Sermon for The Second Sunday of Easter

April 7, 2013

John 20:19-31

I really love Thomas.  I have loved Thomas for years because he has always stood as a symbol that it is ok to be skeptical and have questions about faith.  A little company in that area has always been welcome.  This year, though, I have a new take on Thomas…..new for me at least.

I met this week with the women’s book group, and in the course of our discussion I said something they claimed to have not heard, though I thought I had been saying it quite a bit lately.    I’m pretty sure I have said it among other clergy, and maybe even in front of the bishop’s assistant.  I don’t think I’ve said it around a bishop, and that is probably good.  I have been conscious of saying it because it kind of represents a new place in life for me.  What I said was I have finally gotten to an age where I think I’m old enough to believe what I want to believe.  That’s probably not the sort of thing to be saying around bishops, so in case I end up hearing from one of them, let me practice explaining what I mean when I say I’m old enough to believe whatever I want.

For too much of my life, my faith has been shaped by wanting to be some other kind of Christian.   You all know I make jokes about those Baptists who just seemed to be everywhere when I was growing up, and you know I use them as foils, straw men, for making my liberal theological points from time to time.  But the truth is, I always kind of wanted what they seemed to have.  I really liked their confidence and assurance that they had everything they needed.  The trouble was that by the time I became aware of their message, I had experienced enough death and sickness among loved ones that I already had some serious questions about a good God and bad things happening.  And, some of their basic beliefs like God sending people who’d never heard of him to hell just seemed wrong.  So I lived with a desire for what they had and some strong hesitations about accepting what they believed without any questions.  

How many of you have ever been to a Baptist funeral?  You know they don’t just bury folks, they work in an altar call as long as they have all those people visiting.  The preacher would say, “now I know there’s someone in this room who has been wanting to come forward, wanting to cross that line…”  and I would wonder how the heck he knew.  There were times in my formation when their way of believing looked easy but I just couldn't go there.

I was drawn to the great theologians with their soaringly complicated and articulate explanations about God.  I read theologians who inspired me and made me believe that hard study might lead to really solid ground in this faith that I was a part of.  I read and studied and wanted what they had, but pretty much any answer they provided led to a new series of questions.

I even tried being a charismatic for a while.  That looked good, but my questions came back.

I struggled sometimes, wondering if maybe God wasn’t interested in me because my faith didn’t seem as sure or as confident as that of people around me. 

What took me years to learn, and what I am now beginning to celebrate is the realization that there are all kinds of ways to be in this faith of ours.  And that those different paths can all be faithful and honest and good.  

We are all wired differently.   Some people are more comfortable with major questions left open ended.  Infinite possibility sounds just fine to some.    Others are wired to work within well defined frameworks,  those folks want to know the rules, the givens, they accept the authority of others easily and having done so, are free to explore the deeper meaning of what they have been given.  Some of us have trouble accepting what is handed to us until we work with it, question it, massage it and can finally call it our own.  I just happen one of those people.  

So when I've heard Jesus saying blessed are those who have not seen, but have believed, I took him to be saying blessed are those who are confident in their faith.  That kind of confidence sure looked blessed from my position.   I spent a lot of time wanting to be one of those people.  When I asked why they believed as they did or how they became so sure they would say, well, its in the Bible, or Jesus said so, or that’s the way you’re supposed to believe.  They made it sound so easy and easy sounded good to me. I wanted to be like those folks.  Instead, I kept finding myself to be a question asking, show me kind of disciple, wanting explanations, extremely uncomfortable with the contradictions I heard and with the signs of institutional pressure on the old stories.  Like a four year old who’s learning to work the universe, I asked the question why a lot. And to many of the answers I would ask it again.   Yes, but why?   Why can’t I just believe this stuff and move on with the rest of my life like all those other people I see?  And here’s Jesus saying the ones who can easily believe what they are told are indeed blessed.  Where does that leave the rest of us?  

Well, I think it leaves us where Thomas is.  And in the story we have this morning, Jesus meets Thomas right where he is.  He loves Thomas and works with him to help him find a faith he can embrace.  To Thomas, who doesn't buy what his friends are telling him, who can't believe just because they want him to, Jesus says, "ok Thomas, how can I help you here?  Here are my hands, my side, whatever you need."

What I hear today is Jesus saying there are many ways to believe.   Not just one or two but many.   If you feel yourself wanting something from faith but don’t know exactly why or what you really believe, Jesus says I’ll work with you and we’ll find something that you can be comfortable with.   Wanting something we can’t really name, or fully understand or even imagine in any detail is, I think, a sign that we’re on the right track.  One of the things we know about God..if we can even talk like that..is that God and where our lives might go in company with God is beyond our knowing.  Like Thomas, we sometimes just want to be in that room, hoping, but maybe not really expecting that something will happen.  Hoping but not really expecting that something will touch us in a way that feels real.  

