Sermon by the Rev. Tom Hughes
Sermons
Sermon, Oct. 30, 2022 – Pentecost 21 – “Zacchaeus”
Who in here likes donuts? I’d never given serious thought before to how doughnuts ended up having a hole in the middle, but according to Bishop Douglas Fisher from The Diocese of Western Massachusetts, donuts date way back to Ireland and early Christian traditions there.
For the Irish Christians, All Saints’ Day was a day on which prayers for all the saints were offered, and people had a feast to celebrate the day. But many people in Ireland were too poor to put enough food on the table for their feast, and so the night before,on All Hollow’s Eve, they’d go out and knock on the doors of houses and beg for food. As time went on, this practice evolved, and the beggars at the doors would promise to offer prayers for the dead on All Saints ‘Day in exchange for food.
One woman wondered to herself—“Are these people I’m giving food to really remembering to pray for my dead relatives?” So she decided to start giving those who knocked on her door cakes with a hole in the middle. The person eating the cake would get to the hole in the middle of the cake and remember to pray for the deceased.
And so the donut was born.
Who knows whether or not this is really how donuts came to be, but that’s a good story.
Bishop Fisher connects this Halloween story of the donut to what happens in the story about Jesus and Zacchaeus.
Zacchaeus was not only a tax collector, but a chief tax collector. Zacchaeus was rich. He had everything he needed and more than enough. He could make as much money as he wanted at the expense of the people from whom he collected taxes. The Roman oppressors, who ruled Palestine, hired people to collect the taxes, and in return, the tax collectors could collect whatever they wanted from the people in addition to the actual tax to pay themselves for doing their job. So not only were the people having to pay taxes, but they were also having to pay whatever the tax collectors demanded for themselves—talk about a corrupt system!
So certainly, Zacchaeus was not a popular person in his community by any stretch of the imagination.
I can just hear the derisive laughter when this rich little man went racing through the streets, shedding his dignity out of his desperation to see who Jesus was, trying to barge his way through the crowd, but I’m sure that no one in the crowd was about to let him get to the front to see anything.
So Zacchaeus resorts to climbing a tree by the roadside (more laughter) hoping that from that vantage point, he’ll be able to see Jesus. The other advantage of being up in the tree is that Zacchaeus is now still, and waiting, rather than rushing and in a frenzy.
So here comes Jesus down the road, surrounded by the crowd. Zacchaeus holds his breath up in that tree. Finally he is going to see this man he’s heard so much about. Maybe he’s even mesmerized.
Here’s what I love about this story. Zacchaeus wanted to see Jesus, and he got more than he bargained for, because when Jesus saw Zacchaeus, Jesus saw more than a rich little man in a tree.
Jesus could see inside Zacchaeus.
And what Jesus saw was that Zacchaeus had a big old hole in his heart, a hole so deep and wide that all the money in the world couldn’t fill it.
And Jesus, being the healer that he was, did some open heart surgery to repair that hole in Zacchaeus’ heart right there on that dusty road when he said,
“Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.”
What healing grace and mercy this must have been—
Jesus saw Zacchaeus.
Jesus knew his name.
Jesus wanted to come to his house.
The people in the crowd did not like this—that out of all of them around Jesus that day, Jesus would welcome the loser, the despised tax collector, the unclean one, instead of one of them.
Jesus simply says to them that he has come to seek out and save the lost. Jesus has come to do open heart surgery, to heal hearts, to repair and fill the holes that nothing else can fill.
St Augustine described the hole in all our hearts when he wrote this famous line in his Confessions. “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”
That’s the God shaped hole in our hearts, that nothing else can fill. No matter what we try to put in that hole—money, other people, hobbies, food, our addictions– all of these things will eventually let us down—nothing will ever fill that hole in our hearts except God.
And as Jesus makes clear in this story, God is a big believer in second chances. Clearly, Zacchaeus was a sinner—having taken advantage of his fellow citizens for his own gain.
It’s as if Zacchaeus is knocking on Jesus’ door, begging, and when Jesus welcomes him in, Zacchaeus, out of gratitude, says that he will give half of what he has to the poor, and to go back and repay anyone he’s defrauded four times as much as he has taken. And Zacchaeus welcomes Jesus into his house.
And his heart is healed and filled with the only thing that can satisfy his longing—his heart is filled with Jesus.
The first verse of that old gospel hymn, “I love to tell the story” whose words were written by Katherine Hankey, goes like this.
“ I love to tell the story of unseen things above, of Jesus and His glory Of Jesus and his love, I love to tell the story, because I know it’s true, it satisfies my longings as nothing else would do.”
So here is what I hope you’ll remember about this story of Jesus and Zacchaeus.
Not a one of us is perfect. We all need healing. We all need second chances. Jesus sees us, full of hurt, full of holes, full of longing. We all need open heart surgery.
Zacchaeus reminds us to go in haste, to climb up a tree if we must and to get still and wait for Jesus, because Jesus is coming down the road toward us, his hands full of healing love, ready to give us what we need—his acceptance, and his presence in our hearts.
If we’re looking and waiting, Jesus will see us. Jesus knows our names, and Jesus wants to come home with us today. Jesus wants to fill that hole in our hearts. Jesus wants to give us a second chance.
And in gratitude for all that Jesus gives to us, may we go out and do likewise for one another—to accept one another, to fill one another with God’s love, and offer that second chance for those who have wronged us.
Next time you eat a donut, remember Zacchaeus.
Remember to pray for someone who needs your prayers when you get to the donut hole.
And remember to pray that God will come and fill the hole in your heart.
Sermon, Aug 28, 2022
Sermon, Proper 17, Year C, 2022 Proverbs 25: 6-7, Psalm 112, Luke 14:1, 7-14
“Supper at Emmaus”- Caravaggio
In today’s gospel, Jesus tells us about how we are to come to our true place in the reign of God and find ourselves seated at God’s “welcome table.”
