Finding safety in a hanging basket

         Late one December evening I was getting my outdoor plants ready for an expected freeze.  I carried some into the storage room off my patio and did a marginal job of wrapping the climbing plants.  The last one was a hanging basket with a three year old variegated ivy sort of plant that hangs in front of my kitchen window.  Just to say up front that I am not the best tender of plants.  Anyway I reached up to lift it off the hook and was surprised when a flurry of feathers came out of the plant and whisked by my head.  To say that I was surprised is an understatement.  I almost dropped the whole thing.  When I came back to my senses I realized that two small birds had settled themselves in what they thought was a safe place to roost.  In the center of the basket was a hollowed out little hole just the size for two smalls birds wanting to get out of the wind and rest for the night.  My immediate reactions were sadness and guilt that I had gotten in the way of their plans and had dashed their hope for safety.  So when I sat down to give body to a reflection on this terror driven story, told by Matthew, - I identified with Herod – For those two little birds I was the despotic ruler destroying the illusion of safety in a hanging basket and forcing the avian interlopers into exile.

Now we are nearing the end of the Christmas season.  For most Americans at least - the Christmas tree is already at the curb waiting for pickup and the ornaments are packed away in the attic.  Football dominates the TV and around here our attention is fast shifting to Mardi Gras parades.  Matthew does not want us to go there just yet though.  We want to continue with the warm and fuzzy feelings with shepherds and angels and Mary and Joseph doting over their baby son.  But instead we hear a hair-raising story of fear, deceit, escape, and murder.    

For today the wise guys are still on the road.  But between now and Epiphany on Tuesday  the royal entourage from the East will divulge the location of the newly born “king” that Herod fears, shower the baby with gifts and then, warned by an angel, sneak out of Bethlehem to avoid Herod.  Herod then, in his anger, orders that all recently born male children in Bethlehem be killed.  Joseph, unaware of Herod’s threat, is again visited by an angel in a dream telling him to run for his family’s life.  So he packs the donkey and flees to Egypt.  The Holy family remain there until Herod himself dies.  And once again he is visited by an angel who tells him that it is safe to return home, but now Herod’s son is in power and joseph knows that his son will not be safe.  Matthew tells us that Joseph, Mary and Jesus make a third journey to Nazareth where tradition has it that he opened a carpentry shop and raised his family.  While the birth in a stable and the angelic chorus singing to the shepherds in Luke is a lovely story – Matthew 2  makes for a gritty – disturbing tale that, if nothing else, on this second Sunday in Christmas 2026 is much more realistic, more believable and relatable to the world in which we live today.  Luke makes for a great candlelight service – but Matthew is as raw as the news on the TV.

I say it seems more realistic to me because everything I know about the teachings and works of the grown up Jesus confirm that this birth in a backwater town in Judah did really did upset the social and religious order of Judah under Roman rule.  Jesus came preaching peace, justice, love, diversity, equity, sacrificial service, and inclusion.  If I had been a Roman puppet governor back then I would have been frightened for the future of my own power and wealth.  Jesus taught love and generosity and faithfulness to God  He gave the oppressed hope.

Herod didn’t do anything other than that which any other despotic ruler would have done in first century Roman Empire.   And Joseph did what any parent today would do – he left everything the family owned behind and set out for a foreign land that seemed to offer relative safety for his family. In Matthew’s account Joseph had been warned but God’s angel and so he fled through the desert and over mountains to cross the Nile River and make a new home for his family.

Today standing here it occurs to me that this story might very well be at least equally important as the Christmas story we read on Christmas Eve.  Granted that Matthew loves to cherry pick prophetic visions that “prove” who Jesus was – visions like a ruler coming from Bethlehem, Rachel weeping for her children, and the Messiah being called a Nazorean.  But this story is so realistic and so important because it’s happening right now.  Not only in far off lands – third world countries – it’s happening right here in our own country in 2026.  And it’s not a new thing. 

The last 2000+ years of history have known millions of people called “illegal” because they tried to escape starvation or persecution, or oppression with only the clothes on their backs.  Were it not for Gaza, Tibet, Myanmar, Syria, Afghanistan, South Africa, Honduras, and oh so many more this story in Matthew might seem far-fetched, but in truth it is reality for millions today. A quick google search finds that as of mid-2025, over 117 million people are forcibly displaced globally, marking the highest global displacement levels on record.  Images of boats capsizing in the Mediterranean or in the Caribbean, refugees being incarcerated and deported, ill equipped refugee camps and missiles destroying access to food, water, and healthcare – these are the things that bring sorrow and despair to our world. 

