Do This

 Maundy Thursday, Grace Episcopal Church, 2023

It’s a familiar story. Yet we need to hear it again. And again.

 

So we come together every Maundy Thursday to re-enact, with Jesus in our midst, two expressions of who we are as followers of him and as children of the living God.

 

One of those things is Holy Eucharist: Jesus calls Eucharistic community into being by blessing and sharing bread and wine with his disciples in his last meal with them on this Earth. And he says, “do this in remembrance of me.”

 

Those of us who take seriously our commitment in our baptismal covenant to “continue in the fellowship and the breaking of the bread and the prayers,” tend to be here at least once a week for the ongoing celebration of Holy Eucharist in this place.

 

The other expression of who we are as followers of Jesus that we re-enact this night is our identity as servants, initiated by Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet. And this time he says, ‘I’m doing this as an example of what you are to do.”

 

We call this night “Maundy Thursday” because “maundy,” coming from the Latin “man DAH tum,” means “command.” Jesus didn’t just express hope or desire that we do these things, he commands us to do these things.

 

So we participate and are renewed weekly by Holy Eucharist. But do we have an equally powerful weekly reminder of our servant identity? It is there, in our post-communion prayers, and I’ll come back to those. But do we see our Eucharistic life and our servanthood as being one and the same?

 

I’m not so sure, and much as I love the Book of Common Prayer that guides us through our daily and weekly liturgies, I wonder if it’s not a shortcoming that we can so easily miss that point. Certainly I think our role as servants is the harder to remember and make real with regular practice in our lives.

 

I dare say, coming to the holy table reassures us of our belonging and reminds us of God’s grace and mercy toward us. It is, by and large, our comfort zone.

 

In contrast, practicing our servanthood often takes us out of our comfort zone. And isn’t it interesting—and probably quite relevant—that the action Jesus used to drive home his point about servanthood also takes us out of our comfort zone!

 

I grew up in the Mennonite Church—a sharp contrast with the Episcopal Church in some ways. And I will never forget so long as I live the acute discomfort of the teenagers of the church on foot-washing Sunday. Because, you see, in the Mennonite Church, everyone had to do it. Everyone!

 

And so the teenage girls and the teenage boys would congregate in separate groups in opposite corners of the church, as far apart as they could get, and, rather hurriedly, heads down, wash feet.

 

What is up with that? Well, clearly, kneeling down and washing each other’s feet involves more vulnerability than even adults are comfortable with, much less teenagers. But that is exactly as I think Jesus intended it.

 

Now, please. I did not tell that story to pressure anyone into participating in the ritual of foot washing tonight! I love the Episcopal Church’s “some should, all may, none must” approach to such things.

 

But I do want to call each and every one of us, whether we participate by coming to the basins or by sitting in our pew watching, that we not allow this to be just another annual ritual in the church year.

 

I do call each of us to recognize this re-enactment to be a recommitment to our role and identity as servants, along with our brother Jesus the Christ, and along with all of the vulnerability that servanthood involves.  

 

See, the life of servanthood is not about making us feel good. Last week at our monthly pub theology gathering, we got into a discussion about charitable acts—specifically about such things as giving money to someone who is asking for help.

 

Now that is by no means the only way to enact servanthood—maybe not even the best way—but it is one way. Helping people who ask us for help is one way to “seek and serve Christ” in every human face, as our baptismal covenant puts it.

 

But the question that came up was, what if it doesn’t make us feel good to do it? Shouldn’t doing a charitable act, doing some kind of service to another, make us feel good?

 

My first thought in response to the question was, yeah, that makes sense, it should.

 

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I question my response. Why should it make us feel good? When did Jesus ever say that following the servanthood he modeled for us would make us feel good?

 

Actually, what Jesus did say pretty clearly is that following him was not going to feel good. You know, all that stuff about maybe having to leave behind family, about letting the dead bury the dead, about giving away all your stuff, about the narrow way vs. the broad way…

 

So maybe if doing some charitable or servant-like thing makes us feel good, we really ought to think twice about it. We ought to question our motives. Because following Jesus into the life of servanthood is not about making us feel good. It is far more likely to be about leaving our comfort zone, with God as our help—and that, of course, is what makes it possible.

