Category: Sermons

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’

Acts 2:1-21

My sermon from Pentecost (June 5, 2022) on Acts 2:1-21

*************************

Pete Holmes is a comedian who I’ve followed ever since he talked about what it’s like to carry google in your pocket. For the first time in human history, we have access to an incredible amount of information and yet we’re not a lick smarter for it. He encourages us to dwell in wonder: that space when we don’t have an answer for all the stuff we’ve lived through. Not knowing isn’t always a comfortable place to be in but there’s power in staying open to what we don’t know. A couple months ago, he was interviewed on the Late Show by Stephen Colbert and he started a comedy bit about having to re-learn how to act in public since we’ve chosen to move into a different stage of the pandemic. He described how people move in two modes: a group mode and a solo mode. Group mode is when we’re actively engaged with others by talking, chatting, or simply existing around each other. But solo mode is when you’re in the world but not trying to be a part of it. It’s when you bury yourself in an oversized hoodie, pop on some headphones, and sort of isolate yourself even when you’re surrounded by others. There are times when we need to be in group mode or solo mode and we often switch between them several times a day. Pete tried to set up a joke by saying how he saw someone in real time go from group mode to solo mode. Yet that was when Stephen Colbert, who is a trained comedian and should have recognized the kind of joke setup Pete was trying to do, interrupted with a question. He asked: “how do you see someone going from group mode to solo mode if you’re there?” How, when you’re in a group with someone else, can you see them enter their solo mode? That was a really good question that Pete didn’t expect. And when he tried to continue the joke, he couldn’t and he called out Colbert for not doing what he was supposed to do. In a really humorous way, Pete pointed out how he was Colbert’s guest and it was Colbert’s job to support him. The host was to help their guests sparkle and shine. Stephen Colbert didn’t do what he was supposed to do. And while it’s a silly moment, I couldn’t help thinking about it while reflecting on our reading from the book of Acts because helping others shine is what the Holy Spirit empowers us to do. 

Now this reading occured on a very specific day. The day of Pentecost was – and still is – a Jewish religious festival and it’s known as Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks. In Jesus’ day, it was a harvest festival remembering and celebrating the generosity of God. People would go to the Temple and bring the first ripe grains of wheat that had grown in their fields. They were, in that moment, thanking God for those grains and trusting more would follow. The festival took place fifty days after Passover and in ancient Greek, the word for the “fiftieth day,” is Pentecost. This festival brought together people from all over the Mediterranean Sea into the city of Jerusalem. Today’s text, in fact, lists 15 different ethnicities, which most likely represented only a tiny fraction of those celebrating in God’s holy city. Together, they had a shared identity of being Jewish. Yet they also, as individuals, had their own stories, histories, and ethnicities reflecting how big their identities were. The people in the city were there to celebrate God and that diverse community included a small group of folks who followed Jesus. They were there to celebrate Pentecost but they were also wondering what it meant to follow Jesus. He was no longer with them like he once was and they didn’t know what their lives should now look like. They were wondering what would happen next. And that’s when, while gathered in a small house, something like the wind from a tornado filled the room. While wondering what this wind was all about, suddenly flames appeared over their heads that looked like tongues made of fire. The noise and commotion soon attracted the attention of those in the surrounding neighborhood who wondered what was going on. And that’s when the Holy Spirit, an empowering force from God, drew these two groups together. While they wondered, the Spirit moved through the followers of Jesus so that the crowd could shine. 