I think that just maybe that is exactly why Matthew tells this story in all it’s gruesome detail.  Matthew wants to let us know even in the face of all this suffering that in Jesus - God does draw near to us.  This story is so realistic because Matthew knew better than most of the Gospel writers that because in Jesus God assumes our mortality, God suffers right along with us.  In his lifetime Jesus knew what it meant to be unhoused, to be poor, to be persecuted, to fear, to be disappointed, to be violently assaulted and to die at the hands of fear and hate.  And Jesus knew what it means to love as God loves.

You know this world in which we live is in many ways a beautiful place and there is often love and kindness peaking through the cracks of our lives bringing joy, and love and hope to us – and God is at the center of that too.  Just as God was with Mary and Joseph and Jesus as they fled persecution – God was also with them as they settled in Nazareth and went about the business of reading Torah in the Temple, performing mitsvahs, sitting shiva, playing with friends, going to weddings.  God is with us in all of those things too – comforting us, bringing us hope and love.  Paul tells us in his letter to the church in Rome that nothing…  nothing can separate us from the love of God.  That’s why this story is so important.  No fearful king, no powerful conqueror, no disease, no earthly calamity – nothing can ever separate us from God’s love as we know it in Jesus Christ.

So the next time someone steals your hanging basket that you thought was going to be a safe place to sleep – be like the little birds in my yard - don’t lose hope.  Don’t be afraid to fly to another tree, because God has provided lots of bushes and trees in the yard where you can seek refuge.  In the face of all that tries to sap our hope, I ask that you not let despair or anger poison your hope - for you and for your children.  Christ’s Peace that we offer each time we share the Eucharist is about freedom from the fear, hatred, and oppression that limits our love and our life.  God’s shalom is bigger than that.  God’s Shalom opens the way for all to be free to love and to live.  It opens the way for Peace on Earth and goodwill for all. 

Former Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, closed one of his Christmas messages with this:

“It’s not an accident that long ago, followers of Jesus began to commemorate his birth, his coming into the world. When the world seemed darkest. When hope seemed to be dashed on the altar of reality. It is not an accident that we too, commemorate his coming, when things do not always look right in this world.

But there is a God. And there is Jesus. And even in the darkest night. That light once shined and will shine still.  His way of love is the way of life. It is the light of the world. And the light of that love shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not, cannot, and will not overcome it.”

The Prophetic Voice

 I found myself this week floundering in a maze of possible things to preach.  Jeremiah’s promise of restoration… “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah”.  (Jer 31:31)  The Psalmist gratitude for God’s covenant.. “Oh, how I love your law! * all the day long it is in my mind.” Ps 119:37.  The Widows persistent call for justice and in inevitability of God’s justice for the poor  “And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night?” (Luke 18:7)  But I could not get past the connection that the 2 Timothy reading has with the work we are doing on Wednesday nights as we take a deep dive into the Hebrew prophets.  Bear with me for just a minute as I catch you up on our Wednesday night study.

Back when the children of Israel first entered the Promised Land, Joshua allocated land to each tribe and family by lot. The land had to stay in each family. Even if someone sold his land, it would automatically be returned to the family during the year of jubilee which occurred once every fifty years. Everybody in Israel and Judah in the 9^th C BCE knew this, including King Ahab and his wife Jezebel. So when Naboth wouldn’t sell his vineyard to Ahab, there was nothing Ahab could do about it. It was a family thing.  Jezebel, on the other hand, was a Philistine princess, and she figured she could do something about it! Namely, kill Naboth!

So Jezebel conspires with some nefarious folks to assassinate Naboth.  Once he was dead she advised Ahab to seize the land – and he did!   Ahab did not personally kill Naboth, and neither did Jezebel; however, she gave the orders, and he was the one whose greed led her to give the orders. Because they were in a position of power, God held them even more responsible than the murderers themselves. Elijah brings them the bad news that the LORD is very angry not only because they sinned, but also because they caused others to sin.

Naboth and Ahab have very different ideas about the ability to buy and sell land.  Naboth believed that land cannot be traded it can only be treasured and cared for.  Here the covenantal roots of land ownership goes up against commercial use of land.  But truth out it is a theological issue.  Like so many of the stories in the Hebrew scripture it is a question of faith…  Should the God of Israel be Yahweh or Baal?  Amos, Jeremiah, Micah all warned against worshipping false idols.  Even a millenium later Jesus tells us “You cannot serve two masters You cannot serve God and wealth.” (Mt 6:24)

Since the beginning of time there have been some who believed that wealth is a sign of God’s blessing and that health and well-being are earned – a quid pro quo faith.  But at the very core of this story and all of the others from Jeremiah to Jesus in our lessons today is the core belief that the creator of the universe will not tolerate injustice.  There is nothing wrong with being successful, having the comforts of life – what is wrong is to gain prosperity on the backs of others.  Whether in 9^th C BCE Palestine or in Long Beach MS in 2025. 

