Love the Lord your God

A sermon for the twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost, October 29, 2023

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.

It is fairly common for Christians to think because Jesus says this in a controversy with the Pharisees, that he came up with it, or at least that he was saying something that they disagreed with. Nothing could be further from the truth. Jesus’ answer was from the scriptural text that is most important to all Jews, and certainly the Pharisees. From the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, it is known as the Shema: “Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

Jesus is telling these figures of the religious establishment that he fully shares and agrees with the most essential point of their belief: that it is God and God alone that deserves reverence and obedience.  In fact, in the Gospel of Luke, a young lawyer asks Jesus about how to attain eternal life, and Jesus asks the lawyer what the law says and it is the lawyer who tells Jesus exactly the words that Jesus repeats to the Pharisees. It’s not complicated, it’s not secret, it’s not innovative—it’s just very serious business.

In Luke, the young lawyer tries to justify himself, asking, “Who is my neighbor?” And Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan. You’ll have to wait until that text comes up for a sermon on the Good Samaritan, however.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” Note that he doesn’t say, “Act like you love the Lord with all your heart” or “be really showy with how pious you are” or “tell everybody if they don’t believe and act just like you do that they will be damned to hell.” The command is to live in God’s love—always—at all times and in all ways.

Most people have a god that is far too small, a mascot god that does what they want, makes them comfortable, helps them feel justified in however they do things. That is not the One God of Scripture. The true and only God is no one’s mascot. I once calculated approximately how far a particle traveling at the speed of light would have travelled in the 13 billion years since the Big Bang—80 sextillion miles and change. All of that distance, in all directions, could fit in the palm of God’s hand. God’s love is likewise infinite and it is not subject to manipulation—by magic, or self-serving rhetoric, or use of power over others, or by any attempt to turn the Gospel upside down.

We like to duck out of our responsibility to the one God, who created everything that is and who loves even the poorest of god’s creatures, and find some kind of religious expression that will confirm our prejudices and privileges. It’s always a temptation. The Pharisees answered Jesus’ question about God’s anointed by looking back to when David was the monarch of Israel, a thousand years before. Jesus interprets that scripture by saying that the Kingdom of God is infinitely more and more immediate. Jesus came to hold people to the truth, and ultimately, his speaking the truth was what led to his crucifixion.

That seems like a big jump, but it’s not. Because it is not a matter of words or philosophies or discussion groups. Jesus really meant it and he held people accountable to loving God in their lives and actions.

And what Jesus says after the Shema, wasn’t a controversial or unusual thing to say in his time either. “And the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” That quote comes from our reading from Leviticus today—it’s from the holiness code which lays out how the holy people of God are supposed to behave. Thus, it interprets what it is to love God with all your heart in terms of a person’s behavior. Loving other people and valuing their welfare every bit as much as you value your own is living the love of God.  The God of heaven and earth leads us beyond what is good for us and into what is good. Abundant life is life for others, living in generosity, living in God with our entire heart, soul, mind and strength. Living this way is not a matter of being more religious or better than ordinary people—actually it is very ordinary. And it isn’t optional at all.  Being connected in love is what gives life—being focused only on ourselves and our immediate community is what causes life to shrivel.

We live in a country that has spent far too much of its energy encouraging people to focus on maintaining themselves and disregarding their neighbors. It’s clear to anyone who has eyes to see how this has damaged our country and what a frightening place this has made of our body politic. Honoring God as Scripture directs is essential for the prosperity of a people; elsewise the selfishness of the arrogant undermines those who are ever poor or weak—and that is every one of us at some time or another—the selfishness of the arrogant destroys us all.

In the years that I have known you here at Trinity I have seen how you love and respect one another, reaching out to the sick and shut in; those who are bereaved and those who need encouragement. Trinity has reached out into this neighborhood—a neighborhood which includes many new immigrants and many whose resources are severely limited—and provided a thrift store with free or very low-priced clothing and other articles. From that we gathered a community to share a meal around the table and find spiritual support. It is in such generosity of spirit, in humbly welcoming and supporting the humble that this country—this world even—can survive and thrive. It is not just our family or those we know that are the neighbors—it is all those, poor or wealthy, whom God has called his children.

Our first lesson, from Leviticus defines the treatment of our neighbor—which Jesus observes is the same as our love of God. I’ll conclude by reading a little more from this passage:

When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap to the very edges of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not strip your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the alien: I am the Lord your God.

You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord.

Leviticus 19:9, 17-18

Nothing can separate us from the Love of God

A sermon for the ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 30, 2023

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is a well-known passage, but what is St. Paul talking about? He is talking about the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian community. It’s easy to have vague and misleading ideas about the Holy Spirit, so let’s look at what the Bible has to say about it. The Gospel of John calls the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. What that Greek word means is “one called to the side of someone.”  So, as a priest, I might be called to the side of a person in the hospital or to someone who is grieving. A lawyer might be called to stand alongside of someone with legal problems; or a friend to stand along with a friend in need.  In the church, where Jesus is no longer physically present, God’s Holy Spirit stands alongside us, enabling us to love one another, incorporating our lives into God’s compassion.

Paul says, “The spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought…” It’s common to think that good prayer is somehow an output of a well-informed or disciplined mind, or that somehow if we just pray with enough fervor in the right way we can get God to do the things that are important to us.