 

Here’s what servanthood of the Jesus kind is about: Love. That is all.

 

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. What Jesus did was about love. What Jesus institutes is loving service. And he says, I do this as an example of what you are to do. And when Peter objects, he says, Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.

 

Loving service to each other and all of humankind is intrinsic to our relationship with Jesus the Christ. Without it, we have no share with him.

 

It is the outward manifestation of an inward grace—that inward grace being the love of God through our relationship with Jesus the Christ. Without it, we have no share with him.

 

Our service in the name of Jesus the Christ is an extension of the community we share at the holy table. It is sacramental.

 

And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, we will soon pray after receiving the holy food. Or, in the magnificent words of Rite I, strengthen us to do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in.

 

Service is not merely something we do in our spare time or with spare resources. Loving service is how we walk in the world.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN

 

Please Save Now

 Palm Sunday, Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La.

It has never been clear to me why a homily is required on Palm Sunday. What can a preacher—or anyone else, for that matter—say after reading the Passion Gospel? Would that we all sit quietly and let the pain.. and the anguish.. and the despair.. of having been forsaken by God wash over us.

 

So I don’t have much to say, but a little that matters, it seems to me.

 

I always thought the word “Hosanna!” shouted by the people who waved palms and marched into Jerusalem was a joyous, triumphant “yay, God,” “long live King Jesus” kind of statement. 

 

A few years ago, doing some research for teaching religion in the Grace Middle School, I discovered to my surprise that that’s not at all what it means. Far from being a shout of triumph, it is a plea. “Hosanna” comes from the Hebrew hoshia-nah, which means “please save now.”

 

In other words, the people who escorted Jesus into Jerusalem with a celebratory parade were not shouting praise, adoration or victory. They were begging to be saved already!

 

Perhaps then, it is no wonder that just a few days hence, after Jesus had stood silently before the chief priests and elders and refused to defend himself before Pontius Pilate, those same people called for his execution.

 

He had let them down. Here was a man who refused to save himself, refused to even defend himself. How could he possibly save anyone else? Jesus was a disappointment. He betrayed their hope and longing for a Messiah who would actually solve problems! Fix things! Get the Romans off their back! And so they quickly turned against him.

 

And are we not like that today? Do we not lay down our palm branches and pick up our weapons rather quickly when our often unrealistic expectations are not met by… whomever or whatever: a political party; a friend; a spouse; our church; a priest, bishop or deacon.

 

We want what we want and we want it on our terms. Even when we all really want the same thing, we disagree on the way to get there and have trouble even having civil discussions to seek some common ground.

 

We are very quick to drop our palm branches and pick up our weapons, fling harsh words and sarcastic memes at one another.

 

Jesus before the elders and before Pilate must have looked like a loser. The people wanted to hitch their wagon to a winner. And don’t we?

 

And don’t we want God yet today to “please save us now”! Don’t we, too, have unrealistic expectations of God’s role in human life? Why does God allow.. bad things to happen to good people? we ask. Why does God allow poverty? Why does God allow evil in the world? Why, God…? we ask, as if God were in the business of handing out political favors for those who vote for Him.

 

The people who waved palms that first palm Sunday were unprepared for the answer to their suffering to be Love, simply Love—humble, obedient, self-sacrificing Love that overcomes evil not by fighting back, but by embracing.

 

I’m not sure we’re any better prepared or accepting today of Love as the answer, Love as that which will save us, than were the people 2000 years ago. We sure don’t act like it! We’d rather dig in our heels and go for the win, regardless of the collateral damage the fight might do.

 

As we walk through this holy week, let us examine our own expectations of

God, each other, and perhaps most of all, ourselves. Can we accept humble, patient, unconditional Love as the thing that will save us? And if we say “yes” to that, how must it change us?