Walter Brueggemann notes:  “we ourselves live in an economy where the gap between haves and have-nots grows daily. The gap is everywhere among us, supported by (1) the idolatry of wealth and property, (2) institutional violence of policing, tax codes, and rigged financial arrangements, (3) food from agribusiness designed for export and profit, (4) privatization of public land to the exclusion of the landless, and (5) a throw-away culture of extravagance that is ready to dispose of unneeded folk as well as other commodities to the great detriment of the environment.”   If you don’t believe it just check your facebook feed.  Brueggemann continues.. “Given this evident economic reality now as then, it is urgent that the church learn to reread its text in more knowing, compelling, and courageous ways that are appropriate to the urgency of the moment that God has entrusted to us.”  And that brings us home to the Epistle of Second Timothy.

Second Timothy is thought to have been written in the 2C CE – long after Paul’s death.  Paul had a reputation as a model of faithful endurance.  The letter encourages its addressee, Timothy, to nurture those same qualities in his ministry. It assumes a setting in which Timothy confronts challenges created by rival teachers. It worries about their teachings’ potential to hamper and discredit the teachings of Jesus.  Our passage today calls for the early Christians and us  - in the spreading of the gospel - to be persistent – whether the government is liable to file suit or bring false charges against you or not.  To convince, rebuke, and encourage others to be faithful to God, because the world is full of false teachers who will say whatever suits the desires of the powerful and that there will always be people with “itching ears” who will believe them and spread hate.

Second Timothy and Brueggemann are inviting us to reread God’s word within the context of the world in which we live.  Jesus did not come into the world just to save us from our sins.  Jesus – just like the Prophets before him … came into the world to teach us how live, how to love, how to show mercy, compassion, and gratitude.  Second Timothy says that all scripture is inspired by God.  Some try to cherry pick a package to suit their own greed or hate.  But if we read scripture from the long view, then like the author of Timothy, we will discover that all scripture is a means by which God can breathe life and faith and hope and love and forgiveness and resurrection, into people.  The study of scripture and of the prophetic writings of other faiths and cultures – when understood within the context of the time and place and culture in which it was written can help congregations understand how their individual daily lives are awash with opportunities for authentic ministry.

In my homily last week I suggested that faith was not something we have but rather faith is something we do.  That notion comes home for us today.  Each of these readings tells us that true faith looks a whole lot more like “being bold” than like “Being pious”  Faith requires us to reframe our days and nights with humility and gratitude for the abundance of God’s blessings in our lives and to resist the notion that we earned those blessings. 

For weeks now we have heard about widows, lepers, Lazarus at the gate, ..  all of these tales are intended to remind us – not that we are low belly sinful folks, but to proclaim to us that we are the beloved children of God.  We are called to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest scripture because God has made a new covenant with us … saying  “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

As Christians we are commanded by scripture, tradition and reason to shape our actions and our decisions, our public statements, and yes our votes, to shape them by our understanding of our place in God’s Kingdom and by God’s persistent call to us.  Whether it is on a soapbox, in a pulpit or at the voting booth, God expects us to speak out against greed and oppression against hate and prejudice, and to defend the civil rights – the human rights of those who are unable to defend themselves.  To not only love God, but to also love our neighbors as ourselves.  To that I say…

 Thanks be to God  Amen

The Road to Perdition

 

This essay is from one of the parishioners at St Patrick's...  

The United States is not on the road to greatness.  We are on the road to perdition.

We have “law enforcement” sweeps conducted by men is militia style tactical gear, devoid of any law enforcement insignia, while wearing facemasks.  They are indistinguishable from street thugs and criminal gangs. 

Our government has established “detention facilities” that reek of concentration camps with inhumane unsanitary conditions for people, human beings, who are denied the due process rights that, at least theoretically, are guaranteed by our Constitution.

In the administration’s eagerness to round up criminal illegal immigrants, we have rounded up legal residents, asylum seekers, tax paying workers, and US citizens.  We have torn families and communities apart.  And far too many of our citizens applaud these travesties of justice, even far too many who claim to be Christian.  But what does the Bible say about how we treat the strangers among us?

Leviticus 19:33-34 is pretty clear.  “33 “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. 34 The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the native-born among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”  Leviticus 24:22 reiterates the point, “You shall have one law for the alien and for the native-born, for I am the Lord your God.”  To me, it is pretty clear that all of our rights as US citizens must also apply to immigrants, both legal and illegal.

