Category: Sermons

[Jesus said:] “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in a cloud’ with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. “Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”

Luke 21:25-36

My sermon from First Sunday of Advent (November 28, 2021) on Luke 21:25-36.

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So on Tuesday, I loaded up my minivan with all the potatoes, squash, apples, and oranges you donated to our annual harvest altar and delivered it to Tri-Boro Food Pantry. Now I, for some unknown reason, assumed the pantry would be pretty quiet that morning. The big Thanksgiving meal distribution had already happened and the volunteers, I figured, would be focused on the future. Due to the increased need in our area, the pantry pre-packs all the bags of groceries they distribute. Janelle and the rest of the team work really hard to make sure the 100+ families that rely on the pantry all receive similar things. Rarely do people donate 100 of an item to the pantry so it takes a lot of advance planning to take what’s donated and turn it into something families can use. The pantry actually has a notebook filled with lists prepared weeks in advance detailing what food goes in what bag. This kind of work helps the distribution of food go smoothly while also allowing the opportunity for volunteers to get to know the clients and if they need anything special. By working on the food people will need in the future, the pantry limits the kind of chaos that can happen when people have to wait in line in a parking lot. When I arrived on Tuesday, the pantry was working perfectly. As the clients arrived, the volunteers knew exactly what to do and it was awesome seeing how they made sure everyone had what they needed. Their work serving others went without a hitch. But since it was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, chaos reigned in different ways. Car after car kept showing up, each one filled with people donating turkeys and hams and veggies and snacks and paper goods of all kinds. There was me bringing in hundreds of pounds of produce and also half-a-dozen SUVs filled with canned goods from Temple Emanuel of the Pascack Valley. There were cars from local businesses and schools dropping off all the items they raised during their Thanksgiving food drives. And since many who donated were visiting the pantry for the very first time, it was a bit of a mess. All we could do was get the food inside and the volunteers would spend their future figuring out how best to use these gifts. The season of Thanksgiving is a time when people are very generous but during the week of Thanksgiving, the gifts given to the pantry don’t usually end up on people’s tables in November. Instead, they are a kind of down payment on the future, delivered by people in the present, who gathered these items during their immediate past. Yet these kinds of gifts are amazing because people always need more than one meal. Last Tuesday morning, I saw how the future impacted the present while holding true to the full story of the past. And that’s a strange way to experience this moment but it is, I think, what the season of Advent is all about. 

In today’s reading from the gospel according to Luke, the future is everywhere. We’re told there will be signs causing people to fear what is coming upon the world and that the powers of the heavens will be shaken. People will see the Son coming on a cloud in glory and even when the earth and heavens disappear, Jesus’ words never will. Throughout this passage, the verbs point to the future – and paying attention to the verbs is one way we interpret scripture. This future orientation helps us to unpack Jesus’ words but to do that well we also need to pay attention to his present and his past. Jesus, at this point in the story, was near the end of his earthly ministry and he knew it. He tried, for quite awhile, to prepare the disciples for what was coming next. They, however, didn’t get how someone with so much power could lose to a few people wielding swords. Jesus, over and over again, showed them that people in power do not respond well when God’s love shows up. God’s love often serves as a disruptive event because it refuses to let our comfort come at the expense of others. Jesus, in his own way, was a chaos making agent because he confronted people’s present reality in a way that upended their future. In the words of Audrey West, Jesus knew his presence forces us to question who the future actually belonged to. And so that’s why Jesus brought up the future because who we are today is shaped by what we imagine our tomorrow to be. 

Now that call to think about tomorrow is one that’s still relevant today because we often fight and kill and defraud and threaten and make the lives of others hard because we’re trying to hold onto a future that can easily be undone. We want to be comfortable. We want to be in charge. We want certain moments to last forever and we don’t always want change to come. We hold onto the future we imagine and we become our kind of chaos making agent trying to make that vision come true. But the story of Jesus is the story of how God chooses, over and over again, to disrupt the chaos we create so that a different kind of future breaks through. That’s why, in the story of ancient Israel, God always showed up and why, in the story of Jesus, he entered the human story with a mother who was poor and gave birth next to animals. And when those in power did all they could to keep the status quo, Jesus’ story continued through the Cross. God’s story is a future oriented story where wholeness, hope, mercy, and love is at the center of it all. And everytime we cling to only one kind of future, God breaks through to say that everything will change. 

Now that’s scary because the future is always scary. We don’t know exactly what will happen next but we do know what it’s like when the future we planned for is completely undone. That’s why, I think, why we fight so hard to bring about a certain kind of future. We know how unexpected life can be and we seek a kind of security that will carry us through. Which is why, I think, Jesus made sure that the future oriented verbs in today’s text also told the story of what God had already done. The kingdom of God coming near is more than just a future where no one ever needs to visit a food pantry again. It’s also a descriptor of what people experienced when Jesus showed up. He showed how healing and care, wholeness and hope, should be the power that shapes everyone’s future. His presence made an impact on people who suddenly had a story of how God’s love made a difference in their past. Advent, then, is more than a countdown to a Christmas that is historical and made a bit nostalgic. It’s, instead, an invitation to rethink today by looking forward to how God’s promises become real in our lives. Advent is a way of life that notices how we, through baptism and faith, have already been drawn into the story of Jesus. And since Jesus has been made real in our past, we, as the body of Christ, get to bring the kingdom of God to all those near us. We, the ones who struggle against God’s future, are called to  bring wholeness and healing into the lives of others so that their future will be different. The Advent season is a strange season because we’re looking forward to the future while counting down to the Christmas that’s already happened in the past. Yet when we focus on what’s coming, we get to change what today is all about. We know that chaos is a part of life and our future will never be as secure and comfortable as we would like. Yet through it all, we belong to God and we have a Savior who will never let us go. So I invite you this Advent season to look to the future. Look towards what God’s kingdom is all about. And when your future ends up being completely disrupted by the unplanned chaos of today, hold close to the promise that God’s future is already on its way because Christmas has come, Easter is real, and we are part of every bit of Jesus’ story – forever. 

Amen.