 

  In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

This One Life

 Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La., Lent 5

Five weeks ago, as I was preparing a homily for the Ash Wednesday service down at Christ Church in St. Joseph, I was inspired to go online and order a small hourglass on a chain. My theme for that homily was memento mori, “remember that you are going to die,” and my plan was to wear the hourglass pendant as a Lenten discipline.

 

The plan did not work so well. The pendant came, quickly enough, but the moment I opened the package, I realized that I had ordered too short a chain. I needed to get a different chain for it, and somehow… I just never got around to doing that. Until yesterday, when I finally robbed a cord from another pendant so I could wear it this morning.

 

Or, at least, that’s my excuse for not making good on my Lenten discipline!

 

Why an hourglass? Well, because time is running out—not just in the general sense that everyone must die, but in the particular: I’m going to die! My time is running out. Lent is about remembering that.

 

In today’s Gospel story, Lazarus gets something the rest of us will not get, namely more time after his hourglass had run out. Did you ever wonder what he did with it? Did you ever wonder what that multitude of dry bones did with their second chance after Ezekiel—with God’s help—prophesied them back into life?

 

Mary Oliver, recently deceased, is one of my favorite poets of all time. I’m going to read a poem of hers called “The Summer Day.” The last line of this poem is quite famous. You will most likely recognize it; you’ve probably heard it before. But I think the entire short poem makes the punch line even more powerful.

 

Here it is: “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

 

To be perfectly honest, I am sorely tempted to sit down and simply leave that poem hanging in the air… to give us all time to reflect on what it is we are doing with the one wild and precious life we have been given. But that would not be according to Sunday morning protocol, so…. here are a couple of my thoughts on this business of life, death and being raised from the dead.

 

First, life is a series of mini-deaths and mini-resurrections. It is quite literally a messy mix of deaths and resurrections, so much so that I often think of Khalil Gibran’s famous statement: Life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

 

We have all experienced those times of loss or adversity or change we neither asked for nor wanted—times of loss of control, times that feel like dying. And I also know, because I know my stories and I have heard some of yours, that we have also experienced God pushing aside the stone and calling us to come out of the tomb of hurt or anger or despair we are in and back to life again.

 

At last Tuesday’s Lenten luncheon, it was my turn to give the meditation, and “forgiveness” was on the agenda of the booklet we are using, “Living
Well through Lent.” One of the things I pointed out, contrary to what the culture teaches us, is that forgiveness is not a “once and done” deal. It is a daily decision we must make.

 

Like forgiveness, resurrection is not a once-and-done deal. Forgiveness and resurrection are to be practiced, and I do believe they are connected. It seems to me that we cannot experience resurrection until we have experienced being forgiven, and forgiving… the person who wronged us, maybe ourselves for doing something stupid that got us into this current messy death-like situation, maybe just reality itself for being exactly what it is, nothing more, nothing less. And this human life will give us plenty of opportunities to practice both.. forgiveness and resurrection, of that we can be certain.

 

The second thing I want to say about life, death and resurrection is that, as followers of Jesus, God has a claim on us. God has a claim on our lives. With our baptism, we made decisions well in advance that necessarily shape what we do with our one wild and precious life. Not in detail, but certainly in substance and in principle.

 

To echo one of Fr. Don’s themes, one of those things we promise is to be in church. So, you’re here, I’m preaching to the choir, but… have you considered picking up the phone and calling someone you haven’t seen here in awhile to just remind them that “the fellowship and the breaking of the bread and the prayers” is incomplete without them! 

 

BTW, in case you don’t know, research shows that it is umpteen times more effective for you to do that than for clergy to do it. 

 

But to me the much harder promises come at the end of the baptismal covenant. Those would be the promises to seek and serve Christ in every other person, loving them as myself, and to seek justice and peace for all and to respect the dignity of every human being. I don’t think we do those things well at all.

 

So I’m a teacher. Giving grades comes naturally. I would actually give us a B on church attendance, and maybe a C on seeking and serving Christ in every person. That’s charity. We do some of that. Not enough, but some.