Actually, prayer does not work like that at all. In prayer we stand, or sit, or kneel in God’s presence; our desires, our feelings, our needs are there. Our care for other people and perhaps even our words are there.  But it is the spirit of God’s love, the Holy Spirit, that joins us to God in prayer. We are joined, upheld and helped in our weakness, even when we are unaware, even when we may feel that our prayers are going nowhere—indeed, God’s presence is not based on what we feel or perceive at all—often, it is at times of dryness, desolation or even despair that we are being transformed into the compassion of God—into Christ. It is in God’s design that God’s children are formed together for the sake of the good of this world—in Jesus’ resurrection he is the firstborn of a large family.

But this good—the growth of God’s love—is not happening in a world where everything works out easily, where people can do whatever they want and it’s just fine. Paul lived in a world where truly advocating the mercy of God and the good of God’s most vulnerable could trigger the anger and even violence of a world that valued the self-interest of those who wanted to keep power and privilege. So do we. Being formed in the love of God does not protect us from the consequences of this world—of loss, or ostracism, or anger, or attacks by those filled with self-pity.  Paul was arrested more than once, for telling about Jesus. Standing courageously for the values of Christ’s compassion in this world takes a similar risk of real loss, at least if you actually mean it. The Christian life in the Spirit is not happy talk, or silver linings, or magical wishes coming true. It is living by choosing what is valuable, true and permanent over the illusory and the selfish. It is in this context that Paul says,

If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies, who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.

Romans 8:31-34

The reality of Jesus’ life and death make it clear that the truth of Christian life takes place in a world where there is suffering and death, indeed in a world where there is cruelty and injustice near at hand. The Resurrection of Christ isn’t something that takes away the reality or the permanence of death; the Resurrection is new life, in which the love of God’s Holy Spirit overcomes the fear, anger, cruelty and despair that bind people into the compromised existence of a selfish world. Paul continues:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or nakedness or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

Romans 8:35-37

The thing that has distinguished the Christians whose wisdom has most influenced me over the years is that they share in a complete lack of self-pity. Some are great theologians and others regular parishioners. At another church where I was serving, I visited a woman in the memory unit of a nursing home. She was a lifelong devout Episcopalian and a tough businesswoman. The church remembered that thirty years ago, she told them that that congregation would never realize its building fund goals unless it dedicated ten percent to outreach to the community. By then she had no memory, except what her friends remembered for her. But her character was intact, with no trace of self-pity.  I would visit her, and ask her to pray for the parish and people in the parish, and she would sometimes say something insightful and loving about one of them. The last time I saw her, I asked her to pray with me for the vestry deliberations. At the end, she said, “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

…neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:38-39

I will not leave you orphaned

A sermon for the sixth Sunday of Easter, May 14, 2023

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

“I will ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.”

Jesus is talking here about the sending of the Holy Spirit. The word that Jesus uses that is translated as Advocate, is parakletos—Paraclete. That’s a Greek construction that means “one called to the side of someone.”  So, as a priest, I might be called to the side of a person in the hospital or to someone who is grieving. A lawyer might be called to stand alongside of someone with legal problems or a friend to stand along with a friend in need. So, Jesus is talking with his disciples about his own departure, his crucifixion, and he says, “I will ask the Father and he will give you another one to stand with you.” Jesus stands with us and God calls the Holy Spirit to stand with us in our life.

But what does that mean? The Holy Spirit is understood and misunderstood in many ways by many people, Christian and otherwise. And even those who claim direct experience of the Holy Spirit—surely most of them have some experience—but how do we know it is the Holy Spirit? What does Jesus have to say in our Gospel today? It starts, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” And the passage ends, “and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” The description of the Holy Spirit is about the love of God.

And it has to do with following Jesus commandments—but what are they?  If we have been reading directly through the Gospel of John, we know. In the chapter that has just ended, where Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, he gave them a commandment. In fact, it is his only commandment in the Gospel of John: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Period. That’s it. Easy enough. Of course, the way that Jesus loved his disciples and this world was costly indeed—that evening he was led away to be tried and executed. We are invited, commanded really, to become part of God’s love by loving God’s children, in the most costly way, by giving of ourselves.

Love is not grandstanding, it is seeking the good of someone. You don’t have to die to do that, and no one has to know what caring for another person might cost you. Love is not how we feel, it is helping another, it is being called to stand along with them. Perhaps we do feel good when we do that, but the feeling is not the love, not this kind of love.

The Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, is God’s love. Simple as that: God standing with us, upholding us when we don’t know how to stand, for ourselves or for someone else. The Holy Spirit supports us and holds us together.

Jesus says, “This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.” The Love of God is the Truth. In the face of all the un-love, hatred and violence in this world, the Truth is the Love of God. Why does Jesus say the world can’t know this?  In the Gospel and the Epistles of John, that term “World” has a specific and special meaning that doesn’t necessarily match everything that others might mean when they use that word.  It refers to that realm that looks to itself and its own benefit—to succeed in that world makes one powerful and wealthy, and in the world’s eyes those things are all that count.  It was pretty much the values of the Roman Empire, at least of the ruling elites of that empire, but sharply distinct from the values of Christ and Christians. It’s not that we don’t see those values cropping up from time to time. Perhaps more now than ever.   The World, in this sense, has no room in its values for the love of God—it encourages love of self and protection of self, not being called to support those who are poor, or sorrowful, or passionate for justice. The World cannot receive the Holy Spirit because it cannot open itself to love—if it did, it would cease to be the World.

