Announcing “Advent with the Beginning of Luke,” a new daily devotional book for your Advent observance. Entries from December 1st through Christmas follow the first two chapters of the Gospel according to Luke – from the birth announcements of John and Jesus to the songs of Mary and Zechariah to the birth of Jesus, and culminating with the presentation in the temple. This Advent study will make a meaningful addition to your personal or group preparation for the feast of the Incarnation.Continue reading “Advent with the Beginning of Luke”→
Performed at St. Mark’s in Mystic, CT on Sunday, December 18, 2016
In an homage to the preferred story-telling method of one of my writing heroes, Aaron Sorkin, this new Christmas pageant takes place during a rehearsal for a traditional Christmas pageant. Over the course of the play, the traditional elements of the pageant get untangled from each other and we distill the stories as told by Matthew and Luke.Continue reading “The Best Christmas Pageant Never (A New Christmas Pageant Script)”→
Sermon for Sunday, June 2, 2013 || Proper 4C || Luke 7:1-10
Here’s a common situation in this day and age. For one reason or another – say, you’ve got to figure out how many packages of plastic cups to get for a party – you find yourself needing to do long division. Your phone’s battery is dead, so the calculator app is gone too. You flip over your shopping list and put pen to paper, and then you stop and realize that you have no idea how to do long division. You learned in fourth grade, but (wow) was that a long time ago. Has anyone else had that experience?
So, if basic math escapes us sometimes because we haven’t thought about it in a long time, I’d hazard a guess that we sometimes also lose sight of the basics of being followers of Jesus Christ.
Today, I’d like to get back to the basics. I’m going to talk about faith – specifically about how faith works in our lives. Hopefully, at the end of this sermon we will all rejoice that, while faith seems like an abstract, ephemeral concept, faith is in truth the fuel that fires our lives.
To start this little discussion about faith, we need to clear up one minor issue. In the English language the word “faith” is a noun. This grammatical construction makes it normal for us to ask a question like “Do you have faith?” Faith here is the object of your possession: “Yes, I have faith.” This sounds like completely correct and acceptable English, right? The trouble is, while faith is a noun, it should be a verb. I should be able to say “I’m going faith-ing today” or “We faith-ed yesterday and we’re going to faith again tomorrow.” But those sentences sound really strange, don’t they? I wish they didn’t. The word “faith” is a noun but whenever you use it, I hope you will remember it should be a verb.
Here’s why. We can possess things like concert tickets and hiking boots, but such possessions just sit on the counter or in the closet until we need to use them. If we have faith in the same way we have concert tickets, then we run the risk of storing our faith in the kitchen cupboard until we think we need it. But faith doesn’t work like that. Faith cannot be stored up or hoarded. We might get into situations where we say, “If I just had a little more faith…” But this turns faith into a commodity, something we can trade for something else. That’s not how faith works.
Thinking of faith as a verb removes it from the kitchen cupboard and puts it in our actions. We cannot store up or hoard our actions like we can our possessions. Rather, each action tumbles into the next in a never-ending stream. The problem we run into here is that, since the word faith isn’t actually a verb, we have trouble imagining what faith as action looks like. You know exactly what I mean when I say, “I saw someone running on my way to church this morning.” But you’d have difficulty conjuring up the image if I said, “I saw someone faith-ing on my way to church this morning.”
Because of this difficulty, I’d like to invite you to imagine with me a reality that we don’t often think about. When God created animals, God gave us all sorts of biological systems that allow us to live. The respiratory system lets us breath, the circulatory system cycles our blood through our bodies, the digestive system turns food into nutrients. There’s the nervous system, the endocrine system, the lymphatic system and so on. But we were made in God’s image and likeness, which means we have one more system that other animals don’t have. We have a spiritual one to go along with all our biological ones. We have a faith system.
