“Why aren’t we talking about fascism?”

That’s what someone was asking, over the past few days. I was working near Columbus, Ohio, as one of the trainers for the College for Congregational Development in the Diocese of Southern Ohio.

We covered lots of topics: congregational identity, Episcopal identity, how to map the neighborhood around your church to discern where God is sending you next on your mission, how to look at your congregation through different lenses to see different things — things like where you are on the organizational life cycle. If you’re wondering, St. Paul’s Seattle is currently in the “healthy stability” stage of our organizational life.

We learned a tool to discover who is coming to our congregations to develop their faith, and how best to nurture and lead them; and another tool to discern how the faithful enter their worlds of family, work, neighborhood, and civic life, and what (if anything) they do in those worlds that’s different or better because they said their prayers with us.

“Why aren’t we talking about fascism?” the participant said again. He mentioned this concern in his small group, in our main plenary sessions, and in his written evaluation of the week, which he filled out at the end of our time together. He seemed frustrated because, he reasoned, if we aren’t talking about the crisis of fascism currently threatening not just livelihoods but lives in our nation, a crisis trapping and killing people along the Strait of Hormuz, along our southern border, inside our urban centers and neighborhoods, just outside these doors, everywhere – if we aren’t talking about this global calamity, then, this participant said, we are blessing the status quo. We are going along with all the outrageous things that are happening. We are part of the problem.

Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

Our parents bless us. That is to say, our parents hand things down to us. Some of their gifts are conscious: they deliberately try to raise us a certain way, to instill certain values. They teach us how to treat our friends. They teach us what’s important, and what’s not. They teach us who is kin and who is an outsider. Sometimes they teach us how to vote, how to think, how to behave at dinner, even how to feel.

Other things parents give us are unintentional, unconscious… and they’re not all blessings. Sometimes parents let their children down in ways that give them deep-seated anxiety, and make it hard for their children to form strong emotional bonds with people. My parents formed secure emotional attachments with me, but I think they unintentionally taught me to suppress emotions, midwestern-style. I had to learn from somebody else that big feelings are useful, and good; that if I learn to work with them, they help me make better choices about my life.

Today we celebrate — we call “blessed,” we bless — a human being who is many things, as all of us are, but whose identity as a parent perhaps looms largest in our imagination. Saint Mary the Virgin has many titles, but perhaps her chief title, her primary claim to fame, is Mary the mother of Jesus, or Mary the mother of our Lord, or (we Christians came up with this title a bit later on) Mary the Mother of God.

I will begin with three little scenes, and one song verse, about silence. Silence in its many forms.

After the fire, [there was] a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.

From the works of Simon and Garfunkel:
Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

From the novel “Franny and Zooey,” by J.D. Salinger:
You’ve even both been up here on many a weekend [since Seymour killed himself], and though we’ve talked and talked and talked, we’ve all agreed not to say a word.

After Jesus had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone.

Last week, during the early mass, someone came into our church for a few moments, took one of the snack packs from the table near the baptismal font, and left. I saw this because I was up here, behind the table, getting our breakfast ready.

My immediate response was to add one to my headcount for that mass. “It’s fourteen now,” I told myself. And so that goes for a working priest who’s developing a Christian congregation in a mostly secularized urban setting: attendance is one of our lagging indicators, a metric that helps us assess the health and vitality of this congregation. I focus on attendance enough that I’ve been rightly teased about it.

But I like counting people, especially people I love. (And that definitely includes you, beloveds!) I’m from a big family, so I count my nieces and nephews, a daunting twenty-three people. I always try to count people and other creatures who matter. When I had a big aquarium in the kitchen during the pandemic years, I loved counting tropical fish. When I see videos of dog litters on the internet, I count the puppies. “That looks like seven,” I say to myself. One-two-three-four-five-six-seven. Yep. Oh wait, they’re squashing another one — it’s eight!”

Watch this sermon on video here.

I recall several experiences across my life, especially in the early years, when I had most of my needs met, but I really just needed a little more help. That’s all — I needed more help. Can you relate?

When I was a small child, I needed significantly more attention than my overwhelmed parents could give me. When I was a confused and scared junior in college, I had one strong helper when I came out as gay, but I needed much more guidance than that one person could possibly give.