The Spirit of the World rules by fear, and even those most successful in it are fearful, perhaps even more than those who are less successful. We can all be distracted and drawn in by the Spirit of the World from time to time. It’s possible to even try to steer the church by guides of worldly success and fearfulness. The Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth is much larger and more compelling than the Spirit of the World. The world measures success by power, money, and security—Christ measures by the commandment of love: are we living in love.

At Trinity, we don’t have much by the measures of the World, but we are abundant by the measure of Christ. I know this because I see how you reach out to care for one another, especially for those who are sick or unable to get out. For the efforts you make to provide hospitality to the community of this neighborhood.

The Holy Spirit can be so surprising—it’s not that the Holy Spirit is whimsical, or arbitrary. It’s not that the Holy Spirit is some sort of whoosh of feeling. The thing is, distractible as we are, pre-occupied with our own concerns as we are, we sometimes miss the love that God has for us, and for all God’s children. There are opportunities to be generous or compassionate that we may have missed that suddenly come to our attention—movements of the Holy Spirit—God’s love moving into the world. When we see it, and are incorporated in it, and able to act in the generosity of God’s compassion, it can be a wonderful feeling—but that feeling is not the Holy Spirit. The Love of God moving in this world is the Holy Spirit.

He says, “I will not leave you orphaned… because I live, you also will live.” Today is Mothers Day. Many of us know how precious it is to be nutured by a mother. Not an ideal mother, or an abstract mother, but a mother who, in all her own troubles and imperfections, wants her child to thrive. It’s not automatic, or universal, it requires a certain amount of maturity and sacrifice to do it at all, but an amazing amount of moms choose to be there, standing with their children, comforting them and encouraging them and helping them to thrive in this complicated and difficult world.  All of us are called at one time or another to stand with someone, to be their comforter or their guide.

From today’s psalm:

Come and listen, all you who fear God,

     and I will tell you what he has done for me.

I called out to him with my mouth, and his praise was on my tongue.

If I had found evil in my heart, the Lord would not have heard me;

But in truth God has heard me; he has attended to the voice of my prayer.

Blessed be God, who has not rejected my prayer,

     nor withheld his love from me.

Psalm 66:14-18

Remembering the Saints

A sermon for All Saints Sunday, November 6, 2022

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

With the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints.

Today we celebrate the feast of All Saints, the great feast of the Church in which we celebrate what God has done among God’s people. The word saint refers to a holy person of God. The popular view is that only a few really extraordinary people are saints and the rest of us are, well … not. But Christ has made us all holy, not just a few superheroes. We are all the saints of God. Some people have inspiring stories, and are clear examples of how Christians might live. So, we have Saint Francis who loved the poor by being poor himself, or Saint Oscar Romero who cared for the oppressed by facing up to oppressors, or Saint Thomas Aquinas who helped the church think in new ways and adapt to new circumstances both by being the smartest and most careful thinker that there ever was, and by being a devoted and faithful follower of Jesus, writing beautiful hymns and prayers of thanksgiving. There is a lot of benefit in reflecting on the lives of such people, and seeing what a Christian life can look like for a prominent person.

But there are far more saints who are not prominent, who don’t get the Vatican stamp of approval, or get the title “saint” attached to their name. I know many. I’m looking at some of them right now. But I’ll tell you about one you don’t know and will never meet.

When I was out in California a few years ago working as the interim priest in a congregation, there was a woman who had no memory. I’ll refer to her as Jane, though that’s not her name. When I met her, she was in the memory unit of a nursing home. I went there because members of the church knew that she had been an important part of the congregation at one time, but they had lost track of her, because her family no longer had anything to do with the church. Someone in the church encouraged me to find out about her, so I asked her family who encouraged me to visit her.

What I understood about Jane’s life story was this. She was the office manager of a construction company, a single mother, raising two sons. By 1980, the business wasn’t doing well, but Jane somehow took it over and turned it around. By the time she retired and turned it over to her sons, it was one of the most successful paving, curb and gutter companies in Northern California and her family was very prosperous.

In the late 1980s, the Episcopal congregation in that small town had grown enough that they wanted to have their own church building. Jane was on the fundraising committee. And what church members told me, many years later, is that Jane told the church, “The only way we can ever get to our goal to get this building built is to dedicate ten percent of everything we raise to outreach!” And that’s what they did. When I was with them as their interim, they had a lovely, if modest, little campus with a church building, a parish hall building, a house that was converted to offices and classroom space, and a community garden. They loved their building, but their identity was in their outreach to the families who lived in their neighborhood, who were mostly working class, lower income people, often recent immigrants to the region.

When I met her, Jane lived in a darkened room and she literally had no memory. She barely responded to her name. But she could talk and understand spoken language. So, I told her that the congregation remembered her and was praying for her. I said I had been told that she was active in the church when their building was being built. And some of what I was saying seemed to register. And, as I visited Jane over the months that I was there, we would pray together—she would join in the words of the Lord’s Prayer as I said them. Though she couldn’t do it on her own, her faith helped her pray with me. I would talk with her about what was happening in the parish and the various people. Sometimes I asked her to pray for them. When I mentioned certain people, she would respond by saying something very specific about them. “She’s a brick!” she said about someone, who clearly was just that. “She took me to operas all over Europe with her!” I was struck by how, even though Jane had no active, present memory, when she made the association because I brought up a name, what she had to say about these people was filled with gratitude and Christian affection. Living mostly now, completely within herself, she was still praying. And she was still living a life of Christian love in extremely difficult circumstances.