Being old enough to believe what I want is, for me, a way of speaking about trust built over time.  About little moments of insight, affirmation, awe, accomplishment, surrender….little moments that add up over the years, all conveying the message that even though I don’t feel as confident about my faith as I might like, even though I’m not yet transformed into the person I think my faith is calling me to be, still, I am walking this faith road as best I can.  Thomas Merton said just our desire to walk that road with God makes God happy.   There are a thousand doors into those little moments of affirmation that become a life of faith.  

Someone once said the Christian life involves offering as much of ourselves as we can to as much of God as we can understand.  I like that.  We are called to do the best we can with the insights we are offered.  We come at this faith of ours from a lot of directions with a lot of different experiences.  There many, many faithful ways to live into our Christianity.  And Jesus meets us where we are, like Thomas, and says how can I help make this work for you.  

Some of what I missed out on by not becoming a Baptist was getting to preach while waving a floppy Bible and doing altar calls during funerals.  I think I could imagine some others who might be ready for an altar call today.  There isn't a person in this room today who doesn't belong here.  

I know there’s someone in this room today who is here and doesn’t really know why.  Well come on down.  You belong here,  This is your place too.

And I know there is someone here today who came because you love your spouse and your spouse wants to be here.  That's a fine reason for being here.  Come on down.  

And I know there is someone here who is trying to connect their kids to something deeper.  You belong too.  

Someone here today came because you felt a little funny about not having been for a while.  You belong at the table too.  

You know what brought you here today.  Whatever it is, it’s as good a reason to be here as anyone else’s.   Just like he did with Thomas, Jesus works with everyone who shows up, whenever we show up, to help us find our way.  The call on this day in this place is for everyone.  Amen.

Jeremiah 1:4-10

The word of the LORD came to me saying,

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,

and before you were born I consecrated you;

I appointed you a prophet to the nations."

Then I said, "Ah, Lord GOD! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy." But the LORD said to me,

"Do not say, 'I am only a boy';

for you shall go to all to whom I send you,

and you shall speak whatever I command you,

Do not be afraid of them,

for I am with you to deliver you,

says the LORD."

Then the LORD put out his hand and touched my mouth; and the LORD said to me,

"Now I have put my words in your mouth.

See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms,

to pluck up and to pull down,

to destroy and to overthrow,

to build and to plant."

Call.  this is about call.  Or at least I want to talk about call.  Some elements of call.  

Jeremiah’s call echoes a theme we may all recognize, our hesitation…..I can’t do that, you must mean someone else…..there is no way…….

Sermon Preached at St. Aidan’s

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

February 3, 2013

Most of you know that I serve on the diocesan Committee on Priesthood.  In that work, those of us on the committee spend a lot of time talking and hearing about “call.”  We also spend a lot of time pushing back against the all-too-common idea that “call” has something to do with ordination.  Call is not about ordination. Ordination is one response to a particular kind of call, but they are not the same thing, though that is a common misconception.  Sometimes the language we use encourages such a limited understanding of “call.”   We say things like, “she received the call and went into the ministry.”   (ministry in that sentence, of course is referring to ordained work, but that is not the primary meaning of ministry.  Another common misconception.)   I can remember even hearing people in my deep, Bible-belt-South beginnings speak of call almost as if it were an affliction.  “He was a pretty good old boy until he got the call.”  That kind of talk might make any of us afraid of hearing our “call,” but we have all been called or we wouldn’t be here.  The call to become part of this community, to be baptized and to bring our children for baptism, is itself a life-changing call and here we all are.  

For Jeremiah in today’s reading, call is a commissioning, a sending out on a particular mission.  Jeremiah’s call becomes a life-defining purpose into which he is called to live.   Would that we might all have such a sense of purpose and vocation in our lives.  Maybe the first question for those seeking to live in response to the call of God is where to look for our calling.  How can we figure out where God might be inviting a response from us.  I can think of a few signs that might be worth attending to as we try to discern our call.  Some of them we hear in Jeremiah’s call this morning. 

What have you thought of doing in the world that needs doing that you walked away from because it was beyond your abilities?  Is there a category where you have said, but what can one person do?  or simply, that’s too hard.  What might happen if you worked in that area long enough to challenge those responses.  Maybe it is hard, but not too hard.  Or maybe one person can’t do much but one person can do something.  Or one person can be part of a community that does something.   Maybe the sense that the job is too challenging is itself a sign of call.  Jonah learned that his real call lay in the work he ran away from.  Moses who, like Jeremiah today, told God he was not a gifted speaker, took up the work anyway and discovered that the call really wasn’t about speaking to the crowds as much as it was about remaining faithful to the path in the most difficult of times.  David, king of Israel was the weakest and youngest, almost not presented as a candidate for anointing because he was surely not up to the task. 

In all the stories of call in our tradition, the call is accompanied by a strong response in the one being called that they are not qualified, not capable of fulfilling the work to which they are being called.  That response is the first step in answering the call.  We are called, not to accomplish what we are capable of, but to accompany God into situations where God can make things happen.  Call is always about stepping out in faith, expecting, or at least hoping in some small part of our being that we will be given words, that we will be shown a way,  or that we will meet someone whose call involves helping us in the work we have been given.   When it comes to call, claiming our own inadequacy for the task may be a great starting point.

