Between noon and three

This sermon was preached on the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, March 2, 2025, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley.

Collect: O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Exodus 34:29-35, 1 Corinthians 13, Luke 9:28-36

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

Our Gospel today, the Transfiguration, is a tale of three mountains, or perhaps even more, depending on how you count. Wait, three? Aren’t we just on Tabor? Not all of them are geographical. You’re probably familiar with the traditional image of prayer being a mountain: Thomas Merton’s Seven-Story Mountain comes to mind, or St. John of the Cross’s Ascent of Mount Carmel. Our Gospel today begins with Jesus taking Peter, James, and John up a mountain in order to pray. Prayer is the point of their ascent, not the fireworks that come later. Jesus prays, while his friends doze off.

It should come as no surprise that the spectacular event of the Transfiguration occurs while Jesus is deep in prayer, and while the disciples are heavy with sleep. How many other moments of divine visitation occur at prayer! From Hannah in the tabernacle to Mary at the annunciation to Jesus’s own baptism in the Jordan, addressing ourselves to prayer puts us in a posture where God is known to make things known. Here at the Transfiguration, what is revealed is Jesus himself in divine glory, shining like the sun, while a voice from heaven claims him as God’s beloved Son.

Critically, he is not alone. Moses and Elijah are there, the great archetypal Prophets of old. And there is also the voice from heaven, speaking in the midst of the cloud that comes to overshadow them all. All of them are talking together, while Peter and the others try to make themselves useful. This illustrates another major point: that revelation, in the Christian religion, is never private, it is always something shared. God’s revelation of himself is something which creates relationships, draws links where before there was only disruption, especially across the chasms of time and space, matter and spirit.

What are they talking about? Luke tells us that Jesus and Moses and Elijah were talking about the departure that Jesus was about to make in Jerusalem. We usually interpret his “departure” to mean his crucifixion and death, especially considering where this story occurs in Luke’s narrative, just before Jesus “sets his face to go to Jerusalem.” But Luke is more specific than mere “departure.” The word he uses in the Greek text is “exodus.” Jesus and these two great prophets are speaking of the Exodus Jesus is going to make by virtue of his passion and death in Jerusalem.

Talk of the Exodus introduces the second of today’s mountains: Mt. Sinai. When Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt through the Red Sea, they went first to Mt. Sinai, where in the midst of another cloud Moses spoke with God and received the Law. This was a major, perhaps the pivotal moment in the self-conception of ancient Israel, the moment when God became not just God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but their own too; when they became not just descendants of the patriarchs but their own nation, whom the gift of the law makes a people.

You may know, this generation proved faithless time and again, and God decreed that they wander in the wilderness until every last member of that generation died. Only then would he finally let the people enter the promised land. And yet, forty years later, Moses says to the new generation, “On Mount Sinai, God made a covenant not with our fathers but with us, with every one of you alive here today.” Moses is saying, that moment of encounter on Sinai persists, remains live, fully present, to all the people held by its promise, even if they weren’t born yet.

Elijah, too, knew Mount Sinai: it was the place where he fled for refuge after defeating the prophets of Baal and fearing the anger of king Ahab. At Sinai he looked for God, and knew him not in fire or earthquake but in the still small voice. God told him he had preserved a number who had not bent the knee to Baal, and ordered Elijah to return to them, and organize their defense. At Sinai, with Moses, the people had celebrated their deliverance from slavery in Egypt. With Elijah, their deliverance continued, now also from royal exploitation and oppression.

Maybe it’s fitting to recall in this context that Sinai was also where Moses had first met God, in the bush that did not burn, where he gave his name, ‘I am that I am.’ Today, on Mount Tabor, if Moses and Elijah are talking with Jesus about the exodus he is about to make in Jerusalem, then Mount Sinai can’t be far from their minds, with all it recalls of deliverance from slavery in Egypt, deliverance from exploitation by greedy kings, and the persistent presence of God in the midst of his people, to make himself known among them.

The exodus Jesus is about to make in Jerusalem should recall for us the third mountain of the day. Here we are on Mount Tabor, talking in a divine vision with heroes of Mount Sinai, of Jesus’s coming work — on Mount Calvary. Like Mount Zion, Calvary is not much of a mountain to speak of: only a mountain at all in the sense that the ground falls away around it; it is surrounded on all sides by higher, more dramatic hills. And yet the exodus Jesus makes there makes Calvary a far more glorious mountain than either Tabor or Sinai.

The exodus Jesus accomplishes on Calvary is by his passion and crucifixion; and the way it makes is not through the sea this time, but through sin and death. On the cross, Jesus parts the waters of sin and death, which constantly threaten to drown us, which separate us in ways sharp and grievous both from our beloved dead and from our true homeland in the nearer presence of God. Jesus makes a way through those treacherous waters for everyone to follow who wants to, without regard to origin, class, holiness, wickedness, or deserving. He makes his resurrection theirs too.

So, as glorious as Mt. Tabor and Mt. Sinai both are, as bright and stupendous the vision of Jesus in his glory, bright as the sun, talking with Moses and Elijah, the very subject of their conversation drives us to see a yet brighter and more splendid sight: the Son of God upon the cross. Brighter and more splendid than the transfiguration? It must have been an squalid, dirty affair, with a mob of people behaving their absolute worst. Glorious? Yes. Here a tool of shameful, agonizing humiliation, is made the very throne of God, where death lies defeated forever.

We’re used to seeing and hearing reversals in the Gospels: “Blessed are the poor,” “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” “The last shall be first and the first last,” “He hath put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek.” But here on Calvary is the final reversal, the one in which all the rest inhere: a dying man is the eternal son of God, a tool of state execution is the throne of heaven, the moment of humiliation and death is the moment of victory and liberation for all creation.

And this is the chief glory of the Christian religion: that just when all seems to be lost, it isn’t: “For unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.” What the powers of this world consider defeat, shame, unworthy, alien, waste, God invests with incalculable dignity and worth; and just when those same powers have squeezed the last drop of profit from their captive, in their moment of victory they are utterly undone, bound forever by the one they crucified, while all their prisoners go free.

We can rejoice, then, that our hope burns brightest when the night grows darkest. But even more than this we can rejoice that in the ugliest corners of our lives and of our world, the sneers of the seeming victors blow easily away, and we find there taking root the beginning of love: love that persists through death and hell, love that makes itself present, alive, equally across all generations; love that claims us for its own, that opens our eyes to see as we are seen; love that makes itself known to us in the breaking of the bread.

In theName of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

This sermon was preached on February 23, 2025, the seventh Sunday after the Epiphany. As with the previous few, the thought behind this is inspired and informed by the grief that many in Berkeley are feeling as a result of November’s election and the inauguration of the present administration. Despite the fact that our city’s preferred candidate did not win, as a parish we continue to pray for the president, the government, and all in authority, for the final triumph of God’s justice, mercy, and love.

Collect: O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings: Genesis 45:3-11, 15, 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50, Luke 6:27-38

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Sprit, Amen:

A friend of ours is getting married soon, and I have the honor of officiating, so it means I’ve had love on the brain lately. I haven’t finished my wedding homily yet, but I’m sure I’ll say at least something about love being a mutual enterprise, that it’s something embarked on together, a journey in which the one will hold the other and vice versa.

It’s the sort of thing you say at weddings, to encourage people in the life they’re beginning together — marriage is a life two people create together out of the love they share. And that’s usually what we say about love: it’s shared, mutual, something freely given and received. The full meaning of love, for the married and the unmarried alike, is for it to be given, as well as received; and the meeting between those two actions is what’s so powerfully creative about love.

Today, though, we get a very different message in our readings, a message implied in Genesis, and then made explicit in the Gospel. And that is, that love can frequently be offered in only one direction. Despite the mutual, shared nature of love at its best, it can also be offered in only one direction.

Recall, Joseph’s brothers had sold him into slavery years before, and then told their father Jacob that he was dead, eaten by wolves. Through an amazing sequence of events, Joseph wound up the viceroy of Egypt, and during a famine found himself selling grain to the very brothers who had betrayed him. Though he was tempted to work his vengeance on them, he took pity instead, and revealed himself to them in order that they might be a family again.

Then in the Gospel, Jesus says directly, “love your enemies” — and he says it about six different ways so it’s very clear he’s not just being spiritual, that he really means we’re to love those who wish us harm.