But what does Jesus say?  In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus is asked to rank the commandments.  The conversation is recorded as this:  36 “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” 37 He said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

When someone asks, “Who is my neighbor,” Jesus responds with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Luke 10:25-37.  The story makes it clear that even those we may despise are still our neighbors.  And how we treat even the poorest of our neighbors matters.  Matthew 25:31- 46 is unforgiving about it.  “31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, 33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. 34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world, 35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, 36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ 37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food or thirsty and gave you something to drink? 38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you or naked and gave you clothing? 39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ 40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me.’ 41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You who are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels, 42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ 44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not take care of you?’ 45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ 46 And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.””

In John 21:15-17, Jesus summarizes his instructions when he tells Peter, “Feed my lambs, tend my sheep.”

So regardless of what our “leadership” is Washington are doing, Christian faith makes it clear that our Constitutional rights and protections must extend to all persons regardless of legal status, that we are to love our neighbors by feeding the hungry, providing drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, healing the sick, visiting the imprisoned, and, by the small extension of tending Christ’s sheep, healing the sick and housing the homeless.

Anyone who supports the administration’s inhumane treatment of the powerless among us and at the same time describes themselves as Christian, is, at best, a hypocrite.  While Romans 10:9 says salvation is rooted in confessing Jesus is Lord, Jesus himself says that is not enough.  Matthew 7:21 presents Jesus’ warning, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.”   If Jesus is “Lord and Savior,” it is incumbent upon us to live by Jesus’s teachings and expectations, even if it is hard, uncomfortable, or unpopular.

Who is my neighbor and so what!?!

Propers for Year C Proper 10... Amos 7:7-17, Luke 10:25-37

This fall our plan for our Wednesday evening forums is to explore some of the Hebrew prophets.  One of my favorites is Amos who like many prophetic voices entered into the work reluctantly and with feelings of inadequacy for the task, but who took on the role because he felt God had called him out of obscurity to speak truth to power. 

There is value I think in understanding who and what power Amos was addressing.  In the 8^th C BCE there were two kingdoms, Judah to the south and Israel to the north.  Jeroboam II was king of Israel and both feared and revered by the people.  Israel was strong and in the business of dominating the surrounding countries.  The ruling class was wealthy and getting wealthier at the expense of poor and marginalized communities.  It was a time of power and prosperity, a time when the people of Israel assumed their privilege and affluence were evidence of God’s blessings to them as the chosen people. They had forgotten their suffering as slaves in Egypt and neglected to share the fruits of their prosperity with the poor. Their religious observance centered in the local shrines such as Bethel rather than the temple in Jerusalem, was disconnected from their social ethics and bereft of social justice.  Amos was called by God from his life as a shepherd in Judah (southern kingdom) to speak a word from the Lord, to call out those who had fallen short of the covenant they had made with God. 

Amos was likely, in his native Judah, a person of social standing who traded in sheep and goats and other agricultural products.  From his vantage point he saw a lack of faithfulness in Jeroboam and in his people and Amos confronted the injustice of their extravagant lives with stark accusations of faithlessness, by calling out oppressors, by naming the sins, and with predictions of doom at the hands of outside conquerors.  He called Israel to the same standard of conduct that God asks of all the nations, to rely on God rather than military might, to unite their worship with concern and care for the poor, to let their faithfulness in God be reflected in their faithfulness to God’s people – friends and strangers alike. 

The images in the visions of Amos are stark.  Today we read a passage in which Amos says that God’s judgment is illustrated through the image of the “plumb line,” a bit of string with a weight used as a guide for measuring whether a wall has been built straight or not.  The Lord takes the measure of a wall that represents the people of Israel. Amos is asked what he sees and he minces no words. The Lord finds the wall is warped, no longer straight and true. God warns the people of Israel, “I will never again pass them by; no longer will they be spared, rather they will be judged severely. The meaning of the prophet’s word of judgment is all too clear. Israel has not tended to the straight and narrow teachings about justice, mercy, kindness and faithfulness in Torah.  God has reached the end of his rope - or in this case string - and will no longer excuse Israel’s behavior.  According to Amos, the Northern kingdom of Israel is under God’s judgment for its selfish, self-centered ways and for its lack of faith and dependence on God.

Now for sure the ruling body of Israel would not have been happy with what Amos had to say.  So the spokesperson for the king steps up.  He is Amaziah, a priest from Bethel which was one of those “High Places” to be laid waste.   Amos is commanded by Amaziah to return home and prophesy there. He is not welcome at Bethel.  This does not deter Amos though.  He announces judgment against the corrupt Jeroboam and the members of the priestly caste who have capitulated to the powers they serve. He spells out a dire vision of the future, including the queen becoming a prostitute, the royal children dying by the sword, and the people of Israel being taken into exile, and using some pretty colorful language he speaks truth to the opulent elite and predicts the comeuppance of Isreal. My personal favorites are “listen you cows of Bashan who oppress the helpless and crush the poor” and the very quotable; “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”  But that’s for another day.