 

But that last one? Seeking justice and respecting the dignity of every person? Well, I would say D at best. Because I have heard the poor blamed for their poverty inside every church I have served or attended.. by people who haven’t the slightest idea of what systemic poverty is like or what it takes to get out of it. To respect the dignity of every human being surely requires, at minimum, hearing their story before coming to conclusions about the cause of their condition.

 

I give us a “D”  on that last promise because seeking justice involves change. Justice is not a hand-out. Doing charity does not produce justice. At best it produces survival within the status quo. Seeking justice means looking at causes and examining systems that produce injustice. It means being willing to change, even those systems that worked well for us. And just talking about such things makes us deeply uncomfortable.

 

These things are in our baptismal covenant because God calls us to do them. And we agreed! We made a solemn vow that whatever else we do with this one life, we will—with God’s help—do it all within the context of God’s claim on us, guided by the Spirit, walking in the way of Jesus.

 

Easter Sunday is just around the corner. Our Easter liturgy is a major baptismal event. Using Lent to prepare for baptism became a tradition of the church many centuries ago. My prayer today is that we use what remains of this Lent to assess honestly, to look forward courageously, and to renew our baptismal covenant again, as if for the first time.

 

In the name of God, Father, son, and Holy Spirit, AMEN

Hello darkness, my old friend...

Lent 2, Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La.

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

 

I hope you can hear the music of Simon & Garfunckel in your head as I read those words. I certainly can, but… be grateful I’m not singing!

 

 

Today’s Gospel story puts me in mind of that song. Nicodemus has heard about Jesus and the things he is doing. Perhaps he has even seen Jesus in action, doing what the Gospel according to John calls “the signs”: converting water into wine, healing people, even raising them from the dead. 

 

These signs of Jesus have planted the seeds of a vision in Nicodemus’ brain. He is compelled to go talk to the source, but he goes at night—under cover of his friend, darkness.

 

Why is darkness Nicodemus’ friend? He was a prominent Pharisee who saw something in Jesus, and his response—wanting to talk with Jesus—was very different from that of his colleagues—who throughout John’s Gospel become angrier and angrier, and more and more threatening, and soon plot to kill Jesus.

 

But there’s more darkness in this story than the physical darkness that hides Nicodemus’ visit to Jesus. Nicodemus lives in spiritual darkness. His feet are mired, his body entangled in things of the earth, specifically religious law. It’s all he knows. He is a teacher of the law! 

 

 

And religious law, like civil law, is all about control and order and social identity and politics. It’s about who’s “in” and who’s “out,” who is an acceptable dinner companion and who not, whom your child is allowed to love and whom not, who is “saved” and who not.

 

Nicodemus was about the letter of the law. Jesus was about the spirit of the law. And so it is not too surprising that when Jesus attempts to engage Nicodemus on the spiritual plane, it seems to fall on deaf ears. Jesus speaks of being “born” of the spirit; Nicodemus can’t get past physical birth.

 

They are like ships passing in the night. Or, better yet given my theme song today, like people who show up in verse 3 of Simon & Garfinckel’s song:

 

People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never shared
No one dared
Disturb the sound of silence

 

Nothing is more deadly to the process of learning than thinking you already know. I’ll never forget the young man who came into the mass communication major at ULM a number of years ago. He had already worked in television. His father had a sportsman’s show—a fishing show, I believe—and this kid had grown up helping him produce his show.

 

He came to ULM to get his ticket punched. Not to learn, but to get a degree so he could climb those ladders of success that require degrees. In his first or second semester, he failed a class because of missed deadlines. He was always certain his excuse—helping my dad on his show—would get him extensions and endless grace. It didn’t. He failed. Furious, he disappeared.

 

Several years later he returned, a different person. He came back a person who had discovered how much he didn’t know. And he became a model student. Today he runs his own successful media production business.

 

Jesus calls us to walk out of the darkness of knowing into the light of unknowing, of giving up our religious rules for the sake of love and compassion that knows no rules, that follows no rules.

