One of the most remarkable things about the juxtaposition of these two passages is that not only do they both include the public reading of scripture, they proclaim almost identical messages. Nehemiah and Ezra and the Levites declare that “this day is holy to our Lord.” Jesus reads from Isaiah who foretells the coming of the one who will “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Both stories announce to their listeners, both ancient and present-day, that the time is upon us. God is here, at work among us right now. Things are about to change. Good news has come to those who need it this very day.
Read MoreYou may not have read it this way before, but the bible in its whole, is a love story. We could even dare call it a romantic comedy—not of the sort that’s always funny, though there is that, but in the wider sense of comedy, where at the end, no matter what, there is happiness and joy. From Isaiah to Ezekiel, Hosea to Zephaniah—the Hebrew prophets picked up on this theme of love and described the relationship of God with Israel as an engagement for marriage.
Read MoreIn Christianity, there is no finish line down the road we have to cross in order to receive grace or a spot in heaven. You don’t have to live a long life or reach particular goals to get in, because that’s not how grace works. People came up to Jesus all the time with their burning questions, and he met them where they were. He never said things like, come back and talk to me in 30 years and we’ll assess how much you’ve improved. He was more likely to say things like, “Today, salvation has come to this house.” We have faith that salvation has come for Mary, that she has received a full measure of grace.
Read MoreIf you are finding these days difficult, friends, you are not alone. Our spiritual lives and needs in 2022 are different than they were before. We’re now deep into the waters of baptism with one another, where faith insists that destructive forces are never more powerful than the love of God in Christ. That love raises us to new life, come what may. That is the bigger picture the church offers this day, which has come, as it so often does, just when we need it most.
Read MoreYes, our Savior has been born, but the road to salvation is long and sometimes frightening. After almost two years of living with Covid-19 all around us, I feel similarly about this new year. Yes, 2021 is finally over, but we’re not out of this pandemic yet. Some days, I’m frankly at a loss. How can we respond to this deep truth of the Incarnation: that new life and human brokenness continue to coexist? I think we take a lesson from what happened to the Holy Family after the birth of Christ.
Read MoreChristmas, the actual event of Christ’s coming into the world in flesh and blood, offers a different story. In a world categorized and calculated, manipulated and exploited, God came to be with us and alongside us. And in that coming Christ did not simply arrive to offer us some new thing to look forward to, an ultimate expectation in the heavenly realm. No, Christ came into a world objectified by power and greed and said “you.” Not the “you” of Francis Crick in which every subject is made an object. What Christ brings, Auden reminds us in his poem, is that moment in “the stable where for once in our lives/ Everything became a You and nothing was an It.”
Read MoreIf life happens to feel messy these days, remember that tonight’s joy doesn’t come from a picture perfect holiday cookie or an ideal family gathering. In this place, the pressure to achieve those things is off. God can see right past the Instagram version of our lives to the real one anyway, which is the one God actually works with. The true joy tonight comes from the angel’s good tidings of great joy, tidings meant for us, which we really can’t miss.
Read MoreThe Incarnation is good news for people of all genders and no gender, but I have come to see that Mary’s womanhood has profound implications for her faith and for ours, when it comes to her celebrated obedience to God. Just a few verses before today’s Gospel passage, a perplexed but resolved Mary said to Gabriel, “here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And so we venerate Mary for her “yes,” for her willingness to be the vessel God called her to be.
Read MoreJohn the Baptist is the voice of one crying out in the wilderness. He is strange, an outsider, and as such his invitation is away from the safe confines of the familiar. He does not go into the cities or villages to proclaim his message of repentance. Instead, he stays at the margins and invites all those who see the need for renewal to come out to him. It is from the wilderness that he makes way for the coming of the Kingdom, it is through a fast from the familiar that he prepares the people for the coming of the Messiah.
Read MoreOur sacred story begins not with the first but the second coming of Christ to a world in distress, to a people fainting from fear. It’s a strange place to start the story. But it is a profoundly hopeful place to start, especially for the anxious.
Read MoreWhat a powerful reorientation our scriptures offer us today. Whereas traditional kings are powerful because they are self-serving, wealthy in the things that are passing away, and in a complicated relationship of competition with God, Christ the King is powerful because he is the light of the world, because he is in right relationship with God, and because he brings about a realm of love and hope and abundance for all people. He does not rule over, he sacrifices for, lifts up, ushers in, dwells among.
Read MoreToday we celebrate All Saints. Over history it has become a time when we remember those we have lost, those we hope to see again in the Resurrection life of God’s renewal of all things. But that word saint refers to something more than simply the Christian dead. It is rooted in the word holy, connected to the words health and wholeness.
Read MoreA sermon for All Saints’ Day, for all those who need to see a bit of heaven shining through.
Read MoreIn the face of the endless depth of the divine, any and all work that we do to better understand God and ourselves, especially in faithful relationship with another person, is deeply sacred. It’s kingdom work. We can go around and around in circles trying to understand why we’re here, what to do with our lives, or what this week’s sermon should say, and we may never get any closer to the answer. But we will get closer to the Kingdom of God on earth, to the holy union God seeks to have with us.
Read MoreThings feel a bit rough out there. These days, there are fist fights on airplanes and at school board meetings. There’s a pandemic of a different sort happening, one that afflicts the human heart.
Read MoreThe passage we heard from Job this morning is only a fraction of God’s response. Verse after verse, God recounts the wild wonders of the world that are beyond Job’s knowledge, control, and benefit. From rain in the deserts where no people live to the speed of an Ostrich, cliff dwelling vultures to clods of clay, or my personal favorite, the wild donkey who “laughs at the clamor of the town”—we witness a montage of the created order from the celestial to the mundane, the animal to the atmospheric—all of it a manifestation of God’s creative and loving power. Like an Inuit elder quelling the anger of a child, God reorients Job’s sense of his place in the world with a vision of awe. And though the book of Job is considered by many to be among the most ancient literature in our scriptures, a work first performed as a drama, few books are as relevant to our time or as contemporary in their wisdom.
Read MoreWhen a good sheep like Ellen shows us the gospel, we, in turn, can do that for others. When that happens, whole flocks get pointed in the right direction, trusting that the grace of God is for them. Other sheep will have the opportunity to hear some good news, including that the good shepherd has a particular love for sheep who get lost
Read MoreOur ways of measuring worth are not how God’s system works at all. It’s as if we keep trying to thread our camels through a needle when it’s only grace that gets us through anyway. The young man’s camel was his wealth, which Jesus told him to give away. He would tell us the same thing about our own camels, to let them go.
Read MoreIn my experience, relationships that are based on score-keeping, on measuring tit for tat, relationships that are essentially transactional, are not very healthy. And what’s more, they aren’t the kind of relationships that God calls us into in order to reveal God’s love to the world. And as much as we resist taking a close look at Job and Jesus’ teaching on divorce, I believe that these two passages have much to teach us about relationships, both with other people and with God.
Read MoreThe world of earthly power has no room for children. Jesus knows this well, for his birth came when Ceasar demanded a census, a tool for taxes and building armies, and there was no room in the inn. The world that has no room for children is one that has no room for life. As Thomas Merton writes, “We live in the time of no room…The time when everyone is obsessed with lack of time, lack of space, with saving time, conquering space, projecting into time and space the anguish produced within them by the technological furies of size, volume, quantity, speed, number, price, power and acceleration.” This is a world that has no room for children and their play.
Read More