In this story, Jesus is eating a meal on the Sabbath with a leader of the Pharisees. The first verse of this passage says that they were watching Jesus closely. I’m assuming that “they” were the group of Pharisees who would have been invited to this meal.
Jesus watches the Pharisees take their places at the meal. Where they sat was quite important, for the seating indicated where people stood within the group, who were the most honored, and who were the least important.
The Pharisees were strict followers of Jewish tradition. The more they followed the tradition, the better they considered themselves to be. They judged one another on their accomplishments in the department of law keeping. And those who were the best were the ones chosen to sit in the place of honor at banquets.
Inevitably the Pharisees had come to believe that their relationships with God were determined by how well they kept the laws, and that they earned God’s favor by keeping God’s commandments.
We fall into the same trap ourselves. We try to live by God’s laws. We try to love God and to care for others. We are proud of our accomplishments. We are proud of being good people. But that proudness we develop can adversely affect our relationship with God, and with other people.
Here’s an example. Years ago, Easter Sunday had at last arrived at St George’s in Fredericksburg. The scent of lilies filled the church, exquisitely arranged flowers delighted our eyes, the choir, accompanied by trumpets, sounded like a heavenly chorus—what a grand way to celebrate our Lord’s resurrection. How proud I was to be there, proud of being a good Christian on this day, along with all the other good Christians who filled every pew.
And then my rejoicing was interrupted.
For who should be the lector that day but a woman in our congregation who was well known for her struggles in life and who wasn’t the best reader either.
I’m ashamed to admit that I thought to myself, “I can’t believe that she is reading on Easter Sunday of all days! She isn’t worthy of that honor. Someone who is better than she should be the one up there in front of all these people. I am worthier than she is! Why didn’t I get chosen to read today?” And then I instantly felt guilty and ashamed for this proud thought.
I have mulled over that incident many times in the years that have passed since then. I had gotten caught up in trying to prove myself to God and to everyone else, trying to prove that I was worthy of a place of honor. I was trying to earn my way to God’s table. I had not taken to heart the wisdom of what Jesus had to say in today’s gospel.
Maybe the Pharisees who listened to Jesus that day took the parable he told literally. Maybe at that very meal they had observed the host asking someone to move so that someone more important could sit near the host. And so Jesus underscored what they had all just seen by reminding them of the verse in Proverbs that says “It is better to be told, “Come up here,” than to be put lower at the table. Who would want to be embarrassed in such a public way?
But there’s more to the story Jesus tells than just what happens on the surface of the story.
Jesus is reminding those with ears to hear that our true place in God’s reign is not up to us. No matter how hard we try, we cannot earn the seat of honor at the heavenly banquet, or even a place at all.
Instead, our place at the table in God’s house is entirely up to God’s gracious love and mercy. And we want to put forth our best effort out of gratitude for God’s gracious love and mercy at work in our lives.
Instead of working on earning a place of honor, instead of trying to prove our worthiness, our assignment is simply to trust in the Lord instead of ourselves, to fear the Lord, to take delight in the Lord’s commandments, to be merciful and full of compassion, and to be generous and just, as today’s psalmist explains.
Our assignment is to be humble, just like Jesus was in his life on earth.
In his letter to the Philippians, Paul reminded his listeners that Jesus himself, God incarnate, did not cling to equality with God, but humbled himself, becoming a servant, and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.
To be a follower of Jesus is to cultivate humility, and to be a servant to God and to those around us.
Remember the parable Jesus told that we heard a few weeks ago, in which the watchful slaves are to be dressed for action and to have their lamps lit, to be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks.
And then when the master arrives, he blesses the alert slaves. Just as Jesus did when he washed the feet of his disciples at the last supper, this master will come in, put on his apron, and have the servants sit down to eat, and the master will serve them!
That is shocking, that God would choose to wait on us!
And even more shocking, God invites everyone to the table, not just the worthy few who may, in the eyes of this world, be the deserving ones.
Jesus reminds the Pharisees, and us, of that aspect of God’s unconditional love for all of us in the second half of today’s gospel, when he tells the host, “Next time, don’t invite the ones who can and will repay you. Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind.” They can’t repay you. But God, the only one who can bless us, will bless you because what you have done for those who cannot repay you have done for God.
To offer this grace and mercy to all that is around us is not about earning God’s favor. Offering grace and mercy to the other is an act of gratitude and thanksgiving to God—God, who loves us enough to welcome us to the table even when we are poor in spirit, even when we are crippled physically or spiritually or emotionally, even when we are too weak to get up and walk through another day, even when we can’t even see that God is right there before us, inviting us to God’s table, even when we struggle to be unselfish and hesitate to invite those who cannot repay us to come on in.
So how are we to come to our true place in God’s reign?
To humbly trust in the Lord instead of in ourselves and our accomplishments.
And to live in gratitude by sharing God’s undeserved hospitality, knowing that God embraces all of us and all things in God’s great circle of love, and invites us all to God’s welcome table.
Videos, Pentecost 10, August 14, 2022
1. Prelude
2. Hymn – “This is my Father’s World” (partial)
3. Gospel- Luke 12:49-56
4. Sermon – The Rev. Tom Hughes
Sermon, Pentecost 9, August 7
“Watchful Servants” – Eugène Burnand (1850-1921)
Sermon, Proper 14, Year C 2022
Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16; Luke 12:32-40
We spend a great deal of our lives waiting. Our lives begin with nine months of waiting to be born, and that’s only the beginning of the waiting we will do throughout our lives.
Today’s scriptures remind us that, as Christians, the most important thing we wait for is for God’s reign to become complete on earth, as it is in heaven.