Across the decades of early adulthood and early midlife, I needed help with career discernment, several times. Without that help, every step was slower, every transition more difficult. I finally found my true vocation, but not until a couple of months before my fiftieth birthday.

Now, please be assured that I am well aware that I am just fine. Much more than fine. By any reasonable human or historical standard, I luxuriate in embarrassing opulence with physical health, housing, and income in my fifties that would have been unimaginable for my prairie-farmer ancestors. When I was in seminary, my favorite priest and theologian lived in a small house just off campus, and she remarked that her little two-bedroom rambler was a vast palace.

Jesus said to them, “Come and have breakfast.”

Perhaps you are frightened right now. There is plenty to be frightened about. Climate change is causing heat waves in Europe, and hurricane season is coming: terrifying. But it isn’t just natural ecosystems that are changing or getting worse. Our political world roils in chaos, making Pride weekend all the more relevant and urgent, particularly for our trans companions. War ravages the land in West Asia, Africa, Europe, and along our borders. There was another mass shooting the other day, in Chico, California. A double earthquake has killed at least 1,400 people in Venezuela.

As we struggle through these crises, and (at our best) advocate for others in more extreme need, our chronic and intense anxiety could damage our health. Your fears about the world could finally generate a fear of their own: that your health and well-being will finally begin to break down under the relentless emotional strain.

Or perhaps your fear is closer to home. Maybe you are in a phase of life that daunts you: you are on the brink of adulthood, or you are a parent with a thousand fears about your child, or you are drawing close to the end of your life. Maybe you’re in one of the generations that can’t afford the basics, and you fear you’ll never pay your student loans; or you’re worried that your careful, reasonable plan for a comfortable and safe retirement is unraveling. Or you’re in midlife, and you’re wondering with nagging worry about the meaning of your life, worry about the health of your relationships, worry about the purpose of your career. Maybe you’re coping with addiction: no matter whether you or someone you love is the actual substance user, addiction is a social disease that damages the health of everyone involved, and locks whole families in excruciating fear.

Are you frightened right now? Jesus said to them — Jesus says to you — “Come and have breakfast.”

The woman touched the fringe of his cloak, and she was healed. But this was not a magical fringe: her faith made her well.

The fringe was and is a religious artifact. In Hebrew it’s called a tzitzit. It’s a series of knotted tassels, worn to remind the wearer of the mitzvot, the commandments of God in the Torah — commandments about welcoming the stranger, about sustaining a healthy community, about living ethically and peacefully in God’s presence. A rough (a very rough) Christian equivalent might be the stole of a priest or deacon. When I wear my stole, it becomes a colorful, physical reminder of the baptismal identity we all share.

The woman summons her courage and faith, and rushes up to touch the tzitzit of a Judean rabbi. Jesus is immediately aware of her action, turns and sees her, and quickly grasps the situation. He praises her for summoning her own faith to approach him and to touch his clothing — clothing powerfully laden with religious meaning. Her healing is not only physical: her faith, and the savvy, compassionate response of Jesus, restore her spiritually and socially to her people.

Jesus breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”

We church-going folk sure love to be nice. We love to be warm. We love to be welcoming. When we talk about spiritual concepts like “grace,” we focus on the happy part of the term: the good gladness that washes over us when the Creator fashions us from clay and breathes life into us and sets us on this green earth to live, to laugh, to love.

When we talk about the Holy Spirit, we like to focus on the loveliness of that Spirit, who blows through this community like a warm and invigorating breeze. We might imagine the Spirit’s fire brightening our nights with cozy amber colors, all of us gathered around a snug campfire. Maybe we could toast marshmallows over the Spirit’s golden flame.

Lynette Jennifer Douglass abides for eternal life in the love of the risen Christ. Lynette herself preaches this Gospel.

Across my scant fifty-six years of life, from early childhood through a sacred-music career and onward into ordained life, I have said my prayers and served God’s people in seventeen congregations, some Lutheran, some Episcopal, and I have not known a member of any of these communities who has pressed this point as enthusiastically as Lynette: She is loved, as all of us are loved; she belongs, as all of us belong; we all abide for eternal life in the love of the risen Christ.

Lynette’s evangelism about the love of Jesus Christ is particularly poignant and powerful because Lynette has faced a lifetime of rejection and marginalization due to her physical differences. She survived the emotional abuse of religious people whose ableist religious beliefs tormented Lynette with guilt and despair: surely if she loved God enough, or prayed to God hard enough, God would heal her palsy in a wondrous sign of grace and power.