Now I’m not quite sure what the crowd expected to happen when they saw the small group of folks at the center of all the noise. But I’m pretty sure they didn’t think they would hear Jesus’ story in the language their parents spoke to them when they were born. The wind and the fire were soon forgotten because the experience of hearing those words drew all their attention. Some tried to come up with an answer to explain away what they heard. But Peter knew God was simply doing what God always does. God’s commitment to all of creation is always shown, and made real, in love. And that love does not replace the identities that make us who we are but rather celebrates who, in Jesus, we get to become. No one story or one kind of person or one experience defines what it means to be with God. God comes to us as we are because when Jesus died on the Cross, his arms were open to all. When the Spirit moved on the day of Pentecost, it didn’t empower everyone to speak or understand the same language. Instead, it enabled the followers of Jesus to share the good news: how God lived a complete human life and promised to transform us into something more. And because the crowd heard those words in a very personal way, they witnessed how the whole of who were was welcomed into the fullness of the body of Christ. This, I think, gives us a vision of what being a Christian and living a Christian life is all about. We, because of baptism and faith, get to help others shine. We, through the gifts God gives us, help the people around us become who God wants them to be. We, through our acts of care and service, simply help them thrive. Now to do that well, we need to act as if they’re already part of the group. That doesn’t mean we behave in a way that belittles their distinctiveness or acts as if their identity is something other than what it is. Instead, it’s a call for those of who follow Jesus to always see the other person as someone we’re already connected to. We might not know each other but because of Christ, we love them and through our love, empower them to love others too. Living our lives in this way is a bit hard and we’re not always going to do it right. But God, as we’ll hear in the promises we’ll affirm alongside with Anderson when he is confirmed later today, doesn’t ask us to live out that love on our own. God, instead, gives us the Spirit, this force empowering us to know who we are and to love others like God loves us. We’ll often wonder what this kind of life and what this kind of love looks like. But I’m pretty sure we see it and we live it when we choose to welcome, include, support, and help others shine. And that’s a love that all people, regardless of language, background, ethnicity, or identity, can feel, experience, and see. 

Amen.

“See, I am coming soon; my reward is with me, to repay according to everyone’s work. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. “It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.” And let everyone who hears say, “Come.” And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

The one who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints. Amen.

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

My sermon from the Seventh Sunday after Easter (May 29, 2022) on Luke 10:25-37 (with a hint to Psalm 25:1-10)

****************************

How do you end a book about the end? 

If that question sounds familiar to you, it’s because I’ve asked it before. But unlike other writings we know, the questions we bring to Revelation rarely have only one answer. And that’s because the entire book is a little weird. Revelation was written by a man named John who was living in exile on the island of Patmos, a small piece of rock off the coast of modern day Turkey. After receiving a series of visions from God, he composed a manuscript known as an apocalypse. Now to us, an apocalypse is the end of the world but in John’s day, an apocalypse was a genre of writing meant to unveil or disclose something new. The idea was to show that no matter what people were going through, there was always more to the story. That more was hidden behind the everyday troubles of our world; a world wrapped in violence, fear, and sorrow. An apocalypse might be filled with descriptions of incredibly outlandish things but it was always written for real people living real lives. And so that’s why, way back in chapter 1, John mentioned seven specific faith communities in Asia Minor – aka modern day Turkey – that his book was written for. Each one of those communities was going through their own set of challenges – with some being persecuted by local authorities because they called someone other than the Roman Emperor, Lord. Others, though, were doing just fine. And yet that fine was, to John, a bit inauthentic. They were communities that busied themselves with being comfortable. They lacked a sense of urgency or purpose, seeking out the status quo because they assumed there would be enough time tomorrow to deal with the Jesus who came to them today. These kinds of communities were going through a very different experience than those who faced persecution from the government. Yet to John, the very weird visions God gave to him were visions meant for them both. 

So that’s why I like to imagine John, while trying to end his book about the end, re-reading everything that came before. He had used words to paint images of very odd things that cycled in and through and around each other. There was this throne in heaven, surrounded by four really weird looking creatures, a host of angels, and a chorus of singers that included all of creation – even the microbes living in the sea. There was Jesus who wasn’t described with long brown hair or sandaled feet. Instead, he had a sword for a mouth, looked like a lamb who was killed, and shone so bright there was no longer a need for a sun in the sky. John’s words also described broken seals, monstrous beasts, angelic trumpets, a red dragon, the spilling of all kinds of wrath on all kinds of people, and even several horsemen who brought death to a world reeling in pain. In the end, John wrote about a new holy city descending from above with streets covered in precious jewels and gates that never shut. Everything in Revelation is over the top, shocking, and downright weird. But through it all, God was present, active, and chose to do something even more weird: which was to just love. God took what was already here and made it new. And even when God felt far away – too far to care about those who were suffering and too far to make a difference in the here and now – Jesus was right there with you. 

