Making Room for Sorrow (Blue Christmas Sermon 17 December 2023)

“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.” (Luke 2:7)

 

There was no place for them. No room.

 

This year I find myself wondering a bit more about that particular detail of Luke’s Christmas story. Of course, it sets up one of our most cherished, enduring images of Christmas, depicted in art, in song, in countless home nativity sets: the stable with the holy family tucked inside, with animals looking on in wonder, and shepherds humbly kneeling, and the baby sweetly sleeping in his manger bed.

 

But that all takes place after what happens at the inn. After the tired, footsore man comes to the door, asking for lodging. After the innkeeper looks past him to the laboring young woman standing next to their donkey, bracing herself against its flank, breathing through another contraction. After the innkeeper tells them she has no room.

 

The innkeeper is, I imagine, a woman of the world. She has provided shelter for scores of travelers. Some have been delightful and easy guests, who appreciated her hospitality and paid on time; while others have, as Rumi, the poet, would say, “violently swept her house”,[i] leaving chaos in their wake. Over the years she has learned to size people up pretty quickly. And this couple – well, she can just tell. There is trouble ahead for them. She can see that they are marked for sorrow.

And because she has had plenty of her own – sorrow, that is – because she herself has suffered and lost precious things, because she knows how hard that can be on the heart, she’d just as soon they don’t stay with her. Easier to not let them in. She doesn’t have space for that...(read more)

 

The Good News Begins With... (Sermon preached 10 December 2023)

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”.

 That first line we heard in this morning’s Gospel reading is Mark 1:1. It’s the very first verse of his account of Jesus’ story. And then, after just a quick nod to the prophet Isaiah, at verse 4 we are up to John the Baptist. As my Biblical Studies professor used to say, Mark hits the ground running.

 

No genealogy, no angels appearing to virgins, no cousins getting together to swap pregnancy stories. No star, no shepherds in the field, no heavenly host, no nothing. If it had been up to Mark, there would be, God forbid, no creche to set on Christmas eve. No, for Mark, the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begins elsewhere.

 

“The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. This first verse of Mark’s Gospel is believed by many to actually be its title. But notice Mark doesn’t call it “the good news”. He calls it “the beginning of the good news”. That is important, and we’ll come back to it later.

 

For now, though, Mark is grabbing us by the hand, taking us up to a spot overlooking the Jordan River, and pointing to the crowd gathered on the shore and the masses still streaming down. “People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem” were going to see John, he says. It’s the 1st century Palestinian version of the 10 West at rush hour...(read more)

Those Who Love Us Into Being (Sermon preached 5 November 2023)

This All Saints’ Day service is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful things we do here at St. Matthew’s.

 

It’s beautiful because of the music…thank you, Choir, Orchestra, Dwayne. It’s beautiful because of the remembering, and naming, of those who have passed into the nearer presence of God, when we read the Necrology in a few minutes.

 

And it is beautiful, especially today, as our world is being torn apart by human violence, and there’s so much heartbreak and grief out there, because we are taking this time out, to come together, and just be here. Be here and remember these ones who have shown, in their lives, the goodness and wholeness that’s possible for human beings; the love, grace, generosity, compassion and courage, that are the imago dei – that of God, in each of us.

 

The Church has been commemorating the Feast of All Saints since the fourth century. Initially it was to honor the “capital S” Saints - apostles and heroes and martyrs. More recently, though, Anglican observance has been expanded to include the “lower case s” saints - those we love and see no longer, who have been especially important to us in our lives. Today we honor them, too.

 

In 1997, Fred Rogers, “Mr. Rogers” of children’s TV fame, received an Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement. In his acceptance speech, which you can find on YouTube, Mr. Rogers reminded that audience, filled with beautiful, creative, incredibly successful people, how important it is to remember those “small s” saints – who have been there for us along the way. The ones who have seen us, and supported us, and encouraged us.

He said to them, “All of us have special ones who have loved us into being...(read more)

Dressing for This Occasion (Sermon preached 15 October 2023)

About three weeks ago, an article ran in the New York Times about the dress code in the US Senate.

I know, you may well be sitting out there thinking “I can’t believe she is going to talk about that!” With the horrors that have been unfolding over the past week in southern Israel and the Gaza strip, and the humanitarian crises that are emerging, not to mention the possibility of broader conflict erupting in that part of the world, why bother with a topic that is seemingly so trivial?

