Split it with thumbnail or teeth,
feel its tiny fire upon the tongue,
a supernova soon consumed;
or
let it swell from within, fed by filtered light
and living water, until it bursts
open and eager, expanding like a universe
alert with wonder
The Gospel for Year A Proper 12 includes the parable of the mustard seed: Matthew 13:31-33
Together
we grow side by side
rise and fall
together
who can tell us
apart but God?
Together
in awful glory
we will shine
together
with all the fire
of the sun
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Year A Proper 11: the parable of the wheat and the tares, Matthew 13:24-30,36-43
Dear One, do I perceive that you
have told this parable against me?
Have I stolen the seeds of contentment
from those with whom I am on the way,
the path that you have laid out
in crazy paving, gravel, and grass, where joy
should be in abundance, the hopscotch,
skip, and jump of children? We swoop
instead with greedy, beady beaks and raucous crows.
We have scorched the earth, flooding
your fields with fire; we have pierced
the body you laid out and choked from it
black bile; it quakes beneath our power.
In the beginning, when the soil was planted
with food and beauty, in your Wisdom,
choosing your Words carefully, you said
that it was good;
good for growing grace and the glory
of the image of the living reign of heaven.
Dear One, may it be so.
May we first fall down and be forgiven
by your good earth,
by your creative and therefore compassionate
mercy.
The Gospel reading for Year A Proper 10 includes the parable of the sower and the soil from Matthew 13. Photo credit Gareth Hughes.
This poem-prayer first appeared at https://episcopaljournal.org/confessions-of-a-crow/
Did you recall,
as you were falling into the earth,
into the abyss of memory,
before the ground dented the palms
of your hands before their time;
did you recall,
as the once-living wood pierced your side
with bitter splinters, telling them
that your burden was easy,
the yoke upon your neck un-heavy?
Do you remember,
or is it like the view from a mountaintop,
all rocks and ridges forgiven,
loud aches drowned out by awe –
for a moment, you feel
that you could harness the clouds
to carry you
The Gospel reading for Year A Proper 9 contains the verses. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
Thomas dared to wrestle with God,
as Job before him, resisting and insisting
on a trial, the evidence to be enumerated
in wounds; bold Thomas,
brazen Thomas. I do not dare
to call Christ to account, to demand
such demonstration of the divine,
to command such a performance
as would bring me to my knees, declaring,
My Lord, and my God;
and will he yet tread the base
boards of my heart?
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Images from the life of Christ – The Incredulity of St Thomas – Psalter of Eleanor of Aquitaine (ca. 1185) via wikimedia commons
A sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost, 2 July 2023. The readings include Genesis 22:1-14 and Matthew 10:40-42
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The word of the day is welcome. Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” (Matthew 10:40)
A few years ago, our Vestry considered what it means to post a sign outside the church proclaiming, “All Are Welcome”. It may be time to consider again that word, “Welcome”, as a church and as a nation. Because it is not enough to open a door and say, “Welcome” to someone who cannot get past the outer gate. What does it mean to say, “Welcome”, then, “Time’s up. Now find somewhere else to be”? It is not enough to say, “Welcome” to the parched and weary stranger, without offering them also food and drink, and a place to rest. It is a bait and switch to welcome someone in out of the cold but deny them a place by the fire. Welcome doesn’t say, “yes, I’ll help you, but then you’ll owe me, literally, for life.” It is not enough to invite someone in but then demand that they hide who they really are. It is not enough to say, “Welcome, come on in,” then leave the stranger alone while we talk to other people whom we already know and maybe even like.
I was reminded during a conversation this past week of the wonderful show, “Come From Away”. It tells the story of a small town in Newfoundland that, in the wake of the attacks on the United States in September 2001, became the destination of necessity for dozens of international flights that had made it across the Atlantic but could not land in an America that had, for sound reasons, closed down its airspace.