Yet I know that kind of hope isn’t always easy to see because real life paints its own kinds of pictures we can’t easily shake from our heads. The picture I keep seeing are the words used to sketch out the timeline of cell phone calls made from Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas while the attack was on going. It’s an image I wish never had to be made yet shows how heartbreaking this life can be. And I’m not sure, exactly, what hope looks like when our status quo tolerates this kind of pain. Our first instinct might be to try and sketch out a competing vision for the world. It’s possible to imagine John of Patmos choosing to end his book with all kinds of blessings, joys, and images of love. He could have stopped with the weird and focused more on bringing us a sense of comfort and peace. Yet that wasn’t what John chose to do. Revelation “weaves notes of inclusion,” welcome, and blessing and notes of exclusion, expulsion, and fear “into a single fabric.” As Greg Carey noted, this “passage excludes transgressors from the Holy City, but it also extends an invitation—’Come!’—to everyone who is thirsty. The broader context of Revelation’s closing chapters imagines a lake of fire that receives every person whose name is missing from the Book of Life (20:15) but also a tree that bears fruit ‘for the healing of the nations’ (22:2). Revelation shows the nations and kings being annihilated during the final battle (19:15, 19), but in the New Jerusalem the nations walk by its illumination and their kings bring their ‘glory’ into the city (21:24–26).” And if we try to choose which kinds of weird from Revelation we pay attention to, Revelation doesn’t let us pay attention to only what brings us comfort. This book is meant to be taken as a whole because our whole lives are meant to be taken as a whole too. Real life is very weird and so, I think, Revelation is supposed to stay weird too. The book doesn’t contain some kind of secret message we’re supposed to decode that reveals when God’s kingdom will finally come. Rather, John used images and pictures that mixed, cycled, terrified, and excited because only that kind of weirdness can speak to how ridiculously weird it is to live in a world where what happened at Robb Elementary is accepted as part of the status quo. When John wrote the end to the end, he wanted it big enough to contain all the ridiculousness of real life. Because when we notice and accept and own just how strange, wonderful, and hard life actually is, we realize we’re not actually God. And if we’re not God, that might be the hope we need. 

Because if we are not God, then the story we’re currently writing through our actions and inactions isn’t the real story. The status quo we’re living through isn’t all there is because there’s another story – a heavenly story – where God’s weird trumps our own. God’s weird includes how we, through baptism and faith, are transformed into more than who we thought we were. We are Christ’s body – which is a weird thing to say and an even weirder thing to trust and know is true. And while that’s a beautiful sentiment to express, it’s also difficult when we admit the whole of who we are. We are not perfect. We are often at fault. We exclude, push aside, and let others be expendable as long as we’re as comfortable as we feel entitled to be. We’re broken and wounded and far from ever feeling as whole as we believe we’re supposed to be. We’re just people – people who need Jesus rather than the other way around. Yet Jesus, the son of Mary, the healer, teacher, and rabble rouser who kept reaching out to include all he could, doesn’t expect us to be perfect. Jesus just asks us to trust that the more is our whole story. The body of Christ – a body full of wounded people – is a body with hands and feet that still bear the wounds of the nails that were smashed through them. Yet even the status quo of the Cross for that body was changed into something new. We can, like John of Patmos, paint a new picture that takes seriously the whole of our lives while, because of Christ, knows how the end of our story is already being written. What we imagine is the status quo today is a contradiction from the true status quo we were given in baptism and in faith. Things can, and should, change because we are part of the weird of God. And if God’s weird is to always love – then our status quo can only be to love just as weird as God. 

Amen. 

