Make known to a people yet unborn…

A sermon for the second Sunday in Lent, February 28, 2021

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.

Lent is about preparing for baptism. This Lent I will be talking about how the scriptures guide us more deeply into our life as baptized Christians.

Jesus starts us right out: He “began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering …” And his friend and most senior colleague, Peter, takes him aside and says to Jesus, “This is a really bad marketing strategy. Who wants to hear about suffering and being killed and dying and all that? Let’s tweak the message a little—healings, and that Kingdom of God thing, that is an image with legs … let’s go with that—lay off the suffering and dying thing.”

So, of course, Jesus said, “OK, I’ll try to be more positive, we wouldn’t want to put people off, I’ll try to work with your marketing strategy.” Maybe I should read exactly how he said it, I have it copied down here:

“He rebuked Peter and said, ‘GET BEHIND ME SATAN! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’”

Mark 8:33

So maybe Jesus wasn’t quite so interested in the marketing plan.

Jesus was describing the real life that he lived and the life of those who are baptized. After all, we are baptized into Jesus’ death. Make no mistake about it: Jesus’ death was real, and it was the consequence of Jesus’ life—a consequence that he accepted fully, because he was fully accountable for his life. But sometimes we get wrapped up in the dramatic and the extreme and miss out on how Jesus’ death applies to our life and our baptism as ordinary Christians.

It did not take magic foresight for Jesus to realize that he would be rejected and indeed killed—rejection is a consequence of telling and living the truth. We like to avoid that. Those who smugly think that they are better than Peter in this regard are avoiding this truth even more than he did. Jesus was the most free person who ever lived. He spoke truth with depth and loved people in proportion to that freedom. Jesus was not the most confrontational person in the Roman Empire or in first century Palestine, but the depth with which he lived the truth was extraordinarily threatening to those who wanted to control everything, especially those who wanted to manipulate the message of religion and hold on to the power of the state. The response to Jesus was big and dramatic, because he lived the Truth with complete freedom and a love that could not be ignored.

Living the truth in a big way, and suffering rejection and violence in a big way does not happen suddenly. It follows after living the truth in small ways and small details, and accepting the consequences of one’s actions. We are baptized into Christ’s death. We are baptized into the consequences of being free. To stand for the dignity of others, even though there will be a price to be paid.

Today is the last day of Black History month. We know that many Black people have paid a price for standing up for their own dignity and that of others. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King and Malcolm X both stood up for the dignity of their fellow human beings, and both were, in fact, killed for that. Both knew this was possible, even likely. But struggling for the dignity of others doesn’t always result in death, or even physical violence, but there are often other consequences. W.E.B. du Bois and Paul Robeson eloquently defended the dignity and freedom of their people, but ended up living their last days in other countries. Even in the church those leaders who we remember, like Absalom Jones and Alexander Crummel stood up for the dignity of people of African descent and were rewarded with indignities, privation and marginalization.

It takes great courage to live in the truth. Each of us is faced with situations where it might be easier just to go along, just to accept something bad happening, perhaps to someone else, or to profit from a little untruth or a little meanness. Of course, some use the label of “truth-telling” to be harsh and destructive to others, but the person who is truly free is the one who accepts the consequences of her or his actions and has the courage to be loving when there is a price to be paid for it. It takes courage to refrain from giving false comfort, it takes courage to enter conversations where people are not going to be in agreement, and yet those are the conversations where Christian community arises.

St. Paul talks about Abraham being justified by faith and not by works. But what made Abraham a righteous man, the one whom God chose for his Covenant? It was the way he lived his life, in simplicity, in honesty—by feeding the strangers who passed by. The strangers who turned out to be angels who told him that he would have a child so very late in his life; that he would become a father of many nations.

In baptism, we die to falseness and we die to fear and we rise into a future of hope and community that is not superficial but founded on our sharing that baptism and that truth of Christ, who was rejected for living the truth, and the light of whose love revealed the falseness of the selfish. The way of God is not the way of convenience or of easy safety. Jesus says: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

The poor shall eat and be satisfied, and those who seek the LORD shall praise him:

“May your heart live forever!”

 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations bow before him.

For kingship belongs to the LORD; he rules over the nations.

 To him alone all who sleep in the earth bow down in worship; all who go down to the dust fall before him.

 My soul shall live for him; my descendants shall serve him;  they shall be known as the LORD’S forever.

 They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn the saving deeds that he has done.

Psalm 22:25-30

The Time is Fulfilled

A sermon for the First Sunday in Lent, February 21, 2021

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

The Gospel we are following this year is the Gospel of Mark. You may notice that today’s lesson, for the first Sunday in Lent, includes Jesus’ baptism by John and his temptation in the wilderness, but it has none of the detail or drama that you get in the gospel of Matthew or Luke. Instead, Mark shows how these things are connected: Jesus coming from Galilee, his Baptism by John, the heavenly voice confirming Jesus as the son of God, the temptation in the wilderness, John’s arrest, and Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom of God. In seven verses Mark sweeps through all these events and shows how they relate to one another.