In the spring of the year, the time when kings go out to battle, David sent Joab with his officers and all Israel with him; they ravaged the Ammonites, and besieged Rabbah. But David remained at Jerusalem. It happened, late one afternoon, when David rose from his couch and was walking about on the roof of the king’s house, that he saw from the roof a woman bathing; the woman was very beautiful. David sent someone to inquire about the woman. It was reported, “This is Bathsheba daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.” So David sent messengers to get her, and she came to him, and he lay with her. (Now she was purifying herself after her period.) Then she returned to her house. The woman conceived; and she sent and told David, “I am pregnant.”
So David sent word to Joab, “Send me Uriah the Hittite.” And Joab sent Uriah to David. When Uriah came to him, David asked how Joab and the people fared, and how the war was going. Then David said to Uriah, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” Uriah went out of the king’s house, and there followed him a present from the king. But Uriah slept at the entrance of the king’s house with all the servants of his lord, and did not go down to his house. When they told David, “Uriah did not go down to his house,” David said to Uriah, “You have just come from a journey. Why did you not go down to your house?” Uriah said to David, “The ark and Israel and Judah remain in booths; and my lord Joab and the servants of my lord are camping in the open field; shall I then go to my house, to eat and to drink, and to lie with my wife? As you live, and as your soul lives, I will not do such a thing.” Then David said to Uriah, “Remain here today also, and tomorrow I will send you back.” So Uriah remained in Jerusalem that day. On the next day, David invited him to eat and drink in his presence and made him drunk; and in the evening he went out to lie on his couch with the servants of his lord, but he did not go down to his house.
In the morning David wrote a letter to Joab, and sent it by the hand of Uriah. In the letter he wrote, “Set Uriah in the forefront of the hardest fighting, and then draw back from him, so that he may be struck down and die.”

2 Samuel 11:1-15

My sermon from the 10th Sunday after Pentecost (July 25, 2021) on 2 Samuel 11:1-15.

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You might have noticed that our gospel reading today wasn’t from the gospel according to Mark. Instead, we side-hopped into the sixth chapter of John which we’ll be in for the next five weeks. This chapter is known as the “bread of life” because Jesus fed five thousand people with a few loaves and fishes and then kept saying he was bread. So these readings will be really exciting if you’re a bird. And since this is our Christmas in July Sunday, you would be totally excused if you spent the rest of the day humming a song about swans, geese, calling birds, french hens, turtle doves, and a partridge hounding you for this gluten-based treasure. But today is also a day that needs our creativity because we’re being asked to do a lot. We need to, somehow, integrate the songs of Christmas with a book from the Bible we haven’t spent much recent time in, And we also are sitting with King David’s sexual assault on Bathsheba. None of this is easy and if you’re not able to listen to this sermon right now, you have my permission to do what’s right for you. And one practice we might try to help us discern where we spiritually are right now is to create some breathing-space for our mind and our soul. So before we do anything else and dwell deeper in this complicated moment, let’s take a moment to just rest. 

 But how do you rest during worship, especially if you’re sitting in hard wooden pews or at home trying to get your kids to stop hitting each other while I speak through a microphone not everyone can put on mute? Worship needs us to do a little work. We need to be fully present, either virtually or in-person, while singing, praying, reading, tasting, and listening. And even if we’re not paying attention to everything happening around us, we often come to worship with our mind still buzzing about an argument or an experience we had earlier in the week. Worship gives us a chance to spiritually recharge but that doesn’t mean it’s always restful. So we need to learn how to do that: to make time to rest our minds and our bodies. If we don’t, our creativity and our lives suffer because we weren’t designed to just keep going. We need tob reathe or, in the words of Rev. Kirk Byron Jones, create what he calls: “peace pockets.” He models these mental respites by following rules laid out by Mary Oliver. These periods of time are when he’s “not-thinking, not-remembering, and not-wanting.” This resting can be physical, like taking a nap or making sure your phone is not the first and last thing you see during the day. This resting can also be mental, like taking twenty minutes to look out a window, light a candle, or take a walk. And if you can’t find a moment of silence, you’re invited to make the noise around you into white-noise: changing your focus so that sound of restless children or heavy traffic or lawnmowers becomes an indistinct buzz that loses all meaning. We don’t always have the luxury of resting as deeply as we can. But I hope each of us will realize we can make rest happen. So let’s practice that together. Let’s rest. If it’s helpful, take a deep breath and exhale out all the worries, anxieties, and struggles you carried with you into this space today. Turn your head and look at a window or zone out while staring at the back of a pew. Just…rest because your creative spirit and your life needs it. 

Now, in a perfect world, you would rest multiple times a day. And that rest would bring you a bit of peace that would lead to an experience of clarity that would help you see what’s right in front of you. I know we haven’t really rested long enough for this to happen so if you want mentally turn my voice into white noise while I keep talking, I won’t take offense. Yet I did want to share something I saw in our readings today that came to me after I rested. The crowd that came to Jesus was a crowd full of people in need. They were the culturally unclean; the people the rest of us believed deserved everything that had happened to them. The status quo did everything it could to leave these behind. But when Jesus chose otherwise, making sure each one had more than enough to eat, the crowd tasted something new. They experienced a creative use of power that didn’t try to dominate them. Instead, it included them. It listened to their cries; their concerns; their fears; and their hopes. And it made each person in the crowd feel like they belong; like they matter; like their life had meaning. God’s love did more than just feed them. Jesus’ presence created a new kind of community that even included the unwelcomed. This experience of power was new, exciting, and different because it fed life rather than say one life was more valued than the other. And it was a power, in a weird way, that seemed to ask for very little because it was too busy being for the people who had no power in the first place. It was a power that gave their lives a bit more meaning and it was willing to give everything to help the most vulnerable thrive. 

So when the crowd finally found themselves being part of a community they never had before, they tried to make Jesus a king. Yet Jesus knew our experience and understanding of power was  still a bit too self-centered. Instead of seeing power as a gift meant to be given away, we choose to hold onto power as tight as we can. And we look for leaders willing to fight instead of leaders willing to be for others. King David, while at the pinnacle of his power, sent his army away to do the work he no longer needed to do. And instead, he chose to assault Bathsheba because he knew she couldn’t say no. But when she told the truth of her story, his commitment to power ended up causing more violence, with Uriah hand delivering the order that would kill him and his entire battalion. Everytime we do what we can to hold onto the power we think we have, the creative spark of life meant for all is dimmed by our own hands. Yet the God who claimed us in our baptism, who gifted us faith, and who chooses not to give up on us when we give up on God, refused to be held captive to these creative limitations. God, instead, chose to be born. God chose to need love. God chose to be vulnerable and to reach out to all we make vulnerable too. God chose to be for others while we hold closely to ourselves. And even when God’s love was strung up on a Cross, Jesus’ arms still remained opened to all. 

And so that’s, I think, why we need to make time to rest and to help others rest too. A good nap does more than make us feel good; it helps us see the new life God is inviting us to live. Our present is not the end of God’s story. Rather, it is merely the raw materials God is busy transforming into a new reality. The king of kings, whose first crib was a food dish for farm animals, is more than just our Lord. He also came to trigger our imagination to notice that power can be about so much more. And if Jesus Christ can be for us, then we can learn how to nurture our creative spirit through rest so that we can be for others too.

[Jesus said:] “And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

John 3:14-21

My sermon from the Fourth Sunday in Lent (March 14, 2021) on John 3:14-21.

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So for today’s sermon, I want to begin with a question that I’ve been sitting with for awhile: how do we hold the fullness of the past while still living into the future?