 

Why dig into this troublesome parable we just heard from Matthew, a parable that seems not only irrelevant, but in the end, pretty disturbing? Why, when we are witnessing the worst that humans do to one another, why spend pulpit time talking about what people wear?

 

I am just going to ask you to bear with me, and trust that by the time we finish struggling through Jesus’ story about a host, a banquet, and an underdressed guest, we will have more of an idea of what it means to be faithfully present in the midst of this terrible situation...(read more)

Who Are We, St. Matthew's? (Sermon preached 24 September 2023)

Happy St. Matthew’s Day, everyone! Every year, on or around September 21, which is, technically, St. Matthew’s Feast Day, we celebrate this parish and this community. We gather, we give thanks for God’s grace and guidance over 83 years since the parish’s founding in 1941. And we hear this story of how it all began, for Matthew, from the Gospel that bears his name.

 

On the surface, it’s a simple story. A plot that can be reduced to five bullets:

• Jesus sees Matthew.

• Jesus invites Matthew to follow him.

• Matthew does.

• Jesus and Matthew have dinner together later, with friends, which causes a bit of a stir.

• Jesus clarifies his mission.

 

But you could probably build an entire sermon on every one of these five bullets. Now, don’t worry – I’m not going to be doing that this morning! I’m just going to lift up a couple of themes that they suggest – even possible sermon titles that can speak to who we are and want to be, I think, as a parish named for this particular saint...(read more)

 

Learning by Being Wrong (Sermon preached 20 August 2023)

I invite you to take just a moment, and think of a time when you were wrong about someone. 

Notice I didn’t ask if you can think of a time like that – if you made an assumption about a person based on a first impression, or something you heard about them, or something your grandmother once said about people who look the way that person looks or are from where that person is from, and it turned out you were wrong. 

I didn’t say if because at one time or another we all have been wrong about someone. Being wrong about people is an inevitable consequence of a skill all of us humans develop as we grow up and move around in the world. We simply don’t have time to do a deep dive with every person we meet. So we learn to size them up quickly. To look for and recognize certain cues, conscious and unconscious. And draw conclusions from them.

I see a man walking down the street dressed in a certain style, moving a particular way. My brain instantly processes that information, and makes educated guesses about his age, socio-economic class, health, gender orientation, maybe even the quality of person he is. Because I trust the data I’ve already filed in here (gesture to head). I might not be absolutely correct – but chances are I’ll be somewhere in the neighborhood.

If you are seeing me preach for the first time, you’ll notice I’m a white woman of a certain age who stands up fairly straight, smiles a lot, speaks pretty clearly, sometimes uses big words – and already you’ve sized me up! Warm. Good energy. Credible (hopefully). And you will trust your assessment. It is a totally normal process. We all do it...(read more)

What Jesus Does With Just This Much (Sermon preached 6 August 2023)

Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself (Matt 14:13). 

On our way to the Feeding of the Five Thousand, a miracle which, by the way, is attested in all four Gospels – everybody knows about it, not just church people –  we might want to pay particular attention to that opening line in Matthew’s account. Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. Obviously, Jesus has heard something. And seeing as how he needs to get away from everyone and everything, it sounds like that something might not be good.

 

Last week he was teaching up a storm. Rolling out parables, one after another, about the kingdom of heaven being like a mustard seed, or yeast, or a treasure hidden in a field, or a matchless pearl. But since then, something has happened. And no, it’s not good. In fact, it is really bad. In the 13-verse gap between last week’s parables and this morning’s story, Jesus has learned of the grisly execution of his cousin, John.

 

Herod Antipas, the Roman puppet governor of Galilee, at his own birthday party, became so enthralled by his stepdaughter’s dancing that he promised, in front of all of his guests, that he would give her whatever she wanted. And, coached by her mother, she asked for...(read more)

 

Treasured in the Gap (Sermon preached 23 July 2023)

“Beware the gaps in the lectionary!”A Biblical studies professor of mine once said that.

Beware those places in the Sunday readings where verses get skipped over. 

Okay, so if you are following along in the generic printed bulletins, you can’t tell that’s what happened a couple of minutes ago when Bruce read the Gospel. If you are reading from the online version, though, you can see the Scripture reference for this morning’s text is Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43.  Verses 31-35, right there in the middle of the passage, are left out.