No wonder that’s the first thing Jesus asks us to pray for in the Lord’s Prayer. When we pray for God’s kingdom to come on earth, we are praying for God to make the old destructive death dealing ways of the world into something new and life giving.
Even waiting at a stoplight can take on new meaning if I know that the big thing I am waiting for is for God’s reign of love to come on this earth, and that how I wait, even for a stop light, matters.
Abraham is a faithful waiter. God promises Abraham that Abraham’s old life is going to become a whole new thing—specifically, Abraham will inhabit a new land and have many descendants. God asks Abraham to pick up and go to the land that God will show him. And as the writer of Hebrews tells us, Abraham does what God asks and goes, not knowing where he is going—but he trusts that God will lead him where God wants him to go.
As Oswald Chambers points out, “to wait is not to sit with folded hands, but to learn to do what we are told” by God to do. I like that idea, that waiting is not static, but dynamic. Waiting involves active listening for what God might be calling us to do while we wait for what God is trying to make new in our lives.
So like Abraham, who waited faithfully, we must listen for God’s promise to us, and for the world, (God’s reign coming into reality) and as we wait for that promise, to do what God calls us to do, because God is counting on us to do our parts for God’s coming reign as God makes our lives and the life of the world new.
The next thing we must do is to trust. Because we’re human, we can’t often see how God’s promises are being realized in our lives. So we must trust that even when God seems to be asking us to do something that in our understanding goes against what God has promised, then we should consider doing what God is asking.
Jesus faced this dilemma in the Garden of Gethsemane. How could God’s reign on earth come closer to reality through Jesus dying on the cross? How could death lead to new life? But Jesus trusted God and did end up on the cross. On the other side of death, God resurrected Jesus. And God’s reign on this earth is all about the resurrection of the old into something new.
In her poem, All Things New, Frances Havergal lists some of the gifts God provides when we wait faithfully for God to make all things new, especially when we are dealing with difficulties in our lives.
Light after darkness
Gain after loss
Strength after weakness
Crown after cross
Sweet after bitter
Hope after fears
Home after wandering
Praise after tears
Sight after mystery,
Sun after rain,
Joy after sorrow
Peace after pain
Near after distant
Gleam after gloom
Love after wandering
Life after tomb
Alpha and Omega
Beginning and the end
He is making all things new.
Springs of living water
Will wash away each tear
He is making all things new.
In today’s gospel, Jesus tells the disciples not to be afraid because God’s good pleasure is to give us the kingdom.
Jesus reminds us that in all the waiting we do in our lives, we will want to do what God has asked us to do, which is to love God with our whole heart and to love our neighbors as ourselves. As we care for our neighbors, God will care for us.
Remembering this puts a whole new spin on what we do with our stuff while we wait for God’s reign here on earth to become fully realized—all the way from that duplicate rolling pin I have in my kitchen, and the extra food I’ve saved up for hard times, to any extra money that God provides.
One of the biggest challenges that Jesus lays out for the disciples in today’s gospel is the need to be constantly ready as they wait for Jesus’ return and God’s kingdom fully realized on this earth.
This challenge is even harder for us than it was for the disciples, for we are the current generation of the countless generations of Christians who have waited faithfully for Jesus to return in glory. Along with the Hebrews, who were discouraged because Jesus had not returned after only two generations, we have grown tired of waiting for Jesus to show up in glory and some of us have even given up and left, placing our hopes in our self-sufficiency, or in the material things of this world, even though we say with our fingers crossed each Sunday that we really do expect Jesus to return in glory. We have simply given up and stopped looking for the signs of God’s homecoming.
So today’s gospel brings us up short!
Jesus reminds his disciples and us that we need to get busy and clear out all that extra stuff that clutters up our minds and our spirits to get ready for God to show up!
In our physical lives, we Christians also have the dilemma of too many material things distracting us and keeping us worrying about the things that ultimately don’t matter.
Last week we heard the story that Jesus told about the rich man who was worried about what to do with his excess crops. He went to great expense to build extra barns to store everything in, only to find that he was going to die that night, and that none of the stuff that seemed so important just hours earlier now really mattered at all.
We’ve all got stuff we need to get rid of, both inner and outer stuff, so that we can travel light and to be ready, no matter when Jesus comes. If we have been getting ready, we won’t get caught by surprise. Until we get rid of the old stuff, we will find that waiting for God to make all things new might be a wait that lasts forever because we haven’t done what we need to do.
Which brings us back to the issue of trusting in God instead of in ourselves and what seems like our material self-sufficiency.
But even after we have done what God has asked us to do, and we find ourselves still waiting, we must trust God that God really is making all things new in God’s own, perfect time.
The thoughts of Christopher Davis, who teaches at Memphis Theological Seminary in Memphis, Tennessee, are helpful here.
Davis says in his commentary on today’s Genesis passage that there comes a place in the process of waiting that our trust gets put on trial. “If you’re going to move from frustration to fulfillment, you must develop an intentional life of waiting…the prize isn’t always finally getting what you wanted, it’s what you learned while you waited.” He goes on to say that our job is to go from putting God to the test to simply trusting God, that it’s not just about what we do, but also about who we grow into.
In the waiting, if we wait faithfully, God really does make us new.
What is God trying to make new in my life, and in yours? What is God trying to teach us in the waiting? What is God trying to make new in our church and in our world?
All of us are waiting for something. So let’s remember that as we wait for whatever it is, that all the waiting, for both the small and large things in our lives, must be informed by our expectant waiting for God’s kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.
So let’s resolve to listen for God, to wait faithfully and obediently and to trust that even if not in our lifetimes, God’s reign of love will someday come to pass on this earth, as it is in heaven.
And in our intentional, faithful, and trusting waiting, our lives can be a sign to the rest of the waiting world that God’s reign of love really is on the way.