In both cases, here is a love that is being offered in only one direction. Between Joseph and his brothers there was no trace of the mutual, shared love that clergy preach at weddings; no trace of familial affection; not until Joseph made his love clear to them first. 

How can there be mutual love among enemies, between belligerent forces in conflict? If there were love shared among enemies, they would be enemies no longer. Yet Jesus says, “love your enemies,” instructing us to make the first move in a one-way relationship of love for people who are our adversaries or who otherwise wish us harm.

Life is full of hard lessons about what one-way love looks like. Consider the mother who painfully decides finally to kick out her drug-addicted daughter. The mother loves her daughter, but because of the addiction and because of the patterns it has imposed of crisis, withdrawal, acting out, and the rest, there is no possibility the daughter can return her mother’s love in any remotely symmetrical or proportional way. The mother’s love takes the shape of refusing to enable further destructive behavior — which for all her daughter can see looks like punishment or betrayal.

Or another example: consider the husband, whose wife’s dementia means she can’t remember who he is let alone return the love and care he pours out on her day by day.

Or to take another direction: what does it mean to love people who voted differently than we did? What does it mean to love the people they elected, who seem to be dead-set on inflicting pain and suffering on many of the most vulnerable in society? How can we love those who want nothing to do with us?

Each of us knows what this feels like: you love someone and they don’t love you back, you make a gift that took time and care and maybe even sacrifice, and it goes ignored or under appreciated. Your mother tells you to look after your little sister, but looking after is the last thing she wants.

Life offers no shortage of other examples. Even though it’s not what we usually think of when we think of love, even though we might otherwise affirm that love in only one direction is deficient, even defective in some ways, Joseph and Jesus today both seem to insist that it is still love. Jesus even goes so far as to command that we love our enemies: love those who are not just ungrateful, love those who not only have no desire to love me back, but love those who are actively intending to harm me. 

This is a hard saying. Usually we read it as if Jesus is just commissioning us for the work of reconciliation — love your enemies, so that they can hopefully not be your enemies anymore. Love the people who don’t return your love, so that hopefully they can, some day. But that’s not what Jesus says: he says, Love your enemies, full stop, whether or not they return the favor. It’s a hard lesson made all the harder by clergy and others who use it to counsel people to stay in abusive relationships rather than to seek help or separation. Just to be clear, while love can, and often does, go one-way, it can never be coerced; no one has the right to force your affection or keep you under their control.

“Come on,” you will say, “How can you say that? Love in only one direction is a waste, why bother?” We often think of love as this precious thing, beautifully wrapped, with a bow, that we give to the deserving in our lives. Why would we give such a thing to an adversary, who will reject it at best, and more likely just take advantage instead. Didn’t Jesus also say something about not casting our pearls before swine? But stay with me for a moment. One-way love actually helps to clarify what love is. 

By and large, when love is one-way, it’s not directed to the deserving, and it isn’t received with thanks or delight. Instead, what it feels like is a glass of water poured on dry ground — the water gets absorbed without a trace, or else the ground is so dry the water just hits it and runs off again. We’re right to say it feels like a waste — a waste of energy, emotion, spirit, hope, and all the rest, just thrown away, with nothing to show for it, and an empty place where it came from inside us.

St. Paul writes, after last week’s epistle lesson left off and before this week’s begins, that “Christ must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet; the last enemy to be destroyed is death.” Does Jesus’s command to love our enemies extend to death itself? I don’t like that idea, but it’s often what one-way love feels like. Yes, love like this is water on the ground, imprudently and even flagrantly poured out. 

But isn’t this what we say about all love? It is abundant, profligate, never-ending, stronger than death; “It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things.” If this is true, and it is my firm conviction that it is, then love is less an equal and opposite exchange, and more a continuous series of wild risks — risks that the love we plant as seeds will finally take root and grow. 

Yes, love at its heart is a kind of insistence, often in the face of every evidence to the contrary, that there is a future for us beyond the present injury, beyond the present crisis; that there is more between us than meets the eye. Love is a recognition that part of me is bound up in you, and part of you in me, and that that makes something bigger than either of us; that makes something bigger of both of us. Love makes a future that we are both in, even if that future remains finally out of reach our whole lives long. The future love makes bears strongly on the present, firing it with every possibility of hope. Christ’s command this morning pushes us to hold this future even for our enemies, pushes us to make the first move in love.

Maybe you know the old legend, that when Adam and Eve died they were buried in a place very near to where Jerusalem would later be built; and that when Christ was raised on the cross, it was planted above the exact spot of Adam’s grave. As the Savior died, the earthquake which followed cracked open the rock below, allowing Jesus’s blood to run down into Adam’s grave and among his very bones. Here, at the cross, the life of God moved once again through the dust, as blood now instead of breath as before, creating life where there had been only death. Christ pulling Adam and Eve from their tombs while death lies bound under his feet remains the Eastern Orthodox vision of the resurrection — and of redemption — to this day.

Whether or not the geography is correct, the point remains true. When Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is commending to us the same one-way love that drove him to say, from the cross, forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do. He is commending the same love by which Joseph kept room in his heart for his brothers; the same love that sees our adversaries as people, like us, who are made in the image of God — even if their words and ideas are inscrutable to us and their actions hurtful. 

Jesus is telling us emphatically, in every way he knows how, that love poured on thirsty ground is never a waste, never a loss: his own love outpoured takes him to the cross, where his saving death opens the rock, cracks open the tomb. There, our love poured out mingles with his, and waters the dry, stony, waste places of the earth. There, where this water falls, dry bones put on flesh, and the tree grows whose fruit gives eternal life and whose leaves are for the healing of the nations.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

This sermon was preached on February 16, 2025, the sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley.

Collect: O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you: Mercifully accept our prayers; and because in our weakness we can do nothing good without you, give us the help of your grace, that in keeping your commandments we may please you both in will and deed; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Jer. 17:5-10, 1 Cor 15:12-20, Luke 6:17-26

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

It’s a little ironic to be preaching a sermon on a sermon, and anyway I’ve always thought the beatitudes preach themselves pretty effectively without much help from the clergy; maybe more so without our meddling interference!

The version of the Beatitudes we get today is Luke’s version, which is a little grittier and less pious than Matthew’s more famous rendition. Matthew’s gospel gives us, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” where Luke gives us the decidedly more pointed, “Blessed are the poor,” full stop. Matthew’s gospel gives us, “Blessed are you who hunger and thirst for righteousness,” where Luke gives us, “Blessed are the hungry.” 

And then, where in Matthew’s gospel Jesus takes the beatitudes as a point of departure for a longer sermon about many things, in Luke’s Gospel Jesus stays on the theme a moment longer to offer a corresponding set of woes. As if his beatitudes themselves weren’t pointed enough, we get a further, “Woe to the rich, woe to the well-fed, woe to you when all speak well of you.” I think it’s fair to say, none of us are getting off the hook in Luke’s gospel, in a way it’s all too easy to spiritualize away the force of the meaning in Matthew’s.

I love Matthew, I love the sermon on the mount, there’s probably a reason it’s the more famous rendition. But then perhaps it’s fitting that this Sunday we hear from Luke; perhaps it’s fitting we get the unvarnished truth, less calculated to appeal to the masses. It’s becoming increasingly clear, that at least since the return from Covid, we live in an ever more confrontational age; here we have a fairly confrontational gospel. What do we do with it?

Most of the time, when we hear this text, we nod sagely and agree. This is exactly why it’s so important that the church be involved in social justice, why it’s so meaningful that here at St. Mark’s we have a feeding ministry, why we can be so proud of the shelter and housing ministries provided across the diocese, why we can take such joy in being a founding partner of East Bay Sanctuary Covenant’s refugee resettlement ministry: because we believe that the poor and those in need are dear to God, and that to help them materially, or, in the old language, to offer them “the corporal works of mercy,” is at the very core of how we live out our faith.

I never fail to be moved by the story of St. Laurence, the deacon, who, in a time of Roman persecution, was ordered to collect the church’s treasures and surrender them to the emperor. Instead of the alms boxes, gospel books, and precious stones, however, Laurence gathered a ragtag mob of the lame, the leprous, and the indigent. The emperor was incensed at the stink in his audience chamber, and demanded, “What’s the meaning of this?” To which Laurence replied, “Behold, O Excellency, the treasures of the Church.” And the thing is, he’s not just offering a good zinger — he’s telling the truth.