During the night Paul had a vision: there stood a man of Macedonia pleading with him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” When he had seen the vision, we immediately tried to cross over to Macedonia, being convinced that God had called us to proclaim the good news to them. We set sail from Troas and took a straight course to Samothrace, the following day to Neapolis, and from there to Philippi, which is a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony. We remained in this city for some days. On the sabbath day we went outside the gate by the river, where we supposed there was a place of prayer; and we sat down and spoke to the women who had gathered there. A certain woman named Lydia, a worshiper of God, was listening to us; she was from the city of Thyatira and a dealer in purple cloth. The Lord opened her heart to listen eagerly to what was said by Paul. When she and her household were baptized, she urged us, saying, “If you have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come and stay at my home.” And she prevailed upon us.

Acts 16:9-15

My sermon from the Sixth Sunday of Easter (May 22, 2022) on Acts 16:9-15.

****************************

So last Sunday afternoon, I managed the Tri-Boro Food Pantry’s table at Woodcliff Lake United: a day of service. We, along with other faith communities and organizations, gathered together hundreds of rolls of paper towels, toilet paper, toothbrushes, dish soap, maxipads, tampons, adult diapers, toothpaste, shampoo, and laundry detergent. Our hope was that attendees would learn which items were not covered by SNAP benefits and then pack tote bags filled with those items for the 130+ families who rely on the food pantry every week. My favorite part of the event was seeing people having “ah-ha” moments when they imagined what their lives would be like without toilet paper or soap. This event not only made a real difference in people’s lives; it also invited everyone into a deeper conversation about who calls Northern New Jersey home. Yet one of those conversations has been gnawing at me all week. Two women came to me, wondering what all the stuff was about. I explained to them, in detail, about what we were trying to do and how food isn’t always enough. They were excited to learn there was a pantry and local faith communities who actually cared. As we talked, the conversation became a little more personal as they wanted to know more about this church and about me. It’s then when one of them asked me a question I’m never quite sure how to answer. She looked at me and with incredible kindness and sincerity in her voice, asked: “where are you from?” 

Now it took me a moment to respond because we were at an event called Woodcliff Lake United and so I knew she wasn’t asking about my connection to New Jersey. I had a hunch, based on our entire conversation, that she was asking about my ethnicity. She had expectations of who I was based on what I looked like. And I knew, at that moment, I needed to be mentally, emotionally, and spiritually ready to deal with whatever this conversation brought up. I hoped that at its best, we might be amazed at how so many different people from so many different places throughout the ages led us to be, together at that moment, packing bags to support all the people who call Northern New Jersey home. But I also knew, at its worst, I might be asked to prove how American I actually am. “Where are you from” is a difficult question for me to answer since my family tree is a little complicated. I can trace my ancestors back to colonial America and to people who, legend says, fought for the British in the Revolutionary war. There’s also another branch of people who were indigenous to the land and those whose  nationality changed after the border moved during the US-Mexico War of 1848. I also have ancestors who were refugees who fled Mexico in 1917 as well as others who left southern Italy to make a new life for themselves in the city of brotherly love. There’s a lot of stories within my ethnicity but I chose, at that moment, to simply say I grew up in Colorado. That wasn’t what she was looking for so she followed up with another question. She wondered “if I spoke Spanish because I look like I should.” There is, in our culture, an expectation that Americans look a certain way, speak a certain way, and are always easy to see. But the idea of what an American is – is an idea that’s been contested for centuries. Way back in the 1700s, Ben Franklin said some nasty things about Germans because he thought they could never be like him. And our violent, complex, and painful history of slavery and the treatment of Native Americans show that even acting like an American doesn’t mean you’ll be accepted as one. The Irish, at first, weren’t included in the fabric of America and it took awhile before people from Italy were as beloved as the pasta dishes and pizza they cooked. It even took a Chinese-American who simply wanted to return home to the city in California he was born in to redefine our idea of citizenship. We are engaged in an on-going conversation about who’s allowed to claim the American dream as their own and this conversation is full of conflict, protest, anger, fear, joy, inclusion, welcome, and violence. This question of American identity isn’t a question limited to our past because there are some who have done horrible things because of this conversation at a grocery store in Buffalo, a Walmart in El Paso, and at a Synagogue in Pittsburgh. Who we are and who we’re allowed to be is a big part of our story. And that reality shows up in our reading from the book of Acts because when Paul went looking for one identity, he instead met a woman from somewhere else. 