The last time I saw Jane, not long before I left California, I asked her to pray for the vestry which had some difficult decisions to make at their meeting the next day. Jane had been on the vestry and was a very experienced and tough businesswoman. She looked me in the eye and said, “Don’t take any wooden nickels!” I still laugh with joy and gratefulness for Jane’s witness when I think of her.

We are surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. The communion of saints is a network of people of every time and place. We rely on one another and all the saints of every time, to maintain us in difficulty and in plenty. Their counsel may comfort us or call us to repentance. We give thanks to God for all the saints, famous and unknown, older and younger, close to us or far away. It’s in being humble enough to listen to those who are blessed: the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, the reviled and marginalized, and yes, even our own children and grandchildren, that we ourselves join in the Kingdom of God and the blessedness of his saints.

Listen once more to what the Apostle says in our reading from Ephesians:

I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, and for this reason I do not cease to give thanks for you as I remember you in my prayers. I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe, according to the working of his great power.

Ephesians 1:15-19

Don’t neglect to Love Strangers

A sermon for the twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, August 28, 2022

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

That sentence is the culmination of the Epistle to the Hebrews. It is deep assurance of God’s steadfastness in love for us—that the Jesus we know doesn’t change, he can be relied upon to be there for us, if we are but ready to understand him as he is. But what is going on in our reading for today?

Hebrews is an anonymous discourse, written in the first century.  Of all the writings of the New Testament, its writing is the most literary and polished.  The more polished a piece of writing is, the more difficult it is to convey in translation, because every word is carefully chosen to fit together with the words around it. I realized this when I looked at the Greek to see what word was translated as “mutual love” in the first sentence: “Let mutual love continue.” There is nothing wrong with the translation that we have—it translates the words and sentences accurately.  But on first reading, it can appear that it’s just a list of good things to remember, not particularly connected with one another. But in Greek, these exhortations are tied together by related words that show us the progressive logic of the Christian life of love.

Let me render this in awkward English to illustrate:

“Let brotherly/sisterly love continue, but don’t neglect love of strangers, for hidden in that, some have entertained angels. And remember the prisoners, as though suffering the mistreatment they receive along with them in your own bodies. (And speaking of being in one shared body) keep the marriage bed undefiled. Be not-silver-lovers but be content with what you have.”

Hebrews 13:1-5a translated & paraphrased from the Greek text

This passage weaves together the different kinds of love and not-love that make up the everyday Christian life and experience. It starts with the familiar: the everyday experience of love of the sisters and brothers who we know well and care for. This kind of love isn’t less than other kinds—it’s pretty much the foundation.

But what’s being emphasized is that Christian love doesn’t stop there. Christian love isn’t just for insiders. Even more important is the love of strangers, which is what that word “hospitality” really means—the stranger. Not the ones we know and have social obligations and relations with, but the wanderer on the road, the one we will never see again. By illustration the text alludes to Abraham, who received his greatest blessing—that is to say, the promise of his son and a legacy of a great nation—he received that blessing by stopping and welcoming three strangers on the road on a hot summer’s day.

But it is not just the strangers who we may encounter, but also those who are locked away and out of sight. This could refer to Christians, who like St. Paul found themselves imprisoned because their witness to the Gospel challenged those in power, so that they seized people and locked them up. Or it might recognize that people were seized for arbitrary reasons and held in terrible conditions unless they had the wealth or influence to gain release. That was in the Roman Empire – but it still happens today – for example to people whose immigration papers don’t convince the authorities, even to children in the hospital for cancer treatment. These distant people who we can’t see; we are one with them as well, as if we are one body with them as we are with Christ.

Next, there’s the reference to a shared experience in the body, the text circles back from the most distant and invisible of relationships, to the most intimate and familial— “Let the marriage bed be held in honor by all.” All this love of brothers and sisters and strangers and far-away prisoners does not reduce one’s obligation to those closest or change those obligations. No other kind of love exempts us from the basics of cherishing those in our own household and maintaining the integrity of those relationships. After this exhortation is another word that contains “love,” but in this case it has the prefix that means “not”—literally, a “not-lover of silver,” is what the readers are exhorted to be. The opposite of being one in flesh with another is to focus your love, your life and your future on dead metal, on cash.  Chasing money will not take care of insecurity or of anxiety about it.

This is a simple summary of the Christian life, but Hebrews continues: “God has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’ So we can say with confidence, ‘The Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can anyone do to me?’” So, when this text says, “Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday and today and forever,” it is this simple Christian life of love that it is referring to, living in generosity, with care for others, near and far, and with responsibility to one another, not looking for shortcuts through greed or self-indulgence.

In the Gospel lesson today, Jesus has occasion to observe some people in a situation that they probably thought was hospitality. But rather than love of stranger, or even brotherly love, the gathering was quite the opposite: everyone was jockeying for power and prestige, looking for the best seats, seats that would indicate their proximity to power and that would command high regard. And the host was a big part of this—the guest list was compiled with an eye to enhancing his prestige in the community and perhaps even his wealth. Lives more akin to silver-lovers than stranger-brother-sister-lovers. And Jesus—who is the same, yesterday, today and forever—gives them advice: “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed.”