You might know that I didn’t grow up in Northern New Jersey. And if I wanted to visit my childhood home, I’d need to drive about 1,792 miles west. My hometown of Littleton, Colorado, was once the southern boundary of the Denver Metropolitan area. But over time, suburban sprawl pushed the boundary outwards. And new cities with hundreds of thousands of people now exist in places where I once watched antelope graze. Now, my high school was Arapahoe High School and it was larger than Pascack Valley and Pascack Hills combined. The school was known for its academics and it has a pretty good soccer team. It probably wouldn’t surprise you to know that I was one of the more nerdy kids while there. And while high school was definitely not perfect, they at least didn’t want our 4 years there to be the peak of our lives. A few years before I attended Arapahoe, there was a bit of a controversy. For decades, their mascot was the Warrior – which could have been very generic. But since the high school was named after one of the Native American tribes that once called the area home, the decision was made to make the mascot a caricature of what white Americans imagined indian warriors to be. The mascot was typically depicted as a face turned to its side. He had piercing anger filled eyes, a high forehead, strong nose, and a mohawk on top. He also wore feathers and other accessories that were actually part of Eastern Native American cultures rather than anything out West. No effort was made to have the mascot fit the Arapaho nation. And for decades, that mascot told a story that remembered why it was called Arapahoe but one that wasn’t interested in looking past its founding. And that’s because the Arapaho nation had been forcibly removed from the area in the late 1870s after the United States broke treaty after treaty it signed with the tribe. Some of its members were eventually moved 500 miles north, to the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming. But sometime in the late 1980s, members of the student body, some alumni, and administrators decided to dig deeper into its story. They dug deeper into a vision of history bigger than just the students who ever called Arapahoe High School home. That journey eventually led to the Northern Arapaho Tribe and Arapahoe High School forming a relationship. The relationship included a kind of truth telling, where the school reflected on how the mascot wasn’t telling the full story of its past. It had appropriated a version of an identity while ignoring everything that made that identity what it was. The Tribe told the school they could continue using the Warrior as its mascot but the tribe would teach them what a warrior was all about. A new logo was designed by a member of the tribe, Wilbur Antelope, and was a portrait of their tribal elder, Anthony Sitting Eagle. The two communities promised to visit each other every-other-year, sharing their stories, traditional dances, celebrating accomplishments, and mourning together when crisis struck. Each year, the tribe provided a scholarship for the valedictorian of the high school even though Arapahoe High School is in a very affluent area and the Northern Arapaho Tribe suffers with generational poverty. In the words of Lone Bear, “To [the Northern Arapaho Tribe], being a warrior means going to battle for what’s right, taking care of your family, and passing on knowledge.” And what’s passed on is a full story that does not sugar coat, romanticize, or ignore how the past forms our present and our future. Rather, it faces who we are so that we can become something more. 

Today’s reading from John is part of a conversation Jesus had with a man named Nicodemus. The conversation took place at night and I like to imagine it beginning with Jesus sitting alone in a room. The glow from a small oil lamp illuminated his face and he was trying to wind down after a busy day of preaching and teaching. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door and instead of blowing out the lamp and pretending he wasn’t there, Jesus opened the door and Nicodemus walked in. The conversation began with Nicodemus making one of those statements that was really a bit of a question. He said he recognized Jesus’ connection to God because “no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Now that affirmed a little of Jesus’ own identity but it might also have been an attempt by Nicodemus to get Jesus to do what we all love to do: and that’s talk about ourselves. By affirming his connection to God, Nicodemus might have wanted some more backstory of how that was possible. Jesus could have then shared his story like we share ours: making himself look a little more faithful; a little smarter; and definitely a lot cooler than he actually was. But he could probably have done something we can’t do: step outside the bounds of history and see how different actions by different people over different time periods formed the complex reality we’re just trying to live in. We’re not always good at holding together the parts of our story we are active participants in and the other bits we are given: like our culture, our background, our opportunities, and those things we assume are just how things are. Nicodemus might have expected Jesus to do the same – to tell a cherry picked version of what it means to be the Son of God. But if Jesus had done that, he wouldn’t have been able to tell his full story – one that was going to include the Cross. So instead of talking about himself, Jesus instead turned the conversation around. He poke and prodded at Nicodemus until Nicodemus suddenly found himself in a fuller version of God’s story; one that wasn’t over quite yet. Because Jesus’ ministry wasn’t only centered on where he was from but, rather, on where he was going. What mastered wasn’t that Jesus was part of the Trinity or that he was there when creation came into being. What made Jesus’ story Jesus’ story was that God entered our lives and our world because God’s love couldn’t do anything less. God wouldn’t let the partial stories of our past, our present, and what we imagine our future to be – to limit what God knows we can be. The story of God’s love can hold the truths of our past and the reality of our present while propelling us into a future that is full of hope. 

As followers of Jesus, we sometimes struggle with the fullness of our story. When we examine bits and pieces of our history – the parts that are personal and the parts that include the people who came before us – we’re not always ready to celebrate its true beauty or admit how harsh it actually was. We tend to add a buffer to the story so that we can be isolated ourselves from history. Yet we seem to know how interconnected our stories actually are because we take personally any judgment leveled against the past. It’s okay to be proud or sad or indifferent or excited about the story of who we are and the story we tell about ourselves. But that story of our past was never meant to justify the future God already has in mind for us. Because when you were baptized and graced with faith in God – you were given a promise that your yesterday and your today will not be the limit of your tomorrow. Rather, the love of God would be gifted to you and the Son of God – Jesus Christ himself – would be a companion with you through whatever life brings your way. No longer are you limited to the story you tell about yourself. You are wrapped up in the story of God who sent Jesus not to condemn the world but to save it. And that future doesn’t begin tomorrow – it begins today. We get to tell a fuller story of who we are; where we’ve come from; and how we inherited things beyond our control. Yet we don’t need to be limited by what the past says we can be; instead, we can embrace the future as God declares it will be. And that future is full of love; full of welcome; full of inclusion; full of new life; and full of people just like you – those who have sometimes made bad choices; sometimes denied the dignity of others; sometimes failed to see the image of God in their neighbor; and – at our best – have loved complete strangers just like Jesus loves us. We get to be oriented towards God’s future rather than by our limited view of our past. And we get to live that way right now – because your eternal life has already started. 

Amen.

Then [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Mark 8:31-38

My sermon from First Sunday in Lent (February 28, 2021) on Mark 8:31-38.