Staying with ancient Rome for a moment, maybe you know the story of emperor Julian, sometimes called, “The Apostate,” because he lived after the empire had formally legalized Christianity and he fervently desired to return Rome to its ancient pagan customs. History shows he was not successful in his attempt. One of the principal difficulties was trying to get his pagan clergy to replicate the care Christians took to look after the needy, especially the needy among their own number. Julian recognized that this gave the Church tremendous moral authority among the people, but he could not get his pagans to care, at least not in the same way or to the same degree. Frustrated in a meeting one day, he finally burst out, “See how these Christians love one another!”

Why do we do it? “Blessed are the poor” — well, because Jesus established the pattern, and gave some fairly unambiguous commands about it. Furthermore, we believe that if Christ blessed human life with his divine presence, then every human life, from henceforth, is equally blessed by the divine touch, and serving the needy is tantamount to serving Christ himself. To give St. Matthew his due, we love the passage from his gospel where Jesus says, “When you fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick, and did these things to the least of these my brothers and sisters, you did them to me.” Christian faith gives the pattern and the theological motivation for serving the needy; it’s part of the warp and weft of who we are.

You know me well enough now I think, though, to hear that there’s probably a “but” coming. Luke’s gospel is so stark — “Blessed are the poor; blessed are the hungry; blessed are those who mourn,” that it begs some real soul-searching. In this gospel, Jesus isn’t just telling us — the reasonably well-fed, well-educated, generous citizens of the world that we are here in Berkeley California — that we ought to be kind to our needy neighbors. No, he says, “Blessed are the poor.” 

“Blessed are the poor.” Not, I note, blessed are you if you help the poor out of their poverty, blessed are you if you educate the needy, if you comfort the afflicted, bury the dead, feed the hungry. No, “Blessed are the hungry.” If we stop and think for a moment, we quickly see what a hard saying this really is. Blessed are the hungry? “Surely, Jesus you can’t mean that; surely you must mean that we ought to help them, give them something to eat, lift them out of poverty, get them health insurance, legal assistance, a college education, a pension. Isn’t that what you mean?” “Well yes, you should be doing that anyway,” says Jesus, “But still I tell you, blessed are the poor.”

If we have trouble understanding what he means, and I admit I regularly do, then the fault lies with our ability to see, and not with Jesus’s powers of logic or reasoning. His Gospel doesn’t just give us marching orders to do this project or undertake that ministry. His Gospel upends our entire worldview; it is a “transvaluation of values,” if you will. Blessed are the poor; woe to the rich. At least as far as God is concerned, those nearest and dearest to his heart, those closest to the divine image, the ones in his sight who are kings and princes and heirs of all the earth, tre the poor, the outcast, the stepped over, and the stinky.

This is a great mystery, and I don’t pretend to understand it. Because it means, for example, that the man who sometimes lives on St. Mark’s sidewalk, who makes a lot of trash and other waste, and is often unsettling if not outright threatening to passersby, whom we sometimes have to ask police help to remove — that this man is of such high estate in the kingdom of God that even angels bow to greet him. And I, who have the position, the authority, even the duty, to get him to move, must, in forcing the issue, necessarily admit to a small and mean kind of existence.

This is a painful kind of reversal, but it is just the kind of reversal we ought to expect from the God whom we worship. “Blessed are the poor.” However we understand it, it certainly renders moot all the utilitarian philosophy that undergirds most of our philanthropy and moral thinking. “The greatest good for the greatest number” — sounds like a reasonable metric, and it is remarkably effective at producing results in macro. But then the outliers, the casualties, the cost never go away, and over time they grow to undermine the whole foundation. Perhaps at this stage of our national civic life they already have.

In the midst of all this, the Gospel insists there is a higher mystery at play here. The Gospel is not about “most” for “most,” it is about “All” for “One.” The eternal God, creator of all worlds, became a single human person, to invest with his presence human life for all time with all the whole glory of God.

“Blessed are the poor.” The Gospel is not about statistics in macro, but the individual soul as the temple and tabernacle of God. And in this, the poor, the hungry, and the grieving are the ones upon whom the favor of God rests; truly, they are treasures of the Church, while the rest of us still carry so much dross.

I’ll conclude this morning with a charge from Bp. Frank Weston, the famous early 20th century bishop of Zanzibar, which he gave to a congress of bishops and clergy in 1923. It’s a famous quote, so forgive me if you know it already, and it’s from a very different time. But it bears repeating, especially with this morning’s Gospel and the current conversation in Washington. Weston says,

“If you are Christians then your Jesus is one and the same: Jesus on the Throne of his glory, Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, Jesus received into your hearts in Communion, Jesus with you mystically as you pray, and Jesus enthroned in the hearts and bodies of his brothers and sisters up and down this country. And it is folly, it is madness, to suppose that you can worship Jesus in the Sacraments and Jesus on the Throne of glory, when you are [exploiting] him in the souls and bodies of his children. It cannot be done. . . 

“Here, then, as I conceive it, is your present duty. . . Go out into the highways and hedges. . . Go out and look for Jesus in the ragged, in the naked, in the oppressed and sweated, in those who have lost hope, in those who are struggling to make good. Look for Jesus. And when you see him, gird yourselves with his towel of fellowship and try to wash their feet.”

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

This sermon was preached on January 26, 2025, the Third Sunday after the Epiphany, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley.

Collect: Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

One of the downsides of modern consumer culture, especially since the advent of the internet and social media, is a tendency towards comparison. Am I dressed as well as my friend? Do they drive a better car than I do? Are they ranked higher at work? Do I live in a better or worse zip code? Do they have less debt, higher income? Can they afford to have kids, own a house, replace a roof?

Not only do we have a tendency towards comparison, but the categories by which we compare each other have multiplied wildly: no longer just the classics of conspicuous consumption, house, car, clothes; but now intangibles, too: degrees of fulfillment, happiness at work, value added to society, mMeaning we’ve made or drawn.

With so much comparison flying around, there’s no time to gather the skill or the resources to make a substantive effort. And so we fall into the expedient of performance. Given limited time and resources, if I can at least look like I belong within the constellation of people and causes I care about, then it doesn’t really matter if I actually do belong, if I’ve really earned my place or not. But I don’t have to tell you the effects this has on a person’s psyche. We know the truth about ourselves, even if we’ve managed to hoodwink the world. So, the great promise of mass manufacturing and an internet-connected world devolves into a spiral of ever-increasing loneliness, with an ever-decreasing sense of place or merit.

But you didn’t come to church this morning to hear a priest decry the evils of modernity or social media — so why do I bring this up? Because these kinds of trends seep very quickly into the church, too, and into our lives of faith. When we talk about the health of the Episcopal Church, or any given parish for that matter, rarely do we talk about the actual condition of people’s souls. Instead we’re concerned with how well we look in public, whether thepeople whose opinions we respect think well of us or poorly. We wonder, are we doing enough? By which we always mean, are we doing as much as others? We have a monthly feeding program; others have a weekly meal. We collect coats in winter; others have a whole clothing pantry. We host a drop-in clinic; others have established whole schools for disadvantaged youth. 

Are we doing enough? Underneath the question is always the worry, am I doing enough? And underneath that, am I enough? I wonder, whose response are we afraid of? wWhence comes the judgement we’re so eager to put off?

Notice I’ve gotten a good ways through this sermon without any mention whatever of God. That’s intentional, because I don’t think this line of thinking has anything whatever to do with God. If we identify that voice with God, the voice that says we are never enough, then we are sorely mistaken. The accuser is not God, but rather the devil. Remember that great line from the revelation to St. John, when the devil and all his angels are cast out of heaven, “Rejoice, O heaven, and you that dwell therein, for the accuser of our brethren has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.”

That’s very welcome good news, especially in our comparison-driven day and age. But if that’s the case, that the accuser does not speak truth, then what other standard is there? What else do we have to stand on, how do we know if we’re doing the right thing, going the right way, valuing the right things?