Resources: The poem, “All things new” by Frances Havergal
Commentary on Genesis 15:1-6
Sermon, Pentecost 4, Proper 9, July 3, 2022
We’re going to start off this time together with a little mind exercise.
Here’s a statement from today’s gospel to think over.
“The kingdom of God has come near to you.”
(Time to think)
In your time of reflection, what came to mind?
(Answers from congregation)
Now, turn to your neighbor and offer this greeting.
“The kingdom of God has come near to you.”
(People greet one another)
How did you feel as you offered that greeting?
How did you feel as you received that greeting?
I’m thinking that this greeting is revolutionary!
In today’s gospel, Jesus sent seventy people out ahead of him in pairs to prepare the way for his coming. And Jesus told them to greet the people with this greeting, “The Kingdom of God has drawn near you.” In the towns that received them, the disciples brought about miracles and the kingdom of God did indeed draw near.
Now what if at the end of each day, I had to report in to Jesus about how my mission of bringing God’s kingdom near had gone that day? Would I have anything to report?
Some days, I’d have to confess a complete fail!
Thank God that even when we do fail (think Peter and all his failures) Jesus will send us out yet again.
So what CAN we do to bring the kingdom of God near to the places and to the people that Jesus sends us to each day?
The first thing is to remember that we carry God’s peace out with us. In fact, God’s peace is the most important thing that Jesus asks us to carry out into the world.
And God’s peace is a treasure.
Today’s first hymn, “Peace before us,” written by David Haas, is based on a Navaho prayer. In Native American spirituality, as well as Celtic spirituality, God’s presence “permeates everything—blending and shading into all of life like the iridescent colours of the rainbow.” (Hymn notes on WLP 791 in Wonder, Love and Praise.)
So to carry God’s peace into the world, we can pray that all around each one of us will be God’s peace, that all around each one of us will be God’s love, that all around each one of us will be that iridescence of God’s light, that all around each one of us will be the presence of Jesus.
Then we pray again that all around us will be peace—for that peace that we long for and that peace that we want to carry out is made up of God’s love, light, and the presence of Jesus himself with us, around us and dwelling in us constantly.
This peace is a gift from God.
Jesus points out in today’s gospel that we must be willing to accept the gift of God’s peace.
God’s peace is a living thing—if we decide to accept God’s peace and to share in it, then God’s peace will rest in us, take root in us, and grow in us.
But if we decline it, and there are so many ways to decline God’s peace, that peace will simply return to God.
God’s peace won’t be wasted, so when we don’t want it, God sends it elsewhere, until at last if finds a resting place in another’s heart, where it can take root and grow.
So let’s be people who accept God’s peace and let that peace grow up in us.
Then, Jesus can send us out into the world bearing that peace to those who need it so desperately.
And when we truly bear that peace out into the world, people will know that the kingdom of God has indeed drawn near.
So –we have God’s peace to carry into the world but we need the energy to deliver it.
One of the reasons we come to church each Sunday is to get rejuvenated for the week ahead, sort of like going to the gas station when our gas tanks are on empty. We get refueled so that we can go out and do God’s work.
Each week we come to God’s table ready to receive the body and blood of Christ, literally taking God’s presence into us. And when we come to the table, we receive comfort.
Isaiah describes God as comforting us as a mother comforts her child, and so we are comforted at God’s table.
Jesus directs the disciples to go out and to graciously receive hospitality from those who welcome them, to receive the comfort that others offer to them. “Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide,” a lovely give and take, a back and forth reminiscent of the dance of shared love among the Trinity.
That constant exchange of love produces its own holy energy in which we share when we come together to the Lord’s table with humble and open hearts, ready to receive whatever it is that God intends to provide to each one of us this day.
Our temptation though, is to prefer giving to receiving. After all, Paul told the Ephesian elders in the Acts of the Apostles that Jesus himself said that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.”
And yet, being willing to receive has its own benefits that help us grow into the disciples who can give God’s gifts to others by carrying God’s peace and healing into the world.
In her blog on leadership, Jesse Lee Stoner lists several reasons why receiving can be a good thing. I think Jesus would agree with her reasons.
Receiving reminds you that you’re not in charge, and helps you to develop a more realistic self-image.
Receiving keeps you humble.
When you receive, you allow others the opportunity to feel the pleasure of giving, and you create a space for others to shine.
Receiving lets us experience gratitude.
Receiving helps us to begin to understand what strength really is.
Receiving makes us more well-rounded and helps our relationships with one another to become richer. (https://leadershipfreak.blog/2011/12/19/its-better-to-give-than-receive-and-other-lies/ )
So now, let’s go back to where we started.
Imagine yourself surrounded by and filled with God’s peace.
Imagine yourself with an open heart, open hands, humbly ready to receive the gifts that God wants you to receive. For the moment, just lay aside what you have to offer.
Now imagine going out now in peace, your hearts and hands open.
Imagine this.
And now, turn to your neighbor once more, and greet that person in peace, with your hands open,
saying, “The kingdom of God has drawn near.”
May God’s kingdom draw near to us this day, and may we receive God’s strength to carry God’s love and light and peace out into the world.
Sermon, Trinity Sunday, June 12, 2022
Sermon, Trinity Sunday, Year C 2022
Today’s sermon is almost completely taken from the first sermon I preached on Trinity Sunday here at St Peter’s.
The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the ways that we Christians try to understand the nature of God. In today’s reading from Proverbs, the woman called Wisdom gives us some insight into God’s nature.
Ellen Davis, who teaches at Duke, and is one of our most important Old Testament theologians and Hebrew scholars, says that “the picture of Wisdom playing, even giddily, before God, must be allowed to stand as the important theological statement it is.”
Davis offers this translation of Wisdom speaking about herself at the end of today’s reading from Proverbs.