The faith system works a lot like our muscular system. We all have muscles (yes, even scrawny guys like me). We need our muscles to do simple tasks like getting out of bed, standing up, even smiling. We also need our muscles to do more difficult tasks like running a marathon or lugging a couch to a third floor walkup. Exercising hones and strengthens our muscles, making them more durable and less likely to fatigue. But whether we exercise or not, our muscles still put in work day in and day out.
So, too, with our faith system. The faith system spurs us to seek out life-affirming relationships, to support one another in our daily walks with God, to reach out to those in need, to welcome anyone into our midst, and to share with them the good news of God’s love. The faith system also sustains us through dry, desolate periods, giving us enough endurance not to give up quite yet. Like our muscles, our faith can get weary and fatigued. But also like our muscles, we can exercise our faith to hone and strengthen it, to make it more a part of our actions and less a thing sitting on the shelf in the kitchen cupboard.
If we’re going to exercise our faith, then we should figure out exactly what we mean when we say the word. We’ve already said how faith is a noun that should be a verb. Faith then is the action that happens when we participate in our relationships with God. Faith borrows the best parts of trust, confidence, and humility and molds them into our response to God’s presence in our lives. From trust, our faith borrows the willingness to give ourselves over to the power of another. From confidence, our faith borrows the courage to take the leap into God’s waiting arms. And from humility, our faith borrows the recognition that God (and not we ourselves) initiates the action that results in the giving ourselves up to God.
In today’s Gospel lesson, the Roman centurion actively engages his faith system. He trusts that Jesus can help him. He has courage actually to do something about that trust. And he shows his humility when he sends friends to Jesus to tell him he need not come all the way to the house to heal the slave. The centurion displays such strong faith that even Jesus is amazed. But no matter how strong or how weak our faith is, we each have a faith system that God gave us so we would be able to join God in relationship. The more we exercise our faith system – the more we act out our faith – the deeper can we go in our relationships with God.
Imagine if we exercised our faith in the same way we exercise our muscles. Going to the gym once doesn’t do much, but going every other day can work wonders on our bodies. God yearns for us to have this kind of dedication to our lives of faith. When we are serious about exercising our faith systems, we build time into every day to be in prayer with God. We start with faith and allow it to motivate all our other actions. We take part in the act of worship, both on Sunday mornings and in the moments of our days when our faith shows us special signs of God’s presence that our eyes alone might not see.
I invite you today to remember that faith is a noun but should be a verb. Faith is not a commodity or a possession. Faith is the active component of our relationships with God. God loves us and we love God. What could be better than cultivating that love everyday? What could be better than exercising our faith system so that we resonate deeper and deeper with God’s movement in our lives?
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe
And hope and fear,—believe the aged friend,—
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love. (Robert Browning, “A Death in the Desert”)
…Listening In…
Jesus told this parable: “A man owned a fig tree planted in his vineyard. He came looking for fruit on it and found none. He said to his gardener, ‘Look, I’ve come looking for fruit on this fig tree for the past three years, and I’ve never found any. Cut it down! Why should it continue depleting the soil’s nutrients?’ The gardener responded, ‘Lord, give it one more year, and I will dig around it and give it fertilizer. Maybe it will produce fruit next year; if not, then you can cut it down.’ ” (Luke 13:6-9; context)
…Filling Up…
Have you ever been driving your car for a while and then realize all of a sudden that you don’t remember anything that happened in the previous ten minutes? More than once when I used to drive up and down I-79 in the middle of Everything-Looks-the-Same, West Virginia, I would do just that. I would look out the windshield and surprise myself with the uncomfortable fact that I was on a highway in the midst of many large, metal automobiles traveling 73 mph. Let’s see: the little Hyundai I drove back then weighed 2366 pounds. Toss in another 180 pounds for passenger and luggage. Converting to metric and employing some rules from Sir Isaac, I find that my car’s momentum was 3850N-s (that’s Newton-seconds, whatever those are). Now, I don’t know much about physics, but that seems like a lot of momentum, and I have seen my share of high-speed motor vehicle collisions. How could I ever fail to pay attention for ten seconds, let alone ten minutes?