In The Women's Bible Commentary, biblical scholar Judith Sanderson writes that Amos' career as a prophet focused on two interrelated concerns: how wealthy the powerful people had become and the fact that they had amassed their wealth by exploiting the poor. For Amos this meant that the people had turned away from God's preferential option for the poor and the understanding that widows, orphans, and sojourners, among others, must be cared for as a matter of social justice.  If Amos were living in the USA today, I believe he would be experiencing deja vue.

Amos’ vision of God’s justice does come true when in 721 the northern kingdom of Israel is overrun by the Assyrians and the leaders are exiled.  But it is his strength of conviction that his message is given by God that invites us to consider the impact of standing up to injustice anywhere we encounter it. The similarities of context between the social injustices of Amos’ day and our own make an uncomfortable link between the judgment Amos foresaw for his people and the implications of the prophetic word for our day.  We live in an age when power and greed and spewed hatred are the driving forces for many policy makers.  And it seems now in our country that to oppose the ruling body by calling out injustice or oppression is to invite reprisal.  It is no secret that members of our congregation and I often stand on the margins in the public arena, standing in solidarity with those whose lives our prevailing society discounts with obscene mockery and disrespect, with cuts to freedom of life and liberty, and exclusion from full participation in our common life.  Many will say that prayer and worship should not have anything to do with the issues of the day.  But I think that if I read Amos correctly, and I believe I do, that is exactly where the prophet is calling us.  It is impossible to separate our prayer and worship from our response to the needs of a suffering world without leaving our prayer and worship hollow and empty.

And that brings me right to the Gospel lesson for today.  Jesus responds to the man who asks what must I do to be saved with a story about getting involved.  The message of Luke’s story of the Good Samaritan, like the prophecy of Amos, is that God does not desire that we allow ritually clean practices or prescribed codes of worship to govern how we interact with God and neighbor as the priest and the Levite did or as the elite ruling class of Israel in Amos’ day had done.   Rather we are to open ourselves up to the possibility that the least likely person we encounter will be the one sent by God to show us the way and that we are to emulate those merciful actions with each person we meet.

“Who is my neighbor?” the lawyer asks.  Jesus’ answer breaks down the rules and boundaries set down by the society in which he lived.  The acknowledgment that the true neighbor was the one who sees, cares, and responds to the needs of each person as a child of God and exposes personal prejudices and institutional barriers that restrict, exclude, or oppress as systemic injustices and which are in opposition to the realization of God’s kingdom.   As children of God and as neighbors to each other, we are to go and do likewise.  May God who gives us the will to love both God and neighbor, give us the power and the grace to do so.  Amen

Resurrection... Real or what?

So here we are.  Jesus has ascended and we are waiting impatiently for the Holy Spirit, the promised Advocate to come.  I know that the church year ends with Christ the King way out in November sometime, but for me it feels like we are coming to an end here in June with the long days of Ordinary Time lying in front of us.  In our reading from The Revelation of John of Patmos we hear the clear message “Surely I am coming soon”   You may remember from last week that scholar and professor Mitzi Minor offered a 1^st C understanding of “coming soon” not as a time frame, but as an assurance that the coming of God’s Kingdom is inevitable – God will not be stopped.  Bishop Barbara Harris was fond of saying “the power behind you is greater than the obstacle in front of you,”  Easter is the message for us that there is indeed an awesome power behind us and it will not be stopped.

We hear a similar message in the Paul and Silas story where the jails of the Empire cannot prevent the spread of the Word of God.  Paul and Silas would definitely have understood Bishop Barbara’s mantra.   Although our John reading does not fall at the end of the Gospel, it is part of Jesus’ Final Discourse, the message he gave to the disciples about his death and resurrection which he describes here as “being one with God”.  As we wrap up yet another Easter season I want to think a bit on just what it is that we mean when we say Resurrection.  What is it that you and I hold dear about that foundation of Christianity.  After all a whole lot of our faith and our hope hangs on that word.

Resurrection was not a new concept that was invented by Jesus or by his followers.  The hope of resurrection had crept into Jewish thought before the time of Jesus, but it bore very little resemblance to the concept of hope in the Resurrection that is woven into Christianity today.  Jewish faith - Jesus’ faith – involved what we call proleptic hope, that is hope that is not a single, unwavering expectation, but rather a complex emotion and one that does not claim a specific path or outcome.  It's a hope for renewal, restoration, or a new beginning.  Proleptic hope acknowledges that hope can be present even in the face of uncertainty and hardship and that it can be a source of resilience and strength. 