“And I was delights daily, playing before him continually, playing in his inhabited world, and my delights were with human beings.”
Davis says that here the writer of Proverbs emphasizes the element of play in God’s nature.
After all, God didn’t have to create this world, or us, for that matter!
Davis points out that God’s decision to create the world was a matter of absolutely free choice, and in fact, creation, and especially humanity, God created simply for “the sake of God’s own pleasure.”
The freedom to create and delight in what is created belong together, in divine play just as in child’s play. In this “boisterous” image we see Divine Wisdom freely playing with, and delighting in human beings!
The fact that God plays in creation reminds us that God is here with us and is intimately involved with every aspect of our lives, just as God is intimately involved with all of creation.
And the fact that God is intimately involved with us and with all of creation finds expression in the doctrine of the Trinity,
because as Davis goes on to point out, we “Christians confess that God not only created the world but dwelt in it as a human being and God now continues to be present in our midst through the Holy Spirit, one of whose seven gifts is the wisdom of God.”
An understanding of the Trinity that was popular in the first few centuries of the church captures this playful nature of God.
This understanding is known as perichoreisis.
Catherine LaCugna, a theologian who wrote about the Trinity, tells us that perichoresis expresses the idea that the three divine persons mutually exist permanently in one another, draw life from one another, and are what they are by relation to one another.
If we take the Greek prefix peri (around) and link it with the root of the verb choreuein (to dance), we get a lively metaphor that describes the “one nature in three persons” of the Trinity. Literally God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit “dance around.” The choreia or dance of God is “the choreography of the cosmos—it’s the interrelationship of Creator, creation, and life itself, the holy creativity of the All in All.” (from notes on Perichoresis from The Rev. Susan Sowers)
And LaCugna goes on to add that we, yes, all of us, all of humanity, have been made partners in this divine dance, not through our own merit, or because we’re good dancers, but because God has chosen us to join in this cosmic dance of love. We have been made partners in the divine dance, because everything comes from God, and everything returns to God, and this coming and returning happens through Jesus Christ in the Spirit—“the choreography of the divine dance which takes place from all eternity and is manifest at every moment of creation.”
LaCugna points out that this “one mystery of communion includes God and humanity as beloved partners in the dance.”
Dancing is good for us. A recent article in The Washington Post, “Anxious, lonely, or angry? Try Dancing,” quotes Lucia Horan, who teaches a specific kind of dance that helps people to deal with stress. She says that the “beauty of dance is that it addresses these quadrants of healing—the physical, the emotional, the mental and the spiritual.” She goes on to say that dance works for many people because if forces people to focus on the present moment, which can bring relief from worry, grief, and emotional pain.
The early church fathers used the metaphor of dancing as a way of elevating the soul.
St Augustine says this about dancing.
“I praise the dance, because it frees people from the heaviness of matter and binds the isolated to community. I praise the dance, which demands everything: health and a clear spirit and a buoyant soul. Dance is a transformation of space, of time, of people, who are in constant danger of becoming all brain, will, or feeling. Dancing demands a whole person, one who is firmly anchored in the centre of his life…I praise the dance. O Man, learn to dance, or else the angels in heaven will not know what to do with you.”
Brendan O’Malley tells us that in the Christian Church for the first thousand years Christians danced in procession to and from the church. This dance was known as the “Tripudium, which means three steps or transport of joy… The dancers linked arms and danced in row after row, three steps forward, one step back, moving through the streets and into the church and around it during the hymns of the service, and then out through the streets as a recessional.”
Three steps forward, one step back, three steps forward and one step back—this is how we move toward God in this lifetime, stepping backward periodically, but then advancing again.
So the early Christians danced into, and in, and out of their churches, and felt in their bodies the pull of the divine dance of the Trinity, a dance of mutual love, breathing in together the breath of life, and pouring out to one another in mutual giving.
So what does this understanding of the Trinity, this divine dance that we’re a part of, have to do with how we live our lives today?
Brain McLaren, a current theologian, offers this simple thought experiment.
Imagine God as “this loving trinity of perichoresis, a sacred choreography of self-giving, other receiving; honoring, being honored; fully seeing the other, fully revealing the self.”
Now imagine the universe that this God has freely and playfully chosen to create. Imagine dancing to the music of this universe—“a wild and wonderful symphony, full of polyphony and surprise, expansive in themes, each movement inspiring the possibility of more movements as yet unimagined, all woven together with coherent motifs and morphing rhythms, where even dissonance has a place within higher more comprehensive patterns of harmony and wholeness.”
And finally, McLaren asks us to “imagine how people in this universe would manifest trust in this triune God—with undying creative love toward creation, and all of humanity, and even love toward those people who hold differing beliefs.”
This doctrine of the Trinity as perichoresis is a gift to us, because it allows us to imagine God-in-God, dancing in community, God electing us, choosing you and choosing me, to join in God in this divine dance, stepping with joy into God’s dance with the rest of humanity and all of creation.
And because God has no limits, we know that God has elected all of humanity, not just us, to dance divinely, our arms outstretched and linked in love to one another, taking three steps forward, one step back, and three more steps forward, in a transport of joy, as we learn to dance this divine dance with one another and with God right here in God’s good creation.
And if we fully enter into this divine dance, then surely, as Clement of Alexandria said, even now, “we raise our winged souls to the heavens.”
References
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Songs, by Ellen Davis. Westminster John Knox Press, 2000.
God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life, by Catherine Mowry LaCugna. HarperSanFrancisco, 1973.
Lord of Creation: A Resource for Creative Celtic Spirituality, by Brendan O’Malley. Morehouse Publishing, 2008.
Why Did Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity in a Multi-Faith World, by Brian D. McLaren. Jericho Books, 2012.
