Entangled States

We’re really a work-a-day world here on Earth. A nothing burger in the Universe. The Sun is average, we’re average, not noteworthy at first glance at least – though the Moon’s presence does make things a little bit more interesting. (Other planets have moons, but they’re much smaller. We’re more of a double planet than other planets we know of.)

But aside from that, there’s nothing very special about us. Sort of like Bethlehem, or Jerusalem. For all the exalted language about either of them in the biblical narratives, they’re just not very impressive. There are much more beautiful, inspiring places on Earth. 

Even the old stories of the region focused on Mount Hermon as the place where the Angels fell to earth. That’s big mountain peak with year round snow. Mount Zion? It’s more a hill in a basin created by larger mountains that surround it.

And yet, that’s where God’s House was built. It’s where the drama of the Salvation of the Cosmos was centered. It’s the navel of the world – and our world is, by extension the navel of the Universe.

And it’s part of the story of Christmas that in our religious perspective, God made our little rocky planet holy and unique in all the Cosmos because it is where Jesus was Incarnate.

The steps of Jesus on our planet, the breath of Jesus lingering in our atmosphere means that we have a relationship with the Creator that no other place in Creation has.

There’s a direct link to the sermon video here.

https://vimeo.com/episcopalri/christmas12023

No matter where you are, you can find God. God is present in the quiet wind whispering through the dark and fragrant pine branches tonight. God is present in the candles glowing on the altar. God is present far out to sea on the crests of the foamy waves moving silently through the starry night upon the great deep. God is present in the little smile of a child anticipating the joys of tomorrow morning. God is present in the heart of the great-grandmother who sits by the fire and treasures the memories of Christmases long ago. God is present in the bread and the wine that we share with each other tonight, remembering the reason that Jesus came into this world. 
  
If you would know the true meaning of Christmas — look for signs of the Incarnation. God will show you that there is nothing that cannot be redeemed, nothing that God cannot love, including you and me. Even the part of us that we can’t love, God already does. That’s ultimately why the Incarnation is so important. And why we say Merry Christmas to each other with such unalloyed joy!

The video is posted here.

Happy Third Sunday of Advent. While I’m technically on Sabbatical right now, I’ve had to postpone the start because of issues that have arisen with an institution where I serve as a board member. But while I’m not able to be “for real” on Sabbatical, I’m trying to honor the spirit and doing a bit less right now. 

I hope you’ll understand that I’m going repost a sermon from three years ago. It’s about John the Baptist, arguably the greatest person, born of human parents to have lived. John pointed the way to Jesus with his entire life and coherence of that witness is an inspiration for all us.

You find a direct link to the sermon here.

“Hallmark” movies, especially the holiday ones, are ultimately about reconciled relationships. There’s a tension in the in lives of the characters or character and as the story unfolds the tension is generally resolved in a simple and profound way and the relationships between the characters in the story are restored. Often it involves some sort of forgiveness or reconciliation with other people or past events.

It’s emotionally satisfying because we are drawn into the stories and we start to care for the characters. And, more importantly, it touches a longing that we have in our own lives to have the broken parts of our stories transformed and restored too.

In Advent, particularly with the appearance of John the Baptizer, we see how God is going to accomplish this reconciliation between God and us, and between each other. Baptism and truth telling is a small thing, yet it has profound consequences for us and for the world in which we live. 

You can find a direct link to the sermon here.

Advent is about watching and hoping. But for what?

There is a light at the end of the tunnel and it’s spectacular! That belief, held stubbornly in spite of what seems to be going on around us right now, is the faith of the Church. 

We see a glimpse of that light at Christmas with all the joy and memory it brings, but the true light is fully revealed as Spring ends and the Summer begins. Which about when the fig tree would blossom.

Watch for the Fig tree’s blossom. It will blossom, even though the branches are barren right now. This barrenness is temporary. The light is truly coming into the world and Summer will burst forth.

You can go directly the sermon video here.

What does it mean to have power and authority over someone else if you are following Jesus? 