The people of Gander, Newfoundland, found themselves inundated with unanticipated refugees – temporarily, but in staggering numbers. These travellers, caught up in the ripple effects of extremist violence, numbered a full two-thirds of the standing population of the town. It would take a concerted and united effort to help them, house them, feed them, for who knew then how long before they would be able to complete their journeys. They were frightened, grief-stricken, anxious, stranded, and the town was overwhelmed.
Yet they found it in themselves to provide welcome. They understood that their discomfort at this avalanche of need was part of the human condition, that has to shift and find new positions and accommodations when another child of God, another facet of the image of God, finds its place among them.
This miracle of sacrifice and selflessness is repeated across our country and our globe in ways both large and small and mostly without having musicals written about them; but we hear, too, the voices of unwelcome, of irritation, voices built of barbed wire and venom, along with the voices that worry, less loathingly but with the same result, that if we offer another a cup of cold water, there may not be as much left for us; who forget who it was that set aside water out of the waters of creation for us and our fellow creatures to enjoy.
Welcome – real welcome, the kind of welcome that the prodigal father has for his son, that God has for us – that welcome when we can manage it is a form of worship, since it humbles the self before the image of God standing in front of us, and calls out of us our best approximation of the image of Christ. Whoever welcomes you welcomes me.
We are still, remember, at the tail end of the sending speech that Jesus started giving to his disciples two Sundays ago, when he began to send them forth to cast out demons, heal the sick, raise the dead, proclaim good news. He warned that there would be wolves along the way. But he also promises these pockets of welcome.
Welcome is costly. God is a gracious and abundant giver – but God also asks of us our love, our devotion, our service to one another and the creation which God made us to tend. Sometimes, sure, it seems as though God is asking a lot. Ask Abraham. Ask him.
If Abraham had gone through with it, he would have lost everything to God, everything to his covenant, everything for his faith. He would not only have given up Isaac, but his sense of himself. He would never sleep again. He could never go home. He would never be the same again. (Genesis 22:1-10).
But God – that was not what God was asking of him. God gave it all back. God proved trustworthy. God asked Abraham to lay everything – everything – on the altar of God’s covenant, and God gave it all back (Genesis 22:11-14).
“Truly I tell you,” said Jesus, “none of these will lose their reward.” (Matthew 10:42)
God commands, demands that we love with all our heart, soul, strength, mind, and being the one who has loved us into being, and that we demonstrate that love amongst our neighbours, and our enemies, strangers and people who are simply strange, sinners, foreigners, friends: everyone else who is made in that image of God. Whoever welcomes them welcomes God.
And God, God gives it all back, pressed down, shaken together, overflowing into our embrace from those prodigiously welcoming arms (Luke 6:38).
A poem-sermon for Friday in the first week of the 2023 Chautauqua season at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd. The readings include Genesis 17:1,9-10,15-22
Abraham also laughed,
in the face of God, no less,
and lived – more than lived –
thrived and grew and strew
descendants across the centuries
like seasons, like days, like hours.
Abraham laughed,
and God laughed with him,
shaking earth and quaking the continents.
God laughed until the tears came
and fell like rain,
and Abraham lifted his face to the sky
like purple sage.
God and Abraham laughed until
they no longer knew if they were
laughing or crying,
or why.
They laughed like old friends who knew
that this moment will not pass by again;
and Abraham, finding himself alone
once more, head and shoulders shaking
with the occasional aftershock of glory,
called himself an old fool
as he lifted his feet toward home,
where his son played havoc with his heart.
Featured image: the patriarch Abraham, via wikimedia commons
A sermon for Wednesday in the first week of the 2023 Chautauqua season at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd. Readings include Genesis 15:1-12,17-18 and Matthew 7:15-20
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So here we have it: Judge not – but – by their fruits shall ye know them. It would be wrong, wouldn’t it, to ask Jesus to make up his mind?
Jesus asks, “Can a thornbush bring forth grapes, or thistles a fig?” Can a wolf in sheep’s clothing eat nothing but grass?