Notes on perichoresis from The Rev. Susan Sowers
Sermon, the Transfiguration, Aug 6, 2023
When my five-year-old granddaughter and I are going somewhere in the car, we often listen to music that she likes. Not too long ago, we got the soundtrack to Aladdin from the library. My car is not exactly a magic carpet ride, but the music does take us into another world, a magical world in which what’s expected gets turned upside down and the impossible becomes reality.
In the movie, Jasmine, a princess with all she could ever want and more than she could ever need who is imprisoned in the restrictive world of royal expectations meets Aladdin, a street urchin who never has enough and is constantly in trouble with the law.
The two go on a magic carpet ride high above the world that holds them both captive. We probably all know the hit song from this show, “A Whole New World.”
As I was listening to this song yet again, the thought burst into my mind that in many ways, the lyrics have some similarities to what is going in today’s scripture, when Peter, John, and James go up on the mountain with Jesus to pray. High above the world that they know, they open their hearts to God. Although they are weighed down with sleep, they are awake enough to be aware of what is happening.
Sermon, Pentecost 7, Proper 10, July 16, 2023
Beginning this Sunday and for the following two Sundays, we have the privilege of hearing Jesus tell four parables.
In Matthew’s gospel, as Eugene Boring notes in his commentary, the words, deeds, and mission of Jesus have caused quite a bit of conflict with and rejection by the leaders of Israel, and right before the passage that we just heard, Jesus is even in conflict with his own family. Jesus says that his family is not necessarily made up of his “blood kin,” as we say in the South.
Instead, the family of Jesus consists of the ones who hear the word and then do God’s will.
So according to Boring, Jesus tells the four parables that we find in the 13th chapter of Matthew in order to comment on the meaning of his rejection by the leaders of Israel and the founding of the new community of God, the community made up of those people who do God’s will—not necessarily the religious leaders of the day, or even his own family.
In today’s parable, Jesus, the sower, sows God’s Word, or the seeds, out in the world, with mixed success. Many of the seeds are lost as they fall on pathways so well-trodden that the ground is too hard to receive the seeds and so the birds eat the seeds up. More seed is wasted as it falls onto rocky ground. Even though some of the seed takes root, it withers away because there’s not enough soil to keep the roots moist. Other seeds come up but get choked out by the thorns that have also grown up alongside the seed. Finally, some of the seed falls on good soil and produces a harvest that is abundant beyond imagining.
So someone hearing this parable might come to understand that despite all the conflict and rejection with the leaders of Israel, a new understanding of God’s kingdom on earth will take root and produce an abundant harvest. This parable, as Boring points out, shows us the “mysterious, concealed working of God, who miraculously brings the harvest.”
The parables that Jesus tells start in a familiar world, but as the story goes on, those listening find that their usual expectations get challenged, and new understandings begin to take shape in their hearts and minds.
Imagine what would happen if Jesus were among us today, and wanted to tell a parable to us, to get us to consider what it means to do God’s will, to reconsider who is God’s family, and to ponder what an abundant harvest, brought about by the mysterious working of God, will look like.
Sermon, April 16, 2023, Easter 2 – Repentance “in touch with the Reality that God Creates”
“Hope” – George Frederic Watts 1886
Repentance plays a major part in today’s gospel.
So let’s start with what repentance means.
I like Eugene Peterson’s explanation of repentance in his book, Long Obedience in the Same Direction.
Peterson says that “the usual biblical word describing the no we say to the world’s lies and the yes we say to God’s truth is repentance. It is always and everywhere the first word in the Christian life.”
He goes on to say that “repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision.”
And that “repentance is the most practical of all words and the most practical of all acts. It is a feet -on- the- ground sort of word. It puts a person in touch with the reality that God creates.”
In today’s gospel, John gives us the closing event on the day of the resurrection. Early that morning, Mary Magdalene had met Jesus in the garden.
After this emotional meeting, Mary had gone to tell the disciples that she had seen Jesus and all that he had said to her.
Later that day, the disciples met, which brings us today’s gospel.
They had locked all the doors of the house where they were because they were afraid.
And Jesus came to them and said, “Peace be with you.” He showed them his wounds. They could have no doubt that Jesus was the person standing there in their midst. They could see for themselves that God had brought about a new reality, something that they could not have imagined, new life out of death, , that is, the resurrection of Jesus.
And they rejoiced.
Sermon, Palm Sunday, April 2, 2023
The Dalai Lama has said that “once committed, actions will never lose their potentiality.”
Every action in today’s gospel has a ripple effect, an influence far beyond the original action. The story of the death of Jesus stands as stark testimony to the fact that once an action is committed, it cannot be taken back. The consequences of the action spark other actions, becoming part of the tapestry of events into which our own actions are eventually woven.
In today’s gospel, actions of betrayal, denial, accusations, manipulations, actions based on greed, actions taken out of fear, actions designed to keep the balance of power in place, are all actions that lead to the death of an innocent man, Jesus.
This weighty tapestry of events becomes literally so tragic that darkness falls over the whole land as Jesus hangs on the cross. And then, as Jesus cries in a loud voice and breathes his last, BEHOLD, the curtain in the temple is torn in two.
The historian Josephus, writing in the time of Jesus, describes this curtain in the temple in Jerusalem, the massive structure which had been renovated by Herod the Great. Josephus said that the curtain in that temple was made of Babylonian tapestry, “scarlet and purple, clearly depicting royalty. It was woven with great skill and symbolically depicted the elements of the universe. Embroidered into the veil was ‘a panorama of the heavens,’ meaning that it probably was designed to resemble the heavenly firmaments.”
The purpose of the curtain was to separate the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple. The Holy of Holies was the place in which the Jewish people believed God’s presence dwelt. Only once a year could the high priest go behind the curtain and enter the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement to offer sacrificial blood of an animal to atone for his own sins and for the sins of the people.