Lately I have spent considerable time watching videos posted by Sean Hannah, a sheep and cattle farmer in Scotland. His handle is “Sean the Sheepman.” I won’t attempt his accent but it is a reliably charming Scottish burr.

My nervous system regulates and calms down as I watch videos of Sean and his border collies, Kate, Storm, Echo, and Copper, herding sheep. The dogs rocket away from their boss, hearing his commands from hundreds of yards away. Their speed is astonishing. “Come bye,” he calls, and they know to run clockwise. “Away!” means counter-clockwise. “Walk on,” he says to encourage them to keep going. And of course, “That’ll do,” the signal that they’re done, at which point they zoom back to him and hop on their rough plastic mesh perch on his truckbed. Look him up — Sean the Sheepman. Your nervous system will thank you.

Sean posted a ten-minute video some years ago, recounting his personal history and how he came into this line of work. In the video he mentioned Haig, his first border collie, and of course I immediately wondered what happened to Haig: Sean looks quite young; he hasn’t been at this for a whole lifetime of a dog, has he? No. Haig ate something toxic and died suddenly. Sean said — in a graphic on the screen, not verbally — that he still has a hard time talking about it. Of course he does. I know this feeling well.

Click here to watch this sermon on video, at minute 24:50.

A rage prayer by the Reverend Elizabeth Riley.

Let us pray.

Despite the excess and abundance of the world,
So many go without, so many hunger and yearn
For the basic dignity of food.
For the disparities that sweep our world
Where children of God starve
While other children of God waste in excess,
We repent.
For greed, for our lack of humanity,
For every time we look away,
We repent.
For bellies that hunger,
We pray.
For caregivers desperate to provide,
We pray.

May we make no peace with a world that
hungers,
God forgive us.

Amen.

A couple of years ago, we completed the construction of a fence around our whole property, with one major gap at our driveway on First Avenue North. To fill that gap, we installed a rolling gate, lockable with a combination padlock. We roll the gate open for four hours most days of the week, when our office is open, and we open it many other times, for various events.

Our new gate raises one issue to consider. Our mission primarily focuses on our neighbors in Uptown, many of whom experience housing insecurity. Doesn’t this gate belie our claim that we are advocates and allies of our neighbors? About a year ago, someone said that when we threw a big party with the bishop to bless our renovated buildings, they didn’t want to celebrate with us. The gate was their reason. For them, the gate communicates division and privilege: we are safe inside the gate, and our unhoused neighbors are outsiders. This person wanted to firmly stand with them on the other side of our gate, in solidarity.

But this person did not know what many of us know, and what I am now telling all of you: this gate of ours provides safety to everyone on both sides. When the gate was installed, a person lived in a tent at the edge of our driveway, as he had done for many, many years. Before the gate, there was a disturbing atmosphere of disorder and neglect on this part of the block, and that meant that our neighbor — someone we knew by name, and someone we finally helped to gain permanent shelter and receive medical care — our neighbor was routinely a victim of violence.

More than forty years ago, Minnesota Governor Rudy Perpich named my father to the new state Court of Appeals. Since it was a newly formed court, the governor got to fill the whole bench. My dad was an intentionally regional choice: the governor needed a judge from the southwest corner of the state.

I remember that there was a long delay in the appointment, until finally my father made clear to the governor’s office his interest in the job. When he met with the governor, he asked about the delay. I don’t know how he broached the topic. “Why the delay?!” he could have blurted, but my father was never forward or direct in that way. He did not strut. But somehow he managed to ask the question. Governor Perpich replied, “Because you hadn’t asked me.”

Sometimes the person we want most to be here, or the person we want most to do something, is absent or reluctant only because we have not asked them to come; or we have not asked them to take action.

We shouldn’t miss this detail in Luke’s marvelous telling of the Walk to Emmaus. The risen Christ appears to his followers, and specifically he becomes recognizable to them in the breaking of the bread (more on that in a moment), but they do not recognize him before they ask him to stay with them: “They urged him strongly, saying, ‘Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.’ So he went in to stay with them.”

This little detail in the narrative inspires me to moan and cry out with desire: O Risen One, O Lord, O Savior of the World, stay with us! If it’s just a question of being asked — if all we need to do is ask — then please, Jesus, come and stay with us!