I’m sure some of you know the Edwin Friedman fable of The Friendly Forest. In that story, a tiger comes to live in a forest, which is very worrying to the lamb who was already living there. The other animals of the forest tried to reassure the lamb that they had instructed the tiger that a condition of living there was to let others there live. Still, there was something about the tiger’s growling, stalking nature that bothered the lamb. Even when the tiger was not actively stalking, the lamb was always worried that it would. Eventually, the lamb announced that it could not stay in the forest any longer – the poor lamb’s nerves wouldn’t take the strain of always being on alert for low growls. The other animals proposed a conversation between the lamb and the tiger to sort things out; all except one, who “was overheard to remark, ‘I never heard of anything so ridiculous. If you want a lamb and a tiger to live in the same forest, you don’t try to make them communicate. You cage the bloody tiger.’”[i]
In amongst yesterday’s brilliant sermon, I believe I heard Bishop LaTrelle Easterling quote bell hooks in saying that love and abuse cannot coexist. And Jennifer Senior told us that research shows that spending time with a wolf in sheep’s clothing – a false friend – is measurably more physically stressful than hanging with an outright enemy whose stripes we know.
Beware, then, of the false prophets, Jesus warns; the false friends, the fake fruit trees.
It makes one wonder, what was it like for Jesus, living with Judas all that time?
The sheep cannot teach the wolf to eat grass, to enjoy the snap of a fresh clover stalk and be satisfied. The dove cannot eat plastic olives. Yet Jesus shared even his last meal with the one they called Iscariot.
Perhaps this saying is easier to apply if instead of concerning the true nature of others, it leads us to self-examination. We are not Jesus. We hope that we are not Judas. We try to produce good and satisfying and sound, at least not poisonous, fruit. We worry, some of us, that we come from thistle stock, rather than dandelion, bramble rather than the vine.
You know the saying, that the leopard cannot change his spots. A thistle cannot become a fig tree. But there is one, there is one who can make all things new.
In the description of that strange and mystical covenant scene between God and Abram, there is an intriguing detail – forgive me, I cannot remember where I first read this, and my Hebrew is next to non-existent, but I looked at the interlinear translations online, and it checks out – the deep sleep that comes over Abram, the terrifying, deep abyss of sleep, of non-consciousness, of close to non-existence that comes over him is the same deep sleep that God cast upon Adam, the first human, when God divided that one into two pieces, male and female (Genesis 2:21-23).
After God created the Adam, in that story, God made all of the animals in turn – lambs, tigers, wolves, doves – but none was right to be Adam’s partner (Genesis 2:18-20). So, in that first operation, after putting them into that deep sleep which is as close as we come without succumbing to the abyss, God remade and recast the human; Wil Gafney, in her Womanist Midrash, says that “God puts the creature to sleep and divides it in half.”[ii] The human, who was one, is divided and becomes something new; in fact, two things new! Now more than one human being shares the image of God; we were truly made for one another.
In the covenant that God cut with Abram, in darkness and smoke and fire, just as the first human was made anew into two, just so Abram awoke from the sleep that took him back beneath the primordial waters, a new person, re-created, born again into the life that God intended for him.
We cannot change another’s spots, but as Bishop LaTrelle put it yesterday, we can love them. While refusing to enter into their ravening ways, nor to be torn apart by them, we can still remember that we share the image of God; and in so doing, we can let God do God’s thing with them.
And it is true that we cannot change even our own sin-tempted nature, however we dress it up in lambswool and feathers, but in Christ we are a new creation: “everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Corinthians 5:17) For with God, nothing will be impossible (Luke 1:37).
[i] Friedman, Edwin H. Friedman’s Fables (p. 30). Guilford Publications. Kindle Edition.
[ii] Gafney, Wilda C. Womanist Midrash. Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.
A sermon for Tuesday in the first week of the 2023 Chautauqua season. The first reading is Lot’s separation from Abram in Genesis 13.