Another sign of call may have to do with what you care about?  What moves you?  Tugs at your heart?  Gives you joy?   Call always begins with an encounter with God, with a brush with a deep reality that hints of even deeper things.  “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you,” says God to Jeremiah.  The beginning of your call has been in you all along.   Call is grounded in gifts, loves, interests, leanings, maybe--some probably never really examined.   The beginning of call involves trusting that we are all formed for some purpose in the great cosmic work of creating, reconciling, transforming the world.   Call begins with an encounter with God who most often speaks within us.  For many of us, discerning a call involves silence and conversation, it involves spending some time alone with ourselves and it involves sharing those inner conversations with a few other people.  Discerning a call takes a bit of introspection, and it takes a community; a community to help by asking questions about what is important.  To help us listen to ourselves, to what we say and to what we don’t say.  Sometimes it is hard to know what really calls out within us until we hear ourselves speaking about it.  In a spiritual community, the members help each other recognize the kind of encounters with God that can change our course and set us on a new ad purposeful path.  

Another sign of call suggested in scripture has to do with risky places.   Isaiah receives his call in the throne room of God.  Filled with awe and fear he is approached and given his call.  Moses had to approach a miraculously burning bush.  Ananias had to go preach to Paul who was a real danger to Christians.  There is an old adage, if the cost is clear and the pay off is still murky, it is God calling.  If the pay-off is clear and the cost is unclear it is not God.  If you are feeling a nudge to explore some scary place, it might be worth a look.

Or maybe a call involves the recognition that you are the only person who can answer right now.  Simply hearing of the need brings a responsibility to follow through in some way.  

Of course, there is another possibility as we seek to discern our call that may be right in front of us in a way that we can’t always see.  Your call, your purpose in life may be exactly what you are already doing.   I think of Moses who led all those people for all those years.  Sometimes he seemed to wonder how in the world he had ended up in such a God-forsaken landscape with such a bunch of ornery folks.  In times like those he sometimes ended up on a mountain complaining to God who reminded him of his original call.    Like Moses, sometimes we have to look back when purpose gets clouded and our resolve is waning, remember the passion, the first sense of call and wonder and duty and gratitude immersion in a good work. 

As important as recognizing our call is trusting that we will be supported in that work.  That others with their own calls and God who is always with us will help us as we try to live faithfully into whatever vocation is ours.  “Do not be afraid,” says God, “I am with you.”  Wherever you may be sent, you can be sure it will be a place where that last line is true.  “Do not be afraid.  I am with you.”   Amen

Sermon for the Third Sunday in Easter
April 22, 2012
Luke 24:36b-48

This morning I want to continue a theme I picked up in my sermon on Easter Sunday.  On Easter we used the gospel reading from Mark, which ends pretty abruptly at the tomb with the angel saying he is not here, he will meet you later in the city.  I talked on Easter about what an open ended message that was for all of us.  In Mark’s resurrection, we are not shown any images of what the risen Christ might look like.  Instead, we are told to go out into the world and expect to have our own experiences of the risen Christ.  I said that Mark points us toward a future with Jesus that is still unknown, an unseen future into which we must live.

In this morning’s gospel reading from Luke we have a contrast with Mark’s simple tale and at the same time, some connection with the message that our future with Jesus is yet unwritten.  Luke’s story today gives us a lot of information about Jesus that we didn’t get from Mark.  We have Jesus appearing in the presence of the gathered disciples who are startled frightened.  We have Jesus making himself known in the act of sharing food with the disciples.  We hear that Jesus’ life and death is grounded in the scripture and tradition of God’s unfolding revelation to Israel, and finally, we hear the charge that the message of Jesus is to be proclaimed to all the world, beginning in Jerusalem.  Luke gives us a lot more information about Jesus, but a bit of the background of Luke’s message brings me back around to the theme of an unknown future with Jesus.  It also makes me think of Jor-el.  

You remember Jor-el, right.  No not some obscure figure in Hebrew scripture, though the name does sound like Hebrew.  Jor-el was Superman’s father.  He was well known to those of us who lived with stacks of DC comics and who considered ourselves followers the caped crusader.  You may remember the story.  Superman ended up on Earth because his planet, Krypton, was about to be destroyed.  His father, Jor-el, packed him of in a home-made space capsule--not unlike Moses’ mother putting him in the Nile--and sent him off to earth hoping that his son would find a new life.  In that capsule, Jor-el packed a few essential things his son would need to make it in the new world.  

In a similar way, Luke is preparing Jesus for a journey into a new situation and he is sending him out with the essentials he will need for his new life.   Luke’s world, like that of Jor-el, has been rocked in ways that make it difficult for Jesus to remain in Jerusalem.  Let me explain.  