Up to this point in the book of Acts, Paul – a Jewish man who was also a Pharisee and a Roman citizen – had been primarily bringing Jesus to the people living in Asia Minor, aka modern-day Turkey. But one day God showed him a vision of a man asking for help. Paul and his companions then crossed the Aegean Seas because they recognized the man as Macedonian. This small group landed in the city of Philippi, the capital of the Roman Macedonian province, on the mainland of Europe. Now when Paul arrived at a new place to share Jesus, he had a pattern of first visiting the marketplace or the local synagogue. But instead, we’re told he went to a place outside the city gates that was known as a place for prayer. We don’t know exactly what Paul was looking for but we do know what he found. He came across a group of women and among them was Lydia, who is the first named person in Europe we meet. But Lydia, herself, wasn’t known as a European. She was, instead, from Thyatira, which was located in Asia minor. Lydia was a businesswoman, a trader in purple cloth which was the color reserved for emperors, kings, and the very rich. She was also known as a worshiper of God which meant she was, like Paul, either Jewish or a God-fearer, a gentile who believed in God but who hadn’t fully converted to Judaism. Since it was the Sabbath, I assume Lydia and the other women were there to worship God. And since only women were in that space, there’s a possibility that Paul wasn’t supposed to be there. But Paul didn’t let other people’s expectations get in the way of Jesus. He, on that holy day, shared how the divine and human had come together in a way where neither lost its distinctiveness nor became something it wasn’t. Jesus was fully human, fully divine, and had an identity big enough to hold all other identities within the limitlessness of the kingdom of God. Lydia, even though she lived in Philippi, was still known as someone from somewhere else. She knew what it was like to be asked if she belonged. Lydia, because of her career, her wealth, her status, her gender, her background, and her ethnicity, lived with an identity that was often contested. Yet when Paul showed her Jesus, she saw her place in Him. Through faith, grace, and baptism, Lydia gained a new identity as a publicly declared child of God. This identity did not replace who she was but invited her to become something more. 

In the words of Professor Jennifer T. Kaalund,  ​​”Paul [set] sail looking for a man to share the good news with in Macedonia. Instead, he encounter[d] a group of women.” His expectations were modified and replaced because Jesus’ story is a story meant for all. The question – “where are you from” doesn’t just impact those whose identities are contested by others because who we are and who we are allowed to be matters to us all. Yet through Jesus – you are always more than what others say about you. And that’s because you are the body of Christ. When we find ourselves face to face with sinful, heretical, and unChristian ideologies like “the great replacement theory” or any other belief that draws boundaries based on hatred and fear, our Christian response starts by noticing our place within the body of Christ. We, through Jesus, are part of something more; a more than includes a Macedonian man, a woman from Thyatira, a Pharisee from Tarsus, a person who recently discovered what isn’t covered by SNAP benefits, those families who rely on the Tri-Boro Food Pantry to survive, and all of us gathered in worship right now. When we have Jesus, where we’re from is not limited to where we were born or where others think we belong. Instead, we’re first – and foremost – with God and we’re part of a love which, even on the Cross, kept its arms open to all. 

Amen. 

Now the apostles and the believers who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also accepted the word of God. So when Peter went up to Jerusalem, the circumcised believers criticized him, saying, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step, saying, “I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a vision. There was something like a large sheet coming down from heaven, being lowered by its four corners; and it came close to me. As I looked at it closely I saw four-footed animals, beasts of prey, reptiles, and birds of the air. I also heard a voice saying to me, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat.’ But I replied, ‘By no means, Lord; for nothing profane or unclean has ever entered my mouth.’ But a second time the voice answered from heaven, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’ This happened three times; then everything was pulled up again to heaven. At that very moment three men, sent to me from Caesarea, arrived at the house where we were. The Spirit told me to go with them and not to make a distinction between them and us. These six brothers also accompanied me, and we entered the man’s house. He told us how he had seen the angel standing in his house and saying, ‘Send to Joppa and bring Simon, who is called Peter; he will give you a message by which you and your entire household will be saved.’ And as I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as it had upon us at the beginning. And I remembered the word of the Lord, how he had said, ‘John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’ If then God gave them the same gift that he gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” When they heard this, they were silenced. And they praised God, saying, “Then God has given even to the Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