This is a huge question in the church. And one we are deeply uncomfortable answering. We give people power and authority but we don’t teach them, or have any real understanding of how they should hold and exercise it. And then we act surprised or even shocked when people to whom we give power and authority, with no training or even a working framework to understand what they have now, go off the rails and abuse their position. 

It happens way too often. I speak to you as someone who has had the duty to clean up the mess on a number of occasions.

Executive MBA programs teach that sort of thing, but they are working out of a different set of goals and assumptions. And they have, I imagine, a different expectation about what success looks like in their design.

If we don’t learn this in the daily life of the church, or in our seminary formation, where do we learn it?

I make a try at answering that question in the sermon this week.

You find a direct like to the sermon video here.

The parable of the talents, in Matthew’s Gospel, seems to be a blessing and endorsement of our modern economic life. Three slaves are given custody of various fortunes, some of them truly immense. They are told that eventually they will need to return what has been entrusted to them to their master when he returns. We’re told that their master is a hard man, seizing others property and taking the spoils of other people’s work.

When the master returns to settle accounts with his slaves (and the language is really that of slave, not servant) they present him with the fruits of their stewardship. Two of the slaves have used the fortunes to make new fortunes. One of the slaves simply does as instructed and keeps the money safe, but does nothing else with it. The master is incensed at that slave and turns him over to be tortured.

There are pretty standard ways to interpret this parable, and most of them have to do with our duty to return to God a good return on what God has graciously given us. And that’s probably why this parable is generally read during the yearly stewardship campaigns going on in most Episcopal parishes right now. But if you actually read the parable and take the details seriously, I’m not convinced that is how we’re supposed to make sense of what Jesus means to communicate.

In the sermon this week, I suggest some other ways of making sense of the parable, not as a commendation of investment savvy, but rather as an indictment of unjust economic systems. And I add that I think this parable is only sensible if it is seen through the lens of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of the person who tells it to us.

The direct link to the video is found here.

The Gospel reading this week, the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Bridesmaids, is not one of my favorites. That’s probably just my problem, and should in no way reduce the seriousness of the message that Jesus communicates to us in it. Jesus is warning us, as he often does, that we should be prepared for him to come unexpectedly, even in the middle of the night, and to be ready to greet him when he does.

In this parable neighbors are divided in to two groups, one which has prepared and one which has not. The ones who prepared for an unexpected delay (or turn of events) are called “wise” and the ones who didn’t are called “foolish”. And if entrance to the Kingdom of Heaven depended on one passing a test or doing a good work, then this would all make sense to me. But the thing is, the Kingdom of Heaven is only available to us because of God’s gracious gift; not because we do something to deserve it. And if God is going to gracious like that to us, sinners though we are, why should we, the “wise”, be gracious to our neighbors who made a bad choice?

I explore this question in the sermon, making note that it might be asking too much of the text to fully contain all of the teaching about the mechanics of our salvation in a short parable about “being ready” for the Lord to return. But even given that, I want to invite you to grapple with the text rather than sit passively to receive a gift from it. The willingness to grapple with the text, to struggle with it, is often a sign of our willingness to enter into a relationship with it. An unwillingness to struggle with something can mean that we’re starting to worship it… and only God is worthy of that sort of worship. (And God seems to want us to grapple with God as well.)

You can find the direct link to the video here.

We celebrate The Feast of All Saints this weekend. (We actually celebrated in the middle of the past week, but like most preachers, I’ve transferred the readings and the observance of the Feast to this Sunday.) All Saints historically falls on the first day of new year according to oldest calendars we have from Northern Europe. It’s a hinge between the final harvest days and beginning of the bitter cold.

This two-fold aspect to the season and Feast, mirrors an important truth about the lives the great Saints of the Church. It’s easy to remember the great deeds that the Saints accomplished in their lifetimes and to celebrate what they accomplished. But if we just do that we miss half the story. If you get a chance to read the writings of the Saints, at least the ones that we have managed to preserve, you can also hear of the great sufferings they endured and struggles that they experienced – even in their own beliefs about who God is and what God wants from us in our lives.

It’s that two fold aspect of the lives of the Saints that I explore in the sermon, inspired by the two differing versions we have the appointed Gospel reading for this weekend.

(You can find a direct link to the sermon video here.)