It is believed that Mark’s gospel was written twenty or thirty years before the others, and that between the time of those writings, the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple.  When Mark wrote his gospel, the Jesus movement was centered in Jerusalem.  Christians were seen as a sect of Judaism and the home of Christianity was certainly in the ancient holy center of God’s people.  By the time the time Luke and Matthew and John’s gospels were written Christianity’s future was moving out into the larger world of the Mediterranean.  There were those in Jerusalem who thought maybe the new sect had brought on the trouble with Rome.  The Jesus movement was not as welcome in Jerusalem as it had once been.  Christianity had moved along trade routes and come to life in Asia Minor, Greece and Rome.  The later gospel writers were writing for a new audience, and along with the stories of Jesus they packed a few essentials for life in a new and unknown future.  

Like Matthew with his great commission and John who has Jesus in a long discourse hand over his mission to the disciples, Luke includes a commissioning in which he says that the message of the gospel is for the whole world.   The list of essentials we hear Luke including as he commends the message of Jesus to its future in the world includes basic elements of the faith that you and I still recognize.   

First, Jesus becomes known in the community of those who gather in his name.  We know that to still be true.  There are all kind of ways Jesus can become known to us, but they all start here, in this place where we tell the stories and where we offer our hopes and our lives and eventually ourselves as disciples.   Then there is the basic central message that Jesus becomes known to us in the context of a shared meal.  For two thousand years the bread broken by Christians on this, the first day of the week, has marked us, transformed us and fed us.  The meal we share at the table can seem to us an everyday act of piety and it can be the deepest of mysteries.  This table fellowship with the risen Christ will continue long after we are gone.   Another of the basics is that Jesus puts previous revelation in context and is himself put in context by those same scriptures.   This one is especially important for Luke.  Luke, who goes on to tell the story of the new Church in the book of Acts, wants to make sure we know that Jesus is the keystone in salvation history.  And finally, Luke wants us to know that the message is to be spread to all the corners of the earth.  Christians have a mission in the world.  All of these are packed away with care by Luke and handed over to a world and a future Luke could not have imagined.  Luke seems to have chosen well, for these Christian essentials still provide the structure and framework of our faith.  

Of course, another theme kind of jumps out as we read the story from Luke this morning.   In today’s story, unlike the Emmaus story which precedes it or John’s breakfast on the beach, Jesus’ eating of the piece of fish is used to provide an extra level of surety about the truth of the risen Christ.  A ghost can’t eat a piece of fish, but the risen Jesus can.  Luke wants us to know that this part of the story is true.  That would seem to be the hardest part of what Luke and John and Jor-el had to do.  Some things you can pack along with what you are commending to the future, but how do you pass along what you have come to cherish in your heart about this person, this experience you are having to let go of.  Maybe the answer, at least in the case of Jesus, is you don’t.  Jesus will be ok out there.  Jesus will make himself known among new people in new ways.  We know that to be true.  You’ve given us the basics Luke.  We can work with those.  In fact we are called to keep working with those basics in this new world.

When Luke spoke of Jesus being foretold in scripture he was referring to the promise of an heir of David restoring the kingdom of God.  He was thinking of Isaiah whose suffering servant would provide a homecoming for the exiles.  He had in mind psalm 22, my God, my God...which mirrors the story of the crucifixion.  Maybe it is still up to us in our time to continue the work of looking at history through Jesus.   We were told that scripture proves the truth of Jesus.  Maybe Jesus is also the embodiment of the prophet’s call for a new kind of sacrifice of self giving and service to the poor.  In our time, for many, the mission of making Christ known is centered at least as much in service to others as in words about God and Jesus. Christians have gone back and forth between those two calls since the beginning, and I am certain that the call of our heart whatever it may be in that two sided mission is important for our world in our time.  In this new world of ours the hope of meeting Christ in the community gathered continues, and in our best times we challenge ourselves to see Christ in new places and among people who are very different from us.  As the world becomes smaller through communication we have to look for ways to experience the risen Christ in a community where some of us are Christians and some are Muslim, Jews, Hindu and on and on.  Luke, who so obviously trusted the experience of Jesus showing himself to the disciples, sent us not just a story about one moment in history, but a lens through which we might watch for the risen Christ in our own time.  

The truth of the story that luke so desperately want to convey really can’t be given.  I am often dismayed as I hear the early evangelists trying to convince us at such a distance of the solid reality of what they are proclaiming.  I hear them, but I can’t always feel the certainty they want to impart.  That’s the way it is when you have to release your most cherished beliefs into the unknown world of the future.   The deepest, most profound truth of the story has to do with experience and that has to be lived.   And we know something about that too.  We experience the risen Christ in little ways and in profound ways.  In the face of another person, in moments of insight, in a voice that reassures us in hard times, in the call to love and serve, in lives changed.  We live those moments and then we return to this place with its community,  and table,  and lore of scripture and tradition.   Here we put our experiences of the risen Christ in the context of their experiences.  Here we find encouragement to keep watching and expecting to meet him in new ways in lives yet unseen.  JB   

A Sermon for Easter, 2012

Mark 16:1-8

Alleluia Christ is risen!