This is where our readings today suddenly speak with a voice of deep compassion and love. In Nehemiah, the people of God have returned from exile, the temple has been a ruin for decades, Jerusalem a waste, its walls broken down. They have returned to build a life amid the rubble of a past, a civilization, that is no longer. Ezra reads to them the Law of God, and they weep, because they know they have not kept it, indeed they could not have kept it, in exile from Jerusalem and its temple. If the point is comparison, they know they don’t measure up and that it would be futile even to try.

But Ezra is gentle, even tender with them: hearing the Law as they have is a cause for celebration and joy, not for tears. The Law as he reads it is not there to judge the people; rather it is there to create the people, to establish a covenant between them and the Lord their God, by which he would be faithful to what he had promised. Fulfilled or failure, their society is shaped, created, by the gift of that covenant, and they are united in a shared longing to see it in its fullness.

St. Paul is just as tender with the Corinthians. Like ours, Corinth is a rich society: they are heir, in continuous succession, to all the greatest treasures of Greek language, history, art, and thought. They are proud of who they are, and it pains them to think they might be deficient in any matter of virtue. But just like the tragic heroes of their great dramas, this creates a deep underlying vulnerability: they do not see a need to learn from or to honor anyone who is not like them. So, they are not the great, magnanimous lords of the earth their imagination makes them out to be; rather they are small and mean. They do not need to be brought down to size because they cannot get much smaller; rather they need to grow, grow into the full body of which they are merely a member. They had made the mistake of thinking, perhaps, they were the whole body, when it reality they were merely a part, maybe even so small as a hair. But the hair is proud of the body it adorns, and so Corinth may be proud of the Body into which it has been baptized.

And what body is that? Well, the body of Christ of course. And there lies the answer to all our modern anxieties, our fear of not measuring up, of needing to be everything to everybody, or seeming as if we are in any case. To these anxieties, the Gospel replies not with advice to do yet more. Rather it replies with a command: that we grow up. Not that we do more, but a command that we grow up: grow up into the fullness of the stature of Christ, in whose image we were made and into whose Body we have been baptized, in all our magnificent specificity. 

That will require certain things of us, but the point is to grow, to mature, to live — not to accomplish tasks, tick boxes, or look the part. There are too many boxes for us to possibly tick them all. The whole Body is too large for us to possibly accomplish its every whim. And so instead of comparing ourselves to each other, to the Law, to our own past or to our idealized, imagined future, our duty and our joy is simply to grow up, to live, into the fulness of the stature of Christ.

A big part of growing up is not being afraid: not being afraid of our failures, of our sins, of our nightmares. Maybe you know the famous statistic, by far the most frequent command in the Bible is “Fear not; be not afraid.”

Another part of growing up is making peace with the things we have said “No,” to, the opportunities we have not pursued, or for that matter the opportunities that have said “No,” to us; making peace with the doors that have closed, so long as they are truly closed and not merely blocked with our own baggage.

Another part of growing up is making peace with our own limitations. I am sorry to tell you all I will never be a professional football player. Part of that is total lack of natural talent, another part is that I have redirected all my cultivated practice to things that interest me more. I admit it does not grieve me very much to lose this particular future, but other lost futures do grieve me, large and small, and I’m sure you have your fair share of these too.

Part of growing up is making peace with all of these, and making peace in the only way Christians ever make peace with anything: by remembering that Christ’s cross takes both what is best and what is worst about human nature, the world, and every possible story, and offers it all to God. 

On the cross Christ offers it all to God, that God may give it back again, and God does give it back again transfigured beyond all possible corruption or decay, free from sin and death; that now may flourish only light and life where before was sorrow and thorn; that now may grow bright and solid joys where before was only type and shadow.

We remember, and so we live: as Christians we are created by this act of living memory, no more, no less. By this act of living memory, not by point of comparison or degree of accomplishment, or public recognition. By this living memory alone. By it we are kept in touch with Christ our Lord and with the rest of his body as well. In this living memory we are freed, freed in the very depths of our souls: freed from the whispers of the accuser, freed from the pressures of comparison, free to grow into the image in which we were made, free to rejoice in all things, giving thanks for the treasures of grace revealed in all people and in every created thing. 

For Christ has conquered death and hell, and by our baptism we are members of his own body. We have nothing to prove, to ourselves or anybody else. But rather we grow up to tell the tale afresh in whatever small way is ours to say. So the whole world may see and know: there is good news for the poor, release for the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed: for wherever Christ is, there is the year of the Lord’s favor, and with him is every fulfillment for evermore.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

This sermon was preached on Sunday, January 5, 2025, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, the Second Sunday after Christmas. We don’t always get a second Sunday after Christmas (sometimes The Epiphany occurs beforehand), and since there are three options for the Gospel, it’s even rarer to hear the episode of the finding of the boy Jesus in the temple. But it’s one of Our Lady’s “joyful mysteries,” and this is Year C in the lectionary (focusing on Luke’s Gospel), so I welcomed the opportunity it presented to consider what to do with Jesus’s childhood and the many years of silence in the Gospels between his birth and the beginning of his public ministry.

Collect: O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings:  Jeremiah 31:7-14; Ephesians 1:3-6, 15-19a; Luke 2:41-52

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

When I would hear this Gospel as a kid, I used to think Mary and Joseph were being too hard on Jesus: I mean, didn’t they know? Why didn’t they check on his whereabouts before they just up and left? And what’s the big deal anyway, it’s not like he was in any real danger, he was in the temple.

When I read it now, however, many years later and as the parent of a toddler, my sympathies are entirely reversed, and frankly Mary and Joseph seem far too calm. “Gone for four days? We’ve been worried sick! What have you been eating? Where have you been sleeping? Don’t you realize this is how kids get abducted, or worse? And what is this attitude, ‘We should not have worried’ – I don’t think you fully appreciate the gravity of the situation. No more trips to Jerusalem for you, young man. If you so much as leave the house without permission you’re grounded through next year.”

Truthfully, there are a lot of questions this episode raises. Why did Mary & Joseph not think twice about leaving with the caravan despite not knowing where Jesus was? Was this normal in that day and age, for kids to wander all over a caravan? Should we suppose that the young Jesus was a sociable kid who made friends easily, and that’s why they didn’t worry about him, because they assumed he’d made friends with the other families going their way? Or should we suppose instead that he was quiet and liked to keep to himself, and Mary & Joseph didn’t worry about him because they knew by then that he liked to find places away from the noise? 

And really, where did he sleep for those four days in Jerusalem? Did the temple staff just let him make himself at home? Was old Simeon still alive maybe, or Anna, or was his uncle Zechariah on duty in the temple again, and did one of them recognize him and make room for him? Or did he sleep on the streets in some alley or under a baker’s awning?

And how big must this caravan have been anyway, for Mary and Joseph not to have known its full breadth? Was there a lot of commerce like this between Nazareth and Jerusalem? Or did the Holy Family have to travel with several caravans, changing maybe at Jericho or up at Beth-Shan or Jezreel, and it was at the transfer point that they noticed him missing? 

Were the caravans full of pilgrims only, or were there traders too, or traveling artisans? Was Joseph carrying samples of his workmanship, hoping to drum up business in Jerusalem or among his fellow travelers? 

What did the travelers talk about on the way? Did they talk about Herod’s new reconstruction of the temple? Did they think it bold and powerful, or flashy and monstrous? Did they appreciate the increase in grandeur and scale, or were they offended at the expense, the labor, the national impoverishment it required to build?

Did they comment on the latest ecclesiastical fashion they saw there? Did they keep humming tunes from the services on their way home, or did they prefer the tunes from the hearths of the inns and the campfires? Did they make their own entertainment on the way? Maybe the played instruments. I’m sure they must have played games.

There are questions of wider politics, too: Herod the Great had died not long before, and these were the early years of Roman governors in Judea. Was there still some hopefulness among the people, some sense that peace might prevail? Or was the writing already on the wall, and dread beginning to spread that this could only end in violence? Was there pride, that even now Judea retained certain trappings of self-rule? Or was there resentment that Judea did not even rate full provincial status in the administration of their overlords, but was rather, bureaucratically, a dependent of the province of Syria, former realm of the hated, Hellenistic Seleucids?