If you are not familiar with that term, join the club, it is a new learning for me also.  But it makes sense.  We know that several Jewish sects were active in Jesus’ time and some leaned toward the possibility of life after death.  Jesus talked a lot about how the “Kingdom of God” had drawn near.  But this man was not all about talk he called for actions that would speak louder than words.   He set about in his life to live into the Kingdom of God with love at the center of his being - even in the uncertain world of Roman occupation, poverty, and injustice.  In the end his radical notions about love and charity and service and worthiness got him executed but for his disciples and for us - all of that is bound up in a proleptic hope for resurrection and the inevitable coming of God’s Kingdom.

During the Easter season we open our liturgy with the words, The Lord is Risen..  And the response…  The Lord is risen indeed.  But without empirical proof some would say our proclamation of resurrection is just imagination.  But this morning I believe that I can say with confidence that there is indeed evidence for resurrection.  For one thing there is the fact that all four Gospels not only recount the empty tomb, but they claim that it was women who first arrived at the empty tomb and witnessed to the other disciples.  Now if the disciples had wanted to create a hoax, I’m pretty sure they would have used male witnesses cause you know women couldn’t be trusted.  And then there is the fact that before the resurrection the disciples thought they were waging a military style insurrection – remember Peter took a sword with him to the Garden of Gethsemane.  That notion of military victory went out the window on Calvary, but after encountering the resurrected Jesus on the beach they were able to envision a different kind of victory.  And there is the attempt to scare Jesus’ followers with gore and death  – after the resurrection – that tactic failed miserably.  Instead of creating fear and submission the disciples became imitators and bearers of the Love that Jesus had taught.  There is no doubt in my mind that something created a sea change in those men and women who knew Jesus before his death and that change resulted because they also knew Jesus after – that sea change resulted from knowing a resurrected Christ. 

I remember a story from seminary about a 20^th C German theologian and political activist, Dorothee Sölle, who was asked by a reporter, “Did the resurrection happen?”  Dr Sölle responded “That’s the wrong question.”  “The right question is what difference would it have made?”  Perhaps that is the question we must ask ourselves also.  What difference does the Resurrection make in my life or yours?  Jesus lived in a world defined by competition, kill or be killed, where a few powerful rulers had sway over their very life or death.  The Mystery that is the Resurrection changed that dynamic.  In Jesus we know the possibility of renewal, of hope, of being loved by God.  In Jesus we are all God’s Beloved Children.

In today's world, faith in the possibility of resurrection is often dismissed as mere fantasy or misused as a means to impose beliefs on others.  Today, just like each week, the next part of our service is a recitation of belief.  How often, in churches around the globe, do we confine resurrection to manifesto rather than expand it to a way of life?  How often is our faith a statement of rote belief rather than a mission to love and care for God’s people as Jesus did?

Around the time of the protests to the war in Vietnam, Dorothee Sölle wrote a poem called Credo.  I have some copies if you would like to read the whole thing, but here are a couple of snippets:

“I believe in god
who did not create an immutable world
a thing incapable of change…

… I believe in god
who willed conflict in life
and wanted us to change the status quo
through our work
through our politics…

 …I believe in jesus christ

who rises again and again in our lives
so that we will be free
from prejudice and arrogance
from fear and hate…

…I believe in the spirit
that jesus brought into the world
…I believe it is up to us
what our earth becomes
a vale of tears starvation and tyranny
or a city of god
I believe in a just peace
that can be achieved…
(I believe) in the possibility of a meaningful life
for all people
I believe this world of god’s
has a future
amen

Love one another

 Keshia Thomas was 18 when the Ku Klux Klan held a rally in her home town of Ann Arbor. Michigan.  Hundreds of people gathered to hold a counter protest in opposition to the Klan’s presence in a relatively progressive city.

The atmosphere was tense, but controlled. Police dressed in riot gear and armed with tear gas protected a small group of Klansmen in white robes and conical hoods. Thomas was with a group of anti-KKK demonstrators on the other side of a specially-erected fence.

Then a shout, "There's a Klansman in the crowd."

They turned around to see a white, middle-aged man wearing a Confederate flag T-shirt and Nazi tatoos on his arms. He tried to walk away from them, but the protesters, including Thomas, followed.  His clothes and tattoos represented exactly what they had come to resist.

There were shouts of "Kill the Nazi" and the man began to run - but he was knocked to the ground. A group surrounded him, kicking him and hitting him with the wooden sticks.  Mob mentality had taken over. Thomas, in that moment in time, knew that someone had to step out of the pack and say, 'This isn't right.'"  So the black, female teenager, threw herself on top of a man she did not know and shielded him from the blows.

 (excerpt from a BBC report - https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24653643)

This is one of those Sundays when all four of our readings are interwoven to support one of the fundamental teachings of Jesus…  “love one another as I have loved you”

1.    There’s the story of Peter’s confrontation with the “believers” in Jerusalem, where he shares God’s declaration on inclusiveness… “What God has made clean, you must not call profane.”

