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Community
In 1937, the German secret police shut down a seminary in a town called Finkenwalde. For the two years the seminary operated, the students and teachers in Finkenwalde knew that they were under threat. But still they prayed together, studied together, and ate together.
The book of Acts speaks of a community that seems utopian: "they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.” I think they were simply living a Christian life.
Look again at what the book of Acts is actually describing.
The promise of Emmaus
Christ walks with us even when we don’t recognize him. Even when we’re walking in the wrong direction. Even when we’re running away. Christ walks with us even when all hope seems lost.
“Make us instruments of your peace.”
I love the Prayer of St. Francis, but I think we too often get the logic of grace backwards. “Make us instruments of your peace.” We often understand those words in a way that puts us at the center of the action. As if we alone can carry peace into rooms where hatred lives. As if we alone bear the responsibility of driving out doubt and despair and sadness wherever we find them.
Fear and great joy
Easter Day
I love Easter, but Easter’s tricky. We try to turn it into something tame. But really, there’s nothing tame about Easter.
Wilderness
Good Friday
“It is finished.”
When I first started reflecting on this short phrase for a shared reflection, I was struck by how scared I was to imagine someone saying this phrase about my time and efforts on Earth, or that of those I love and care about.
From here I imagined how Jesus’s disciples and friends must have felt. I think their loss of Jesus is a type of grief and unwanted change that can easily be compared to a wilderness.
"Love one another"
A Sermon for Maundy Thursday
Everything we do tonight does actually have one purpose, one focus.
Who is this?
There are three words that might be the most important words in all of scripture. They come from the people of the city of Jerusalem. We’re told, “When he entered Jerusalem, the whole city was in turmoil, asking, ‘Who is this?’”
We so often forget, like the people of the city of Jerusalem, that salvation never looks like what we expect.
But we often forget something else. Something even more important.
“More than watchmen for the morning”
The edge of a tomb can be a hard place to talk about hope...
"We are not blind, are we?"
A man was blind. Jesus gave him sight. You’d think that’s the whole story. But John gives us thirty more verses after the healing, telling us about what happens when people who think they understand how the world works are confronted with something that doesn’t fit what they already believe.
It doesn’t go well.
The unity God calls us to
I have been enjoying myself this week imagining what I would ask Jesus if I ran into him while I was going about my day, minding my own business, like the Samaritan woman at the well. If I had Jesus in the flesh, right in front of me, I could try to resolve some important theological questions... Dear Jesus, please tell me, who is right?
Nicodemus in the dark
Think about the last time you were outside at night. Not in town — somewhere dark. Really dark.
It takes a while for your eyes to adjust. At first, you can’t see much of anything. But if you wait — if you resist the urge to flood the darkness with light — things start to take shape....
I think about Nicodemus standing outside in that kind of darkness.
Easy or hard? Wrong or right?
Somewhere along the way, we convince ourselves that the wrong thing is the reasonable thing, the necessary thing, the only realistic option. We lose the moral clarity that children have.
Sometimes a childlike clarity is exactly what we need. But even when the right answer isn’t quite so clear, the call is still ours.
"Get up. Don’t be afraid."
The psalm we read this morning doesn’t pretend that the troubles of the world aren’t real, or that they won’t affect us. But it does make a claim: The uproar won’t get the last word.
Hold on to that promise as we go up the mountain with Jesus, Peter, James, and John.
But it’s what happens next that I want to focus on....
Salt and light
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.
That’s what Jesus says in today’s Gospel. It’s what he tells the crowd that gathers around to hear him speak on a mountainside in Galilee. And it’s what he says still to us today.
You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.
He doesn’t say “you should try to be” or “someday you might become” or “here’s a goal for you.” He says you are. Right now. Today.
A vision that makes a demand of us
This morning, we celebrate the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul. It’s what we call our patronal feast, the feast day of the saint our church is named for.
Paul’s story is a story of God’s call, and of a life lived in service to that call. It’s also a story about moving forward when you don’t know what’s ahead, which feels particularly relevant as we begin this new year together.
“What are you looking for?”
Epiphany. What does that word mean to you? A dramatic revelation? A quieter realization? On the Christian calendar, Epiphany is both a day and a season. The day wise men appeared from the East bearing gifts for a newborn baby, whose birth was heralded by a star. And the season in which we remember all the ways in which Jesus becomes known. The great stories of Epiphany are stories that inspire artists and writers.
But an Epiphany can also be a quieter thing. And that’s what we see in today’s Gospel. Jesus approaches John the Baptist, who recognizes him at once. Andrew and another disciple see John point to Jesus, and so they follow him, curious. And so we come to Jesus’s first words in the Gospel of John. Jesus doesn’t begin his work with mystery or miracle. He starts with a question.
“What are you looking for?”
Promises
“The Lord shall give strength to his people; the Lord shall give his people the blessing of peace.” Those words from today’s psalm make a promise that’s just as necessary today as it was back then. And then there’s Isaiah, who promises the coming of one who “will bring forth justice to the nations.”
Strength and peace and justice. Ancient promises.
But when the heavens do open in today’s Gospel, when the Spirit descends and a voice from heaven speaks, it doesn’t mark an ending.... It marks a beginning.
Joseph's courage
I once heard someone say that the gospel of Luke is like a musical. The gospel of Matthew, on the other hand, is nothing like that. In Matthew we have political intrigue... the Holy Family’s flight out of Bethlehem into Egypt... Jesus’ life threatened from the very beginning. Fully divine, yes, but as a child in need of protection, fully, terrifyingly, human.
The promise of Christmas
Today is the fourth day of Christmas—which means, as far as the Church calendar is concerned... the celebration that we began on Wednesday night continues. Christmas won’t end until the wise men arrive on the Feast of the Epiphany on January 6.
There’s a wisdom in the ancient Church calendar, because it takes more than a day to even begin to grasp the mystery of Jesus’s Incarnation. We really need both Advent—a time of preparation—and Christmas—a time of celebration.
But... the next holiday on most of our minds isn’t Epiphany, but New Year’s Eve.
New Year’s Eve. It’s a time to make resolutions. To get serious. To start fresh. To turn a corner. You’ve probably heard the slogan: “New year. New you.”—which seems to imply that the old you isn’t good enough.
Where we go wrong is when we decide that the only way to be worthy of love, peace, or hope is to improve ourselves first.
That gets the promise of Christmas exactly backwards.