 

And why is it so hard for us to do that? I must go back to Simon & Garfunckel one more time. Remember the final verse? It goes like this.

 

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
In tenement halls"
And whispered in the sounds of silence

 

You see, we make idols of what we know, and the rules that worked for us, that helped us organize and manage our lives, that give us our identities and helped us be successful in earthly terms. And we should not forget those things and I am certainly not saying we should reject them or despise them.

 

But we make idols of them and that is when they become darkness that enshrouds us, and blinds us to seeing God in our neighbor and in all of God’s creation.

 

Nicodemus clung to human religious knowing and theological certitudes, devoid of the wind of the Spirit. He was blind to the new thing God was doing before his very eyes: Jesus, the Son of Man who came to preach love as the fulfillment of the spirit of the law.

 

We do know that later on, Nicodemus stood up for Jesus a little bit when Jesus was being interrogated by the Sanhedrin. Later still, Nicodemus helps Joseph of Arimathea take Jesus down from the cross and lay him in a tomb. That gives me hope that eventually Nicodemus was able to experience himself as a beloved child of God.

 

How about us? Are we stuck in the dark of thinking our particular religious beliefs and practices are all there is to know about God? Our Holy Scripture and our interpretations of it the one and only truth? That our social and cultural ways are morally superior to everyone else’s? Have we made an idolatry of a political party?

 

The Bishop actually addressed that last thing very specifically in his address at Diocesan Convention. He said, If a political party is your primary identity, stop it! Just stop it. That is not who you are.

 

To follow Jesus is to relinquish knowing and certitude. It is to be open to the movement of the spirit. In the words of early 20^th Century poet Jessica Powers, The soul that walks where the wind of the Spirit blows turns like a weather-vane toward love. …To live with the Spirit of God is to be a lover.

 

  In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

 

Memento Mori

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, Ash Wednesday

Keep death daily before your eyes. That is what Saint Benedict wrote in his rule for monks. And early Christian monastics of all sorts found innovative ways to do it. Some took up a scoop of dirt from their eventual graves and kept it nearby. Some, in fact, slept in their coffins. Some built their own shroud, a few stitches at a time taken day by day by day throughout their adult lives.

 

These are memento mori. That is, reminders that they, we, and everyone are going to die.

 

In the Episcopal Church, we get ashes on our foreheads, but we only do it once a year. I’m not so sure that is enough. Indeed, I’ve really been struck this year by the understanding that many of our spiritual fathers and mothers taught that we need a daily reminder of our mortality.

 

I have long said I’m not afraid to die. I’ve lived a good life. Life doesn’t owe me anything. I know who I belong to and where I’m going… but not a clue, of course, as to what the next place actually looks like… Nevertheless, I’m not afraid to die.

 

At the same time, however, I struggle to conceive of the world without me. Maybe that’s because I’ve been pretty healthy all my life, but… somehow, it seems I’ll just go on and on, like the Energizer bunny! I cannot conceive of the world going on without me, but of course it will. 

 

Phillippe de Champaigne, Vanitas

 

So consider a Lenten discipline of giving yourself a daily reminder that you are going to die—a memento mori. Make it real. Write about it in a journal, or wear something—maybe a skull pin or pendant, or an hourglass to remind yourself that time is running out.

 

And why? Why should we remind ourselves that we are going to die? Why make it a daily spiritual practice?

 

We already know at least some of the answers to that. We are all in this room old enough to have experienced death—not yet of ourselves, but of someone close to us. And we probably know that it does wonders for focusing our attention on priorities. When death is before your eyes, we know at least temporarily what is important and what is not important.

 

Perhaps keeping our own death daily before our eyes will indeed rearrange our lives, teach us to make better choices about how we spend our time, and our talent and even our money.

 

Keeping our own death daily before our eyes is also a way of healthy and appropriate letting go of those things that are so destructive to living a full and rich life. How much time will we invest in holding onto a grudge, stubbornly refusing to forgive, beating up ourselves with regret… while contemplating our own death? Not much, I hope.

