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Some of the Pharisees said to him, “Surely we are not blind, are we?”

The world is exploding, yet again, in ever more horrific ways. In the face of all this chaos, and in response to all this injustice, we remain a progressive, affirming, Christian faith community, sent on a mission to mend this neighborhood, this city, and this world, in any way we can.

Our faith took root and flourished twenty centuries ago, in yet another terrible, apocalyptic time, led by a few dozen courageous souls who responded to the cruelties of war and empire by building a community of joyful yet serious mission in the name of the Risen One. In our own time of violence, fear, division, and discord, what then shall we do?

I’d like to begin our discernment by reflecting on ourselves a bit. This is not a narcissistic exercise. I just want to begin with our community’s identity: who are we, and are we ready to go on this mission?

At first glance, I’d say we have some notable virtues. We support honorable public servants, and many of us contribute to the campaigns of just and good politicians… Well, okay, we have concluded that they are just and good enough.

“Surely we are not blind, are we?”

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A reading from a (slightly redacted) song by Britney Spears.

You wanna?
You wanna?
You wanna hot body? You wanna Bugatti?
You wanna Maserati?
You better work.
You wanna Lamborghini? Sip martinis?
Look hot in a bikini?
You better work.
You wanna live fancy, live in a big mansion,
party in France?
You better work.
You better work.

Here ends the reading.

Britney did not coin the phrase, “You better work.” RuPaul made it famous, and it is a time-honored expression in queer culture. One day, when the gay comedian Matteo Lane was in a restaurant in Rome and discovered that Oprah Winfrey was also there, he thought carefully about what to say to her, something that would quickly telegraph “I’m gay, I’m American, and she looks great.” He cheerfully snapped, “You better work!”. Oprah, being Oprah, didn’t miss a beat. “You better work!” she shot back, with a smile.

And so, for us, inspired by Britney, Matteo, and Oprah, the holy season of Lent begins. Lent is here: we better work.

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We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see — we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

When he writes these words, Saint Paul is on the defensive. He is on his back foot. (Maybe you can sympathize.) The church he founded in the city of Corinth has lost confidence in him. They think he is ineffective. They even disrespect his physical presence. In the portion of his letter to them that we just heard, he sounds more desperate and plaintive than anywhere else in the letters of his that survived into our own day. 

But Paul, the patron of this parish, never merely wrote letters, defensive or otherwise. No matter what happened, he took every opportunity to think and write theologically. Every disappointment or setback, every triumph or victory, every event in the chaotic, colorful story of his work as a developer of churches was grist for Paul’s theological mill. (He would encourage us to do likewise.)

So… when he’s on his back foot with the Corinthians, Paul reflects on how simply being a Christian is inherently a disadvantageous position. We preach Christ crucified: we will always be one down; we will always be at a disadvantage. You want to build a faith community? You want to lead a movement for justice? Maybe you want to organize a protest, or revitalize this neighborhood, or just make life easier for the people around you who suffer the worst of our unjust socioeconomic society. If you want to do any of these good things, and if you want to do them because you are a Christian, you will struggle at it. You will be choosing an uphill road.

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Click here to hear the Paula Boggs Band song, “We All Fall Down.”

***

A reading from the song lyrics of the Paula Boggs Band. (Paula Boggs is a Seattle-based musician and a member of this congregation.)

When life takes a turn for worse
remember this little verse:
we all fall down.
Let's not make it even worse.
There's more than enough to curse.
We all fall down, don’t you worry.
No matter how high we climb,
life will find a way to kick our behinds.
And so, I am no better than you,
Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Jew,
we all fall down. 
Even your boss the jerk, chases skirts,
and thinks he's cool as Captain Kirk —
he will fall down, don't you worry,
cuz just when we think we’ve arrived,
something really crappy breaks our stride.
We all fall down, don't you worry.
Guaranteed! We all fall down.
Believe me! We all fall down.

Here ends the reading.

Sometimes it helps to just admit it, just accept it, just come right out and say it: we are all fallible, we all make mistakes, we’ll never measure up, life kicks our behinds, we all fall down. But I’m eager to remind you that this bracing acceptance of reality is cherished in our tradition. We Episcopalians often like to say that we are Catholic but also Protestant, and that we hold both identities together in creative tension. So let’s allow the best of our Protestant tradition to reassure us: Protestants admit freely that humans are error-prone, and that only by God’s grace are we saved from the dreadful future of our own design. 