Today’s episode from Luke’s gospel of Jesus’s life at 12 years old contains tantalizing hints at broader life in the larger world of the 1st century Eastern Mediterranean, as well as precious clues about Jesus’s personality and the Holy Family’s home life. But as it is, this is the only such glimpse we get. Between the visit of the Magi, which we will celebrate tomorrow on January 6, and Jesus’s baptism by John in the Jordan, which we’ll get next Sunday, we have absolutely nothing apart from today’s episode. That’s over thirty years of silence.

What are we to make of this? Especially today, on the last, twelfth day of Christmas, when the songs of the angels are still ringing in our ears and we are full of wonder and delight at the newborn Lord? Most of the time, I think we just appreciate it as a nice family sort of story, and then fast forward to the really juicy bits when Jesus’s public ministry begins.

If pressed, we might say it’s a useful story because it illustrates that Jesus had a human childhood. Even though he was obviously special, seriously precocious in matters of religion, he was still a kid with an independent streak who occasionally got into trouble with his parents. That’s relatable, and it’s worth pausing to appreciate that.

But I don’t want to let us off the hook that easily. The clues and questions and tantalizing glimpses of a larger, broader life, I think make an important point: Jesus is the incarnate Son of God, as much in the manger as on the cross, and he is just as equally so in all those thirty years of silence. 

Jesus was just as equally the Son of God in all those thirty years of silence as in the episodes that are recorded in the Gospels. And because of that, all those years, invisible to us, are nevertheless central to his identity as a human person, central to the offering he makes of his life upon the cross, central to the life that rises from the dead and opens the gates of heaven. These are the landmarks of his public ministry, the mighty acts whereby he works salvation for the world and makes all things new. But even as he binds Satan and harrows hell, in there somewhere is still the kid who made his parents worry by hiding out in the temple for four days.

Do you hear why this is important? I’m a priest, I like church, you know by now I’m an ecclesiastical maximalist,  “more is more” as far as I’m concerned. So you might be surprised to hear me say, “Church is not the interesting thing about the Christian religion.” What we do here Sunday by Sunday and day by day is certainly the chief expression of our religion, where we speak most clearly and celebrate most beautifully the central mysteries of our faith. But where it chiefly happens is in you: in your lives, in your homes, in your families, at your work, in your world; where, day by day, you live your lives as people transformed by grace, called to new life, who bear witness in your loves, in your duties, in your recreation, that God in Christ has rescued us from the kingdom of death, and that we now have joy, hope, a future, in him.

Then, when you come to church, you bring with you everyone you have met, everyone you have loved, helped, laughed with, rolled your eyes at, injured, insulted; everyone you have worked with, needed something from, encountered. You bring them all here, with you, to the altar; and you offer them, with Christ’s own offering of himself, to God. 

So, here in church, we join the high priestly offering by which the world is reconciled to God. But it cannot happen without your life out there in the world: your day to day, boring and mundane maybe to you, invisible to the rest of us here in church, is actually the front line of the Christian religion. It is not invisible to God. And when you finally appear before him, and all the angels thunder their celestial “Te Deum” at your welcome through the gates of pearl, it will be as the person who was bored on a Tuesday at work; who chose to say the Our Father instead of honking your horn, who threw a fabulous Christmas dinner party for 12, who made some hard decisions with your ailing mother, who went out hiking but got caught in the rain, who put the left-handed scissors in the right-handed pail in kindergarten.

Do you hear what I’m saying? Much of our lives feel invisible to formal religion and matters of theology. There are no church holidays for Jesus’s graduation from high school, and no doctrine about his success or failure as Joseph’s apprentice. And yet, just as on the cross he offered the whole of his life to the Father, not just the bits we can read about, and therefore offered the whole world; so it is the whole of our lives that God redeems, not just the religious bits. And because he redeems the whole of our lives, his grace, his joy, his mercy, his peace, can break out for us in what might feel like the unlikeliest places. That in turn helps us to offer those unlikeliest places back to God the next time we pray or come to church. And so our disparate and fragmented world is stitched back together, slowly but surely, as a little yeast leavens the whole loaf.

I hope this is some encouragement: your life, especially when you are not in church, not praying, not otherwise religiously employed, is dear to God; it is not foreign territory to him. It is all a part of the story, all a part of the life He is working in you — and therefore it all belongs to the arena of divine agency and gift.

Let the finding of the boy Jesus in the temple be an invitation to you: to widen your horizon of where you see God at work; to live your own day to day as the place where God reveals his mercy and truth; and to bring it all back here to the altar, where we offer the sacrifice of thanksgiving, are fed by the fruit of the tree of life, and are finally found by God and brought home.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

This was my column for St. Mark’s first parish newsletter of 2025, published on Friday, January 3, 2025. I don’t usually post my weekly newsletter columns to this site, but it seems to have struck a chord with more folks than usual, so it’s here in case others might find it an encouragement. You can hear the King’s whole 1939 Christmas radio broadcast on YouTube, here.

Dear Friends,

This week I was reminded of some words of poetry which King George VI quoted at the conclusion of his Christmas radio broadcast in 1939. Germany had invaded and then annexed large portions of Poland, Britain and France had declared war on Germany, and the long naval battle for the Atlantic was already underway. Meanwhile the Soviet Union had invaded Finland and built military bases in the Baltic countries; Japan had invaded China two years before. But large-scale hostilities between the major Western powers had not yet begun, and the world was clearly on the precipice of an abyss. The poetry quoted by the King at Christmas struck a deeply hopeful note, and proved a source of abiding inspiration to many throughout the long years of war:

I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
“Give me a light, that I may tread safely into the unknown.”
And he replied,
“Go out into the darkness, and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light, and safer than a known way.”

For days the media could not identify the poet, who turned out to be the rather obscure but manifestly holy social worker and teacher, Minnie Louise Haskins, who published it in 1912 as part of a collection of poems meant to raise funds for her work in missions. Her famous poem remains a source of inspiration to me today, and I’ve turned to it occasionally since first hearing it years ago.

It is always tempting to plan as much ahead as humanly possible. And on one level, that’s just good stewardship, the path of wisdom. But what happens when our plans are wrecked, or prove insufficient to the task, or otherwise come up short? Then we come face to face with the question of trust, which it would have been wiser to keep in mind all along: Do we trust God to be faithful, who says to each of us, “You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you; I have called you, you are mine; I come that you may have life, and have it abundantly; taste and see that the Lord is good.” Do we trust him to be telling the truth, even if the whole apparatus of our lives – the scaffolding we’ve spent such effort building – comes crashing down? 

Or, put another way, do we trust God because of the many blessings we have received? Or do we trust him because we have no other? I submit that until we have no other, we will find it difficult to trust God, or anyone else for that matter. So a major task of Christian life is to know, and to increase in the knowledge, that we have but one hope, and that no amount of darkness, failure, grief, or pain can snuff it out or take it away; that no amount of success, prosperity, happiness, or fulfillment can take its place. We grow in that knowledge the same way we grow in anything else: by exercise, practice, taking the risk of putting our finger on the wrong note in the studied intent of playing the right one; by stepping out into the darkness and placing our hand into the hand of God.

Life brings no shortage of opportunities to step out into the darkness. As 2025 begins, I commend to you the practice and habit of trust: to put your hand into the hand of God, and step out into the unknown, into the darkness, into whatever abyss may open before your feet. What God has begun in you, in me, in the world, he will bring to completion. Haskins’s poem concludes, “So I went forth, and finding the Hand of God, trod gladly into the night. / And He led me towards the hills and the breaking of day in the lone East.” So may it be for each of us.

Yours faithfully,

Fr. Blake

This sermon was preached on Christmas Eve, 2024, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley.

Collect: O God, you have caused this holy night to shine with the brightness of the true Light: Grant that we, who have known the mystery of that Light on earth, may also enjoy him perfectly in heaven; where with you and the Holy Spirit he lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

Readings: Isaiah 62:6-12, Titus 3:4-7, Luke 2:1-20

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

If you were to draw or paint your own rendition of the Nativity scene, what would it look like? Probably something like the creche here at St. Mark’s, which we blessed at the beginning of tonight’s service: You would have Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus in a manger; an ox and ass nearby, shepherds with a few sheep; angels, wise men, maybe a few camels, the whole cast. 

