Dry Bones & Lost Causes

Dry Bones & Lost Causes

A Sermon for Lent 5 (Year A)

“It’s a lost cause… What’s the point?”

“It’s a lost cause… Society’s burning, and the planet is drowning. It’s too late to reverse the damage we’ve done.”

“It’s a lost cause… The Church is dying; look at the numbers. There’s no hope of bringing back the people we’ve lost.”

“It’s a lost cause… He’s failed again; so why even bother? He’s fallen too many times for it to be worth giving him another chance.”

It kinda seems like a world of lost causes out there. Maybe you’ve noticed? Maybe you’ve seen them? I mean, maybe you’ve felt like you are one? I know I have in the past.

When We Hide

When We Hide

A Sermon for Lent 1 (Year A)

Can I tell y’all a secret?

And I know this might come as a shock, but I’m not perfect. I screw up all the time. I fall way short of the life I’m supposed to live—the life I want to live. I leave undone the things God calls me to do, and I keep doing the things God warns me not to. I say things and think things and do things that violate God’s vision of Creation as it should be. I sin—a lot. I’m not perfect. And neither are you.

And yeah, obviously, that’s not really a secret. The fact that I sin—that we sin—isn’t news. As our Old Testament reading shows us, it’s the human condition. Adam and Eve have just been commissioned by God to till and tend the Garden to God’s glory, and already we see them reaching out their hands to exploit it for their OWN glory. And the rest, quite literally, is history: a story riddled with humans misusing the gift of life that God gave us. We screw up and wound ourselves and each other—all day, every day.

But the question before us today is: What do we do with those wounds? What do we do when our eyes are opened and we see what we’ve done?

Utter Foolishness

Utter Foolishness

A Sermon for Epiphany 3 (Year A)

I love being right. Almost as much as I love winning and getting my way. Because if I’m “right” and I lose then at least I can stew in my indignation at the “foolishness” of the people who “won.”

We live in a society that glories in winning and being right. The world tells us that we can only be happy or even safe, if we’re winners, not losers—if we beat other people or parties or nations and do whatever it takes to build the world—the country—even the church that we want.

But obsession with winning—with security or strength or just the self-satisfaction of knowing we’re right and they’re wrong—is an addiction to a drug that takes more than it gives.

Tell it again!

A Sermon for the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord (Year A*)

“Tell it again, Ammachi! Tell it again!”

Immigrant families live on story. At least, that was my experience growing up. My grandmother—my Ammachi—left India to join our family in West Virginia when I was 2 years old. And she brought with her a gift: our family’s story. It was a gift more precious than gold or frankincense or myrrh not because the story of our family was particularly remarkable but because it was our story—the story of our family.

In the wintertime, we’d gather by the fireplace to shelter for what passes for cold weather down south. And we’d ask her to tell us the stories again. “Tell it again, Ammachi! Tell it again!”

And so she would tell us the stories again, even though we knew them well.

*This was preached at a parish using A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church by the Rev’d Dr Wil Gafney; so the propers are different from those appointed by the Church

All About Love

All About Love

A Sermon For Christmas Day (Mass III)

“If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”

It’s true. But if we stop there—if we treat this catchphrase as the sum of the Gospel—we run the risk of shrinking this love—God’s love—into something vague and abstract. What makes us Christian is not our belief in a God of love. We are far from unique in proclaiming that message. God is love… but that’s not what makes us Christian.

The Night is Dark

The Night is Dark

A Sermon for Advent 1 (Year A)

Friends, my heart is heavy today… Kelly Loving (age 40), Derrick Rump (age 38), Ashley Paugh (age 35), Daniel Aston (age 28), Raymond Green Vance (age 22). I was late in hearing the news about the shooting at Club Q in Colorado last weekend. And it felt like barely a second later, six more were dead in Virginia. To be honest, I mostly feel numb when I hear about yet another mass shooting. But sometimes I do feel the weight, when the tragedy touches close to my life.

Why We Give

Why We Give

A Sermon for Proper 25 (Year C)

“God, thank you. Thank you that I’m not like those people—the misers, the slackers, the people who only show up on Christmas and Easter. I’m here every Sunday. I sacrifice my time to serve the community. I pledge to the stewardship campaign every year, and I know I give more than half of these people ever will. So God, thank you.”

This is what the first man in today’s Gospel might sound like if he were standing here now.

The implicit antisemitic bias in Western Christianity might make us hear ‘Pharisee’ and think: “Ah, this is a story about Christianity vs. Judaism—Faith vs. Works.” But that’s not really what’s going on here. For one thing, both of the characters in the story are Jewish. This Pharisee’s problem isn’t that he’s an observant Jew. He prays! He fasts! He gives a full 10% of his wealth to God! These are all really good things—things that God commands and calls us to again and again in the words of Scripture.

brackish springs & implanted words

My lectio on James this morning pulled together a string of verses that have been milling around in my head lately:

  • “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water?” — Jas 3:10-11

  • “When [Israel] came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter […] Moses cried out to the LORD; and the LORD showed him a piece of wood; he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet.” — Ex 15:23a,25a

  • “For blessed is the wood by which righteousness comes.” — Wis 14:7

  • “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” — Gal 6:14

  • “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” — Gal 2:19b-20a

  • “Therefore rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness, and welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.” — Jas 1:21