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After all those years in the bosom of his grandfather and uncle, I cannot imagine how Lot felt about Abram’s invitation to leave. Was he offended, rejected, relieved? Did he worry about leaving Abram and Sarai alone in their advancing years, with no other family to care for them? Nevertheless, he took Abram’s offer, to choose the direction that looked most fertile for him, and he left.
Yesterday morning, introducing and moderating the first lecture, President Michael Hill once more said something that caught my ear. He quoted the proverb, “Blood is thicker than water.” But, he went on to say, it is a matter of debate as to whether the blood in question means biology, or whether it refers to the kind of blood that seals a covenant. Surely both are at work here.
When Abram’s father left Ur, he took Abram and Sarai, and their nephew, Lot, since Lot’s father had died. Nahor, suffering from middle child syndrome, was not mentioned, but he also ended up in Haran (Genesis 11:27-32). After Terah died, Abram and Sarai continued their sojourn into the land that God had promised to show him, and, after the model of his grandfather, they took Lot with them. After some adventures, they arrived once more in Bethel.
But here was where their paths diverged. Abram said, “Let there be no strife between us; for we are kindred” (Genesis 13:8). “Separate yourself from me,” he told his nephew. “Go your own way.”
And Abram and Sarai were left alone, except for all of the livestock, all of the people, and the promises of God, the covenant that God would make with him.
It is rare for relationships to remain static and intact. Karol Jackowski talked about that yesterday afternoon, as the very sky altered and opened up over the Hall of Philosophy. People grow, change, discover new and exciting things about themselves, which may or may not be new and exciting to their friends and family. People acquire needs and desires, or fulfill them, and adjustments are needed, if a relationship is not to wither. Sometimes greater space is needed; sometimes deeper closeness.
Abram assessed the state of his relationship with Lot, and he realized that if they were to remain kindred, and remain kind, something had to change.
He also recognized that if he needed space to remain in relationship with his nephew, then he needed to give his nephew space, too. He invited Lot to choose his own direction. He let him go his own way, the way that seemed best to him. Perhaps he was doing what he wished his father had done for him; we have no way of knowing that.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus advises, “In everything do to others as you would have them do to you, for this is the sum of the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 7:12) Before the law and prophets, Abram looked upon his nephew, and wanting not to fall into strife with him, did what he thought was best for both of them.
A cynical person might wonder about inviting Lot to choose the richer, more fertile ground. A cynical person who has read ahead might notice that the rich, fertile plain upon which Lot is about to settle will not remain rich and fertile for long. If you travel there today, you will find the salt flats that surround the Dead Sea, stretched out like the skin of the earth to dry. Is this what it means to cast pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6), letting Lot’s greedy eyes tempt him to the greedier town of Sodom, whose sin, according to the prophets, was haughty pride and excess, cruelty to the poor, and contempt for the compassionate provisions of the law of God (Ezekiel 16:49-50)?
But no. This was Abram’s gift to Lot, to let him freely choose what looked good to him. And when Sodom went to war, and Lot was taken captive, Abram went out to redeem him (Genesis 14:1-16). And when it all went down, Abraham still spoke up for his nephew and his neighbours (Genesis 18:16-33), bargaining with God not to give up on the city. His distance did not diminish his care for Lot. This was a decision, not a division, and despite putting some distance between them, Abram loved him.
No, this story, although it is hard, is not one of the breakdown of love, not even of blood, but a parable of the growing pains that accompany true love, and the necessity for kindness even in the midst of them. It is a story about letting go in order to let love grow. Yesterday afternoon, in her description of holy sisterhoods born not of biology but of friendship, Karol Jackowski described sealing a promise with a dying friend by pricking their thumbs and rubbing them together, to bind them together but also to allow them to let one another go where she needed to go.
It is not the story of every family (or perhaps, after all, it is), but it is the story of our biblical family, in which even the dogs eat the crumbs from under the table with impunity.
It is a story through which the blood of the covenant courses, that which has bound us to the family of God through our spiritual ancestors, with all of their ups and downs and sideways. It is the story that continues, through the blood of the new covenant, the generosity of Jesus who has done for us more than we could ever have asked or imagined, who has bound together heaven and earth, however great the distance between us may be.