How would you draw the stable itself? Probably you’d make some kind of lean-to shed, like what you see in the creche here, or in the stained glass window above it. Archaeologists tell us the stable might have been more like a cave, a hollow place in a hillside. Or, if the inn were a small one, maybe their stable was just the first floor of a two-story building, with rooms above to let out among the family’s own quarters.

If, however, you are a medieval or renaissance painter, your stable might look a little different. These artists did often depict the stable as a shed, a cave, or a house, all the above. But sometimes they depicted it as a ruin instead, a broken shell of some larger, older building: sometimes a ruined temple, sometimes a ruined castle, sometimes a ruined house. Sometimes the ruins are totally collapsed, just a jumble of broken stones and beams. Sometimes they are still partly inhabited. In one such painting, the ruin is of a colossal Roman triumphal arch, broken down and growing weeds. Archaeologists are quick to declare, no such triumphal arch was ever built in Bethlehem or was ever likely to be. And they’d say the same about all the glorious temples, castles, and manor houses that these painters ruined and turned into their stables for the Holy Family.

So, why did they depict it as a ruin? The point is a theological one. There may not have been an actual ruined triumphal arch in Bethlehem that an innkeeper used as a stable. But it is true nonetheless that the Christ child was born to “cast down the mighty from their thrones,” and “exalt the humble and meek,” to borrow from the text of his mother’s Magnificat. It is true that he would defeat and bind forever the ancient powers of sin and death, and that he would free the prisoners whom they had long held captive. It is true that this Child’s life and death would reveal the violence and injustice upon which every human kingdom depends, and open a better way to Paradise than so many towers of Babel. 

A ruin as a stable drives home the theological point: here is a child whose birth begins a new thing, opens a new path, heralds the dawn of a new day, in which all the works of every erstwhile power are thrown down. To see them ruined at the coming of this Prince of Peace is certainly cause for celebration, and for hope.

There are others, though, for whom the ruins make less a theological argument than a personal commentary, and for these people the ruins are not cause for celebration but rather for lament. No matter how corrupt or unjust it finally becomes, in human achievement there is still at least some spark of beauty, of creativity, of nobility, and sometimes quite a lot. Insofar as it is human at all, human achievement has its root in God’s own creative power. And therefore when it falls into ruin, it is only humane to lament.

For some, the lament is less for monuments and institutions than it is for personal griefs, failures, or losses. The ruins in these medieval and renaissance nativity scenes may as well be the tatters of the world I thought I knew, while suggesting that the world I live in now cannot possibly be even a shred of what I once enjoyed. These are people grieving a spouse, a parent, a child; people working through a divorce; experiencing an addiction; facing a cancer diagnosis or a bankruptcy. Perhaps they are staring down literal ruins after a wildfire or hurricane. 

For all of these, the ruins are too familiar for words, and they almost do not bear looking at. For these, the medieval and renaissance painters preach good news indeed: here, in the ruins, the Word is made flesh; God is born, the light shines in the darkness that the darkness comprehendeth not. Here, in the ruins — not somewhere else. Not in ivory palaces where everyone is well-off and well-adjusted. Right here, where it is cold and insecure and the ruins sigh only of failure, confusion, loss, and grief. Right here, this is where the Word is made flesh. 

And if I am here too, then I am not far from God after all. Rather, here in my ruins, I have a privileged position to behold how he works his love: in quiet, in gentleness, and among those who know heartbreak. So the painters offer consolation, too, in addition to commentary: for Christ to be born amongst the ruins makes them blessed who all likewise dwell in ruins, from now on and forever.

But of course the ruins are the setting, not the point, and this is the third insight these painters offer us: ruins do not have to stay ruins. Recorded history is full of significant restoration projects, from the walls of Jerusalem to the Houses of Parliament to Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, which reopened just a few weeks ago. 

Sometimes such a restoration is more a re-construction, even sometimes a redemption of sorts. Maybe you know about our Anglican cathedral in Zanzibar, on the coast of Tanzania. Begun in 1873 to celebrate the end of the slave trade, the cathedral was built directly over what had been the city’s largest slave market. The high altar was placed directly over what had been the market’s principal whipping post. The message is clear: here in a place where people were removed from human fellowship and bought and sold as livestock, we now partake of the sacrament of divine love; we are restored to one another as brothers and sisters, bearers of the image of God and members of one another.

So perhaps those painters were onto something, to paint the Christmas stable as a ruin, a shell. A ruin serves as a marker of something that was and is no longer. But more than that, such a stable suggests what is yet finally coming, by the will and power of the One who is born there. It is a sign of potential, of future fulfillment: the Christ child’s kingdom is new, certainly, but it is not destructive. In ways too mysterious even to guess, He takes what we have ruined, what we have destroyed, corrupted, poisoned, consumed for our own pleasure at others’ expense; He is born to take all of these things and make them good, make them whole; to restore them to us far more completely than we could ever desire or deserve.

So the ruin is not the end point of a long, sad story. Rather it is a chapter break, even a starting point — ruin is a harbinger of reunion and restoration, which purpose will be taken up by this Child as surely as Mary draws him to her breast. Ruin is where he is born. But he is born to make the desert bloom, to make cities rise from waste places, to make water flow from the rock, to make dry bones take flesh and live. For this Child is God-with-us, and where he is, there can be no more alienation, no more death, no more crying or pain or hurt. For his mercy, his forgiveness holds sway over every mere justice, and in his heart our hearts are finally at home.

This Christmas I invite you to draw near with faith to the Lord’s crib: to behold here the ruin of our world, perhaps even the ruin of your own soul; and to see in it not the end of all things, but the beginning of God’s work in you. Be assured, by the gentle touch of his grace, that work will be brought to completion, till the whole world be called “the redeemed of the Lord; a people sought out, a city not forsaken.”

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

This sermon was preached at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, on the Third Sunday of Advent, December 15, 2024.

Collect: Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings: Zephaniah 3:14-20, Ecce Deus (Canticle 9), Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

“Sing aloud, O daughter, Zion, rejoice and exult with all your heart!” “Therefore you shall draw water with rejoicing from the springs of salvation.” “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice.” Except for the Gospel, our readings today all sound the clear note of rejoicing. They are full of so much joy that when we heard the Gospel just now, I started to suspect that John the Baptist must not have gotten the memo. 

“Rejoice greatly, Rejoice, Rejoice always;” and John says, “You brood of vipers!” He urges the people to turn away from their besetting sins: tax collectors from greed, soldiers from extortion, the rich from hoarding. And he goes on, with images about axes lying at the root of trees, the unfruitful being thrown in the fire, the Messiah coming who will baptize not with water but with the Holy Spirit and fire. It comes as almost a bit of comic relief to hear St. Luke conclude, “So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.” Good News? Really?

On the face of it, our lessons stand in stark contrast to one another. But on further examination, they’re really not so far apart after all. For John, the good news is that a new life is in fact possible, that turning away from greed, extortion, hoarding, and other sins does not lead to a diminishment of human life but to an enlargement. For Paul and for Zephaniah, the same is true: that despite our many sins, God has chosen for us not justice but mercy; and in his mercy,  created a new society, a new humanity.

In many ways, explicit and implicit, the season of Advent makes it clear to us that all the good news, all the prophecies, all the exhortations to joy and hope, all coalesce in the person of Jesus Christ, the Incarnate Son of God — so his coming birth is an occasion of great significance, a feast of high celebration and thanksgiving, that opens our eyes, opens doors of possibility beyond whatever confines or constraints we currently experience. This is the reason for so much happiness and joy in our readings and in the Christian celebration of Christmas.

But if you’re like most other reasonably normal human beings, all this is frequently more difficult than it sounds. Despite the great theological depth and nuance of what Christmas celebrates, our wider culture seems to take the holiday as an excuse to tell us all how to feel: How many seasonal paper coffee mugs are plastered with words like “joy!” and “peace on earth!”? And how much incessant jangling muzak everywhere you go implicitly demands that we put on a smile and look the very picture of holiday cheer as the price of admission to polite society? 

Newspaper editorials, political speeches, and advertisements are all full of mysterious references to “this time of year,” as if we all just understand that this is a time to pretend that serious disagreement doesn’t define our public life, that long histories of abuse and neglect simply take a vacation right about now, that the hospitals aren’t full and mom isn’t an alcoholic, and dad isn’t dying, and I can get away with neglecting my health for a little bit longer. All this just gets swept under the rug in a collective decision to go stark raving mad, fa la lalling all the way — and if we don’t consent to the madness, or happen to face some inconveniently timed personal crisis, then the implication is we “just haven’t really gotten into the spirit of the season yet,” and well-meaning friends think all we need is a peppermint spice latte to cheer us up.