I don’t think I’ve ever begun an Easter sermon in any other way.  Those words mean Easter.  They are Easter.  But as I hear them this year, I wonder what we are supposed to think of such a claim.  Christ is risen.  We come to this morning from all kinds of lives, with a variety of experiences and levels of engagement with the Christian faith.  For some, the words, Christ is risen, may speak of the event that changes everything, a concrete moment in time when the rules were turned upside down.  For others the words may be just another outrageous claim by a church who asks its members to believe the wildly impossible as a condition of belonging.  If you are wondering about what kind of claim this risen Christ idea might be able to have on your life you are in good company.  This is a good place for such questions.

I know also that I’ve never approached an Easter sermon without wondering how best to welcome all the people who don’t get here that often.  If you haven’t been to church in a while I am delighted that you decided to come this morning.  Really.  As far as I’m concerned, this is your service.  It’s easy for the regulars to be here, but some of you have had to do some traveling to be present today.   Maybe you’ve had to ignore some of your serious questions about the church.  Maybe you decided to test the waters of Church again after a long hiatus and were afraid the preacher might draw attention to those who don’t come very often.  Oops.  Sorry.  Many are here, I’m sure, out of pure love for someone who asked you to come with them this morning.  What a nobel and worthwhile calling.  I am so glad you’re here.  

And for all of you who are here throughout the year and those who are visiting friends and relatives.  Welcome to this glorious morning of music and color and celebration.  I look forward to this day all year long, to the hymns, the crowd, the children the Easter outfits the flowers.  All of it.  But again.  What is it about?  What do those words, Christ is risen mean.  Given half a chance, I’d love to try and explain it to you, but this year I have been warned off that task by a fellow named Andrew Sullivan whose article you may have seen in the most recent issue of Newsweek.  

The line on the cover said, Forget the Church, Follow Jesus.  Turning to the article, I read, “Christianity has been destroyed by politics, priests, and get-rich-quick evangelists.  Ignore them.”   Now I can go off on get rich quick evangelists and politicians with the best of them, and because of that, I sure didn’t appreciate seeing myself lumped in with them like that.  Evangelists, politicians and priests.  Humph.

But reading on, the point became clear enough.  Part of the problem with Jesus is that everyone has their take on what he means and what he is about, what people who follow him should be about, how they should act and what they should believe.  It is so easy to take possession of the newly risen Jesus, bending him to our own limited views and purposes.  Even when those purposes seem so right…..maybe even when they are right.  The problem begins says Sullivan when we start accusing others of not following Jesus, or not understanding what Jesus is about, or claiming that those who don’t agree with us are enemies of Jesus.  You can hear all of that and more in the political headlines this week.  And you can hear people in my business talking pretty easily about what jesus is calling us all to do.  I have my lists,  maybe you have yours.  Sullivan says that kind of infighting about the message is a big part of why people give up on the Church.  I say it again,  if you happen to be here today because you’re willing to give the Church another chance, God bless you. I only hope I don’t screw this day up for you.  Of course I do have some help in the form of a gospel reading we don’t usually haul out for the main service on Easter morning.  

You may not be familiar with the resurrection story in Mark’s gospel.  We just heard the whole thing.  At least what we heard is considered the oldest version of Mark’s Easter story.  You may know that Mark’s gospel was written at least twenty years before the other three gospels.  The other writers had Mark’s gospel and some other material, but they owe the heart of their stories to Mark.  Those other gospels are much longer than Mark’s because the others added not only stories, but theology and explanation to their gospels.  John and Luke, for instance, have Jesus appearing to the disciples several times after his death.  John and Luke want sightings of Jesus to take place in the context of a meal.  John has Jesus cooking on a beach.  Luke has him break bread at an inn at Emmaus.  Matthew not only tells the stories, he preaches them as well.  When Matthew has Jesus tell a parable, he then has Jesus proceed to tell us what the parable means.  Matthew, Luke and John tell the resurrection story in light of what the Church is already coming to understand and believe about Jesus.  You can feel the interpretation narrowing as the meaning of “Christ is risen” is defined.  

Mark, on the other hand, tells a very open ended story.  He is not here, says Mark’s angel.   Go into the city and he will meet you there.  No word about what will happen.  No expectation about what comes next.  Jesus will be there and together you will do what comes next.  Mark’s Easter revelation is simply that Jesus isn’t where you expected him to be.   He has gone ahead of you and will meet you in the new place.  

Whether you are a regular at these services or are here for the first time today.  Chances are you have some pretty fixed ideas about Jesus and the Church and God.  I know I do.  

What I’m hearing today is that even the best of those beliefs, even my most cherished ideas about what it means to follow Jesus may need to be held lightly.  Mark’s Easter message is challenging in its announcement that the disciples’ new life with Jesus lies out there, in a future yet unseen.  This day is not about reinforcing ideas and convictions as much as it is about freeing us to discover what may still be.   Jesus isn’t where you left him, says the angel.  He’s waiting for you just ahead, down the road a bit.  