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One of the easiest ways to cause a problem in your relationship is to speak up in a very public setting. For example, let’s say you’re out with friends and everyone was having fun. One of your friends made a light hearted comment and then you, without thinking, turned that comment into a joke at their expense. Or maybe your coworker was telling a story but left out something that’s a little embarrassing. That little detail had no bearing on the outcome of the story but you couldn’t help to speak up and reveal what they didn’t want you to share. Or maybe you and your loved one were having an argument. It was simmering for a while and it wasn’t resolved. You were starting to feel a little bit resentful and while staying up way too late scrolling through social media, you made a post, turning your private conflict into one that’s now very public. Not everything in our relationships is designed for public consumption. And I know, personally, how easy it is to create drama by inadvertently crossing that line. We don’t always mean to call attention to our friends in a way that makes them defensive. But it’s sometimes easier doing that than telling them, “we need to talk.” What we need to do is own up to the truth that these kinds of one-on-one conversations are really hard. They aren’t always easy but they can be the one thing we’re supposed to do. So I wonder if Peter, in our reading today from the gospel according to Mark, was trying to do a hard thing. I know he usually gets a bad wrap when we read this passage because it takes a certain amount of gumption to messiah-splain to the Son of God. Yet if Peter really wanted to call out Jesus in an unintentional or difficult way, I imagine he would have done so in front of all the disciples. Instead Peter waited for an opportunity to pull Jesus aside and say, “hey, we need to talk.” Peter did the hard thing – and Jesus responded by doing everything you’re not supposed to do when tending to a relationship. 

Now before we go too deep into Jesus’ actions, it’s important to set the stage of what’s happening in our reading. Jesus and his followers were approaching the city of Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea was founded by Herod the Great’s son – Herod Philip – and his kingdom included parts of Galilee, Syria, and Jordan. Caesarea Philippi became the administrative center of his little empire which is why he named it after himself. But Herod Philip also decided to use the name of the city to flatter the person who gave him his power. Caesarea was named after Caesar – aka the Roman Emperor. Herod Philip ruled the area because the Roman Empire, which controlled the region, let him rule. Without their authority and power, Herod was nothing. So he filled the city with Roman imagery, Roman statues, and they even built a temple honoring the Roman Emperors outside the city. As Jesus and his disciples neared this very Roman looking city, Peter confessed that Jesus was the Messiah. Peter’s confession was more than just a theological or spiritual statement. It was also a political one – because if Jesus is Lord – that means the Emperor – and those who supported him – were not. By saying Jesus was the Messiah, Peter was proclaiming that the structure of power in our world was about to change. Jesus’ ministry wasn’t only only about taking care of people’s souls; he was also going to take care of their bodies, their ideologies, and the ways they live with one another. Jesus’ good news for the poor was literally that – good news for the marginalized; the pushed aside; and those without power. But any good news for them was also anything but for those who enjoyed power in the here and now. Peter couldn’t wait to see God’s compassion for the marginalized realized in his lifetime. But when Jesus started talking about suffering, pain, and this…thing used by the Roman Empire to maintain their power and control – Peter felt compelled to say to Jesus: “hey, we need to talk.” Peter wasn’t being malicious but he couldn’t imagine God’s love bringing about a kind of conflict where the Empire, rather than Jesus, would win. 

Now, I don’t know what Peter expected when he pulled Jesus aside – but he probably didn’t plan for his private conversation to become very public. Not only did Jesus bring their conversation back to the disciples – he then included the entire crowd. In fact, we’re still reading about Jesus calling Peter “Satan” 2000 years later – which is usually not really a great way to keep a relationship with each other. Peter, after witnessing Jesus’ fame grow and after experiencing Jesus’ power, assumed Jesus would install himself into a position of authority that held power over others. Jesus would become a kind of benevolent emperor – a kinder version of the type of ruler they had all grown up with. But Jesus, as the Son of God, didn’t need to be installed in to power. He already had it. The difference, however, was that he wasn’t interested in what we imagine power to be all about. What he wanted – what he practiced – and what he taught – was a power with others and one that would heal the world. It’s why he ate meals with sinners and hung out with the poor rather than the rich. It’s why he healed people on the sabbath – not letting people suffer even one day more. And it’s why he wouldn’t allow the maintaining of the status quo interfere with the giving – and sharing – of life. In the words of Ira Digger, “Mark is saying that the Son of God will not dial down his ministry to spare his own life, or even to ease his suffering. His commitment to the healing of humanity literally knows no limits.” The power Jesus lived out was a power meant to help others – regardless of their social status, their identities, their genders, their ages, or their wealth – to thrive. His mission in the world was, by default, going to disrupt the world. And so that’s why the world’s response to that kind of disruption – is always the Cross. 

Now it’s a bit strange to talk about Jesus’ ministry of healing in the midst of an ongoing pandemic. I know too many people who’ve been infected by COVID-19 in just the last few weeks. If there’s anything I want right now, it’s Jesus’ healing of the world. But I’m also mindful of how I want that healing to just be a return to how things were. We all want this disruption to end but that doesn’t mean we’re always open to the kind of disruption Jesus’ healing actually brings. We want a return to normal but Jesus was never in the business of letting things remain the same. God always comes to us in love and that’s why we try to resist it. We want Jesus to move in our world but only on our terms. We are fine with God’s love as long as we don’t have to give up our ideas of freedom, of power, of position, or our points of view. We’re okay with Jesus as long as Jesus doesn’t ask us and our  communities to change too much. And we assume that good news can only be good if it caters to us. Yet God won’t let us get in the way of a love and a hope and a way of being in the world that lets God be God and lets let’s life, not the Cross, be what we share with all. There is a cost to being a disciple of Jesus – and that means we are called to give up ways we resist what God is doing in our world. We need to give up limiting who deserves love and who doesn’t; we need to give up limiting our attention to only people who are like us; we need to give up the ways our social status and power requires others to make adjustments for us; and we need to lean into relationships with all people instead of only a chosen few. We need – in a way – to be like Peter and Jesus. We need to refuse to give up on one another. Because even when Peter thought Jesus got it wrong and when Jesus called out Peter for all time – they doubled down their commitment to each other. Even when we get our relationship wrong; even when we say something we shouldn’t; and even when something private becomes way too public; we can commit ourselves to being Jesus’ good news in our world. And this is something we can do because in your baptism, in your faith, and in this very moment – Jesus has already made the promise to never give up on you. 

Amen. 

Jesus said: “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven. “So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

My sermon from Ash Wednesday (February 17, 2021) on Matthew 6:1-6,16-21.

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So I’d like to start tonight’s sermon with a little experiment. Take a look at everyone who surrounds you. If you’re by yourself, think about a few neighbors or family members or friends. Take a moment to really focus on everything that makes them who they are. Examine their clothes, the features of their face, the way they laugh, and the opinions they hold. Make sure your entire focus is directed at them. And then – once you feel as if you are totally absorbing who they are – make a detailed list of everyone of their sins. 