If this is you this year, or if this has ever been you, then I’m delighted to tell you, the Church, anyway, is not here to tell you how to feel, at Christmas or at any other time. Well that’s a relief, you might say, but then why go to so much trouble telling me to rejoice all the time? Or, for that matter, telling me to repent? It sounds like you want me to feel good and then bad, or maybe it’s bad and then good — either way all the back-ing and forth-ing makes me seasick.

And the Church replies, Yes! This is exactly the problem: as human beings we are captive to our emotions, desires, wants, and fears; captive to the up and down rollercoaster of our hearts, our material needs, and the attention economy by which modern capitalism runs. The Gospel we preach is a Gospel of freedom: freedom to move and be shaped according to the goodness of God, and not according to the myriad ways we have learned to shame, manipulate, or coerce certain responses out of ourselves and our neighbors.

That may not sound like much of a difference, but it’s really critical and quite profound. The Church’s exhortation to rejoice at the coming of the Savior is not a command to put on a happy face, no matter your present pains or anxieties. Rather it is to suggest that the Kingdom of God is built of deeper, more lasting architecture than my own condition at any given moment. And, further, that in this deeper, more lasting architecture, even my present pains and anxieties, by some great mystery, have some coherence: they are not detractors, not evidence to the contrary, rather they sing in harmony with God’s peace. And whether I feel like singing or not, that this is cause for joy. If I cannot now take up the song, then it will be waiting for me when I am ready, And when I do finally open my mouth, I will discover that I have indeed been singing all along.

Because — and this is a yet deeper mystery — as human beings, as the world was created, our natural state is not the neutral posture of dispassionate observation so beloved by scientists, judges, and journalists alike. Our natural state is rather one of continual joy and wonder at all that God has made, at the heights of beauty of which creation is capable and the dazzling complexity of human personality and ingenuity; to rest in a loving thankfulness offered in praise back to God. 

The Gospel we preach, the Gospel Christmas celebrates, makes it possible to affirm that even grief and loss have been visited by Emmanuel, God-with-us, and that by his touch they blossom and grow in ways we cannot begin to guess or control. Freedom in Christ means, among other things, a restoration to this natural state of rest, where wonder and love comes as easily as breathing, and peace is deep enough to hold and encompass every pain and anxiety.

So, on this third Sunday of Advent, whether you welcome or resist today’s many exhortations to rejoice, I pray that at some point in this coming Christmas season, a door opens for you, from whatever your present circumstances may be to the wide world of grace and love which God has placed at the root of each soul and every created thing. That in whatever narrow place you find yourself, the horizon begins to grow and new possibilities emerge of forgiveness and faith, just as the one born in the manger will rise from the dead and break every chain. And, that something of your self will be restored to you, which perhaps you did not know that you had lost.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

This sermon was preached at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, on November 24, 2024, the feast of Christ the King (Last Sunday after Pentecost/Proper 29). Today’s feast, following so shortly our national elections a few weeks ago, provided a natural occasion to reflect on power, vulnerability, and the Gospel.

Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, whose will it is to restore all things in your well-beloved Son, the King of kings and Lord of lords: Mercifully grant that the peoples of the earth, divided and enslaved by sin, may be freed and brought together under his most gracious rule; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Readings: Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14, Revelation 1:4b-8, John 18:33-37

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In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

Today’s readings present probably the highest contrast of any set of readings in the lectionary: the Old Testament, the Psalm, the passage from Revelation, are all highly exalted in tone, with royal imagery and language of great power and dominion. Reading these lessons, one is in no doubt about the ultimate authority of God or of his chosen. “His throne was fiery flames, a thousand thousands served him, the court sat in judgement and the books were opened. The Lord is King, he has put on splendid apparel. Lo, he comes with clouds descending; to him be glory and dominion, for ever and ever.” 

And then we get to the Gospel, which takes place mere hours before Jesus is crucified. Yes, he and Pilate are discussing kingship, and what sort of king Jesus might be. But it’s impossible for the context to fade into the background. This is not a meeting of two equals. Pilate is a citizen of Rome, the governor of Judea, appointed by Emperor Tiberius Caesar himself to rule in Caesar’s name. And Jesus is the son of a provincial carpenter turned itinerant rabbi, arrested and condemned. He appears before Pilate a prisoner, whose life hangs on a word.

Today is the feast of Christ the king. The whole force of the other lessons, certainly the collect, our hymns, the choir’s anthems, all of them drive us to see that here in Pilate’s chambers, the prisoner is the one who is lord of all; while the chosen deputy of the most powerful man on earth we are meant to think merely a mid-level bureaucrat at best.

No starker contrast exists in all the church’s calendar of Sundays, feast days, or readings. There’s no way around it, this level of contrast is hard to understand. Sure, we can acknowledge it with our minds, but what on earth does it mean?

Part of the challenge, I think, is that at this point in our history, it’s hard to imagine a king of any sort; at least, a king like the ancient world would have known. In the Year of our Lord 2024, almost every monarch we’re aware of is figurehead of a limited, constitutional monarchy: useful for raising awareness of charitable causes, and of course endless fodder for tabloids and talk shows, but not usually much else. Meanwhile in this country we have famously done away with monarchs altogether. Every schoolchild grows up learning about the American Revolution: when effigies of King George were burned, many of his officials and sympathizers were tarred and feathered, and the new nation established itself on principles from the Roman republic, not the Roman empire. 

So we can perhaps be forgiven some confusion when it comes to the feast of Christ the King: not only is the contrast between ancient almighty royalty and a condemned prisoner too much for our brains to hold, the whole idea of a king is foreign to us in the first place.

Maybe it’s worth digressing at this point, to say that no form of government is explicitly or implicitly endorsed by God, not in the Christian religion at any rate; you might say Christianity is “governmentally agnostic.” And indeed, across history it is frequently the case that Christianity spreads most quickly and roots most deeply in places with oppressive governments rather than in those with benevolent ones. Which is not to endorse oppressive regimes, only to observe that the Christian Gospel resonates with people there in a way that it frequently doesn’t elsewhere, or not to the same degree. 

As Americans, no matter where we locate ourselves on the political spectrum, it is often difficult to remember that we have not perfected the art of civilization, that our ideas are not necessarily the best, that God is not reading the New York Times taking notes on how better to run the universe (though sometimes I wish he would). 

It’s worth keeping all this in mind, especially at times when we feel the stakes are particularly high, when our choices as a nation have real consequences for good or ill across the globe. They do, of course: I am not suggesting that our choices for good or ill do not matter. Only that we worship a God who is quite capable of making good from evil, of snatching life from the jaws of death, of affirming that a prisoner awaiting his death sentence is actually King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

And perhaps this is exactly the point, or at least for us, here in Berkeley, on this year’s feast of Christ the King at any rate: we cannot imagine a king, yet we own this one as high above all earthly authority. We cannot hold the contrast between Caesar’s prisoner and the lord of all creation, yet we worship him as God and nourish our souls with his flesh and blood. The impossibility of all this, the necessity of affirming it all anyway, must finally break something in us: our assumptions, our expectations, even perhaps something of our aspirations. 

The Gospel of Jesus Christ and the quest for political power and influence do not and can never go hand in hand. Because the Christ of the Gospel does not pull the levers of earthly power; rather he is crushed by those who do. And if you and I would worship him truly, we must first ask, whom have I crushed, and how might I turn and serve them? And then, who else is crushed by the powers that be? Can I find it in myself not just to serve them, but to adore them as those in whom Christ is especially visible? If I can adore the refugee, can I adore the fentanyl addict? If I can adore the addict, can I adore the unpleasant uncle whose mind is rotted with social media and memes? Maybe, but I suspect most of us have work to do. I certainly do.

It is true that in this life, in this world, especially perhaps in Berkeley, California, we find ourselves in possession of a certain amount of power, whether we asked for it or not. We try to do good with this power, we seek to wield it for the benefit of others. But power is a double-edged sword, and the tighter we grip it, the longer we wield it, the more damage it does to ourselves. 