Maybe the message of this Easter day has to do with meeting Jesus in some new place in our lives.  If Jesus has been companion and comforter for you, maybe the risen Christ will be teacher, challenger of the status quo, prophet.  If Jesus is champion of the poor, maybe the Jesus you meet in town can help you wrestle with what it means for God to love the rich as well.  Maybe if Jesus has become a sign of God’s, or maybe better, the Church’s judgement, then the risen Christ might be the one who convinces you finally that you…..that you are worth whatever effort it takes for the two of you to walk together in the new life.  To enter that new life with Jesus, whatever shape it might take, we first have to hear that he isn’t where we left him.  He’s moved on and wants us to join him.   

Mark’s gospel--the oldest version anyway-- doesn’t give us any examples of what it means to experience the risen Christ.  No encounter stories.  No surprised disciples.  In this sparse telling of the tale we don’t read about how others met Jesus.  We are instead encouraged to go out and meet him for ourselves.  Our celebration today really isn’t about today, it’s about tomorrow and the next day and the next.  And it is about discovering anew the depth and variety of meaning in the cry that has echoed in the world for all these centuries, the cry that announces the beginning of another new chapter in our story, the cry that points us toward the new life we have only to go out and meet.  Alleluia, Christ is risen!     JB

Sermon for the Last Sunday of Epiphany

February 19, 2012

Recently, in my preaching, I have been talking about Jesus in new ways, ways I didn’t learn in my early life in the Episcopal Church.  Of course what I really have been doing is trying to reclaim some language I had ceded to some other Christian folks who I always thought were just a little too comfortable talking about Jesus.  Anyway, I have been talking a lot recently about the up-close God whose name is Jesus in ways that seem new to some of you and to me as well.  I’ve made jokes about people wondering if I have gone off the deep end, and even Mary has been looking at me a little funny lately.   But there is a way I have always been taught to expect Jesus to be present.  It is a teaching I received as a child and one for which I am very grateful.  From a very early age I was taught to expect to meet Jesus in the Eucharist.

I was taught that somehow, Jesus was in that bread and wine.  Now I have been wanting to talk about the Eucharist for a while--to do some basic introduction of what we are about in this central rite of our tradition and this seems like a good time.  There is a strong connection to the last Epiphany gospel we just heard, but we will get there in a a minute.  What I have come to understand so far about the Eucharist is that we do meet Jesus there, we do meet God there and it happens in all kinds of ways.  It happens in different ways at different times in our lives.  

Some of us have come from traditions that have very specific teachings about how Jesus is in the bread and wine.  They teach that somehow, though the elements still look like bread and wine, they are actually changed into the body and blood of Christ in the prayer at the table.  You may have been told that it is important for you to believe that.  Others may have come from traditions where communion is not celebrated often or maybe not at all, and where it is seen mainly as a commemoration of Jesus’ last night with his friends.  It is a good thing for Christians to do, but there is no magic there.  The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church and some others use a wonderfully ambiguous term to describe what we believe about the bread and wine, one that invites, intrigues and leaves a lot open to interpretation.  We say we believe Christ is really present in this sacrament.  Really present.  We don’t say or worry about exactly how that happens.  We just expect it to be true.  

And it is true for many of us in many different ways over our lifetimes.   Sometimes we come looking for strength and we find it.  Sometimes we seek forgiveness and there it is.  Sometimes we come with no idea what we are looking for and we are surprised to find ourselves renewed in some way we didn’t know we needed.  Other times we come and go without much sense of having received anything, but even those times may be seen to have conveyed something as we look back on them later.  In the Eucharist we get a little glimpse, a little taste of what God is like.  We touch for a moment the God who is for us, who loves us and welcomes us and is poured out for us.  We come to the table, we receive communion, and we go back to our seats and mostly, we never tell anyone what just happened.  We don’t often talk about what we have received--what we have experienced.  We keep quiet and we carry the experience with us as we go out from here into the world.  

It is a little like what happened to Peter, James and John.

The story of Jesus being transfigured on that mountain is always the gospel reading for the last Sunday in Epiphany.  We have been hearing other stories--the magi finding the baby, the healing stories, the casting out of all those demons--all pointing to God present in the world in a new way in Jesus.  This final story is the most dramatic.  Here, Jesus shines with the light of God in his person.  For just one moment, Peter, James and John see Jesus as he really is.  The curtain is lifted for just a second and they glimpse the reality behind the words and the healing and everything else that will follow.  They are given a great gift in this experience of light.  As they come down the mountain, they want to focus on what has just happened, they want to enshrine the moment and Jesus tells them that would miss the point.  They are not to discuss what has happened until he has been raised from the dead.  He tells them ‘the time to tell about this experience will be later, when you are living out my purpose in the world.‘   This gift of clarity will strengthen them, fuel them and remind them of what they are about as they take on the life of being the body of Christ.

Whether we climb mountains with Jesus or take him in our hands in the humble elements of bread and wine, we don’t bask too long in the experience.  We are sent out, changed and marked by the experience to be Jesus in the world.  That “changed” business is another part of what I learned about the Eucharist as a child.  It changes us.  The collect for today quotes St. Paul who says we are being changed from glory into glory until we are transformed into the glory of Christ.  The transfigured Christ is a glimpse of the true nature of not only Jesus, but of ourselves in Christ, an image we are probably not ready to see.   We come to the table week after week to take Jesus into  our hands and we go away marked in ways we may not even notice, ways we may not even have imagined to hope for.  But somehow, God is at work--Jesus is at work in the mystery that is the Eucharist.  And somehow in that process we are made new.