 

How about awaking us anew to the value of life itself and to the transient beauty that surrounds us? Like trillium, this most beautiful wildflower that blooms for only a few weeks in the early spring. Now! Go see it now, because by the middle of March it will be gone. Without a trace.

 

Trillium

The poet E.B. Browning said it like this:

 

Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God; and only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.

Another author whose reflections I often read in preparing a sermon is Suzanne Guthrie. She wrote:

 

But if I look at the life cycle of a butterfly, eggs in foaming spit, hatching to worm, to caterpillar (chewing my passion vine into lace!) to silky cocoon, to a completely new creature of iridescent color that flies to the nectar in the flowers, lays eggs and dies, I see a whole of which I am a part. As are my beloved dead. Everything interconnects. I remember I am dust.

 

Maybe keeping our own death before us helps us to be joyful, content and attuned to the present, to cherish every moment that we draw breath? To love God for God alone? For no other motive than to love for love’s sake?

 

Remember, you are going to die.

 

This Muslim prayer is mine today:

 

O Lord, may the end of my life be the best of it; may my closing acts be my best acts, and may the best of my days be the day which I shall meet Thee.

 

  In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

 

Come and See

 Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, Epiphany 2

What a strange little conversation we hear in today’s Gospel story. “Come and see,” Jesus says, to two complete strangers. And they do. And the world changes, just like that. Not only for Jesus, and those two strangers, but for us as well.

 

We are in the season the church calls “Epiphany,” which means “showing forth” or “manifestation.” We celebrate not just any manifestation, but the great manifestation or showing forth of Jesus as the Son of God and savior, not just of the Israelites, but of the whole world.

 

 

Epiphany begins with the three wisemen from other parts of the world arriving in Bethlehem. They seek “the king of the Jews,” and upon seeing Jesus—at that point a toddler—they bow down and pay homage to him. By their actions, the three wisemen declare Jesus to be the King of All.

 

The Epiphany story continued last week with the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. John himself recognizes something different about Jesus. He is hesitant to baptize this one, whom he says is greater than he. But Jesus prevails, John baptizes, and the universe speaks: This is my son, the beloved. None other than God manifests Jesus as the one and only son of the living God.

 

Today’s Eiphany story begins with a couple moments of great clarity on the part of John the Baptist. He is still preaching and baptizing on the banks of the River Jordan. He has baptized Jesus, the baptism itself was remarkable, but as yet nothing remarkable has come of it.

 

Now John sees Jesus approaching and loudly declares him to be the savior of the world. Still, nothing happens—at least nothing that the New Testament authors thought worthy of recording.

 

But the very next day, Jesus walks by John again, and this time—when John cries out his striking testimony, Look, here is the Lamb of God, John’s two disciples go off and follow Jesus.

 

Thus begins this strange little conversation that issues a real challenge to us today. It begins with Jesus turning to these two sketchy guys who have just walked away from the even sketchier guy—dressed in camel’s hair and eating locusts and wild honey and preaching hellfire and brimstone along the bank of the river—a truly sketchy guy… Jesus turns to the two following him and says, What are you looking for?

 

Well, that’s not an entirely strange question, although I would have probably been way less polite! But Jesus seems open to a reasonable explanation of why they are suddenly following him. So he asks, What are you looking for?

 

Here’s where it gets kind of strange. They do not answer. It’s a simple question, but they do not answer. Rather, they ask a question in return. Where are you staying? Not “where do you live?” which is what makes sense to me, but Where are you staying?

 

So it seems to me, first, that there was something enigmatic and compelling about Jesus, something they couldn’t quite put their finger on. I suspect they didn’t answer Jesus’ question because they just weren’t sure what they were looking for, only that Jesus seemed to have something to offer—something so powerful that they turned on a dime, so to speak, from following John to following Jesus.