Now, if your eyes just grew wide, know that mine did too. And the truth is that I don’t actually want you to make such a list – especially since I want the rest of your night with your spouse, your children, and your friends to be peaceful. But I do wonder what your reaction was to that request. Did your eyes, like mine, get big? Were you surprised to be asked to make such a list on the first day of Lent? Or did you notice that you already had such a list in mind? You might have found yourself, in a split second, feeling full of judgement. You started criticizing their choice in jeans, the ways they eat, and how you’re always the one who makes plans to connect with family and friends. Your list could have included things you’ve brought up before or maybe only things you’ve kept to yourself. And it might have been surprising to see how many minor annoyances we automatically label as sins. Not everything that bugs us is necessarily a sin but we all struggle to live as if God’s kingdom has come near. Every day, we have to do the hard work of living with the fact that not everyone in the world thinks or acts like us. But we are pretty good at identifying other people’s problems. That doesn’t mean we’re actually right in the conclusions we draw, but we’re really efficient when it comes to seeing what we imagine to be other people’s sins. I wonder if we do that because human beings can be very outward focus. Our eyes look outside of us and our ears are tuned to listen to what’s around us. Even the voice we speak sounds much different from the voice we hear in our heads. In some ways, we are designed to be outward facing at all times. And it can take work to shift our focus towards ourselves. 

So what if I asked you to make a different kind of list. Instead of asking you to name the sins other people have – what would it be like to make a detailed list of your own? What would it take to name all the ways you act as if you are the center of the world and how hard it is to believe that we’re not? Our initial list might feel pretty general but I bet we could make it be as detailed as the list we made about others. This list wouldn’t be a tool we use to harm our sense of self – to enhance the lies the world – or our selves – tell us. Rather, it would simply be an attempt to list the truths we refuse to hide. And it would be a list that God already knows. A shift from looking outwards and cultivating what’s inside of us – is one of the things, I think, Jesus is getting at in our reading from the gospel according to Matthew. 

Now this passage is one we read every Ash Wednesday and it comes from the middle of Jesus’ great sermon on the mount. Matthew placed that sermon at the start of Jesus’ ministry – an attempt, I think, to try and describe what fueled the inner life of Christ. For Matthew, the presence of God was fleshed out not only in the reality of Jesus but also in his preaching and teaching. He wanted to give us a sense of what fueled Jesus and helped him change the lives of so many people who were outside of him. And that interplay between who we are, whose we are, and how that impacts the world around us – was something Jesus touched on often. He knew that faith and God’s love took seriously who we really are. That includes not only what we do but also what we think, what we believe, and what we feel. He was mindful of every relationship that we have and how outward focus we can be. Yet everything we live through and everything we do is experienced, expressed, and generated by our body and our mind. When we focus on what outsides of us, that focus still comes from somewhere. And Jesus wanted us to be mindful of who we are so that we can become the people God knows we can be. 

So when we listen to Jesus’ words about hypocrites, we shouldn’t just blankly dismiss the people he talked about. They – like us – were people practicing their faith. They prayed. They fasted. They made financial gifts to their faith communities and those who are in need. They took time to nurture their relationship with God – and yet Jesus was aware of how easy the life of faith can become so outwardly focused, it forgets where that focus comes from. And if the fuel for our faith relies primarily on the attention others give us, then our faith actually becomes unsustainable. Because there will be times when the attention we receive will be harmful or non-existent. And there will be moments when grief, sadness, pain, and suffering make it too hard to believe. We might even find ourselves too busy for God or having so much joy in our life that we end up acting as if we do need any more God. What sustains our faith cannot depend on what others – or ourselves – give to us. Rather, we need God and the promise that Jesus will never let us go. 

So what is a practice of faith that keeps Jesus close to us and helps us hold onto the fuel for the life we actually live? Well, one answer to that question comes from the verses we didn’t hear today. In the gap between verses 6 and 16 – Matthew included this: 

“Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.”

Those verses probably sound familiar and that’s because they’re Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. And that prayer is more than just something we recite because Jesus told us too. Rather, he knew that these words serve as a kind of corrective when we default to an outward focused identity. When we pray the Lord’s prayer – we are reminding ourselves that there is a God – and that we’re not it. We hold tight to the truth that God’s kingdom will come; that our food, clothing, shelter, and wealth are gifts; and that God is leading us even when we are too busy to notice Jesus in our life. This prayer reminds us that God’s forgiveness is what helps us forgive others. And that the gift of faith is sustained not by what we do, or what we read, or what we are taught. But that faith itself is a gift from God – and the fuel for the life we are called to live. When we tend to ourselves, we are taking care of what God uses to love the world. The Lord’s prayer is just one of the gifts God gave us to cultivate a faithful inner life. God also gave us the gift of therapy, the gift medication, and the gift that each one of us can learn to truly listen to the people around us. And that might be one way we can lean into this season of Lent. We can take these 40 days and 6 Sundays as an opportunity to tend to what fuels us. Because the list of sins – the one we make for other people and the one we make ourselves – is not the sum of what the life of faith is all about. Rather, in your baptism and in your faith – you are  given the gifts of hope, peace, love, and Jesus himself – to fuel who you truly are. Jesus expects those who follow him to practice their faith – which is why he said “when” rather than “if” all over this passage. So that’s something we can do – in church, in our homes, with our families, and even on our own. We can tend to ourselves so that the true treasures of heaven can be expressed in our lives, in our loves, and in the hope God gifts to the world.

Amen.

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.” So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude. Then he said to me, “Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord God: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people; and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken and will act,” says the Lord.

Ezekiel 37:1-14

My sermon from the Fifth Sunday in Lent (March 29, 2020) on John 9:1-42

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One of the things I’m not doing much of – right now – is driving. My car, on most days, just sits in the driveway. I occasionally turn it on to go to the grocery store or to church. And on sunny days, I move it to the street so that my kids have more space to play with chalk. Since I’m trying to love my neighbors as best as I can, I’m spending most of my time with my feet on the ground rather than on the gas pedal. Now I know not all of us can stay at home like I can. Some of you are doing amazing work as nurses, doctors, and first responders – and others are keeping us fed by staffing grocery stores and making sure all our online shopping orders arrive at our doors. Your lives are really busy and stressful right now – and I pray you can find moments to rest – because you are truly making a difference in the world and I’m so grateful for everything that you do. I, on the other hand, get to stay at home. Yet that doesn’t feel like the privilege it actually is. Because as my car sits in the driveway with its wheels going nowhere – the rest of the world seems to spin much faster than it should. Even in those moments when we find ourselves feeling really bored, the anxiety that’s in our part of the world is very heavy. More and more of our friends and neighbors have officially been diagnosed with the coronavirus. And many of us are worried about our finances because we either lost our job, had to lay off workers, and we have no idea what the stock market is going to do next. No longer are the news reports that made us anxious last week only about other people. Those reports are now about us too. I don’t drive right now because I know I shouldn’t be going anywhere. But I also don’t even feel like getting into the car because there are these other forces around us that seem to be driving the next part of our story. 

