There are seventeen errors in the order of service tonight, one for each year of Larry’s episcopacy. These deliberate errors are an homage to all of the accidental ones he has noticed here over the years as bishop, but was too gracious to point out.
Read MoreThe bridesmaids with extra oil had no real reason to pack more. The wedding was not supposed to be delayed. And who starts a reception at midnight anyway? They looked foolish by the world’s standards. But they trusted in a different reality. Their faith was not in the ways of the world, but in the bridegroom himself.
Read MoreThe saints of past and the present are people like most of us, those who are without all the resources of life, who weep and don’t have it all together. They are people who long for justice and often don’t see it. They are those who pray for peace despite the constant onslaught of violence. What makes them saints, those blessed people who make God’s love visible, isn’t the fact of any of these normal human situations or longings. Instead, it was they have turned their lives and longings toward the light of Christ, basking in His radiance and absorbing it into nourishment for the world. It is in this turning toward the light that they provide an opening for the healing love of God against those forces of darkness that seek to undo love and destroy God’s creatures through pride and shame.
Read MoreIf you mourn tonight, there are symbols all around that are especially for you. Let the symbols around you lift your spirit. May they comfort you and assure you of connections that can never be broken. May the symbols that surround us reveal the larger realities in which they participate, in resurrected life that never ends, and in the eternal congregation of the communion of saints. And remember, never call them “just symbols.” They are so much more than that.
Read MoreAlthough we hope for it, it’s hard to imagine a world in which everyone in the Middle East can share their homeland and their holy places. I was uncomfortable sharing a random cemetery I found with people who actually have relatives buried there. But if we learned anything from the first five books of Holy Scripture over the summer, it’s that while we are promised an inheritance of family, holy space, and blessings of purpose, we are not guaranteed comfort. In fact, it’s only on the other side of our discomfort, on the other side of our acceptance that the inheritance must be shared, that we will find our promised land, the Kingdom of God.
Read MoreMoses’ face would shine after he talked with God, as if he were coated with the residue of the glory he encountered. Perhaps we could try praying like Moses, asking to know God more fully, in order to see more of that brilliance. “Lord, show us your glory.” I trust that when we pray like Moses, our faces will shine with some of that residual glory, a light we can take into the world.
Read MoreHealing broken bones is a pretty concrete way of helping to usher in God’s dream. And of course, Steno tended to more than just broken bones. He had a way of ministering to broken hearts, too. Like Luke the physician, he knew the link between the healing arts and Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Read MoreThis morning we’re back in the thick of it with Matthew’s Gospel. At the beginning of today’s chapter, Jesus made his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. As the crucifixion draws closer, the stakes get higher, and the teachings and proclamations more urgent. With the parable of the wicked tenants, I think Jesus wanted his listeners to squirm a bit, and I think he succeeds, even to this day.
Read MoreGod is not just liberating Israel from Egypt, but is also liberating them from the entire pattern of life that Egypt represents. So, to offer a new pattern, one that doesn’t depend on controlling people and exploiting the world, God offers them a strange food, one that can’t be identified according to any of their old ways of knowing or stored up for more than a day’s time.
Read MoreThe only exception to grace seems to come when we reject a system that keeps bringing people back into the fold. If this were an easy teaching, Jesus could have said it once and been done with it. Instead he told story after story to help us heal from the pain of our endless scorekeeping.
Read MoreIt is a comfort, on this most joyful day, to know that even as we move through the messy, beautiful, hard work of being in community, we need not fear surprise or disagreement or conflict. Because we have a way forward. We have a little encouraging push from Paul to get to work. We have all kinds of guidelines for how to love each other, and we even have some steps for reconciliation when we need them. Most of all, we have our worship to ground us in the faith and keep us from forgetting to whom we belong: to God and to one another. So this fall, as we do every fall, we recommit to this place, to each other, and to our common worship. There’s no better time.
Read MoreThe first part of the passage tells us that the disciples were out on the water in a storm not by chance, but because Jesus had instructed them to do so. At first, this might be a little disconcerting. Why would Jesus send the disciples out onto the water if he knew or even suspected a storm might come? But when we take a step back, we can see this story is actually part of a larger pattern that spans all of holy scripture.
Read MoreIn a world that offers virtual, shiny, and shallow solutions to our cravings, we need to be reminded to hunger after the real and the holy.
Read MoreIt is in my inability to speak, the weakness of my words, the seeming failure of my prayers, that the Spirit moves into my heart, hearing its hope and grief, and offering my deepest self to God. The Spirit shares in the loss of words, speaking only in sighs, and yet the Spirit’s groaning on our behalf is understood by God. When we no longer know what to say, the gate to our deepest prayers is opened.
Read MoreThe parable of the wheat and the weeds is about the coexistence of good and evil in the world and in our own hearts. That’s not a surprise to any of us. But the twist comes in what Jesus asks us to do about it.
Read MoreI hope we can cut our rascal Jacob a little slack as he goes about God’s scandalous work in the world, while also having some compassion for Esau as well. We embody both of their legacies. Sometimes we are the lowly with whom God walks and sometimes we take our privilege for granted and learn a brutal lesson about quick fixes and the promise of God.
Read MoreOne of the attributes of God throughout the scriptures is that God is faithful. God chose a covenant as a means to express that divine fidelity to us. This arrangement also tells us that God’s purposes can be accomplished through our lives, no matter how imperfect the details. I think this is why Genesis zooms in on the lives of Isaac and Rebekah and so many others. If they can be the carriers of the covenant, so can we.
Read MoreWe take comfort today in Jesus’ words, that Trudie knew the way to heaven, and that she is in a dwelling place built just for her. Her joy is complete. Whatever unfinished coding projects she had are now done. I imagine Trudie has already found the library in heaven and is working on a paper to present to the other angels about the glitches in our human operating system. Like her friends and family in this life, the angels will be blessed to know her.
Read MoreReading the story of the binding of Isaac in our age, might strike us as an encounter with a primitive god, a dark picture that bears no likeness to the enlightened faith we’d like to claim. And yet I think we need this story now more than ever. Ours is a world that desires to control more and more, to solve every problem, to heal every wound. And while that might seem good on the surface, it makes it impossible for us to live into the fact of our limits, our vulnerability, the absurd pieces of our life that could never fit in some neat rational system. Faith, hope, and love are not achievable by algorithm or formula, or knowable beyond the risk of faith.
Read MoreWhen God doesn’t fix things, how do we give thanks then? What does our faith have to offer when things go wrong? You can’t find a better story in the Bible to shed light on those questions than the one about Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. The Book of Genesis is filled with faithful people doing good and faithful things. But there are plenty of painful events, too, ones in which God doesn’t provide a rescue or a happy ending. Those stories provide a different kind of witness, one that is honest and useful when things go terribly wrong.
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