We can do this. We can love one another in mutual care, but also welcome the stranger and those who we do not know. For the Lord is our helper, what can anyone do to us?

Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Book of Common Prayer, Collect for Proper 17

How Exalted is your Name in all the World

A sermon for Trinity Sunday, June 12, 2022

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

O Lord our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world!

Today is Trinity Sunday. This is the Feast Day of the name of this parish, its patronal festival, if you will. But the Trinity is not a traditional patron saint, the Trinity is the Christian understanding of the nature of God.  As our psalm today says, God is to be exalted in all the world, it is the majestic God that created all things that protects us and cares for us, that leads us into all truth. When Christians talk about that God, we talk about the Holy Trinity: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

The foundation of the doctrine of the Trinity is the faith of Israel: “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.” There is one God, and only the one true God is worthy of worship. This has always been the Christian affirmation—we worship the one God, the God of truth. The ancient world had a marketplace of Gods. You could take your pick of the ones that were around, negotiate for the best deal you could get, find the most advantageous terms. But Israel rejected all that for the one true God, the God of Truth, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who would hold them responsible for lives of faithfulness and compassion. “You shall have no other gods before me.” This has been the essential teaching of the Christian church at all times, from the very beginning to the present.  But as we Christians describe God, we must describe our experience of Jesus, the Crucified and Risen One, and the Holy Spirit enlivening and guiding the church.

This can sound all very high falutin’ and metaphysical, but what I am trying to put forward here is a humble doctrine of the Trinity. It’s not that we are somehow better because of the Trinity—that our belief automatically means that we are free from all the inclinations to be unjust that the prophets spoke against, or mistakes in how we describe or follow religious truth. What it means is that we are humbly, before God, confessing Christ.

There is one God, the God of truth and justice. You shall not bow down to idols or make up other kinds of supernatural justifications for what you want. Indeed, affirming God the Holy Trinity puts to the lie the many representations of Christianity that use Bible verses and assertions of religious traditions to rationalize hate and cruelty and limiting God’s love to those who have someone’s stamp of approval.

Christians have always affirmed that there is one god, the True God, who was from the beginning, before all things. But Christians also know God in the person of Jesus the Christ, who lived among us as the truth. The distinction between Jesus and every other human being is not some magical potion. Jesus was God’s love for us, walking among us, living as a man from God’s point of view—that is, a life lived entirely for the good of others. This was not just the appearance of God walking on earth, but God whose love made him as close to us and as vulnerable as any human being. He lived in love and healed the sick, and the sinfulness and selfishness of human beings caused him to be killed.

The doctrine of the Trinity is how we Christians try to make sense of our experience of the God of Truth, so distant and so close, so powerful and so vulnerable. We teach and we believe that the God of Love has come among us and that God’s love among us is the Holy Spirit.

But what does that mean? The Holy Spirit is understood and misunderstood in many ways by many people, Christian and otherwise. And even those who claim direct experience of the Holy Spirit—surely most of them have some experience—but how do we know it is the Holy Spirit? What does Jesus say? “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” … “and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.” The description of the Holy Spirit is about the love of God.

 And it has to do with following Jesus commandments—but what are they?  At the Last Supper, when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet, he gave them a commandment.  In fact, it is his only commandment in the Gospel of John: “Love one another as I have loved you.” Period. That’s it. Easy enough. Of course, the way that Jesus loved his disciples and this world was costly indeed—that evening he was led away to be tried and executed. We are invited, commanded really, to become part of God’s love by loving God’s children, in the most costly way, by giving of ourselves.

Love is not grandstanding, it is seeking the good of someone. You don’t have to die to do that, and no one has to know what caring for another person might cost you. Love is not how we feel, it is helping another, it is being called to stand along with them. Perhaps we do feel good when we do that, but the feeling is not the love, not this kind of love.

The Holy Spirit is God’s love. Simple as that: God standing with us, upholding us when we don’t know how to stand, for ourselves or for someone else. The Holy Spirit supports us and holds us together. But the Spirit doesn’t just hold us together, otherwise the church would have ended with those first disciples holding one another together.  The Spirit is here among us, to reach out, beyond our comfortable confines, to convey God’s love, and our own respect to others, the many people around who need a little more respect and care. In this time when hate and condemnation are having a resurgence in this country, Christians need to attend to our own inclinations to care more for ourselves than to listen to the Holy Spirit—to listen to our own young people and others the church has ignored for too long.

The Holy Trinity upholds us, binds us, comforts us and leads us into the truth of God’s compassionate life in Jesus Christ.

Let us pray:

Out of the mouths of infants and children your majesty is praised above the heavens.

You have set up a stronghold against your adversaries, to quell the enemy and the avenger.

When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers,

the moon and the stars you have set in their courses,

What is man that you should be mindful of him? the son of man that you should seek him out?

You have made him but little lower than the angels; you adorn him with glory and honor;

You give him mastery over the works of your hands; you put all things under his feet:

All sheep and oxen, even the wild beasts of the field,

The birds of the air, the fish of the sea, and whatsoever walks in the paths of the sea.