A sermon for Monday, June 26th, at the Chapel of the Good Shepherd, Chautauqua Institution. Year A Proper 7 Monday Gospel: Matthew 7:1-5
There is but one judge whose acumen is trustworthy and true. Fortunately, God is infamous for steadfast forbearance, slow to anger, and abiding in great mercy.
I find it interesting that the morning after the opening challenge from [Chautauqua Institution’s] President Hill to exercise curiosity before or even instead of judgement, we have this lesson from Jesus. One might even call it a curious coincidence!
There is no doubt that we carry logs in our eyes, prejudices and prejudgments that subject us to “confirmation bias”. I know that I am guilty of it. I know that it is easier for me to pick holes in the argument of another than to recognize the chasm of compassion missing from my own. And it is true, I think, that apart from the patience of saints, I will be judged as impatiently as I categorize, affirm, or dismiss others.
Still, we are told elsewhere that we shall know the trees by their fruit; we are told to be as wise as serpents, though as gentle as doves; we do need day by day to make judgements about situations, actions, even to prejudge what might come next, as part of making our lives in the world.
There is another problem, which is that this verse, “Judge not,” has become a way to end rather than to begin a conversation. I guess that’s where the curiosity would come in.
Stephen Holmgren, in his book, Ethics after Easter, teases the verse out this way:
It is usually quoted in situations where a person or group is admonished not to criticize the behavior of others. However, it is likely that the kinds of judgments that Jesus forbids are assessments of the final state of another’s soul. … This is quite a different matter from using reason and reflection to assess the structure and moral character of acts that we witness on an everyday basis.[i]
In other words, we do have an obligation to exercise (good) judgement; but we cannot mistake our judgement for God’s justice.
Beth Kissileff, whose husband survived the murderous attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, has written several times about the difficulty of rendering justice, even when we are quite certain of our judgement. Most recently, she wrote for Haaretz,
The only thing that makes sense to me in relation to the trial is an insight from the Talmud which has been on my mind. The “profundity of justice” (In Hebrew, omek ha’din) is among the seven things concealed from humans.
Why? Humans are not equipped to cope with some kinds of information. Most of us would not want to know the day of our death or what is in the hearts of others“[ii]
“The profundity of justice is hidden from humans.” In amongst the awfulness of what Beth is writing about, that insight rang like a clear bell. Most of us would not want to know what is in the hearts of others; only God knows, only God sees the whole human clearly. Our judgment, even at its best, is incomplete; we judge actions, while God has charge over the whole person.
Most of the time, thank God, our judgements are not based on such an intense crisis. But that in itself gives us the opportunity to interrogate them, examine them for short-sightedness. Because left unquestioned, unrestrained, they can affect not only to those we judge, but our sense of justice itself, our vision of God’s kingdom come, which contains compassion beyond our understanding, which is restorative, and redeeming, which renders the justice of reconciliation, which so often evades us. There is, after all, more joy – and probably relief – in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine (if you could find them) who need no repentance (Luke 15:7).
Sometimes, I think that the idea of exercising curiosity rather than judgement over someone we disagree with is, while a really good idea, a stretch in practice. To be more honest, I find it a stretch, especially over an extended period that feels like eternity. But I wonder if we could manage, if I could manage, curiosity over what God thinks of this person, whom I know that God loves, despite the grief they may occasion, whom I know is made in God’s image. What does God still see in them, that God has counted every hair of their head?
There is but one judge whose acumen is trustworthy and true. Fortunately, God is infamous for steadfast forbearance, slow to anger, and abiding in great mercy, even for a sinner like me.
[i] Stephen Holmgren, Ethics After Easter (Cowley Publications, 2000), 143-4
[ii] https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2023-06-19/ty-article-opinion/.premium/the-pittsburgh-synagogue-shooter-has-been-convicted-but-theres-no-real-justice/
Featured image: Michelangelo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
over the water 