Today’s reading from the book of Ezekiel was originally spoken to a community full of anxiety and fear because they were living far from home. Ezekiel was a prophet who was maybe 30 years old when the armies of the Babylonian Empire conquered Jerusalem, forcing the people who lived there to leave and rebuild their lives hundreds of miles away along the banks of the Euphrates river in modern day Iraq. Ezekiel, who had begun his ministry pointing out the many ways the people of Jerusalem failed to love God and their neighbors, was now living in a land not of his choosing. He and the rest of the Jewish community were in a new place where their old way of life no longer worked. They needed to build new shelters, new routines, and change their expectations of what daily life could be like since they were now living in a future that they didn’t expect. For some, this new adventure was difficult but not impossible – because they had wealth and other privileges that helped them maintain, to some degree, the lifestyle they were used to. But for others, this new reality undercut their sense of security, purpose, and hope. As we hear in today’s passage, the community cried out saying, “Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.” For these survivors of war, violence, and forced migration – these dried bones were both metaphorical and very real. They thought they knew how their world worked. They thought they knew God. But then something came – an external force – that shook the very foundations of what they knew and it left them feeling vulnerable, scared, and afraid. 

And it’s at that moment when God gave Ezekiel a vision rooted in the very words the community was already saying. God placed Ezekiel in a valley full of dry bones. Those bones represented everything the community was feeling and experiencing. All their fear; all their worry; and all their not knowing about what would come next – everything that was draining their life – was there, in that valley. And once Ezekiel acknowledged all that was lifeless around him, God gave him new words to speak. These words were not words that Ezekiel came up with. Rather – God gave him an external word – one that broke through all the things that were taking their life away. Yet this word did not undo what the community and Ezekiel were experiencing. Things weren’t going to go back to the way things were because life doesn’t work that way. The lives we live are real – and we are shaped by every experience that we have including those moments that leave us feeling undone. Yet God’s promise to you is that your undoing will not be what defines you. Instead, God gives to us a new word – rooted in our baptism and in our faith and renewed daily by God’s grace. And it’s this external gift from God that will be what ultimately shapes us and forms us to live that new life that, in God’s eyes, truly defines us. 

So on this fifth Sunday of Lent, your bones might feel pretty dry. You might be worn out, empty, and just plain tired – tired of being anxious, tired of being at home, tired of not living the life you wanted, and tired of having something else shape the life that you live. All those feelings are normal; all those feelings are valid. Yet I hope that in your dry bone moments when your patience is thin, and you are feeling overwhelmed by the noise of a busy house or by the oppressing silence of being alone – in those moments, I invite you to lean into what God has already given you. This Lent, we’ve been spending time remembering and learning how to share that moment when Jesus was real to us. That is a holy gift meant to sustain you during your dry bone days. So let’s continue to add to the story we’re going to share – a story that began with “Once upon a time there was…” “And every day…” you lived your life a certain way. “Until one day…” Jesus was there. “And because of that…” the life you lived was now shifted in subtle and not so subtle ways. Yet you noticed that as you lived, something new was animating your life. At first, you weren’t sure if anything really changed but then you realized this new thing mattered because your dry bones were no longer the only thing that defined you. Instead, you discovered how Jesus enters into our world; into our anxiety; and into our suffering. Because God knows that we need an external word to cut through the troubles of today and to remind us that it’s God’s love that is driving us and our world. So I invite you to remember your story; remember your baptism; remember your faith – and trust that it’s hope, not anxiety; peace, not unknowing; and love, not fear, that holds your life. Let’s now add to the faith story we’re learning to share. And as you pay attention to the breath of God that still gives you life – finish this sentence: “Until finally…” 

Amen.

As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “[Neither this man nor his parents sinned. In order that God’s works might be revealed in him, ] we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” When he had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man’s eyes, saying to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). Then he went and washed and came back able to see.

The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight. He said to them, “He put mud on my eyes. Then I washed, and now I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?” And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, “What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.” He said, “He is a prophet.” The [Jewish leaders] did not believe that he had been blind and had received his sight until they called the parents of the man who had received his sight and asked them, “Is this your son, who you say was born blind? How then does he now see?” His parents answered, “We know that this is our son, and that he was born blind; but we do not know how it is that now he sees, nor do we know who opened his eyes. Ask him; he is of age. He will speak for himself.” His parents said this because they were afraid of the [Jewish leaders]; for [they]had already agreed that anyone who confessed Jesus to be the Messiah would be put out of the synagogue. Therefore his parents said, “He is of age; ask him.” So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, “What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Then they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from.” The man answered, “Here is an astonishing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but he does listen to one who worships him and obeys his will. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a person born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.

Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?” Jesus said to them, “If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, ‘We see,’ your sin remains.

John 9:1-41

My sermon from the Third Sunday in Lent (March 22, 2020) on John 9:1-41.

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So right now, the most spoken word in my house is “what?” Now I don’t live in a large home. It’s a one story ranch, all on the same level, and the walls and doors are not very thick. Nothing in my house is soundproof. Which, on most days, is fine. But when everyone is home – including two adults who are working, two kids in school, and a 14 month old who loves yelling at people as they walk by on the street – we’re constantly saying “what?” to each other. The combined noise of conference calls, computers,  online meetings, and educational games on the iPad means we’re always looking for different ways to cut through the noise and get each other’s attention. 

Now I know for some of you, this is what your new normal looks like. But even though the state of New Jersey is now under lockdown, some of us are still going to work or are living isolated from our family, friends, and neighbors. You might not be living in a loud house right now – but there could be a different kind of noise clouding and interfering with your world. Every day, we learn about the many additional confirmed cases of the coronavirus that are in our neighborhoods. And many of us can’t visit family or live the way we want to. Each one of us is trying to adjust to this new reality that is overwhelming. And since we don’t know when this virus will dissipate, our new habit of gathering together online feels like it might last forever. Learning how to cut through the noise of news, fears, and anxiety is really hard. And you might find yourself constantly saying “what?” as you try to figure out how to live your life in a new, safe, and sometimes loud kind of way. 