O Lord our Governor, how exalted is your Name in all the world!

Psalm 8:2-10

Bless those who Curse You

A sermon for the seventh Sunday after the Epiphany, February 20, 2022

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.

Jesus teaches us, just as he taught his disciples and the crowds who followed him. They followed him not only to learn about what he might teach, but because in encountering Jesus, people were healed. Before the story we heard last week, the one where Jesus began his teaching with the Beatitudes, Jesus healed a man with a withered hand on the Sabbath.

There is no doubt that Jesus was a healer and he cast out demons. If you approach the documents that we have with an historical eye, we can be more certain in saying that what he was known for was his exorcisms and his healings – more than for his teachings. Yet, he also wasn’t a magician and did nothing particularly showy.  Despite the crowds, what we know of Jesus was how plain and ordinary he was. His healing and his teaching were the same: What he did was move people from the self-absorption of fear and pain to the honesty of healthy life in God.

What Jesus presents is simple, anyone can do it—you don’t have to be smart, well-educated, or a religious superhero. However, it is a challenge to be honest and generous in your life. And it requires courage, because there are real-world consequences for being honest and generous in a world dominated by fear, selfishness, and self-serving dishonesty.

Some people think the things that Jesus says in today’s Gospel are unrealistic or even soft-headed. Love those who hate you? In America nowadays, especially this week when the attention is on Valentine’s Day, whenever we hear the word “love” we think about hearts and roses. But that’s not what Jesus is taking about. In the New Testament, “love” means action and engagement for the sake of the good of someone else. Of course, when we do that successfully, it may make us feel good, because living generously and making someone else’s life better is a good thing. But love is not about the feeling, or being addicted to getting the feeling, or the positive feedback. Jesus points this out a little later, “If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same.”

Then, when Jesus talks about loans and giving things away, it gets pretty intense: “if they take your coat, give them your shirt”; “lend, expecting nothing in return.” Jesus knows his customers. People rationalize and lie to themselves and others about how badly they have been treated and how terrible the others are. I’ve so often heard people who don’t like these words of Jesus, turn the conversation to macro-economics—but he’s not talking about that, he’s talking to us. Can we live more generously than we do? Is someone else in need? Is there a misunderstanding about who owes what? Jesus is encouraging everyone to find a way to live generously and to stop rationalizing their selfishness. Accept even a real wrong to your own interest, for the sake of truthfulness and justice in society. This is not about coddling wrong; it’s about stepping away from defensiveness and self-justification. Even when we must stand up for justice, it is not for our own advantage or comfort that we stand, but for the sake of those who are harmed by the contemptuous and violent. The fierceness of compassion is far different from the rage of self-defense and selfish rancor.

When Jesus says, “Love your enemies, do good to those that hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you,”—isn’t that impossible?  I mean aren’t we going to be upset if people do bad things to us and our loved ones? If love were about feeling good, it would be impossible. But what Jesus has to say is not about making you, or anyone else in our country, feel good. Christian love is not desire, or even friendship, but concern and action for the good of others.

Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” He does not say, do everything they want, or pander to their cruel whims. Rather, we should look for their ultimate good, for their healing and health. If you are taking care of a cranky and spoiled child, it is not loving to let them run into a busy street or hurt their little sister or brother. Pray for your enemies, for their well-being, for them to be guided to just actions—even it is in spite of themselves. It sometimes means that you have to stand up to a person who is destroying their life or the lives of others.

Does it require courage to follow Jesus’ teachings? Yes. Is it too hard for ordinary Christians? No. Healthy Christians know to seek the good of others before self. They also are honest about their own fears and their own selfishness, and they seek to repent and believe the Gospel daily. It is the pretense of acting like we are better than others, or the justification of selfishness and self-interested manipulation of the world around us that is unacceptable.

Jesus doesn’t say that life in the real world is easy. He just doesn’t pity us, rather he loves us and looks for our good.

Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.

Luke 6:22-23

We are blessed and we are healed by Jesus’ love for us and the courage of his honesty. We are called to be Christians in this world, in this country, at this time.

Let us pray once again our Collect for today:

O Lord, you have taught us that without love whatever we do is worth nothing: Send your Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts your greatest gift, which is love, the true bond of peace and of all virtue, without which whoever lives is accounted dead before you. Grant this for the sake of your only Son Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Love Never Ends

A sermon for the fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, January 30, 2022

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.

Today’s Epistle lesson is St. Paul’s great hymn in praise of love. In his first letter to the Corinthians, he has been discussing spiritual gifts and he arrives at the end of his discussion and points out than the one spiritual gift worth having is love.  I don’t know about anyone here, but when I look at these characteristics of love, I see that I can be occasionally a little irritable, sometimes just a little arrogant—and don’t ask my wife about the rude part. The love of God is something that we don’t always fully live into.

God’s love is always here for us, but our own love, and the love of Christians is not something that is automatic or something we can take for granted. Living together in a Christian community requires patience and forbearance, because someone is always going to be irritable, or resentful, or insist on their own way. Love rejoices in the truth—not the truth of telling others what’s wrong with them—but the truth of knowing the depths of God’s love for everyone, the truth of Jesus’ love for us and his giving himself for us.