What these events are is the essential background of Jesus’ ministry. John the Baptist’s call for repentance was the context for Jesus’ appearance. It was John’s arrest by the soldiers of Herod Antipas, the ruler of Galilee, that was the occasion of the beginning of Jesus proclaiming of the Good News. Later in the Gospel, Mark tells the story of the why and how of John’s arrest and execution. This Herod was corrupt, cruel, and selfish.  Though he was a Jewish ruler of a Jewish principality, he was the client of a foreign power. John had pointed out his sexual immoralities and, more importantly, how he was unfaithful to his people, acting against the best interest of the people of Galilee and Judea. This was entwined with John’s preaching to the crowds about their repentance. It was not just the leaders who had to be held accountable to God, but everyone. Repentance was necessary—not feeling bad, but changing their lives; choosing each day to live in God’s justice. That was the messenger, preparing the Lord’s way, crying in the wilderness. And Jesus was in the wilderness, being formed in truth and served by angels.

John was taken into custody by the soldiers of Herod Antipas. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near: repent and believe in the good news.” It is the first Sunday of Lent and we begin that journey with Jesus, the journey which ends with his arrest by the religious police and the Roman soldiers, and his execution on Calvary. His message to the people in Galilee is the same as John’s was, down by the Jordan on the eastern edge of Judea: Repent, the Kingdom of God is here.

What is that Kingdom? We know some of it: Jesus was a healer, he cast out demons, he taught people hope, character, and faithfulness. He embodied God’s mercy and that was what he taught. Entering the Kingdom of the most merciful God is easy—you just rejoice in God’s mercy, live as God’s merciful children.

Of course, to be God’s merciful children … to even think about being joined to God’s mercy… that requires some honesty and humility. We look around nowadays and see a world that is filled with every bit as much corruption as John the Baptist saw in Herod Antipas.  It is easy to see it in government, in business, and even in churches. The consequences of corruption become visible when there is a crisis, like the freezing weather this week in Texas with massive power outages, where politicians quickly issued statements to blame others rather than trying to work together to remedy the disaster.

It would be a mistake to smugly assume that this corruption is limited to a single political party or set of corporate leaders. The corruption of some individuals may be easy to see, but the problem is far deeper. We live in a culture that accepts cynicism and selfishness as the way things are and have to be. But that’s not OK – that way leads to moral and physical death. We live in a culture that makes excuses for cowardice, especially the cowardice of the powerful, especially if they are powerful white men. And, for some reason we hesitate to call this opportunism, cynicism, and cowardice what it is: sin. And that sin hurts everyone, and that hesitation to recognize and call it out implicates all of us, it makes it easier for everyone to be cowardly, and harder to fix things. We ALL need to repent, for it is OUR society that is at stake.

 It takes courage to repent, because it means living in a new way. Repentance is the opposite of taking refuge in a world of fear and anger and blame. The Kingdom of God that Jesus brings is not the self-indulgent world of Herod Antipas, but the generous world of Jesus, who brought life and hope to others and didn’t run away from the very real risk to his own person. All through this coming season of Lent, we will see that Jesus’ loving actions, his teaching and his prayers all lined up in perfect accord.

This Lent is a time for Christians to attend to being formed in Christ: Called to renew our baptism into his love, into a renewed life of prayer, but also into the courage to repent of our sins and expect the same of our society. We live with Jesus, who came with courage to bring God’s love to us.

Immediately after his baptism the spirit led Jesus into the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan. He was tended by the angels of God. He came to his home country of Galilee calling for repentance and proclaiming the Kingdom of God. He went among them, casting out demons and healing them.

For where your treasure is: a homiletical note

A homiletical note to precede the Invitation to a Holy Lent, Ash Wednesday, February 17, 2021

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

So much of what people do nowadays, and to be truthful what they have done during most times, is to use everything they can find to get an advantage in their dealings with other people. It is not surprising that religious people use religion this way. It’s totally wrong, but it isn’t surprising. It isn’t even surprising that people amp up the stakes and drama of religion to get an even bigger advantage—dramatically showing off their piety and devotion, their “faith” that magically is more “faithful” than others. And it is not surprising when such people who become big leaders are also eventually revealed as abusers of children, women and others in vulnerable positions.

It is not surprising, but it is the opposite of what our devotion to God is intended to be. Jesus is sharply critical of these religious manipulators—of the self-serving use of piety to get power. The love and mercy of God is for the healing of all—to reverse our perverse pursuit of self-serving aims to get the better of our neighbors. Some do not want to hear this, but God calls them to repent. God calls us to repent.