 

Second, it seems to me that they also somehow sensed that following Jesus was a whole new ballgame. Whatever it was that they desired and that they thought Jesus had to offer, it was going to be a whole new kind of adventure. Jesus was not going to take them “home” to meet his wife or mother, or to some established carpentry workshop where he would learn the trade, or to the family farm or sheep herd where they would settle down and live happily ever after.

 

Later on in the New Testament we hear Jesus say, The foxes have holes and the birds of the heaven have nests, but the Son of Man does not have a place where He may lay His head” (Matthew 8:20). So I have to wonder if somehow these, his first two followers, sensed that from the very beginning.

 

Where are you staying? they ask. And now Jesus says the strangest but most compelling thing of all: Come and see. Come and see, he says, and invites these two strangers into his life.

 

Surely it is the kindest, gentlest, most gracious invitation into having one’s life turned completely upside down and inside out the world has ever known! Because that’s what it was. Those two sketchy guys quickly become a third when Andrew runs off to get his brother, and those three sketchy guys hook up with Jesus, and the consequence today is us—a whole bunch of sketchy guys and gals—looking to be followers of Jesus!

 

Here’s the two ways this story challenges us today. First, what are we looking for from Jesus? We’re here, in this church. So it is fair to conclude that we’re here seeking Jesus. (If we aren’t, then maybe we’re in the wrong place!)

 

I can only speak for myself, but I’m certainly looking for Jesus as a source of help and comfort in dealing with the challenges and concerns of daily life on planet earth. I’m looking for assurance of my own salvation. I’m looking for a refuge from the storm, and the older I get, the more I’m looking for safe passage to a better place—not soon, but eventually. Am I alone in that? No!

 

 

But here’s what I also know: Andrew, and his brother Peter, and whoever the third sketchy guy was… they got all of that, and more. Whatever they were looking for, they got way more than they bargained for. Their lives were turned upside down and inside out. At some point, the going got so rough that every one of them ran away from Jesus, because the way of Jesus is also the way of the cross.

 

So when Jesus says, Come and see, and we go, we are not just going to a place of comfort and reassurance, to a world of “what Jesus can do for me.” We are going instead to a place that can be quite discomforting and challenging. We are going to be stretched by our encounters with others. As we learn to love what God loves, we are going to suffer the pain of the world.

 

And here’s the second way, Jesus’ invitation challenges us. As the body of Christ in the world today, we are the ones called now to issue the invitation, Come and see. We are to be the bearers of the Good News of the love of God for all people and all creation. We are to be the ones to heal the sick, welcome the stranger, and share with those who have less.

 

Come and see. Every Episcopal church I know and love and serve in some way, wishes for more members. Maybe we’re even kind of good at saying, “Come.” But what kind of keeps me awake at night is, what if they do? What if people do, in fact, come? What will they see? A handful of folks focused on their own comforts and future? Or a sketchy bunch of Jesus followers seeking to do what Jesus would do? Loving their neighbors—and all that implies—in his name? That, my friends, is the most challenging question of all.

 

  In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN

What's in a name?

 Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La., Feast of the Holy Name

In case you don’t remember, or have never noticed, the Hebrew Scripture—which is our Old Testament and is also part of Islam’s Koran—contains two creation stories. The first one that occupies the first chapter of Genesis is by far the better known. That’s the one that goes, “On the first day, God” did thus and such and on the second day God did other stuff, and so on.

 

I’m not sure why this story is more popular or better known. Maybe just because it comes first in the Bible, maybe because it is more detailed and satisfies our sense of order by enumerating God’s creation schedule.

 

In any case, the second creation story that occupies most of Genesis Chapter 2 gets relatively little attention. About the only thing most people recall from the second story of creation is that’s the one where God puts Adam to sleep and takes out a rib to make Eve. Sadly, not much good comes out of people remembering that because they tend to turn it into a rationale for a lot of nonsense about gender relationships! But.. we will not go down that rabbit hole this morning.

 

Something else happens only in that second creation story that I want to bring to our attention today. I’m reading now, Genesis 2:18-20a: 

 

Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’ So out of the ground the Lord God formed every animal of the field and every bird of the air and brought them to the man to see what he would call them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. The man gave names to all cattle, and to the birds of the air, and to every animal of the field. 