Matthew reports that, as Jesus dies, the curtain of the temple is torn in two, from top to bottom, so that it can never again separate God from the people. Jesus’ death has torn away all barriers to God’s presence with us and for us, even in our deepest sins.
Once committed God’s actions will never lose their potentiality either, which is the good news in today’s sorrowful story.
Although all of the actions that led to Jesus’ death could not be taken back, God used those actions for good, to free us, once and for all from being held forever captive by our sinful ways.
Now, nothing can separate us from the love of God except for our own active rejection of that love.
Which brings me to Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus. That betrayal set in motion the whole series of events that led to Jesus’ death. Scripture tells us that when Judas saw that Jesus had been condemned, he repented. But he could not change what he had done. He couldn’t go back and fix what he had done. This story would play out and Jesus would die.
So Judas at least took his thirty pieces of silver back to the chief priests and the elders and said that he had sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to it yourself.” They refused his money and his repentance.
Judas threw down the money, left, and went and hanged himself.
After all the time he had spent with Jesus, he still didn’t understand that Jesus had brought to earth a new reality in which God’s grace is sufficient. No longer an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, but only God’s justice and love. If only Judas had thought to repent to God instead of to the chief priests.
But the tapestry in the temple that kept the people from the immediate presence of God was all that Judas could understand. Even after all that time with Jesus, all that Judas ultimately knew and all that he could see in his mind’s eye was that curtain of scarlet and purple through which he could never pass and through which the chief priests had refused to ever offer atonement for his sin. And so, his pain and his repentance disregarded by the priests, he felt that he had no recourse to God and death was all that was left.
Jesus died, and the curtain in the temple was torn from top to bottom. God removed that barrier, too late for Judas in this lifetime, for Judas had already taken justice into his own hands.
How often we come before God in this life with the events of our lives, with all of our sins and weaknesses interwoven into a thick tapestry of our own creation, a barrier that we believe blocks our way to God forever.
But if we remember this story of all that happened the day Jesus died, we can recall that as Jesus breathed his last, God ripped the curtain of the temple in two, and destroyed every barrier that has ever blocked our way to God.
We can live in hope, because we know that our true place of repentance is not in the temple in front of a curtain, but kneeling in contrition at the foot of the cross.
Sermon, March 19, 2023 – Lent 4
Are you stuck in your ways? I know that the older I get, the more I would say that being stuck in my ways is true of me. After all, it’s good to do things in a particular way, to be a certain way, and I like my comfortable beliefs. Life is less complicated if we know how we want to do things, and we have beliefs that support the way we tend to see the world.
But today’s passages have made me think differently about being stuck in my ways. The many people in today’s lectionary readings who are stuck have got some issues to face!
In today’s Old Testament reading, God shakes his prophet Samuel up a bit because Samuel is stuck. Samuel is balking over anointing a new king. After all, Samuel had anointed Saul, the current king, and had been a big supporter of Saul. But now, God is ready to move on, since Saul has been a disappointment to God as the leader of Israel. So God tells Samuel—stop being stuck in the past. It’s time to do something new. So Samuel finally gets himself together and goes to Bethlehem to find Jesse, the father of many sons.
Samuel expects that the Lord will choose the one of the oldest, kingliest-looking sons. He has a preconceived idea of what a king should look like—and yet, seven sons pass by and God doesn’t choose one of them. So Jesse sends for his youngest son, David, who is out in the fields keeping the sheep. Certainly not king material—a shepherd, and too young to be given such responsibility.
But surprise of surprises, when David shows up, the Lord says, “Rise and anoint him; for this is the one.” And the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.
The most unlikely person is the one that God chooses as the next King of Israel and not only that, the one from whose family the Messiah will someday be born.
Samuel isn’t the only one who is stuck.
Sermon for March 5, 2023 – “Faith is foundational to our lives as Christians”
Faith is foundational to our lives as Christians.
In the Living Compass Lenten devotional that some of us are reading during Lent, the readings last week were about faith. Robbin Brent wrote in her entry for Friday, March 3, that faith is believing in something and then acting on that belief.
And she quotes Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who says that “faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole stairway.”
We are practical people—we like to see what’s ahead, and plan accordingly so that we can be thoroughly prepared. Planning trips, planning vacations, planning for school, planning for retirement, planning for issues that we may face toward the end of our lives—all of this planning is good to do. But we so often plan as if we are the only ones in charge of our lives and fully in control, forgetting that life is notorious for handing us unexpected and often unwelcome challenges that we have not planned for.
But when these unexpected things happen, we can act on our belief in God by stepping faithfully into whatever the situation is, knowing that God is with us, and will go with us, and will never, ever leave us alone—so we can proceed, yes, often with trepidation, or with caution, or even with great sorrow, but proceed we can and will. We can lay aside our own plans and enter the unknown into which life is calling us.
We can step into the unknown because we are people of faith.
In today’s Old Testament reading, God tells Abram, just a regular person like us, to go from his country and his kindred and his father’s house to the land God will show him. God does not give Abram a map or tell him anything about how to get where God is leading him—that is the future that Abram cannot see.
But Abram believes in God, and so he acts in faith. The writer of Genesis states succinctly, “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”
Today’s psalmist is starting out on a difficult journey to Jerusalem, a trip that will be full of unknown challenges, since the traveler must pass through the barren wilderness, exposed to the heat of the day and the chill of the nights, possible attacks by thieves, getting lost, and no telling what else. Wouldn’t it be easier just to stay home?
But the psalmist is willing to set out because that person has faith in God’s steadfast love. The traveler knows that especially in the difficulties of the journey, God, like a mother hen spreading her wings over her chicks to protect them from predators and to keep them warm and safe, will also protect the psalmist in the face of any challenge that may arise.