Our whole lives are permeated by the inclination to get an advantage at the expense of others, so also our whole lives should be permeated with repentance. So each year we undertake a season when we focus on this repentance—a season of growth in awareness of God’s goodness and mercy, and of the place we can occupy in God’s compassion—the season of Lent.

Jesus led them up alone to a High Mountain

A sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany, February 14, 2021

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

And after six days Jesus takes Peter and James and John and privately leads them up alone to a high mountain.

That’s the first sentence of today’s Gospel reading in one translation I use. It’s not as smoothed out as the translation in our lectionary. It’s good to look at scripture from different angles, because sometimes in our desire to smooth things out, we miss important pieces. Often, in our lectionary, the reading leaves out the first phrase of the first verse: “And after six days.”

I always find the story of the Transfiguration difficult to get a handle on as a preacher. It doesn’t have the moral, theological or historical content that most of the passages that come up for sermons contain. Shiny Jesus, two prophets and a cloud just doesn’t ring a bell for me—what’s it connected to? What sense does it make?

For me that transition phrase, “And after six days,” provides a clue. The Gospel of Mark almost always marks transitions with the word that means “immediately,” so this is unusual. Six days was the amount of time that Moses and Joshua spent under the cloud on the top of Mount Sinai, waiting for the tablets of the law.

But why this pause? What does it mark? Flip the page of your New Testament back one and the event that happened immediately before this is the most serious conflict between Jesus and his disciples in the Gospels. When Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered that he was the Messiah. But then Jesus began to explain what that meant: suffering, rejection, being killed and rising in three days. Peter kind of freaked out, took him aside and rebuked Jesus. Jesus’ response was: “Get behind me Satan!” Not exactly the response that Peter was hoping for. Jesus then said to the whole crowd, as well as his disciples,

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

Then, after waiting six days, he takes the inner circle of his disciples privately to the top of the mountain. Jesus, shining with the glory of God, accompanied by the two most significant of the prophets, Moses and Elijah. The conflict with the disciples had been about his suffering and death. They weren’t understanding. It’s not made explicit here, but there is something that Peter ignored when he decided to rebuke Jesus. What Jesus had said was that he would be “rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed … and after three days rise again.”

Violence and dying are familiar to us and easy to digest, but what about resurrection? Is that just wishful thinking? Is it just a placeholder, do we just ignore it? Jesus took these three disciples, the first ones he called, to show them something different, a new and different life, triumphant and in the presence of God—yet inextricably linked with those things that these disciples were afraid to face—rejection, suffering, death. To share this Gospel, they must know both sides. And notice, when Peter sticks in his suggestion about building something, it is because they are afraid here too—the reality of God’s goodness and presence can be as frightening as suffering and death. Life takes courage, especially life in Christ’s resurrection.

Then the cloud came upon them, just as it had for Moses, just as it had at Jesus baptism, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him.” The Resurrection of Jesus is here in the center of the Gospel of Mark—we don’t separate his active life of healing, his casting out of demons, his rejection and suffering, or his teaching of the Kingdom of God from God’s conquering death and raising him from the dead. Knowing the resurrection puts the rest into perspective. The disciples may still fear, have doubts, worry and forget, but they have seen Jesus manifesting God’s glory with Moses and Elijah, they have seen that the truth is Jesus facing death, not in avoiding it or shying away from the difficulties of rejection or disapproval.

This week, there has been a trial in the United States Senate. It has been very difficult to watch and listen to all the terrible things about the January sixth insurrection and its incitement.  Many want to look away, to leave it in the past, to pretend it did not happen. Yet the truth is, that the evil did erupt, the sinfulness of many had its consequences and papering it over will not bring peace, but more violence. Facing this truth and working toward accountability for this evil is the only way for our country to reach any peace, any lasting prosperity.

Wednesday, we begin our journey of Lent. Lent is a penitential time, but that does not mean a time of feeling bad and guilty. It’s not a time to be run down and resentful and headachy because of a lack of candy or coffee. The penitential season of Lent is about facing the truth. We are tempted to hide from the truth, because we are fearful—but Jesus shows us the truth: his Transfiguration into the Glory of God, his Resurrection and defeat of death. But that truth is not avoiding the difficulties and hurts of this life, or the realities and limitations we must face as individuals or as a congregation. In today’s epistle, Paul observes that “the god of this age has blinded the thoughts of the faithless, so that the illumination of the good tidings of the glory of Christ—he who is God’s image—should not shine out.” The distractions and temptations of the ways of this world push people to avoid difficulty and thus be blinded to life. Jesus took his disciples up that mountain so that they could see—not avoiding their difficulties, but knowing that abundant life is here, that freedom is in joining him in faithfully accepting and living in the truth.

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.