So… relax. We all fall down. No need to worry about whether it will happen to someone like your skirt-chasing boss: he will fall down. And no need to worry about all the rest of us falling down. We will. It has occurred; it will occur.

I offer all of this as a preamble to the daunting Good News we hear today, news that tells us first how great and lovely we are, and second how high God’s standards are for us. Jesus begins by calling us “salt of the earth” and “light of the world.” This is high praise! As salt, we season the world around us with our insights, with our trustworthiness, with our strong and refreshing presence in the worlds of home, neighborhood, church, and public square.

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Do you like getting things right? Perhaps that is a universal trait, something all humans have in common, but I really wonder sometimes if every one of us is truly wired in this way. I always felt good when an exam or term paper came back with a high grade, and I definitely have felt better about my work over the years when someone said, “That’s right, yes, you did that correctly.” But… I tend to flex about things. Maybe you do, too. Did we mostly get it right? If so, maybe that’s good enough for us. “Progress, not perfection,” goes the bumper sticker. 

But that’s not Robin’s way. Robin gets things right.

Robin comes early on Sundays to practice. You’ll find him swinging the thurible, up and down the main aisle in here, and you’ll check your watch and wonder to yourself, “How — not just why but how — is he here well over an hour early for mass, just to practice something he’s done countless times?!” Or you’ll walk up the short staircase over here and hear Robin singing in the chapel. He’s rehearsing his lines for the Prayers of the People. He has sung them many, many times before. But here he is, practicing them yet again.

Robin is working hard to get things right.

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When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and [he] taught them.

When United States District Judge Fred Biery, in the United States District Court for the Western District of Texas, San Antonio Division, saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down at his bench he heard the case of Adrian Conejo Arias and L.C.R., a Minor, versus Noem, Bondi, Lyons, Margolin, and Doe. Then Judge Biery’s disciples came to him, and he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

“Before the Court is the petition of asylum seeker Adrian Conejo Arias and his five-year-old son for protection of the Great Writ of habeas corpus. They seek nothing more than some modicum of due process and the rule of law. The government has responded.

“The case has its genesis in the ill-conceived and incompetently implemented government pursuit of daily deportation quotas, apparently even if it requires traumatizing children. This Court and others regularly send undocumented people to prison and order them deported, but do so by proper legal procedures.”

Judge Biery continued (and yes, I’m reading his ruling in its entirety): 

Prue recently got a new car. She never really got to enjoy it. It is a sad irony that the most unfussy and practical person that any of us has ever known did not have a chance to enjoy a shiny new car in her twilight years.

Prue wore fun t-shirts that played on words. One of our best photographs of our sister in Christ has Prue in a Seattle Aquarium t-shirt with a Star Wars theme, “The Otters Strike Back.” It is a funny irony that one of the most serious and missional Christians that any of us has ever known was famous for her quietly playful, self-effacing silliness.

Prue lay on her deathbed holding the golden gift of self-aware wisdom and the majestic power of love for God and neighbor. It is a lovely irony that the person who has done more ordinary, menial tasks for this community than anyone we have ever known was given a holy death of the kind we read about in the lives of the saints.

The Cappadocian father Gregory of Nyssa, brother of Basil the Great, remembered his older sister Macrina’s holy death with great solemnity and awe. Filled with the Holy Spirit until her last breath, Macrina reflected insightfully on the human soul and on the Resurrection, and then she died in the peace of God.

Such was the death of Prue, who knew every corner of our storage rooms and sacristies, who scrubbed out our stains and ironed wax off our linens, who spread mulch and swept up dirt and stocked our shelves with supplies. She lay in great weakness last month, and when her kidneys began to fail she knew it was time. “Either the kidneys or the tumor will do me in,” she said, on the day before she died, in her straightforward way, in that pragmatic, sensible, cheerful way you all know so well.

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Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
He will not cry or lift up his voice,
or make it heard in the street;
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice.
He will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

I would like to sit quietly, in a room. That is a New Year’s resolution, I suppose, but more accurately it is a lifelong aspiration. It is a plank in my intentional Rule of Life, my Way of Life. When I see others doing it, I admire their maturity and integrity. I want to be the kind of person who can simply sit quietly in a room. I am glad I have a job that asks me to practice doing exactly that, every week. 