And then we come to Nicodemus. I really like the story of Nicodemus because he is a practical human being, a literal thinker with a bit of an imagination, a law keeper and a planner, all admirable traits.
It’s that bit of imagination and that need to plan that brings Nicodemus to Jesus at night. After all, he and his fellow rabbis know that Jesus is a teacher who has come from God and that Jesus couldn’t do what he was doing apart from God. Nicodemus just might need to factor Jesus into his life and his plans. So he decides to go have a talk with Jesus to find out.
The first thing that Jesus does is to dismantle the tendency of Nicodemus to think literally, to believe only what he can see and understand. Jesus introduces Nicodemus to the world of imagination—to the life of the Spirit, a life that requires being willing to enter the unknown, because “the Spirit blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.”
Jesus goes on to tell Nicodemus(and here’s the GOOD NEWS) that God is on the side of the world—all of those who don’t know God, or have any idea of the Spirit—Jesus has come to clue them in, to open them up, to challenge them to go beyond what they can see to what they cannot even imagine, that is, the beginning of life in God, here and now.
Jesus didn’t come to condemn the world but to save the world.
We’ve probably all been where Nicodemus is—we are curious, we can see that God is at work in the world, and we want to know—what do you, God, have to do with my life? We believe in God, but we aren’t sure that we want to act on that belief by letting the Spirit in and possibly wrecking our carefully thought out plans.
We can’t predict or control the Spirit. So how can we plan for the work of the Spirit in our lives? We have to have imagination, to be open to possibilities that may never have occurred to us, to be willing to jettison our carefully laid plans and be willing instead to enter the unknown.
Ultimately we have to choose—we can take a chance and enter into the unknown life of the Spirit, and act on our beliefs, going where God calls us, or just continue on as we are, thank you very much.
Remember, faith is believing in something and acting on that belief. As Robbin Brent says in the essay that I mentioned earlier, “it is our faith in God, expressed through our willingness to act on what we believe, that prepares our minds and hearts to respond compassionately to suffering, our own, others’ and the world’s.”
One person who chose to enter the life of the Spirit was Harriet Tubman. She was born a slave and escaped to freedom. But Harriet could not forget all of the people who were still enslaved back home. So she acted on her belief that “God don’t mean people to own people.” She had compassion on those who were still suffering as slaves. At great risk to her own life, Harriet Tubman kept going back into danger, over and over, even though she had a bounty on her head, to lead many more slaves to freedom.
Quaker abolitionist Thomas Garrett said of Harriet Tubman in 1868 that “I never met a person of any color who had more confidence in the voice of God, as spoken direct to her soul…and her faith in a Supreme Power truly was great.” His statement is on the wall of an exhibit at the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park in Dorchester County, Maryland.
Many of us know about this intrepid woman because of our friend Cleo Coleman, who embodies Harriet Tubman and tells the story of Harriet’s faith and how she acted on her faith by becoming a liberator of her people. As the History Channel says of Harriet Tubman, “she is one of the most recognized icons in American history and her legacy has inspired countless people from every race and background.”
Harriet Tubman has a new separate feast day on the Calendar of the Episcopal Church, and that day is March the 10th. The Episcopal Church encourages all parishes and dioceses, in conjunction with other communities of faith, to honor Harriet Tubman in a worship service on or near the 110th anniversary of her death, which will be this Friday, March 10, 2023.
So we honor her today as a person who did not hesitate to enter the unknown life that the Spirit called her into, by acting on her faith and responding compassionately to the suffering of others by leading them to freedom. And as Harriet Tubman herself said, “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. You have within you the strength, the patience and the passion to reach for the stars, to change the world.”
After Nicodemus left Jesus late that night and made his way back home, maybe he looked up at the stars and remembered God’s promise to Abraham, that God would make of Abraham a nation as numerous as the stars in the heavens. After all, Nicodemus was a member of that nation of Israel and a teacher. But now, maybe Nicodemus wondered what else Jesus could teach him. Would he ever understand what Jesus was trying to say about being born again, being born from above, being born anew? Maybe Nicodemus wondered if he might dare to follow Jesus openly. Or maybe he was just too tired and too puzzled to give the conversation he had just had with Jesus much more thought right then.
We will never know.
But what we do know is that several months before Jesus was crucified, the chief priests and the Pharisees, of whom Nicodemus was one, wanted to have Jesus arrested. Nicodemus spoke against this arrest. He said, “Our law does not judge people without first giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” He was taunted for his statement—the others said, “Surely you are not also from Galilee, are you?” So now we know that Nicodemus must have given more thought to what Jesus had said to him, for Nicodemus is acting on his belief that Jesus has come from God by having compassion on Jesus and speaking against his arrest.
After Jesus is crucified and dies, Joseph of Arimathea, a secret disciple of Jesus, asks Pilate for the body so that he can give Jesus a proper burial. Nicodemus goes with Joseph of Arimathea to bury Jesus, and brings with him a mixture of myrrh and aloes, weighing about a hundred pounds. The weight of these spices would be appropriate for the burial of a king. Clearly, Nicodemus revered Jesus and had compassion for him, or he would not have honored him so lavishly.
We hear nothing more of Nicodemus and we can only imagine the rest of his story. Did his compassion for Jesus become compassion for the world around him?
We don’t know the rest of our stories either. We can’t know the future. But what we do know is that God loves us with a steadfast love. And that steadfast love never ceases. God’s love will carry us through all our goings and comings in this life, through all the joys and all the heartaches, because we know that God’s mercies will never come to an end. Even after our longest and darkest nights, God’s mercies are new every morning. We can proceed through the unknowns ahead with confidence.
And we can faithfully act on our belief in our steadfast, merciful and loving God by letting the Spirit blow where it will through our lives. We can faithfully step into the unknown, and go where God would send us, full of steadfast love and compassion for all this hurting world.