If I can’t pay attention when doing something potentially dangerous such as driving, how often do I let everything that passes me simply flatten into mere scenery, leached of color and motion? How often do I lapse into the background of my own life? How often do I look at people and not see them or hear a voice and not listen for its meaning and timbre? The answer: pretty darn often, because life is so much easier on autopilot. Easier, but then again, I’m not sure that counts as living.
This week we are going to talk about the difference between simply existing and living – living into the fullness that God yearns for each of us. So stay tuned.
…Praying For…
Dear God, your encounter with Saul left him forever changed. Help me to recognize the changes that you have caused to happen in my life and be thankful for them. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, ready to step into the spotlight of my life and shine in the brilliance of your presence.
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can… (J.R.R. Tolkein, The Lord of the Rings)
…Listening In…
They said to each other, “Weren’t our hearts on fire when he spoke to us along the road and when he explained the scriptures for us?” (Luke 24:32; context)
…Filling Up…
Yesterday, we talked about Bartimaeus, a blind man who doesn’t start making his way down the road until Jesus restores his sight. Now, most of us persist in our spiritual blindness even as we grope along looking for the road, so it’s a good thing that you don’t actually need to be able to see to start making your way down the road.
In fact, there’s a story that deals with just that. On the day of the resurrection, two of Jesus’ followers, Cleopas and another unnamed person, travel home from Jerusalem to Emmaus (half a day’s walk, give or take). These two fairly unimportant folks are walking down the road when they meet another traveler. We know this newcomer is Jesus, but they don’t see him for who he is. While they are walking along the road, they are blind to the reality of the Risen Christ in their midst.
When they sit down at table later on and Jesus breaks the bread, they recognize him with their eyes. Then they say something peculiar: “Weren’t our hearts on fire when he spoke to us along the road…” While we are traveling along the way of Jesus Christ, we rely on more than just our sight to guide us. It is not until they see Jesus with their eyes that these two disciples realize something inside of them told them what was going on hours earlier on the road. Call it intuition. Call it instinct. Call it the presence of God pulling each of them and each of us into closer relationship.
This pull happens while we are traveling down the road with Jesus – we don’t need to see it to feel the pull tugging us back to God.
…Praying For…
Dear God, your son’s presence made the travelers’ hearts burn within them. Help me to recognize that same fire within me whenever I start to doubt your presence in my life. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, strengthened by your love and able to walk another day on weary feet
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you;
Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.
…Listening In…
Now there was a man named Joseph who was a member of the council. He was a good and righteous man. He hadn’t agreed with the plan and actions of the council. He was from the Jewish city of Arimathea and eagerly anticipated God’s kingdom. This man went to Pilate and asked for Jesus’ body. Taking it down, he wrapped it in a linen cloth and laid it in a tomb carved out of the rock, in which no one had ever been buried. It was the Preparation Day for the Sabbath, and the Sabbath was quickly approaching.The women who had come with Jesus from Galilee followed Joseph. They saw the tomb and how Jesus’ body was laid in it, then they went away and prepared fragrant spices and perfumed oils. (Luke 23:50-56; context)
…Filling Up…
This Holy Week we are be meditating on the fourteen “Stations of the Cross.” The Opening and Sending sections of this week’s Devos, as well as the italicized verses at the end of each station come from the Episcopal “Way of the Cross” service found in the Book of Occasional Services. (If you’d like to hear the complete work, check out the music page.)
Station 13: The body of Jesus is placed in the arms of his mother
Daughter of Jerusalem,
Cradle your Son.
“My heart is poured out in grief,
My eyes are spent, but my sorrow’s just begun.
My name shall be ‘Mara.’
Bitter I have become.
O Death, I feel your sting,
But is it true that the grave’s
Power will be undone?”
Her tears run down her cheek: And she has none to comfort her.