2.    And the Psalm acknowledging that the sun and the moon, the monsters of the deep , the cattle and the birds, and even the kings and princes, men and women, young and old – all are to stand and praise God with one voice

3.    that wonderful reading from Revelation where we are reminded of the totality of God’s presence, the futility of our efforts at control or to perpetuate our own small worlds in the face of God’s New Creation,

4.    and finally this reading from John, offering his teaching to the disciples and to us - on what it means to grasp the expansiveness and the inclusiveness of God’s love as shown thru Jesus’ life.

It is a high bar to which Jesus’ life and ministry of love calls us.   These are rich lessons that beg to be preached.  They are fundamental to our theology, the core of our faith.  And if we are honest with ourselves they speak of one of the most elusive qualities of being a Christian – they call us to widen our understanding of who is loved by God and who God desires that we love.  The story I recounted of the 18 year old black activist woman laying her body across a man is a tangible living out of the instruction to love one another. 

I’ll admit that doubts creep into my mind about whether or not he would have done the same for her.  Stretching one’s thinking to embrace - with love - those with whom we vehemently disagree or those who we find to be despicable is just as hard for me as it is for anyone else.  My prayer at the end of the mass for God to intervene and to bless those who we struggle to love is a real life, personal prayer.  The psalmist writes: “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.”

From the day we slip into this world – perhaps from the day we are conceived – we compare ourselves to others.  Am I as handsome as he is?  Is my skin as blemish free as hers?  How can I outmaneuver him so that I will get that high paying job?  He/she is not as smart/pretty/ upright/motivated, loved/hated as I am because he/she is a man/woman, black/white, native/immigrant, straight/gay, trans/cis, legal/illegal, educated/or not.  You pick the appropriate X versus Y category.  I don’t care who you are or how liberal or enlightened we think ourselves to be - every time you or I walk into a room, we size ourselves up against everyone else – physically, emotionally, financially, intellectually.  We are self-centric organisms.  Anyone or anything that does not fit into our own personal scheme of things becomes the “other”, the “stranger”.   

And there lies the difficulty, because when we see all that is around us from the paradigm of “me me me” then it is really very difficult for us to understand ourselves to be made in God’s image.  Instead we see God through our own image and that makes it really really difficult to understand the magnitude of the love that God feels for you or for me.  If I cannot see the face of God in those who are different from me, then I have narrowed my vision of who God is.  I can only know God partially –  i.e. that part that is like me.  I’m gonna say that again…  If I cannot see the face of God in those who are different from me, then I have narrowed my vision of who God is.  I can only know God partially –  i.e. that part that is like me.  I do not know the part of God that is reflected in the homeless man, the immigrant, the teenage mother, the addict, the perfectly dressed Harvard graduate in the corner office, the trans person, the teen with pink hair and tattoos, or the woman who seems to have everything going for her, perhaps even the other people in this room.   Refusing to let go of preconceptions and misconceptions of stranger makes it very easy to let anger and hatred be our first response to difference.

In the first century the believers in Jerusalem questioned whether or not the Gentiles were deserving of God’s love and grace.  Peter answered that question for 1^st C Palestinian Jews.  Today there are so many people who are being singled out for verbal and physical abuse, caught up in wholesale bombing and starvation, maligned and attacked with threats to freedom and prosperity  – honestly threats to their very existence.   Seeing the suffering taking place tears at our faith and shakes us out of those places where God’s image can be narrowed and limited by our fear of the stranger.

 T

his “new” commandment that Jesus gives us today is not about what we believe to be true or what our image of God might be.  This commandment is about how we live with one another and how our love is reflective of God’s love for us.  It’s not about Christian belief it is about Christian praxis.   And the newness is that the source of the love is Jesus Christ.  When we open ourselves up to the deeply penetrating love of Christ and let it take hold of all that we do and say, then we can begin to appreciate how God’s love takes all of our differences and makes them holy and good.  Breathe in the difference.  Revel in the power of God’s hand at work through each of us.  We can’t stop it no matter how much we dig in our heals and want God to love us better than those strange people next door.     It just doesn’t work that way.  Thanks be to God.  Amen

Run in circles - scream and shout

 

The written text is below.  Here is a link to the preached version.  The occasion was The Fifth Sunday in Lent 2025 and the text was Is 43:16-21 and John 12:1-8.

The words that are spoken are mine Lord - May the words that are heard be Thine.  Amen

In 1933 in his inaugural address, Franklin D Roosevelt told the people of the world, that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  He was really speaking to the millions of Americans who were drowning in the quagmire called the Great Depression, but history has held on to those words that were then and are now profoundly prophetic.  I bring this up because I feel that we are faced today with a lot of fears – both actual and perceived.  The language used by our leaders and others is inflammatory and intended to disrupt relatively peaceful communities.  So I think it’s important to look at what fear does to us as people of God and hopefully what we can do to mitigate its effect on us.  I truly believe that the opposite of faith is fear.  So how do we remain faithful to our God of mercy, kindness, and love in this time of uncertainty?