Our Gospel lesson today overlaps with last week’s reading that Bishop Bakare preached on. Jesus opened the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, the sixty-first chapter, where the prophet announces the hopeful message of God’s redemption for Israel, his summons for them to return from exile. That scripture that Jesus’ audience heard was: “He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor …” And what Jesus says as he’s teaching the meaning of that text is: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In other words, Jesus is present in this world to bring good news to the poor.

So is the Good News of God’s love mainly for the poor?  Could be. Certainly, the song that Jesus mother sang before he was born, the first Canticle we pray in our Morning Prayer service, says, “He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away.”

It is significant, of course, that he starts with the poor. Those who get the least respect are just as entitled to full honor and respect as those who presume that they are the ONES who are entitled to it. It is not the case that some are entitled to honor and others can be dismissed. ALL are worthy of our respect. ALL of us have God’s respect and love, right now. Jesus is telling us that—and the challenge is to us, and to everyone—how should we respect the ones who God loves and respects, particularly those who are pushed to the side, dishonored in their social status, or what language they speak, or physical disability, or their place on the economic ladder. God gives us freedom, what do we do with it?

 In today’s Gospel, the congregation hears about the Good News to the poor, and they nod their heads, and say, “Yeah, pretty good.” They probably think that THEY are the poor and the Good News is just for them. But then they look at Jesus, and they say, “Wait a minute, this is just that carpenter’s son, what gives him any authority?” But Jesus explains a little more: “the prophet Elijah brought that good news to a widow outside of Israel, not to those inside, and when it came to curing lepers, the prophet Elisha cured Naaman, who was a Syrian, not any of his own people.” The Gospel spreads far beyond those in our own neighborhoods, or our social communities where we’re most at home. The love of God extends far beyond where we ourselves are comfortable.

When the congregation realized that Jesus was saying things other than what they wanted to hear, they did what any self-respecting congregation would do—they took the young preacher out and prepared to throw him off a cliff.

Our reading from First Corinthians tells us, “Love does not insist on its own way; … it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”   Jesus is the love of God. He had spoken the truth at home, and he had much more to do, so he slipped away. Living in the love of God can be a slippery thing. We like to divide the world into good guys and bad guys—and, of course, our group are the good guys. But God’s love is bigger than ours. We are called to grow, not in our own way, or in winning more so that others lose, but in the love that rejoices in the truth.

St. Paul says, “Love never ends.” That means that our growth and change in love never ends—we are challenged by Jesus, and just as we have ahold of him, he slips away to teach more love. We think we know the will of God, but Paul teaches us, “as for knowledge, it will come to an end. …Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.” Jesus preaches to us, the Good News to the Poor, and we know what he means, we know the poor, we know how many deserve respect who don’t get it. But yet, we also know that Good News because he makes us uncomfortable and challenges all of us, to learn to extend our love further, to examine ourselves and live more deeply in God’s love.

“Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

1 Corinthians 13:13

God is Love

A sermon for the fifth Sunday of Easter, May 2, 2021

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son.

Since Easter, we have been reading First John as our epistle reading each Sunday. The entire discourse is about Christian love. Today’s lesson, which is most of the fourth chapter, is the fullest and perhaps the most famous discussion of love that we have. Maybe you have heard the Greek word for love: Agapē. If you look at the Greek text, that word shows up in various forms three or four times in every sentence in the first part of this lesson.

It is not that this is some special or different kind of love that Christians have. It’s not a secret magic word. Love is a characteristic of human life. But often we forget, misunderstand, postpone or distort love, and hurt one another by not loving one another.

There is nothing weak, sentimental or foolish about love. And love is not something that we achieve, or count up in points to show that we are better at love than someone else. Fundamental to Christian understanding of love is that God first loves us. Before all things, and in all things, and through all things—God is loving us. Love is not an achievement, but the pure grace of our creator, who comes among us and suffered with us that we might live in his love. Love is a gift that may manifest itself in many ways according to who you are, but it is not an optional gift or talent. You can’t have some people who are smart, and others who work hard, and others who lead, and yet other, different people who are loving. Without love, none of the rest of it is real. And it is God who loves us first, and we know that and experience that, in Jesus, whose life makes us real. Because love comes from God to everyone, to all God’s children— no church or group of any sort has a monopoly on love—nor does any sort of special definition of love outweigh the love of God for all people and all creation.

The lesson continues with the audacious statement: God is love. Not “God is like love” or “God is the source of love,” but “God is love.” Simple. Direct. But challenging. This means that love is not my opinion about it, or someone else’s feelings about it. Love is God and God is free, before all things, above all things, and in all things. Distortions of love or lying about love would put one at odds with the living God. God loves you and God loves me—and it is very serious business. In asserting that God is love, we are saying that the essence of all that is, is that bond of caring and striving for the well-being and thriving of one another, that we know in being loved and in loving. “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.”

On Wednesday morning, Eileen Emmanuel died unexpectedly. Eileen has been a linchpin of Trinity Church for a very long time. She was our parish secretary, taking care of many practical needs of the church, preparing and printing our bulletins, maintaining correspondence, working to be sure that the church was ready for worship on Sunday morning, reminding me of who has a birthday or anniversary, or those who died recently or in years past, or people who have been reported as sick or in the hospital. She was a frequent reader in the service, and a good one, I might add. I was stunned when I heard of her death. I expect that others in our church had a similar reaction; her passing is a terrible loss for us. But nothing like the loss for Malcolm and Rodger . The loss of the wife and mother who was such a bulwark to her family is beyond words. We can say this, however, the love which Eileen expressed in her work, her care for her family, her devotion to her church family, and to worship of God shows something of God’s love for us.