Station 14: Jesus is laid in the tomb
Grieving,
They pull the thorns from Jesus’ head;
Not quite believing
Their way, their truth, their live is dead.
The future looming:
A void where light is never shed.
Now they’re entombing
The bridegroom who will never wed.
You will not abandon me to the grave: Nor let your Holy One see corruption.
Closing Antiphon
…Praying For…
Dear God, your holy Son relinquished his life to destroy death, and he died so I might live. Help me to die to self each day and live for him he rose again on the third day. As I wait and watch by the tomb, grant me the grace to remember his presence in my life, in whose name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, glorying in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, our life, and resurrection.
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you;
Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.
…Listening In…
A huge crowd of people followed Jesus, including women, who were mourning and wailing for him. Jesus turned to the women and said, “ Daughters of Jerusalem, don’t cry for me. Rather, cry for yourselves and your children. (Luke 23:27-28; context)
…Filling Up…
This Holy Week we are be meditating on the fourteen “Stations of the Cross.” The Opening and Sending sections of this week’s Devos, as well as the italicized verses at the end of each station come from the Episcopal “Way of the Cross” service found in the Book of Occasional Services. (If you’d like to hear the complete work before Friday, check out the music page.)
Station 7: Jesus falls a second time
Again my Lord falls to the ground,
Lays in the dust;
Underneath the cross’s beams he
Calls me to trust
That his words are true, despite his frailty.
Surely this humility
Is the true life-giving way
To serve as Jesus served.
He bears our iniquities
For we like sheep have gone astray
And have served only ourselves.
“But as for me, I am a worm and no man: Scorned by all and despised by the people.”
Station 8: Jesus meets the women of Jerusalem
“Daughters of Jerusalem,
Weep not for me;
But weep for yourselves
For your children, let your tears fall freely.”
How vast is your grace, Lord?
As vast as eternity?
Blessed are you who wipe
Away every tear from our eyes.
Joy shall our children see.
Those who sowed with tears: Will reap with songs of joy.
…Praying For…
Dear God, your holy Son took up the cross and in its weight bore the weight of the world. Help me to find the will to help bear the weight of some of this world’s suffering, for the sake of Jesus Christ, in whose name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, glorying in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, our life, and resurrection.
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you;
Because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.
…Listening In…
Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, “This boy is assigned to be the cause of the falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that generates opposition so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your innermost being too.” (Luke 2:34-35; context)
…Filling Up…
This Holy Week (as well as yesterday and today and tomorrow), we are be meditating on the fourteen “Stations of the Cross.” The Opening and Sending sections of this week’s Devos, as well as the italicized verses at the end of each station come from the Episcopal “Way of the Cross” service found in the Book of Occasional Services. (If you’d like to hear the complete work before next Friday, check out the music page.)
Station 3: Jesus falls the first time
Humbling
Himself, becoming most obedient;
And he is stumbling,
In human likeness was he sent
Now he’s falling,
The cross’s weight will not relent
And still he’s calling:
Return to God in love, repent
“Surely he has borne our grief: And carried our sorrows.”
Station 4: Jesus meets his afflicted mother
Daughter of Jerusalem,
Handmaid of the Lord:
See your holy Son
Beaten, stricken, and deplored.
How vast is your ruin?
As vast as the sea?
Blessed are you who mourn
For in the light of the Lord
Comforted shall you be.
“A sword will pierce your own soul also: And fill your heart with bitter pain.”
…Praying For…
Dear God, your holy Son knew the scorn of the world as well as the love of his mother. Help me always to remember there are people who love me, even during dark days. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, glorying in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom is our salvation, our life, and resurrection.