Acts 11:1-18

My sermon from the Fifth Sunday of Easter (May 15, 2022) on Acts 11:1-18

****************************

A few weeks ago, my three year old walked into our hometown’s library with the kind of confidence only a three year old has. She made her way to the children’s section and pulled a dozen books off the shelves. We dragged them over to a table and she asked me to read them out loud. I didn’t really know where to start so I chose a book by Cori Doerrfeld. On the cover was the image of a young child with curly dark brown hair who was wearing green and white striped pajamas. The kid was crouched into a ball, with their knees pulled close to their chest. But instead of being completely sad, they wore a slight smile because a gray fuzzy bunny was hugging them. As I flipped open the book, I read out loud the title to the story: The Rabbit Listened.

The story began by introducing the young child on the cover. Their name was Taylor and Taylor was about to build something amazing. Using a bunch of small wooden blocks, Taylor assembled a castle that stretched high into the sky. It was awesome but then suddenly, everything came crashing down. Taylor, who had done nothing wrong, curled up into a ball, feeling every one of their feelings. After  a bit of time, a talking chicken noticed something was wrong. They rushed over to offer their condolences and invited Taylor to talk and share about everything they were feeling. But Taylor didn’t feel like talking so the chicken left. A moment later, a giant bear strolled by. The bear assumed Taylor must be angry and said they could, together, roar and growl and shout about how unfair the whole thing was. Taylor, though, didn’t feel like shouting so the bear left. It wasn’t long before an entire zoo of animals came to see Taylor, including an elephant who offered to fix the castle and a hyena who wanted to lighten the mood with a few jokes. An ostrich came by, inviting Taylor to stick their head in the ground and pretend that nothing happened. And when that didn’t work, a snake slithered by and said they should go find someone else’s castle to knock down too. But Taylor didn’t feel like doing anything and so they all, eventually, left. Taylor kepting sitting there, barely noticing the rabbit who showed up next. The little bunny said nothing as it inched near Taylor. And when the space between them was practically non-existent, the bunny stopped and curled up next to Taylor. The rabbit, unlike the others, said nothing and instead let its presence be the only thing filling the air. 

The reading we heard a few moments ago from the Acts of the Apostles is, I think, Peter telling others about the power of presence. As we heard last week, Peter was hanging out in the city of Joppa after he met the disciple Tabitha. A commander of the local Roman garrison named Cornelius learned he was near. Cornelius, unlike other soldiers, was a God-fearer: someone who believed in God but who hadn’t converted to Judaism. He was a gentile – a non-Jew – who served in the army that killed Jesus. Peter, as a follower of Jesus, was supposed to stay far away from people like Cornelius. Cornelius, though, sent messengers to find Peter and that’s when God sent Peter a dream. In his mind, Peter saw a picnic blanket descending from the sky covered with all the foods he didn’t eat. But that doesn’t mean Peter was a picky eater. He was a faithful follower of God who followed the Bible including  when it said some foods were okay to eat because they were spiritually clean while others were not. These food laws were not primarily about maintaining someone’s physical health. They were, instead, a daily reminder showing how God’s people were set apart from others so they could serve God, honor God’s law, and trust that God would deliver them. The rules about eating were not experienced as a burden. They were seen as a sign of how every bit of our life, including the meals we eat, mattered to God. This encouragement to be distinctive helped Peter imagine that since God gave everything its proper place, Peter’s place was always with his God. But then God, through a vision, invited Peter to eat new things. And when he awoke, everything had changed. He soon met Cornelius’ messengers and agreed to visit this commander of the Romans. I imagine that when Peter entered his home, he might have been inclined to be anything but himself. He could have pretended he wasn’t Jewish or that he loved Rome or that he didn’t remember what the Romans had done to Jesus. Peter could have acted as if his identity didn’t matter but he chose something else instead. Peter stayed fully himself and when he saw Cornelius, he didn’t ask him to be anything else either. Instead, they both shared their experience of God with each other. Through their mutual telling, listening, and paying attention to one another, the Holy Spirit formed them into something new. They were both who they always were but, through Jesus, they were now bound together in a way that couldn’t be undone. Their individual stories were no longer just their own stories but were now integrated into the lives of others. Wherever Peter went, a part of Cornelius’ story would be with him. And when Rome sent Cornelius to fight in some far off place, a part of Peter would be with him too. Through Jesus and in Jesus, the baptized, the faithful, and all who follow Christ, are now fully present within each other’s stories. 