The march of evil and violence overtaking our nation relies on noisy spectacle: decapitate a nation’s leadership with no plan for what to do next, then threaten to violently seize territory from a NATO ally, then terrorize a high school and murder a woman in her car, then gloat with macho bluster in a viral interview, saying, “...We live in… the real world… that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.” These actions and words are all profoundly unchristian and unethical and even monstrous, but mostly it’s all just noisy spectacle. It’s intended to keep us roiled and riled, exhausted, tense, and finally desperate.

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The kids are not alright.

We are living in the first decades of an era when children in this country do not expect to exceed their parents in education, income, health, or length of life. The advent of new technology always inspires anxiety, but we really do not know how generations raised on the internet will develop, what they will need, or whether they will thrive. Children and youth, particularly trans and queer children and youth, are thrown around as political footballs in a profoundly unhealthy public square. They are abused by politicians who will say or do anything to distract us from what’s really going on in this country, and around the world. We should be talking about climate justice and wage justice and public education, but instead we are provoked to argue about trans kids in sports.

So I want to hear some good news. I want to hear the Good News. Thankfully, our companion in Good News this morning is Luke, the third evangelist, my favorite (Luke just barely wins my approval in a photo finish with the sublime John). I love Luke because Luke is sanguine, but not a pollyanna. Luke is cheerful, but not glib. Luke writes in gorgeous prose, and Luke assumes that a diverse audience can keep up with an urbane, sophisticated storyteller. So… Mark the evangelist tells the story of people “digging” a hole in a roof to let down their friend to Jesus, for healing. But Luke, in his telling, improves the architecture: the man’s friends remove roof tiles, not clumps of sod. Luke’s Gospel is a classy establishment.

O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray.
Cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today.

“Be born in us today.”

Yes. I want that. I want Christ to be born in us today, right here. I can think of a few places in particular – certain places in our here and now – where I would very much like Christ to be born, where I believe Christ is truly born.

Here’s a good one: Christ is born in hospital waiting rooms. Just this week I spent an anxious half hour in a hospital waiting room while a nurse worked on the medical needs of one of our parishioners. And I can tell you: Christ is born in that waiting room at Harborview, born into the worry and the fretting of every exhausted soul that lingers there. Christ is born in that waiting room to reassure the friends and families of patients that whatever happens, they will not be alone, and they will be saved from despair. I returned to the side of our friend with renewed strength.

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***

“Those who speak do not know. Those who know do not speak.”

This is a Taoist saying, attributed to the philosophical tradition of Lao Tzu. But we Christians pray alongside a few saints who seem to have lived by this maxim, first among them Joseph of Nazareth. Joseph says not one word in our scriptures. I like to think of him as the patron saint of my parents’ generation – the Silent Generation, the masters of endurance, the artisans and scholars and workers who know a lot, but say very little.

Joseph said nothing at all, at least in our hearing, but he certainly listened. He paid attention to four dreams, dreams that counseled but also challenged him. One: Joseph listened when God’s messenger reassured him that he and his controversial bride would be alright, that he should marry her, and that he should name her son. (By naming the child, Joseph became his legal guardian, saving his – and his mother’s – lives.) Two: Joseph listened when God’s messenger encouraged them to run for their lives – making them refugees. (In our time, we know a lot about refugees.) Three: Joseph listened when God’s messenger said it was safe to return home. And Joseph listened a fourth time when God’s messenger warned them to settle not in the political tinderbox of Judea, but in the tranquil Galilee region.

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***

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad,
the desert shall rejoice and blossom; 
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly,
and rejoice with joy and singing.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert; 
the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp,
the grass shall become reeds and rushes. 

Long ago now, more than thirty years ago, I lived on 21st Avenue South in Minneapolis, sharing an old house with a few college classmates. One day, the city pulled up the asphalt street in a repaving project. For several days, the earth was bare and exposed. I remember different colors of earth, from black to light ochre.

My friend Bronwen wrote a poem about it. She imagined the exposed earth giving a glorious sigh, breathing with sweet relief after its release from the hard petroleum pavement. The earth rejoices upon its liberation from oppressive human infrastructure. I think of C.S. Lewis in one of his children’s fantasies, when a river god rises up from his watery realm, chanting, “Loose my chains, loose my chains,” and then the liberating army does just that: they tear down a bridge built by a tyrant’s engineers. The free people triumph, and the land rejoices. The rivers shout with joy.

“Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: ‘May they prosper who love you. Peace be within your walls and quietness within your towers.’”

***

What do you really want? Really?

We all want lots of things, including the basics: real food, warm shelter, good music, good art. We want silence and stillness in this wild world. Maybe you want cookies with hot coffee. I surely do. We have a lot of cookies waiting for us at coffee hour.

But really, seriously, ultimately, viscerally – what do you really want?

When I talk about my career, I say that I really want reconciliation. I may say it often enough to try your patience. For a decade I ran a private therapy practice for couples, a day job that was all about relationship repair. The problem was, I didn’t like running a one-person business. It felt lonely. And working on one relationship at a time felt piecemeal, disjointed. So I changed gears and deepened my involvement in faith communities. I doubled down on being a faith leader. I’m okay with counseling couples, but I really want reconciliation in all its forms, so I want to see it happen in whole communities.

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God knows who you really are, who you truly are. God greets you in heavenly peace – the real you, the authentic you, your true self that others don’t completely know or fully understand, your true self that even you may not fully recognize. The true you belongs to God.

Other people often tell you who you are. And often enough, you may happily accept their judgment. For more than three decades, a number of people have been calling me “Uncle Stephen.” I am an uncle: I accept that identity, and hope to honor it with my nieces and nephews. As their uncle, I belong to them. But is “Uncle Stephen” truly me, in my essence? When God meets me and gathers me into Paradise, will God say, “Welcome, Uncle Stephen?”

Someone calls you mother or papa, Grandpa or Oma, and maybe your heart surges with delight: yes, that’s me. But is this identity truly you, in your essence? “I am somebody’s mother,” you may say. And so you are, to the depth of your very being. But — do you, in your essence, belong to your children?

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A poem by Seamus Heaney:

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other's work would bring us to our senses.
So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

***

We will gather again later this evening, in the dying of the year, in our burial garden, to pray for those we love who have died. We honor our grief, and their lives, with solemnity. We proclaim our hope with faith. And we make our song of alleluia with confidence, even if our voices break with the freight of it all.

Our earliest forebears in the Christian faith, those who knew Jesus personally and the couple of generations that followed them: they were especially concerned about the topic of death. Many of them had assumed that Christ would be returning in their lifetimes, so the deaths of the first members of the movement were alarming and upsetting. They had to reinterpret the Gospel. They had to make sense of how they were a people of the Resurrection who nonetheless experienced physical death.

And so they have left us tonight’s passage in the first letter to the Thessalonians, which may be the very oldest book of the New Testament, in which Paul deliberately, consciously tries to console the first Christians that the dead will rise again and meet them, with the Lord, in the air. We may or may not imagine trumpets and clouds, but we share their great hope, and we proclaim with confidence another consolation they gave us: The first Christians taught us that we meet our beloved dead even now, long before a great apocalyptic reunion. We meet our beloved dead here at this Table. At this Table, the great cloud of witnesses descends as we go up, and all are together for the feast.

Jesus said to them, “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again.”

Sometimes, over the course of my life, I have kicked myself with frustration. I’m in a conflict with someone, and I give away the store. I sell myself down the river. I don’t stick up for myself. I lament my own cowardice. And then, deepening my frustration, I think of a snappy comeback two or three days later, far beyond the moment of confrontation when I could have really zapped my adversary with a great line. 

I think of this occasionally when people voice their frustration about weak political resistance during this apocalyptic time. In the Senate primary campaign in the state of Maine, two candidates are taking up familiar positions: an establishment candidate in her late seventies who seems like a safe choice but is hardly inspiring; and a young idealist with the common touch who stirs and inspires many people but has a controversial past, and a controversial tattoo. I read news reports on this and I think, “I’ve never been to Maine, but I’ve seen this play. I know how it ends.”

We could really use a win. And by “we” I don’t mean a particular political party – I really don’t. My parents formed me to belong to one party with the same loyalty my father showed to one car company; but at this point I just want to support someone, anyone who can reduce student debt and reduce atmospheric CO2 and reduce predatory business practices and reduce the toxic madness of social media and reduce voter suppression and reduce the cost of all prescription drugs and reduce the stratospheric housing prices that cause most of our urban problems and reduce the environmental threat of AI and reduce the violence, racism, transphobia, and misogyny in our culture. And then, on day two…

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Ellen is salt.