When we have a sudden major change, a huge loss such as this, the temptation is to be afraid. To worry about ourselves and what will happen next. Fear is definitely a temptation, but as it says in our lesson: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” The life that binds us together and builds us up is the love of God. We experience that love in the love of our sisters and brothers. And if we lose one sister, her love is not lost, we have received her love and it continues to abide in us. The ongoing life of the present and the future is the love we give to one another; generosity in response to the gift of God who is love.

In today’s Gospel Jesus says:

‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower … Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit.

John 15:1,4-5

Each of us abides in Christ, in the love of God. And by abiding in that love we bring forth the fruit of love—generosity, welcome, support, and comfort of others. In my years here, I have seen such fruit emerge from the members of this church and there is much more to come.

We live in a world where many are fearful and there are dangers. Often those come from fearful people lashing out—trying to keep the things they fear at a distance or to crush those who they fear. Christ came as a stranger and those things happened to him. But the forces of fear and death did not define him. He continues to bear the fruit of love. Our love is perfected in him and he casts out fear. We abide, not in the things that we remember, or want to hold on to, but in God. And God is Love.

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 for ever.

They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn *

            the saving deeds that he has done.

Psalm 22:27-30

But in Truth and Action

A sermon for the fourth Sunday of Easter, April 25, 2021

Trinity Episcopal Church of Morrisania, Bronx, New York

Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.

How do we know God’s love? Or indeed, how do we know love at all? This is the theme of the First Epistle of John, which we have been reading this Easter season. Love is the result of God’s love for us, for all people and all the universe. God first loved us, and then we are able to love one another.

We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another.

1 John 3:16

We know the story of Jesus: his healing and teaching, his crucifixion and resurrection. In Jesus, God did all this for us—facing the powers of death; the anger, corruption, the self-serving blindness of oppression. He did not just say things, he lived his love for us to the end.

Perhaps we can describe love. Perhaps we can say that we love someone, or some thing, or some group of people. That’s fine. But just saying those things is not love. As the text we began with says, “Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” Parents love their children by feeding them, playing with them, comforting them if they are afraid. A parent who says to a child, “I love you,” while neglecting those basic needs, hurting them or making them afraid is not loving that child.  Love is in the deed of loving, not the form of words. Christians must not be so quick to say how much they love, but be quick to do the loving things that keep our neighbors and sisters and brothers safe; helping them when they are in need. On the other hand, we shouldn’t fall into the trap of being competitive about how much we should do for others. Love doesn’t work that way. We are human and we respond as we are able, doing what it takes for those whom we love.

“…not in word or speech, but in truth and action.”

It’s more important to be truthful about our loving actions than it is to defend our actions or to explain ourselves. There’s no need to dress up or excuse those times when we may have ignored someone’s need by rationalizing how it’s really for the best. That only distracts from loving the person whose need we can see now. We should be asking ourselves: Who needs comfort? Who needs help to get by? Though its good if we can be truthful with ourselves, acknowledging those times when we weren’t there for others, the real point is to focus on this: How can we love now?

That’s what this passage in our reading today is about:

And by this we will know that we are from the truth and will reassure our hearts before him whenever our hearts condemn us; for God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have boldness before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we obey his commandments and do what pleases him.

Our hearts do not condemn us, because God has loved us first, God is merciful and cares that we thrive, that ALL of God’s children thrive.

1 John 3:19-22

The big thing in the news this week was the conviction of former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin in the murder of George Floyd. The murder and everything that surrounded it has been very traumatic—we’ve all followed it in the news, so I won’t recite the details. But it has raised the issue of how police function in our country and how they should function. The phrase “To Serve and Protect” is often used to describe and define the work of police. For that to have any positive meaning, it must mean that the police are there to serve and protect everyone; in particular those who are vulnerable and in difficult, fragile or disturbed situations. No one needs the police when they are strong, well and comfortable. Serving is the opposite of bullying or dominating, and real service often entails vulnerability.  It is no longer a time for police departments to address service and protection, especially for the youth of Black and brown communities, in word and speech alone. It is time to move toward service in truth and action.

I do not believe that the problem is primarily of individuals in the police departments, and, indeed, we all know many good men and women police officers who serve their communities with care and distinction. Rather, the problem is the priorities and values that are put forward by departments and unions—prioritizing weapons and domination over training in human problem solving and de-escalation, for instance. As long as police approach their work as war, looking for adversaries, those who are most subject to racism will be in the most danger—at least as long as our society continues to have any racism. It is not too much to ask our leaders and policy makers to do this, not simply in word or speech, but in truth and action.

Our Gospel this Sunday is about Christ, the Good Shepherd, or as one translator puts it, The Model Shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away …

John 10:11-12

All of us, truth be told, can be more like that hired hand than any kind of good shepherd more often than we would like to admit. But it is Christ that is the Good Shepherd. He keeps us safe and protects us, and that is what makes it possible for us to love one another, to be generous for the sake of God’s other children, despite our fears and backslidings.  It is God’s love and we can live it in truth and in action.

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil;

for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me;

you have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over.

Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,

and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

Psalm 23:4-6