Now the rabbit, when she curled up next to the kid who was busy feeling all their feelings, didn’t ask Taylor to be different. The rabbit didn’t insist on talking, shouting, laughing, helping, or getting Taylor to do anything. The rabbit just sat there, letting its presence show Taylor they weren’t alone. And once Taylor felt seen, noticed, and accepted, it’s then when they talked, shouted, laughed, roared, cried, and started building a new castle once all the feelings were fully felt. The rabbit didn’t have to know the right thing to say when she saw Taylor in distress. The rabbit just had to be there so that Taylor could see how the rabbit knew Taylor mattered. The vision of the picnic blanket full of the things other people ate wasn’t, I think, an invitation for Peter to stop being who he was supposed to be. Rather, it was God’s way of inviting Peter to see how our practice of distinctiveness sometimes makes us not as fully present to others as we should be. Peter, before the vision from God, probably wouldn’t have entered Cornelius’ home. But once he got here, he discovered how Jesus was already there. Sometimes the most loving and Christian thing we can do is to simply be present with other people. We can enter their spaces, their struggles, their joys, and sit in their heartaches. And when our traditions and experiences that make us distinct keep us from being actively present in the lives of others, we can remember how Peter’s distinctiveness grew when he noticed what God was up to. God was already swirling within the life of Cornelius and God is also present in the lives of everyone you meet. The rabbit listened by first being present to Taylor. And we can be fully present to all our neighbors if we work to listen to the ways God is moving through their lives. To do that well, we, and everyone else, need to be fully ourselves. If we pretend to be anything but, we risk failing to embrace how, through Christ, the stories of others have become our story too. We might not always known exactly what to say when someone is being fully themselves. But we can stay with them because, even after Jesus was killed on the Cross, Jesus chose to stay with us too. 

Amen. 

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

John 12:1-8

My sermon from the Fifth Sunday in Lent (April 3, 2022) on John 12:1-8.

****************************

A couple weeks ago, the Paris Review of Books, published a conversation between three scholars about how to choose a perfume. They talked about the power of gimmicks, how weird perfume commercials actually are, and how not everyone gets to choose their smells. Our sense of smell is the most sensitive of our senses and its one we process almost spontaneously. When we smell, the odor enters into our bodies which we then respond to in a very embodied way. Smells do more than just tell us if something is sweet or stinky. They also remind us we don’t live in a void or a vacuum. In the words of Jude Stewart even, “air’s existence… becomes palpable because smells ride on air.” Smells extend our environment, connecting us to a world that’s much bigger than what’s in front of us. Smells also have the power to collapse time, transporting us into the past while keeping us rooted in the present. A sniff of a cherry pie, the scent of an ocean breeze, and even the fragrance of a flower in bloom can connect us to those moments and the people that changed us. Smells can announce our arrival before we enter the room and they grow, change, and evolve depending on what other smells they run into. And overtime the intensity of a smell drops off unless it was cause by a 3 year old who emptied an entire bottle of perfume in her room one spray at a time. We know how powerful our sense of smell can be because when we lose it, either through age or accident or an illness like COVID-19, our engagement with our lives fundamentally changes. It’s difficult to put into words the totality of smells and our sense of smell. Yet we know how smells soak into every nook and cranny around us. Smells have their own potent kind of power which might be why the gospel of John was very specific in our reading today about the kind of smell that interrupted a dinner party for Jesus. 