Our seminarian, Susan, was telling me about her trip to the holy land.  She encountered a group of monks in the desert who, when they put the bread in her hands at communion said, “become what you receive.”   In a few minutes when you receive the bread and wine at this table you will hear those words.  The response says it all.  Your line will be, “the body of Christ.”   JB

Again, it has been a while since I posted anything.  That is largely because since August, I have not been preaching from a text.  This past Sunday I learned that I could record my sermon on my i-phone and I ended up with a record of what was said.  The problem you will see as you read this is that I don't talk in very writable form.  I apologize in advance for the punctuation in the following transcript.  I have tried to make it readable, but a proper edit would take me all week.  One of these days I'll figure out how to let you listen on the church's web site.  For now, here is the sermon.

Sermon Preached on the Second Sunday after Epiphany

January 15, 2012

Ok.  I’m looking for a show of hands here.  How many of us would like to improve the quality--the living of our lives?  How many of us have some idea that we would like to be better people?  How many of us have imagined a life where our living reflects our deepest, most heartfelt values even better than it does now?   Now, how many of us think we can get there on our own.  Yeah.  Welcome to Christianity.  

Welcome to the whole Judeo-Christian tradition, the story about the God who intervenes in the world in lives of people who long to make it to a better place, often a better place they can’t imagine.   They just kind of have this intuition, this hint.  They know there is a better place; they somehow know they can be more than they already are.  We are talking about a God who meets those people and says, “let me help you make the journey to that new place, let me get you out to that new place.”   Welcome to Christianity.  Welcome to our faith in which there comes a time in the history of God and people when God says, “you know, it’s time for a new way of joining you and leading you to the next new place, one that will be a surprise to you but that is really what your best heart desires.  I’m going to do that in a new way.”    

And so we get to the season we celebrate now, the season of Epiphany, where the new way of being among us to help us, to lead us, to help us make our way to the new place is a very up-close and personal way.   No longer are we aided by a God who has to be sought in a temple or has to be begged to come near--a God we only see as fire at night or something like that.  Our God is very near and comes among us in a very personal and up-close way, and that personal and up-close God has a name.  And the name of the personal up-close God is, of course, Jesus.

Now I’ve got to tell you that Jesus has not always been a word that comes quickly to my lips.  I was raised an Episcopalian.  I heard a lot and thought a lot about God.  I eventually began to get interested in the Holy Spirit because I knew there was something going on here but I didn’t know what that was about.  I didn’t use the word Jesus very much because I had heard that name used in a lot of ways that were sort of problematic.  When I was a kid and I would hear the other kids ask, “do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?”  I would say something like, “I’m an Episcopalian.  I don’t think we do that.”   That’s just where I was.  That’s what I grew up with.  That kind of talk just didn’t sound good to me.  Growing up there was always a draw to have that kind of a friend that these people were talking about, but it was coupled to what I always took as an off-putting rigidity about ways to understand the Bible and ways to behave, and I wasn’t sure I could do those two things together in any kind of way, so I just quit using that kind of language because the “J” word used to signal hard stuff.

As I grew up in the church I began to understand this evangelical business, you know, the people who say you have to have some kind of rousing experience of Jesus in your life--and you probably have to have a controlled and tight understanding of theology--I began to put that over in a category I wasn’t going to mess with.  I certainly never would have called myself an evangelical, wouldn’t call myself that today, but I’m not sure about what I’d say next week or next year.  Because what I am coming to understand more and more, the longer I stay with this business, is that Christianity is about nothing else really, nothing else but relationship with Jesus in which we travel with that up-close and personal God to the next place in our lives.

Now as much as I have tried to separate myself from all that evangelical stuff, it’s funny.   I was thinking this morning about this sermon and what I was going to say and decided to take a break from sermonizing and check e-mail.  There was my friend John, my life-long priest buddy John, whose theology I have shared since teen-hood.  He said, ‘we just had this guy come to our area and speak.  He caught my interest. He seems to be a progressive evangelical, have you ever heard of him?’  Even John’s getting into this stuff.  I wrote back and said I have one of his books on my shelf and I haven’t dusted it off in a long time.  Maybe I should take another look.  It seems this Jesus stuff is converging on me these days.  

There is a fellow here in town with whom I talk about prayer.  We pray and we get together every month or so to talk about how that is going.  We were talking this week about how it is only in the last year or so that we have both begun to use the name Jesus and to see Jesus as the one with whom we speak as we walk along through life--as we make our journey.  I have, for years, spoken to somebody that I have called God or Spirit, but I have been reluctant to use that Jesus word, but now, here my friend and I are in this place Jesus seems to work.  What I am finding as I go through my life and I live with this God whom I meet in all kinds of ways, is that I’m beginning to have a little different take on all this stuff.  Maybe the person I pray to is Jesus.  Maybe this person I walk with is Jesus, and maybe Episcopalians can know Jesus in some kind of up-close way.