O Lord, you are my Lord and my God, and I have never seen you. You have made and remade me and bestowed on me all the good that I possess. (St. Anselm, Proslogion)
…Listening In…
After taking the bread and giving thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19; context)
…Filling Up…
This Lent, we are exploring our faith by running through the alphabet. Today, “R” is for Ritual. This word gets a bad rap. More often than not, the word “empty” precedes it, as in “such and such was just empty ritual.” The connotation here is that ritual happens simply for show; there’s no depth or meaning in it because rote repetition has ground these things out.
Thankfully, the United States has a national pastime called baseball. And baseball proves once and for all that ritual, no matter how repetitive, is most certainly not empty. Every ballplayer has his own personal ritual when he comes up to bat. So-and-so spits on his batting gloves and slaps his hands together between each pitch. That other guy unfastens and refastens his batting gloves half a dozen times before stepping to the plate. A certain hurler walks once around the pitching mound in a clockwise direction before every delivery.
There is nothing empty about these rituals. What seem to baseball outsiders as odd idiosyncrasies, are to purists the signs of the undiluted nuance of the game. The players’ rituals help them focus on the incredibly difficult tasks of throwing a ball at nearly 100 mph to a spot about three inches square or hitting that same ball after tracking it through all four of the dimensions.
Ritual in church is far from empty, as well. The repetitive action we take each time we enter the sanctuary helps us to focus on what is important in our lives, namely the ways God is moving in those lives and the services God is calling us to perform. So, play ball. Er…I mean, thanks be to God!
…Praying For…
Dear God, you are the presence that blesses our ritual with meaning and purpose. Help me to find the focus that ritual provides so that I can discern how you would have me use my life in your service. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, grateful for the word that you speak daily into my soul, the word that continues to create me and helps me to grow.
When you read God’s Word, you must constantly be saying to yourself, “It is talking to me, and about me.” (Søren Kierkegaard)
…Listening In…
After he took his seat at the table with them, he took the bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he disappeared from their sight. They said to each other, “Weren’t our hearts on fire when he spoke to us along the road and when he explained the scriptures for us?” (Luke 24:30-32; context)
…Filling Up…
The texts of the Bible have guided people for thousands of years. Before the earliest pieces of the Hebrew Scriptures (what many Christians call the “Old Testament”) were written down, the oral tradition guided people in their walks with God. Then the Hebrew Scriptures were compiled in written form and became the guiding documents for the faith of Israel. Those documents were the Bible for the folks who wrote the second part of the Christian Bible, what is commonly called the “New Testament.” The combined texts have come down through the centuries to us because people from the first telling of the story to today have known that it was important enough to save.
The Bible has been translated into hundreds of languages. It has easily outsold any other book on the planet. And yet, most people – even many who go to church every Sunday – don’t know much about it. Indeed, before I went to seminary, I had read perhaps thirty percent of it. Even with three years of seminary under my belt, I’ve never finished the entire thing (though I’m working on it right now). Even though the Bible is the most popular book of all time, the pages inside many of them have never been turned. The words have never been read. And because we haven’t turned those pages and read those words, we have missed out on encounters with the God who encountered all the people who filled those pages and wrote those words.
And so for the rest of this week, we are going to talk about a few things you might not know about the Bible. We’ll start tomorrow when we discuss the fact that the Bible isn’t really a book at all.
…Praying For…
Dear God, you write the pages of my life even as I read the pages of those whose lives you wrote in the past. Help me to use their knowledge and love of you to develop my own. In Jesus Christ’s name I pray. Amen.
…Sending Out…
I leave this moment with you, God, hoping for an encounter with you as I read about your presence in the lives of your people.
Because of this difficulty, I’d like to invite you to imagine with me a reality that we don’t often think about. When God created animals, God gave us all sorts of biological systems that allow us to live. The respiratory system lets us breath, the circulatory system cycles our blood through our bodies, the digestive system turns food into nutrients. There’s the nervous system, the endocrine system, the lymphatic system and so on. But we were made in God’s image and likeness, which means we have one more system that other animals don’t have. We have a spiritual one to go along with all our biological ones. We have a faith system.
Where the Wind... 