John is light.

We begin with salt. Salt is often overlooked, a little canister in your kitchen that hides in plain sight, but salt is everywhere. Just a half teaspoon develops the flavor of your soup, or your cookies. Salt is the base for medications. You use salt when making ice cream to lower the melting point of the ice. Salt preserves food; it de-ices roads and airplane wings. Our bodies require salt to regulate fluids and nerve impulses. We use salt in cleansers. You keep salt on hand for your healing bath, and to soothe your throat. Salt softens hard water. Life on earth began in the salty sea.

And so, in turn, consider Ellen, our salt friend: she is modest and receding, but her influence is everywhere. She draws alongside you with a word, or with her famous side-eye. She quietly reads a library of books and attends countless plays; then she turns that curated wisdom into a lifelong vocation of skillful companionship. She is the ‘fairy godmother’ for countless children and youth; she comes to the aid of foster families; she is a feminist whose chosen full-time job was raising three children; she smiles with mischief when a grandchild says something lightly salty – or whenever they say something that their lightly-salty Nana would have said.

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A reading from Lamentations.

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for God’s compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion;
therefore I will wait for the Lord.”

We could use some good news. We could use a few compassions of God, freshly baked this morning. Flaky, luscious compassions: the mercies of God lovingly prepared for us, like a croissant with homemade jam and hot coffee.

We could all benefit from deep rest. I think it is both probable and likely that every person in this room is sleep-deprived.

Since our celebration in late June, when the bishop was here and we thanked everyone who made it possible to refurbish and rebuild this church, we have grieved the deaths of four people: Tom, John, Ellen, and now, just two mornings ago, our own Robin Jones. Please pray for his wife, Denise, one of our companions who prepares God’s compassions, new every morning. Denise is in our knitting group, the group of saints who keep neighbors warm during the cold and wet months. Denise is also one of our protestors, giving voice to the voiceless. Pray for Denise, as she grieves… and as you grieve.

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Last week, I watched a 2022 documentary produced and directed by the comedian W. Kamau Bell called “We Need to Talk about Cosby.” Now, these days, if you say you have deep thoughts and feelings about Bill Cosby, you are revealing that you are probably over the age of forty. My friend and former seminary classmate Josh is just thirty years old. I asked him, “Has Bill Cosby meant a lot to you?” He said, “No, not really.” But for me, as a teenager in the 1980s, I delighted in the many artistic gifts and achievements of Bill Cosby. I adored his sitcom, a colossal mega-hit that at one point attracted more than sixty million viewers. (Hit TV shows these days are lucky to reach twenty million.) But I remember “Fat Albert,” too. And “Picture Pages,” and its catchy theme song. I listened to Cosby’s comedy specials on my Walkman.

Bill Cosby was everywhere. He dominated popular-U.S. culture for decades. He broke barriers as an entertainer of color, even though he caused some controversy within the Black community because he essentially played by the white man’s rules. His consistently positive, disarming affect was criticized for papering over racial injustice. White folks could laugh along with Bill Cosby and go back to sleep. And now, forty years after the height of Cosby’s fame, when section 2 of the Voting Rights Act is under threat, we are painfully reminded every day that the nation is all too far from realizing the dream of Dr. King.

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Years ago, Andrew and I watched “Scandal,” a smart, gritty television show about a political “fixer” named Olivia Pope. Olivia solved problems for hapless politicians who had gotten themselves into hot water. I haven’t watched “Scandal” for many years now, but I expect it is almost quaint by comparison to our current political misadventures. 

In one memorable scene, the White House Chief of Staff, a world-wise political operator named Cyrus Beene, is speaking with contempt about members of the opposition. He condemns them as brutally as he can, finding a particularly devastating insult to throw at them: “These people,” Cyrus says, “These people actually believe in Angels.”

What fools. They believe in Angels?! Fluffy, feathery winged beings of indeterminate gender who flutter about, invisibly, in the clouds. And the clouds are dotted with harps, most likely. And there’s St. Peter, right out of a New Yorker cartoon, standing behind a lectern next to the pearly gates, reviewing poor souls to decide whether they’ll get into heaven.

“These people actually believe in Angels.” How ludicrous!