Christ the King teaches us, the only thing power is finally good for is for giving away: for casting down our crown before the only one who can wear it without being corrupted by it: the One who humbled himself to become a servant, even to death on a cross.

This is a beautiful vision, I think, and offers an important alternative to the world we live in. Today there seem to be two prevailing responses to woundedness, vulnerability (well, three, if you count denial): First, we can insist that we ought not be vulnerable, that it is beneath our dignity, and then rise up in anger at those we perceive have wounded us. Or, second, we can wear our victimhood as a badge of honor, and thereby turn it into its own source of power and corruption. But this is really the same as the first, and both mean we are finally consumed: whether consumed by anger or by pride, the result is the same.

Christ before Pilate, Christ the King offers a third way: refusing on the one hand to take vengeance for our wounds, refusing on the other hand to justify ourselves by them, we can instead just stop, and behold them. They are wounds, they are injuries, to be sure. But as the wound in Christ’s side made his heart visible, even, as early commentators put it, opening passage to the heart of God, so our wounds put us in touch with what is truest and best about ourselves, and in the process make our hearts open to the presence of God and to our fellow human beings. 

The mystery is, that while this makes us vulnerable to attack, abuse, misunderstanding, and all sorts of villainy, yet it is the only way to be faithful to the example of our Lord. And, as the cross is his eternal and glorious throne throughout all worlds, so wherever you feel most vulnerable, most afraid, is the place his glory abides in you, is the beachhead of his kingdom on earth. 

Do not leave that shore, do not seal it up, do not make it your brand, do not charge admission, for heaven’s sake do not muster an army there or declare yourself king. Instead let it be the place where you continually draw water from the well of life, where the sun breaks across the sea and the wilderness blossoms as the rose.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.

This sermon was preached on Sunday, October 27, 2024, at St. Mark’s, Berkeley, the twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25 of Year B).

Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, increase in us the gifts of faith, hope, and charity; and, that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Readings: Jeremiah 31:7-9, Hebrews 7:23-28, Mark 10:46-52

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In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen:

As we approach the end of the church year, our march through the Gospel of Mark is beginning to come to an end. On the last Sunday before Advent, we’ll see Jesus before Pilate mere hours before his crucifixion and death. Today, Jesus has set his face to go to Jerusalem, and he is making his final approach to the holy city, up the road from Jericho. By now he is immensely popular, and crowds follow him everywhere. It’s lost on no one that this is a royal road, traveled by everyone from Joshua to David and many holy prophets.

A blind beggar, Bartimaeus, has taken up his regular station by the road. He hears a crowd, and when he learns that it’s Jesus of Nazareth, he shouts, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” People try to shut him up. The teacher is important, he is on his way to Jerusalem, he has much on his mind, he cannot be bothered. What they really mean is, they are embarrassed to be sharing space with someone so obviously disturbed. “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” And of course Jesus does: he heals Bartimaeus, and shames the crowd.

Then the last line makes a critical turn: “Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your faith has made you well.’ Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.” Jesus says “Go,” but Bartimaeus doesn’t, he joins the crowd and follows. Where are they going? To Jerusalem. What will happen in Jerusalem? Jesus will be betrayed, arrested, tried, sentenced to death, crucified, buried, and after three days raised from the dead. What does Bartimaeus do with his restored sight? He follows Jesus to Jerusalem. The first sight Bartimaeus sees is the passion and death of the Son of God.

See the point Mark is making here: the crowd, full of their own importance at being near a figure like Jesus, has no room for a person like Bartimaeus. He is a distraction to them, an obstacle, that they need to remove. But Jesus stops for him. For Jesus, Bartimaeus isn’t in the way at all, he isn’t a distraction, he isn’t an obstacle. For all we know, Bartimaeus may have been the whole reason Jesus chose this road in the first place. Jesus heals him, restores his sight, and now Bartimaeus cannot bear to be parted from his healer.

I’m always moved by this, and I can’t help but wonder if you ever feel this way, extraneous to the purpose, that your presence is somehow a distraction to God or a bother to the church? I do sometimes, I’ll admit. God has a lot of things to be busy with, and here I am complaining about my lowly problems? Or maybe somebody told you that God only helps those who help themselves, or that you have to be good at your job to be worthy of love, or that the kingdom is only for the with-it and the well-adjusted.

Recently another survey came out, reporting why people feel uncomfortable in church. The most popular response? “I’m not really sure if I believe or not, oo it would be hypocritical of me to come to church.” One woman was quoted, saying, “I’d go to church more often, only everyone else always seems to know what they’re talking about, and most of the time I haven’t got a clue.” One way or another we convince ourselves we are a distraction to Jesus and therefore that we don’t belong anywhere near the way he is going or the people who follow him.

But here’s the thing. Just as for Jesus, blind Bartimaeus was not only, not in the way, but was the way Jesus was going, so it is for you and me. The human race, and not just the human race, but individual, messed up humans, are the way Jesus is going: the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us: to know and love and call and heal and redeem John, and Peter, and Mary, and Martha, and Blake, and you too. Human beings are not in the way, not a distraction; human beings are the way Jesus is going.

So fully is this the case that we cannot truly understand the cross otherwise, or the resurrection, or anything else in the Gospels or the church’s great treasure-house of faith. Jesus comes to seek out every place – every place! – where we humans have managed to find ourselves: in sickness, in health; in prisons, on crosses — innocent or guilty — in palaces, in universities; in hospitals and psychiatric wards; under bridges, by the side of the road; in hell itself. These are all stops on Jesus’s way, because you and I are his destination, the subjects of his whole attention and love.

No matter how major or minor our concerns, how embarrassed or shameful we feel, how frustrating our aggravations or how full of longing our spirits, you and I are never a distraction to Jesus, never extraneous to his purpose. I hope that’s some comfort to you. It is to me. But if that’s the case, then we must not be a distraction to ourselves. We cannot let our many cares turn us away from Jesus’s approach. 

“Ah, Jesus, I see you coming, first let me take out the trash.” 

“No, now is the time for healing, for cure of souls.”

“Oh but I haven’t finished correcting the leaflets, there are people I have to take care of, I’m at odds with my sister, I’m addicted to painkillers, work is stressful. Jesus, I know what you want to do, but other people need you more than me; really, I’ll just be in the way, please come back another time.” 

“No, your heart is the Jerusalem I’m bound for, within you is the Calvary where I must die. Your life, messy and distracted though it be, is what I am here to offer my Father; and my resurrection shall be yours, too.”

“What? My heart, your Calvary? Is it really that bad?”

“It’s not a question of badness. I am here to shine light in every dark place. You can dimly guess where those places are. But I made them, I know them, I love them. I planted them to grow and bear fruit, and soon they shall. Watered with my blood, they shall no longer grow thorns but figs; lit by my face, they shall no longer wither in darkness but flourish as the garden of the Lord. They shall be his own temple, the place where his glory rests forever.”

We must not shrink from this touch. Though we recoil at the suggestion, we must not shut our hearts to their being the Calvary on which the Lord comes to die. Put aside fear and feelings of unworthiness, busy-ness and worry, and let Jesus offer himself to his Father within your heart. He will carry with him all your cares and loves, your life and your world, through hell to the very throne of heaven. When the stone is rolled away and you emerge into the garden of his delight, you yourself will be larger, with room for multitudes within.

So it is with all the redeemed: each person is a door to the kingdom of God. At the end of the Chronicles of Narnia, our heroes are surrounded by their enemies in a last battle they seem sure to lose. They retreat into a rickety stable at the center of the field. But instead of meeting their demise, they find the stable is bigger inside than it was outside, there is no roof but sky overhead, with green grass underfoot. A voice calls them further up and further in, to enter an ever-larger world, where even enemies become friends.

So it is with you and me. Like Bartimaeus, Jesus opens our eyes to see what is there to be seen. Bartimaeus found his vision immediately filled with the Lord’s road to Jerusalem, his passion and death. When our eyes are healed we will see no less. But the vision does not stop there, it grows: what Jesus begins in my heart, in yours, opens yet further, farther, to realms of light, of joy, beyond all telling: where crying and pain are no more, and all evil is made good; where all flesh shall see the salvation of our God.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit: Amen.