 

Today is the Feast of the Holy Name. Our Gospel lesson from Luke tells the story. On the 8^th day after his birth—to us, the 8^th Day of Christmas—Joseph and Mary take Jesus to the temple to be circumcised and named. And they name him “Jesus,” the name given Mary by the angel Gabriel. Jesus means “salvation.”

 

I connect these two stories—the naming of the animals and the naming of Jesus—to make the point that naming is a profound act. We call things into being by naming them.

 

Have you ever noticed that? That once you have a name for something or someone, it or they exist for you in a new way? That you see things you never noticed before once you have a name for them?

 

Here’s a small example. I went hiking yesterday in the Russell Sage WMA with several friends, two of whom are very knowledgeable about mushrooms. We were standing beside a fallen tree trunk covered with various fungi and I had photographed the ones I recognize.

 

That’s actually something I noticed about my nature photography. If I know the name of something, I am way more likely to make photographs of it. I love learning the names of all kinds of plants, animals and mushrooms, but I have to discipline myself to take pictures of them so I can then look through field guides and learn their names!

 

So… we’re standing beside this log and one of my knowledgeable friends said, “Look, this one is called ‘violet-toothed polypore.’” And I looked and sure enough, there they were. Little fan-shaped mushrooms with a purple rim on the side of the log. I had not noticed them.

 

What do you want to bet that next time I go to Russell Sage—or any other bottomland hardwood forest—I’ll see them everywhere! Because now I have a name for them. Violet-toothed polypore!

 

Naming matters. God invited the man to name the animals, and thereby called humankind into the role of co-creators. Throughout Hebrew Scripture, people and places are given meaningful names, that is, names full of meaning.

 

For example, “Moses” means “drawn out” because he was drawn out of the water by Pharoah’s daughter, and he goes on to “draw out” the Israelites from Egypt. Jacob names the place where he wrestles with God in a dream “Beth-el,” meaning “house of God.”

 

These names are not merely identifiers we need to keep characters and places straight. That’s kind of how we do names today. Rather, Old Testament names speak of calling and destiny.

 

“Jesus” literally means “salvation.” And that is who he is to us. That is his calling and his destiny. Of course, he has other names that point to other aspects of him: Prince of Peace, Counselor, to name just two. But his first and given name, from God the Father through the angel Gabriel, is Salvation. Jesus is our salvation.

 

And what a comfort it is to say the name Jesus and to know him as Savior, the one who brings salvation to us—not once, but over and over again, as often and as long as we need it, which is to say always and forever!

 

One of the several online sources I typically consult in preparing a homily suggests that we might want to “write the name of God above the new year,” mentally and emotionally, just as we might physically chalk the first initials of the 3 wisemen above our doorways on Epiphany: C + M + B (Caspar, Melchior, Balthasar).

 

Writing the name of God above the new year in our hearts and in our mind—and I did it in my journal last night—will then help us enter the practice of breathing the Holy Name so that it might eventually become one with the beating of our heart. This is a way to experience and understand what it means to “pray without ceasing.”

 

 

But if we leave it there, if saying the Holy Name becomes merely a comforting moment that wipes away our sin, if praying the Holy Name is merely an act of piety, then we have taken the name of Jesus in vain.

 

That’s the “boom” of this homily. The name of Jesus is not just the calling of a babe born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago. Claiming that name is a calling for us. To claim the name of Jesus is to do the work he has given us to do. Otherwise, we take his name in vain.

 

You probably don’t need me to enumerate once again what that work is. But I’m going to anyway. It is to love our neighbors—ALL of our neighbors—as ourselves. It is to heal the sick and feed the hungry, to give one of our coats to someone who has none. It is to see God in every other human face and all of Creation. It is to seek justice and the common good.

 

Let us pray, as we claim the name of Jesus today, that we will in the coming year walk the walk of service that claiming that name calls us to.

 

  In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.