Our story today from the gospel according to John is full of people asking “what?” And they do this even though it might seem as if they’re really asking why. When the disciples first noticed the person born blind, they began with a “why” but they assumed they already knew the answer to their question. They wanted Jesus to certify that they knew how God and the world already operated. This type of reasoning is why, I think, the religious leaders threw a fit because Jesus healed on the wrong day. They, like the disciples, were focused on the what. And what they saw was Jesus doing work. He spat on the ground, made mud, and asked the person born blind to do work too. Now on any other day of the week, that might have been fine. But Jesus chose to do this work on the sabbath, on the one day of the week when all of creation was invited by God to rest. Jesus interfered with that rest by asking the person born blind to get up, go, and wash. The what of the healing – the process of how it was done – became what the religious leaders focused on. The parents, likewise, were also focused on the what. When confronted about the identity of their son, they focused on that question rather than asking why he was healed in the first place. And when we step back and look at what the man born blind’s life was like before Jesus saw him, he see that he was beggar. We shouldn’t assume that he was, in some ways, ill or that his blindness caused him to be less of a person. Rather, he lived the way he could live and in the ancient world, that meant he had to beg. No one asked why he begged; they just assumed that begging was the only thing a person born blind could do. When we listen to the questions being asked by all the different kinds of people in this passage, everyone is focused on the what – hoping that their answer to that question could somehow cut through the noise of what Jesus was doing. Their assumptions and expectations of how God operated in the world were challenged by this Jesus who happened to see a person born blind. Jesus, I think, wasn’t interested in “the what.” Instead, he was focused on “the who.” And when he saw that the person born blind wanted to see – which we notice by the fact that he chose to go to the pool and wash – Jesus responded with a loving act that did not care about their what. Jesus, in this moment, just loved. And when the people around him failed to understand what Jesus was doing, he returned to the person who once was blind – and connected them to a community where they would be allowed to become exactly who God was calling them to be. 

So I want you to think about your personal faith story. When was Jesus real to you? Now over the last few weeks, we’ve been using that moment in our life as the source for the story we’re going to tell. And we’re using a storytelling method from Pixar to teach us how to share that story with others. We set the stage for our story by finishing this sentence: “Once upon a time there was…” And since Jesus showed up in our lives as they already were, we add to our faith story by finishing this sentence: “And every day . . .” Yet when Jesus showed up, your everyday changed. So we add to our faith story by being specific and finishing this sentence: “Until one day…”  Now, it’s possible that this moment didn’t, at first, cause us to see the world in a new way. We, like the person born blind, might have tried many different things to figure out what this Jesus thing meant. And that part of our story might have been hard, filled with anxious times and unexpected challenges. Or we might have needed to live a lot of life before we looked back and noticed how Jesus was always with us. God’s promise of presence, love, and hope belongs to you even in those moments when your what, your who, and your why are all mixed up. Because your faith and your baptism are the sign that Jesus will never give up on you. Jesus, even now, has already found you. And he promised that he will keep returning to you – leading you into a new reality where you are defined not by what you have done or what you think happened in your life. But instead by the fact that, even now, Jesus is already part of your story. So as you think about the next part of your faith story, I want you to finish and repeat/reuse the following sentence as many times as you need: “And because of that…” 

Amen. 

[Jesus] came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, ‘Give me a drink’. (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, ‘How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?’ (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink”, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?’ Jesus said to her, ‘Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’
Jesus said to her, ‘Go, call your husband, and come back.’ The woman answered him, ‘I have no husband.’ Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, “I have no husband”; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!’ The woman said to him, ‘Sir, I see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.’ Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I am he, the one who is speaking to you.’
Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, ‘What do you want?’ or, ‘Why are you speaking with her?’ Then the woman left her water-jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, ‘Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?’ They left the city and were on their way to him.

Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, ‘Rabbi, eat something.’ But he said to them, ‘I have food to eat that you do not know about.’ So the disciples said to one another, ‘Surely no one has brought him something to eat?’ Jesus said to them, ‘My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work. Do you not say, “Four months more, then comes the harvest”? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labour.’

Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, ‘He told me everything I have ever done.’ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there for two days. And many more believed because of his word. They said to the woman, ‘It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.’

John 4:5-42

My sermon from the Third Sunday in Lent (March 14, 2020) on John 4:5-42

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So what struck me about this reading today – was how the Samaritan Woman and Jesus both made choices in this passage. When she came to the well, she didn’t expect to meet anyone there. But she finds Jesus – who is sitting there and, in my head, I imagine he’s basically in her way. She needs to go near him to get to that well. And so she does – and that’s when he spoke to her. His words “give me a drink” are not the earth shattering faith-based words we might Jesus to say. But they do stop her in her tracks. Because she knows that what Jesus was doing was really odd – because he shouldn’t be talking to her in the first place. She’s a woman. She’s a Samaritan. And he’s a Jewish teacher. There’s a huge gender and religious barrier between the two that should cause both of them to keep their distance. The Samaritan and the Jewish community had different thoughts about who God is and where God is to be worshipped. Those differences had separated, over the centuries, separated these two communities. Jesus, in that moment, shouldn’t be talking to her. But he did. And that left her with a choice. She should have, according to their cultural expectations, just fill her bucket and gone home. She should have walked away. Yet she didn’t. She talked back. Because, by meeting him, her everyday suddenly changed. 

But this connection wasn’t the only choice these two made. We also get a fun back and forth where Jesus and the Samaritan woman take a risk to reveal a bit of their story to one another. She revealed, even though she didn’t have to, a little bit about who she was. Yet she didn’t reveal her whole story – just a bit – just enough to make you wonder why she’s revealing her marital status to a strange man she just met at a well. She, in that moment, showed who she was – a person with a story worth telling but one she would tell on her own terms. And so Jesus, in his own way, did the same. He says, in this passage, something he hadn’t said before. He said, “I am he” – the Messiah. But the words he spoke were even bigger than that. He said “I am” – words that matched the ones God used when God revealed Gods-self to Moses way back in the book of Exodus. Moses asked for God’s name and God said “I Am.” Jesus chooses to reveal his identity to someone he shouldn’t be talking to. And she, at the same time, revealed who she was too. There is, in their relationship, a mutual revealing – a mutual sharing – of who they are. And in that sharing, she was invited into a new life – a new reality – where God revealed all the different kinds of stories from all the different kinds of people who belonged to God. 

This Lent, we’re working on telling our faith story and we’re using the Pixar model of storytelling to do it. A few weeks ago, I invited you to think about a moment when Jesus was real to you. Savor that moment and then try to put that into words. First, set the stage for the story by finishing this sentence: “Once upon a time there was…” And once the story is set, spend time describing what made that day like every other day by finishing this sentence: “And every day . . .” Yet when Jesus showed up – when Jesus made himself known to you in a real, tangible, ordinary, and  extraordinary kind of way – your everyday changed. Maybe not at first. Maybe not in a thunder and lightning kind of way. But your everyday changed because the promises made to you in your baptism and faith – of God’s presence, love, and hope – were no longer just words. They were made visible in your life – and revealed that those promises were already part of your story. Because once upon a time there was a Samaritan woman. And everyday she went to the well for water at noon. But one day, she revealed to someone she wasn’t supposed to a bit of her story. Your story, like the Samaritan’s woman, is worth telling. Your experience of Jesus is part of who you are. And so I invite you, in the middle of this weird time when we might struggle to feel as if Jesus is really here – lean into the promises that are already part of who you are. Then add to your Jesus story by finishing this sentence – But one day . . . 