Now the story about Jesus being anointed with perfume appears in all four gospels. Jesus, while at a dinner, ends up being interrupted by a woman with a jar of expensive perfume. After she pours it on him, the disciples and other guests in the room tend to get a bit ornery. Jesus, in response, simply says to leave her alone. Jesus, while very much alive, experienced a ritual typically reserved for a person after death. This general outline fits every version of this story. Yet I’ve often found that it’s in the difference where we discover a bit of what this story might mean. Three of the gospels place this story in the village of Bethany, 2 miles outside of Jerusalem. The dinner party was held in either the home of an unnamed Pharisee, a leper named Simon, or in the home of Lazarus and his sisters. The perfume, typically identified as nard, is always described as expensive but only John says it was worth nearly a year’s worth of wages. Both Matthew and Mark describe the woman pouring the perfume over Jesus’ head, soaking his entire body, while Luke and John limit the action to only his feet. In the other three gospels, the woman is never named. But John, however, chose to give us a name. With that name, he also gave us an entire story. And so the Mary we meet is a sister who just a chapter before sent word to Jesus that her brother was ill. 

By the time Jesus arrived at their home, Lazarus had already died. He stood outside the tomb and cried. He wept for his friend, showing us that grief, tears, and sadness aren’t things unknown to God. And after expressing with his body just how much Lazarus meant to him, Jesus then told him to come out. Jesus didn’t stick around very long with Lazarus’ family and soon headed towards a village far away. But when the holiday of Passover drew near, Jesus turned and returned to Jerusalem. When he neared the city, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus invited him over for dinner to do all the things we do when we share a meal with a beloved family friend. As the meal stretched on, Mary left the table to retrieve a very expensive bottle of nard. And when she returned, she did for Jesus that one thing she had actually done for her brother just mere weeks before. 

Now imagine what that moment must have felt like for everyone in that room. The smell would have reminded them of one of those most awful experiences they had lived through. The grief and sorrow that filled their soul while they watched their brother grow ill would have been mimicked by how that scent seemed to fill every nook and cranny in the room. Martha and Mary would have remembered pouring the perfume over their brother’s body and how its smell changed as it gradually soaked into his skin. Once Lazarus was sealed in this tomb, the smells had nowhere else to go. Everything would have lingered in the air with the expectation no one would sniff that specific combination of smells ever again. But when Jesus told Lazarus to come out, the first thing Lazarus’ body would have processed was the smell. From that point on, the smell of nard would have been permanently connected to that moment in his story. Lazarus knew what that smell was used for. Yet he also experienced a new promise where, in the words of Rev. Karoline Lewis, “the life that God provides will be present even in the reality of death.” Later, while gathered around a shared table, that promise sat with them too. The smell of nard still represented what it was typically used for. Yet because Jesus was there, it reaffirmed their connection to love that would never end. 

We might not have a story like Mary, Martha, and Lazarus where the promise given by God was made palpable in a way others could see. We might feel as if our life exists in its own kind of void – one empty of connection, healing, wholeness, and a sense that all of this has meaning. I’ll admit that I sometimes feel lost, especially when the horrors of war, violence, anger, and fear reveal how talented we are at being as unloving and hurtful as possible. I wish we all had the opportunity to sit at a table with Jesus to let his presence soak into every nook and cranny in our world. We need his love and grace to be more than something hanging in the air. We need it to be palpable, tangible, and real – like a smell reminding us what’s always around us. And that’s one reason why we have baptism and faith. It’s why we were given the ability to pray; to worship; and to belong to the community that God knows can’t be what it’s supposed to be without us. We need reminders, especially when we doubt, or question, or find ourselves overwhelmed by what’s around us, how God’s love is what truly holds us through. It’s why we have a table – the Lord’s table – where we are welcomed and fed not because we are perfect or because we know everything the Lord’s supper is about. We are included because we are loved. It’s a love we haven’t earned or one we’re entitled to. It is, instead, a love freely given because that’s who God is. At this table – one that extends to wherever and whenever you are – you are gifted a promise that makes you brand new as it soaks into every nook and cranny of your imperfect, but fully known, life.

Amen.