I understand that you may think I’m strange for ever having said I didn’t pray to Jesus. You may also, though--and I think it is likely true for more folks in this place--think, oh,oh.  Baker’s going off the deep end.   Well Baker isn’t going off the deep end, but Baker is discovering, as life goes on, that Epiphany--the discovering Jesus among us--Epiphany is not a one time event.   It doesn’t happen all of a sudden.  It can happen slowly and gently over time.  Until one day you look up and say, by golly he is right here.  He is nearby.  He is close.  

Now there are all kinds of ways for us to know Jesus, and that is part of what I like about this story of Nathaniel and Jesus we have today.  Nathaniel kind of had this idea that one day someone would come along who could make things better, who could lead him to a better place.  He gets talked into--invited into--going to meet this Jesus and Jesus says, “yeah, I know you.  You’re a straight up person, you’re all right.  I saw you under the tree over there.”  And Nathaniel says, “that’s incredible.”  

Now think about that.  The beginning of this friendship is nothing more than a little bit of awareness.  Nathaniel is kind of aware of Jesus and Jesus says, “yeah, I have kind of noticed you too.”   Isn’t that how friendships--life long friendships--begin.  First there’s this, “yeah, I kind of have you on my radar, ok, I know who you are.”  And then you run into each other again and then maybe at work or in school, maybe someplace you begin to have some more interaction and the relationship changes.  And as soon as you’ve had an experience or two together, then the relationship deepens some and in talking with each other you can refer to those other experiences and it just gets richer and richer and deeper and deeper.  

I think that living with this up-close and personal Jesus who comes among us, whom we celebrate in this Epiphany season, I think living with that Jesus is about moving from one level of friendship and acquaintance to another as we grow and become more and more of what we might be able to be.  And I find that in that friendship there are wonderful little changes.  This is the Jesus who loves us, forgives us before we can think about asking for it, who is just extravagant in the way he offers himself for us, and is also the one who challenges us--is also that little voice of conscience, is also that other little voice in the conversation in our head that comes up with a bit of wisdom or a nugget or something we needed to remember, and in that way, manages to change us.  Not in huge ways, I never change in any huge ways, but a little bit.  Maybe a little realization about compassion, maybe a little realization about how to take something that people say to you, maybe a little realization about how to give the tiniest bit of love back.  Little changes that may not seem like much to the people around us if we told them about them, but that seem like scaling some big mountain to us because we’ve done something we didn’t know we could do until that friendship helped it to happen.

I’ve known Jesus in all kinds of ways.  Back when I was a kid taking bread and wine, I knew something important was happening there, I just didn’t call it Jesus.  When I hear that voice of conscience sometimes--I used to try to get it to shut up--now I may try to listen to it a little differently.  I’m beginning to understand there’s more here than I thought.  In exchanges with some of you, in exchanges with others, in receiving love, affirmations, hope--and challenges-- from the people around me I am beginning to understand that’s who’s been there all along.  

And so I guess my message to you this morning is this Epiphany business, this Jesus who becomes manifest among us as God up close and personal--I know that’s a little weird for some of you--but up close and personal, that Jesus becomes known to us over and over again in brand new ways so that maybe at some point in our lives, if someone comes up to us and asks, “do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and savior?” you can just substitute for personal Lord and Savior a word like friend and say, “oh yeah.”  Or companion and you can say, “sure.”  Or mentor, tutor, coach.  Any of those will do.  But the goal I think for us in Epiphany is to end up in a place where we can all say, “yeah, I know this one.  I know this one who showed up among us, who bears God to us in a new way and who is leading you and me to the new place that we can only barely imagine.”   Amen

Long Time No Posting


Dear Friends,


I see that I haven't posted a sermon since June, and it seems a little funny that when I finally get around to posting one it is about money.  
Here's the thing. 


I really haven't been writing sermons down since June.  I was in Longport for the first three weeks of July and I have always just wandered the aisles and talked to those folks.  I left Longport and went to my first residency with the Shalem program in August, where the subject of my next Sunday's sermon sort of came to me while I was running one morning.  That meant I had a sermon a week before I needed it, which most of you know is pretty rare for me.  By the time that Sunday came around, I had decided to wing it, to work without a net, as it were, and I have just been doing that ever since.  I sometimes have some notes written down, but not something together enough to publish here.  This past Sunday I wanted to talk about money, and I was as nervous about the talking as some of you probably were about having to listen.  At 8:30 I stepped into the pulpit and tried to preach from a text which is part of the sermon that follows here.  Walking in at 10:30, my faithful associate, Elizabeth, mentioned that the sermon could use something more.  As the gospel reading wound down, it became apparent that I just needed to trust and talk.  I had enough of this one written that I was able to post it.  


I will work on some way to record and transcribe in the future.  I'm having fun preaching without notes, and I am sometimes surprised at what I hear myself saying.  Thanks for checking out the blog.  JB