Let's Not Bury the Lead (Sermon preached 10 March 2024)

This past Wednesday, at the 10am Chapel Eucharist, one of the small group that comes regularly to this little service arrived bearing gifts.

 

From her purse, she pulled out a handful of little notebooks with blank lined pages, with pens to match. She said “a little pre-Easter gift in anticipation of Easter joy. I just thought they were so pretty”. Of course, the other four of us, all women, loved them! So cute, so thoughtful, such a sweet shade of pink – it’s “Easter-y”, right? Reminds me of Easter bonnets and Easter dresses.

 

Then as is my habit, I’m afraid, I started thinking out loud. “Well, you know”, I said, “the liturgical color on one of the Sundays in Lent actually is pink, rather than purple – just like one of the Sundays in Advent is pink – that’s why one of the candles on the Advent wreath is pink. Pink, or rose, symbolizes a lightening of the purple penitential tone. The same thing happens in Lent, somewhere in the middle. Maybe last Sunday or this coming Sunday…we are between the third and fourth Sundays, I’m pretty sure.”

 

So of course she got out her phone and Googled Lent/pink and there it was! The Fourth Sunday in Lent (which is today) is called Laetare Sunday – laetare being Latin for “rejoice”...(read more)

Broken and Beloved (Ash Wednesday 14 February 2024)

When I first realized that Ash Wednesday was going to fall on Valentine’s Day this year,

I thought oh! Such a paradox! This placing, side by side, of the acknowledgment of human sin and an homage/celebration of/ to human love.

 

And then, I thought, no, this is really wonderful. This year, on Ash Wednesday, we get to hold these two things together. We get to embrace, at the same time, our brokenness AND our beloved-ness. Which is what the God who both made us and saves us, is doing all the time. These two aspects of being human cannot be separated. Our brokenness and our beloved-ness cannot be pulled apart.

 

Today we begin, though, by leaning into our brokenness. Not because it’s more important, or bigger; but because until we face its reality, we cannot begin to comprehend how utterly and completely we are loved... (read more)

Ever Turning on a Dime (Sermon Preached 21 January 2024)

“You know, life can turn on a dime” That expression has been around for a long time, right? When my bishop back in Central Pennsylvania said it to me, I had definitely heard it before.

 

We were having coffee at a funky little place in Williamsport, the small town where I lived with my family. They had a great selection of coffees and teas, items for sale by local artisans, and deep chairs and couches that looked like they’d been pulled out of people’s attics.

 

We were talking about my job prospects. This was in 2010, I think, so I’d been ordained maybe 6 years, and had served first as the Missioner for a cluster of three small local churches, and then as the Interim in a parish 100 miles away, which had meant me splitting every week between there and home.

 

There were no decent openings within reach for me. The two full-time positions in Williamsport had come and gone, both parishes having called straight white married men, with children, from other dioceses; and no I’m not bitter! And now, this was the second bishop (his predecessor was the one who ordained me) – the second bishop who was saying he would sure hate to lose me, but didn’t seem willing to help me, much, job-wise.

 

“You know,” he said, “life can turn on a dime”. I think he thought he was being encouraging. But as far as I was concerned, there was not a dime in sight...(read more)

 

Waves, Particles, Absorb, Amplify, Shine! (Sermon preached 31 December 2023)

Some years ago, I had a conversation with an old friend who had been, for many years, teaching optics at the graduate level.

 

Now, you need to know: though I enjoyed physics in high school, it was definitely not my first language. Anyway, we were driving to the airport late in the afternoon and ended up talking about how polarized sunglasses work. He was explaining that the way they cut down on the glare is by filtering out half of the sun’s light waves.

 

But isn’t light a particle? I asked. Well, yes, he said. That is also a model for light. In some situations, the wave model works better for describing how light behaves; and in others, the particle model works better. The fact is that light is neither wave nor particle. Both are ways we can think about, and talk about, light; but neither completely accounts for the “miracle” of light.

 

So, here you and I are, just about a week after Christmas, with the stable at Bethlehem, courtesy of the Gospel of Luke, still right here, listening to the Gospel of John’s version of how Christ came into the world. These first eighteen verses of John 1, which is called “The Prologue”, are offering us another model, if you will. A model that is as different from a young woman giving birth in a stable as particles are from waves...(read more)

 

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)