Amen.

Now there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. ² He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with that person.” ³ Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” ⁴ Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” ⁵ Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. ⁶ What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. ⁷ Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ ⁸ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” ⁹ Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” ¹⁰ Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

¹¹ “Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony. ¹² If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? ¹³ No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. ¹⁴ And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, ¹⁵ that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

¹⁶ “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
¹⁷ “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.

John 3:1-17 (NRSVue)

My sermon from the Third Sunday in Lent (March 8, 2020) on John 3:1-17.

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One of skills I’ve never really developed is learning another language. And I consider that a problem because there are words in other languages that better describe certain experiences. For example, if you’ve ever dreamed up a comeback long after the other person has walked away and it’s no longer helpful – in German, that’s called, “Treppenwitz.” Or if you woke up this morning feeling completely unmotivated – in German, “Blaumachen.” The German language has a habit of having these kinds of great words that capture a moment in our life and I wish I could pronounce them correctly. Because there’s another German word that I first discovered two days ago that seems to fit our current moment here in Northern New Jersey as we face the reality of the coronavirus. And that “Hamsterkäufe” (Hams-ter-käu-fe).

“Hamsterkäufe” is literally a hamster with so much food in its mouth, its cheeks are bulging. But the word isn’t really about hamsters – it’s about people. It describes how, when faced with uncertainty, we try to soothe ourselves by buying more and more things. “Hamsterkäufe” is what happens when we use retail therapy to deal with the uncertainty of a pandemic. And this came to life for me two days ago when I went to Costco for my weekly shopping trip. At exactly 3 minutes after it opened, the store was in complete chaos. Gigantic lines snaked through the store, trying to buy bottles of water. And everyone grabbed anything that looked like it could be used as a disinfectant. People were buying anything they could to lower their fears – but I could tell that people didn’t really know what they should buy in the first place. We don’t really have a protocol or a default check-list of what to buy when facing an unknown virus. So instead, we default to what we do know: which is buying for a snowstorm or a hurricane. I wasn’t planning to buy any cleaning supplies on Friday but I found myself getting caught up in the moment and ended up a little “Hamsterkäufe” myself. When it comes to the coronavirus, there’s a lot we don’t know and that’s scary. It feels like we have to figure out, on the fly, how we make living through a pandemic part of our new normal. 

Last week, I introduced our Lenten focus on learning how to tell your faith story. You, I truly believe, have a story worth telling but I know telling stories isn’t always easy. Over the next few weeks, we’re using Pixar’s storytelling process as a way to help tell our own story. We began last week by thinking about a moment when Jesus was real to us – and we set the stage for our story by finishing the sentence: Once upon a time there was . . .  If you remember what you thought about last week, great. We’re going to build on that today. But if you need help, let’s use as an example our current coronavirus story. We should keep it personal – and so if I was sharing my story, I could begin with our worship committee working to make today’s worship safer for all of us. But I might want to start my story with what I saw at Costco. So my opening would be: Once upon a time there was. . . me – shopping on my weekly trip to Costco. That kind of start is simple, short, and introduces you to the person in the story that’s going to experience something. We might imagine that our faith story should start large and with something that seems important. But since it’s our story, it’s okay to start with the person who’s going to experience Jesus in the first place. 

So now that our storytelling has started, what’s next? Well – today’s sermon title can help. We can use the phrase, “And then…” or something like “And every day…” as a way to share with others what’s our everyday reality. For example, In my coronavirus story, I could make the next part read: “And then…I tried to do my usual thing of getting whole milk out of the cooler.” There’s nothing big about that statement. But it does point to a moment in my life that looks like a thousand other moments that I’ve had. And that, I think, is the point. Because when we tell our faith story – we’re not just talking about Jesus. We’re also revealing a bit about who we are – and how Jesus, somehow, changed our everyday way of being in the world. 

And we see this conversation about a new normal in our reading today from the gospel according to John. In a very Pixar kind of way, the story basically began with: “Once upon a time there was a Pharisee named Nicodemus.” Now Nicodemus was a leader in his Jewish community. He had, over the years, devoted himself to the study of the gifts of God – which includes the Torah, the law – and how that describes a way of being in the world. Nicodemus took seriously God’s call to love his neighbors and we should assume, I think, that Nicodemus kept God involved in all the parts of his story. If we were telling his story the Pixar way, we might next the part read: “And every day Nicodemus kept close to the promises of God.” And I think that’s exactly who Nicodemus was because when he heard Jesus was nearby, Nicodemus went to see him. He recognized that Jesus’ actions were signs of what life with God was all about. And those signs already matched Nicodemus’ experience of leaning into the promises of God. But when Jesus started talking about being “born from above,” Nicodemus was thrown for a loop. Nicodemus had grown old and had lived a life full of God and God’s promises. Jesus’ words were not working to replace Nicodemus’ Jewish identity. Rather, Jesus was laying out a vision of another gift from God – one rooted in the relationship Jesus was choosing to have with Nicodemus. This part of the story ends a few verses after John 3:17 and we never hear Nicodemus’ response. Instead, as Jesus’ story plays out – Nicodemus sort of fades into the background. Yet his story continues to grow – and we see him two more times in John. In chapter 7, he is with a gathering of the Jewish Sanhedrin – a leadership council – reminding others that a person must be heard before being judged. And then, near the end of the story, he pops up in the middle of chapter 19, helping Joseph of Arimathea give Jesus a proper burial. There’s actually a lot of Nicodemus’ story that we don’t know. We have no idea what his thoughts were after he heard verse 3:17 nor do we get the reason why he came back to Jesus in chapter 19. But what we do see is how the promise of God never left Nicodemus and that his connection to Jesus didn’t fade even when they were apart. Instead, it took time for Nicodemus to discover the new everyday way of being in the world Jesus already gave to him the moment they first met. 

The German word “Hamsterkäufe” is a good word for how we try to make peace when we’re facing uncertainty. But there’s another word – an English word – that we can turn to when we’re unsure of what comes next: and that’s loved. We are, through Jesus, loved. And the love Jesus gives is not a one-time thing. It’s a love designed to last, helping to carry us through the trials we’re going through. It’s a love that is in the background, working on you even when you don’t know it’s there. And it’s a love that will always be of your story. In the face of uncertainty, like the coronavirus, we’re not sure what our story will look like. But we do know that, through Christ, we already have God’s love as our new normal. Our call is to lean into “Hamsterkäufe” as a way to find peace. Rather, we’re invited to lean into that love that Jesus has already given us. Like Nicodemus, it might take years before we realize what this love has done for us. But when we do, we will discover how love is the sign of who God – and you – really are. So as you keep writing the faith story you’re going to share – take a moment to think about what’s next. Go ahead and finish this sentence: “And every day . . .”

Amen.