And who, you may ask, decided to do this? The North American Consultation on Common Texts, in collaboration with the International English Language Liturgical Consultation, decided to do this! And they know what they are doing, right? 

I mean, all that’s in those five verses, between the story and Jesus’ explanation of it are a couple of “the kingdom of heaven is like” sayings, and a note that he liked teaching in parables. They don’t seem to have anything to do with this parable about a carefully planted field that gets contaminated under cover of darkness, and the meaning that his disciples, and you and I, are to draw from it. 

Still, I’m not sure they’ve done us any favors by taking that short cut to the tidy wrapping up of a story that on the surface seems pretty simple but, if we sit with it a bit longer, pretty challenging...(read more)

 

How We See (Sermon preached 2 July 2023)

I have a story to tell you. A fable, if you will, about a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. 

Once it had been a great order. However, as a result of waves of anti-monastic persecution during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth and twentieth, all of its branch houses were lost, and its ranks became so decimated that only five monks remained in the now decaying mother house: the abbot and four others. All of them were in their 80s, and clearly it was only a matter of time before the order would die out.

In the deep woods that surrounded the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town would occasionally use for a hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the elderly monks had become a bit psychic, so they could somehow always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. “The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in the woods again,” they would whisper to one another. 

At one such time, as the abbot agonized over the imminent death of his order, it occurred to him to go visit the hermitage. And ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery...(read more) 

 

Faith in Transitions (Sermon preached 11 June 2023)

About that story we all just heard in the reading from Genesis, where God tells Abram to leave country and kindred and go to a land that God is going to show him? Well, I have a question.

I know, I know, it’s a REALLY important story. It is the opening scene in the epic saga out of which the three great Abrahamic faiths will emerge. For Jews, Abram is the one with whom God initiates a unique relationship with Israel. For Muslims, Abram is the one who originates the chain of prophets that culminates in Mohammed. And for us Christians, Abram is the icon of faith who shows us what trusting God looks like.

 

Given all that, I’m kind of embarrassed to admit that it’s taken me this long to wonder about the other key person in this story. The one who is mentioned only in passing, but who God, in effect, also summons to leave country and kindred and go. I’m talking about Abram’s wife, I’m talking about Sarai. And my question is, what about her call? What about her faith? (read more)

An Even Greater Superpower (Sermon preached 14 May 2023)

Last week, the New York Times ran an opinion piece by David French, a political commentator who this past January became one of their regular columnists. Undoubtedly some of you saw it – the title was Politics Cannot Fix What Ails Us. And tagline was “Solutions to social problems lie close to home”.

In his article, French notes that there are multiple significant negative cultural changes underway in our country including falling fertility rates; rising teen depression and anxiety, an epidemic of isolation and erosion of people’s sense of belonging; and an overall loss of social cohesion. These negative changes are profound, and don’t seem to have clear political solutions. 

And he observes an emerging pattern. We rightly feel a sense of loss, wrongly turn to politics to fill the hole in our lives, and then grow increasingly frustrated when the political process invariably fails to live up to the expectations that we place upon it. French is convinced that the true answer to our cultural challenge is much more parochial and personal... (read more)

 

Finding Illumination (Sermon preached 23 April 2023)

It was on the last full day of our pilgrimage trip to Holy Land that we finally got to Emmaus. To Emmaus Nicopolis, that is – the Byzantine town that scholars have traditionally identified as the Emmaus of Jesus’ time. There are actually a few other possibilities, including one that surfaced in 2019, Kiryat Yearim, an ancient fortified hill town a bit closer to Jerusalem.

By then our group of 25 had been together for ten days, and had developed a happy, comfortable rhythm. We knew the way on foot from our home base at St. George’s Guest House into the Old City, and had visited some sites there. We’d been off and back on the bus in Bethlehem and the Kidron Valley, and seen the Dead Sea Scrolls in the Shrine of the Book. We’d spent three nights in Nazareth; hit a couple of spots on the sea of Galilee; taken the sky tram up the face of the Mount of Temptation; and checked out the cave where Jesus is said to have fasted and prayed for 40 days and 40 nights. 

And looking back, now, from the vantage point of this morning, it seems to me that everything we’d seen and experienced was being gathered up on that final day, when we arrived where this story we just heard takes place...(read more)

 

A Family Story of Healing (Sermon preached 19 March 2023)

How do we sort through that tangle of a story? It was hard enough to stay with it, right? Forty-one verses! Such a long story, and it’s complicated. 