Fear is at times paralyzing.  At other times it creates emotional chaos that drives us to erratic and unhelpful decisions and actions.  Fear can be used as a tool to immobilize effective responses to harmful situations or speech.  Fear divides an otherwise harmonious group into irreconcilable layers of difference by engendering envy, unhealthy competition, and the willingness to throw an otherwise friend under the bus in order to save oneself.  In the end fear can destroy the fabric of community. 

For sure there is nothing new under the sun and these kinds of tactics designed to create fear do from time to time become part of a community’s story.  The images of God restoring the people of Israel and establishing a new world order brought hope into a seemingly hopeless world asking them to forget the ways of the past and instead look forward into the future with hope for God’s mercy.  That fear felt by the oppressed Israelites is, I believe, that same fear that so many around us are experiencing today.  Prophetic language speaks across generations and so this poetry of Isaiah has a lot to say to us today.

Do not remember the former things,
or consider the things of old.

I am about to do a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

Today I believe it is fear that is creating the chaos, confusion and tribalization that we see in our world today.  History is cyclical and we are in a time when the cycle of bellicose hate speech is sending good people into panic mode.  When that happens, we lose the ability to think rationally or to plan and execute a counter message of love.  Instead of rational arguments or productive action we just run in circles and scream and shout.  Fear and uncertainty make us run in circles – we lose clarity in opposing hate, greed, and cruelty.   Without hope and knowledge of or faith in God and the possibility for reconciliation that God offers, the fear can overwhelm us and we find ourselves at the bottom of a very deep well.

Isaiah 43, - we heard just a snippet of it this morning, is prophetic salvation poetry in it’s finest form.  It is a text about who God is and what God has done (and will do) -  God our creator, deliverer, and forgiver.  When hope was hard to come by, it was the prophetic voice of 2^nd Isaiah that awakened a sense of order, purpose, and will that was born in the fires of faithfulness.  God’s work cannot be understood apart from God’s relationship with the people.  In the rich tradition of the prophets the people of God and in fact the faithful today who hold these promises sacred are reminded that God is merciful and that we are precious beloved children of God.

God triumphs over all that causes fear and chaos in our lives, and over all that threatens our existence, be it water, war, or wilderness or the greed of humankind. God will not abandon us.  God is present now just as God was present in Babylon.  Isaiah proclaims that the Lord makes a new way.

In our Gospel this morning Jesus has returned to Bethany and the home of his friends.  There was chaos and danger everywhere.  But for the moment the friends just wanted to enjoy a meal together.  Lazarus was there and Martha Mary was there too and most likely some of the other disciples and maybe even some local guests.  Of course, the room was packed, it was - after all - a party.

Mary, perhaps remembering how she had sat at Jesus’ feet once before, comes to him with an expensive bottle of oil and anoints his feet and then wipes off the excess with her hair.  It is an act of generosity and devotion grown out of love and her awareness that Jesus was about to walk into a situation that would cost him his life.  Of all those watching it was Judas who objected vehemently to the extravagance of the costly perfume.  While Mary’s faith remained strong in the face of fear, Judas’s faith was already compromised and he speaks out of greed and anger .

But I wonder how many of the disciples, when Judas jumped up and objected to a woman attending to Jesus with such extravagance…  I wonder how many of them had a little heartbeat skip and leaned - forward ready to get into the fray and jerk the jar out of Mary’s hand and throw her out of the room?  I suspect, - human beings being who we are - that at least some of them were enticed into a bullying gang mentality.  Are we any different?  Do we speak up when our leaders use hate, anger, and greed to create fear and hopelessness, or do we silently give thanks that it is not us who stand accused? 

Isaiah tells us that God is creating a new thing and our job is to be open to that new way.  We are to be steady, trusting, walking in love and mercy.  Jesus offers the consolation that evil is real, but we do not have to succumb to that evil.  Rather we have the opportunity now to hold onto what is good in our world.  To love and to serve God’s creation extravagantly.  To walk through the chaos around us with love and forgiveness for ourselves and for each other, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, …pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”  (Phil 3:14)

Perhaps the over-arching take-home for us today is that God both calls us to holding onto a vision of a generous, ordered world and at the same time blesses us with divine faith to help us get there.  We stand on the verge of Holy Week.  The flowers are ordered, the bulletins are prepared, the choir is already practicing for Easter.  The promise of Easter morning is just a touch away and the Peace of God that passes all understanding beckons from the other side of the grave.   Amen