It’s about an unsought healing. It’s about the blame game. It’s about the process and progress of conversion. It’s about how wrong-headed following the rules can be. It’s about how easy it is to confuse blindness and seeing.

I imagine John had all these things in mind, and more, as he crafted this account of an unnamed man’s move from one way of being in the world to another. And his hearers,  beginning with that first century community in which he lived and wrote, and stretching on down through the centuries to you and me – have been recognizing ourselves in this story, ever since.

Who among us has not, when we don’t know what else to do, thought that if we could just figure out whose fault a tragedy is, somehow that would make it better? (read more)

Listen to the Tempter! (Sermon preached 26 February 2023)

That conversation that we just overheard in this morning’s Gospel from the fourth chapter of Matthew? I’m betting it’s not Jesus’ first go-round with the Tempter. I mean, he’s thirty years old, according to tradition. Way past adolescence. In fact, with the average life expectancy what it was in first century Palestine, he is middle aged! Plus, he’s a deeply faithful Jew, steeped in the stories of his people: stories of God’s divine call, and faithfulness and mercy; of their human struggle, and failure, and disobedience.

And he has been preparing for his mission – God has been preparing him – for a long time. For years, Jesus has been listening and learning, studying and wrestling, on his way to becoming the prophet, teacher, healer and savior, whose impact on human history will be, well, immeasurable.  

Finally, he’s ready to go. He’s met John the Baptist. He’s waded into the waters of the Jordan, heard God declare he is the beloved Son, felt the Spirit fill him…and then take him into the wilderness for one more boxing match with the devil. One more reckoning with “the father of lies”...(read more)

 

You ARE Salt (Sermon preached 5 February 2023)

I’ve decided that I’m not going to really preach today – at least, not in the classic sense. I’m just going to do show and tell.

 

Does anyone know what this is? This is a salt cellar. It was given to me this past Christmas – I’ve never had one before, and now I’m so glad I do! So here’s what’s great about my salt cellar. It just sits on the counter – it’s very stable, hard to knock over. Open it up and you can take just a pinch or you can scoop out a whole tablespoon full – or more! It’s really easy to refill.

 

Now, I tend to take salt for granted. I’m not one of those people who craves it – give me sweet over salty any day. But in fact salt is truly amazing stuff. And a little goes a long way...(read more)

What Are You Looking For? (Sermon preached 15 January 2023)

What are you looking for? Now there’s a question! It’s a question that can be asked a lot of different ways. 

A salesperson approaches, shortly after you come into a store; or a family member catches you rifling through a drawer. “What are you looking for?” The question is friendly and helpful, a tad curious. A therapist or spiritual director asks it, or a close friend or spouse, and the question becomes more penetrating. “What are you looking for?”  I mean – what are you really looking for? Security? Recognition? Enlightenment? A fight? There can even be a hint of disbelief in the question. “What are you looking for?” As in, do you even know? Or, does it actually exist? Maybe you are on a wild goose chase!

What are you looking for? These are the first words that Jesus utters in the Gospel of John. And the ones to whom they are addressed were not exactly ready for them... (read more)

All God Needs... (Sermon Preached 24 December 2022)

Welcome! It’s so wonderful to be here tonight, isn’t it? Here in this warm, beautiful space…here with us virtually, wherever you are…here with whoever is sitting next to you, whether it is a loved one or someone you don’t even know. There’s such grace and blessing in simply sharing this moment. Let’s just soak it in…breathe it in, slowly and deeply - breathe out, in again, then out.

It’s hard to believe it’s going on three years now since the pandemic turned our lives upside down. Since we learned, the hard way, that though solitude is nourishing for all of us, not being able to experience that sweet exchange of energy that takes place when we are in one another’s presence is NOT good for us. Not at all. This year we are appreciating the simple goodness of being together in a way that we haven’t for a long time. This year we are feeling especially grateful that we’ve made it here, to Christmas Eve.

The 100-mile trip to Bethlehem that Joseph and Mary had to make to that first Christmas Eve was long and difficult. For Mary,  whose pregnancy was at full term, it was ten or eleven days of walking, or lurching on the back of a donkey. And for Joseph, who was responsible for her and the child’s safety, it was a whole host of worries (read more)