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. 

Where was Thomas, the Sunday before, when everything happened? 

Where was he?

A little over a year ago, the new 2025 St. Paul’s vestry met for a long meeting to plan the coming year. Our consultant got things started with an ice-breaker exercise. The prompt: Your name, how long you’ve been at St. Paul’s, and a fantasy world you’d love to live in. There are so many fantasy worlds: the Stars, both Trek and Wars; the dark, intriguing Battlestar Galactica; Middle-earth; the worlds of Anime. Or do you want to be an X-man, or a Marvel avenger, or someone in DC Comics? Ursula LeGuin, Neal Stephenson, Philip Pullman: feel free to choose your favorite fantasy author. Whose world would make you feel at home?

This was my response to the prompt: My name is Stephen Crippen, I’ve been your pastor for [at that time] two years and counting, and my favorite fantasy world is a sub-world in the Star Trek multiverse: the starship Voyager.

Voyager is a home far from home for our heroes. Flung to the other side of the galaxy, they spend seven television seasons working their way back. What I love about this world is how everyone is stuck together. I realize this dream of mine might be your nightmare: we’re all on board a ship together, like it or not, and we have to work together if we want to survive, and accomplish our shared mission. If we argue, we have to make up, because we’re going to see each other in the corridors and mess hall, and it’s just impractical to stay mad.

Click here to watch this sermon on video.

On Wednesday, February 28, 2001, this region suffered an earthquake of magnitude 6.8. It lasted about thirty or forty seconds. It was severe. The epicenter was in the Nisqually area northeast of Olympia. Several hundred people were injured, and one person died of a heart attack attributed to the upsetting event.

That particular day in 2001 was Ash Wednesday. I know this because I was working as the organist at Queen Anne Lutheran Church, up the hill, and we were finishing up our morning Ash Wednesday liturgy. I was standing next to a small portable organ — small by the standards of a pipe organ, that is. The hulk of pipes in their casing rose above my head. We were in a little chapel, and everyone had received Communion except me.

I told myself. “Eh, I can just go up for Communion tonight.” I stayed by the organ and did not receive the sacrament.

And then the earth shook.

Click here to watch this sermon on video.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb.

Mary was up all night. Was she a “morning lark” up early, or a “night owl” out late? Neither one, I say: She just had a bad night. In this hardship, she is our companion: you’ve surely had some bad nights. You came here this morning while it was still dark: I doubt you slept all that much lastnight.

Coming to the tomb before dawn; coming to church before dawn; getting up and out of the house when you can’t stop thinking about everything: We all know this. We’re all restless. Mary found her way to the tomb before dawn because she was restless.

She was grieving of course, and this great feast of Resurrection is at least in part about human grief, the kind of grief that wakes you in the night, and haunts you day and night. Mary’s closest friend and beloved teacher had been publicly executed, dashing everyone’s hopes — and profoundly traumatizing all of them, too. It took almost four centuries for Christians to make visual art about the crucifixion. This is generational trauma.

Long ago I was the organist at a funeral for a small child, a victim of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. It was a dreadful day. I do not recall what the preacher said. I remember the parents, ashen and mute, in the front row. I remember the child’s wrecked grandpa. I remember the open casket, and what looked like a terrible, forlorn, yet serene little doll inside it.

I spoke to the child’s grandfather. He had proudly doted on his grandson, a delight in his sunset years. I don’t remember what I said to him. I probably just said, “I’m so sorry.” But I clearly remember him saying to me, “We’re empty. We’re just empty.”

Go here to watch this sermon on video.

After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), "I am thirsty."

Last Friday, four of us were here in the afternoon cleaning the baptismal font. It is a mighty undertaking. There are power plugs, filters, pumps, basins, beeping leak monitors, buckets, wash towels, and hoses. It takes a long time to drain the large font, the smaller pool, the filter mechanism, and the lowest tank. It takes a long time to wipe clean all the surfaces. It takes even longer to fill it all up again. We discovered that a few bugs had met their end in the filters; they are now at rest in our garden. The whole setup of font and machinery exists on two floors of the building. Laura, Barbara, Shimi, and I took this on. 

At one point I stood over the font and took a photograph of the empty basins. It is so rare to see the font bereft of all water. If you tap your knuckle on the dry inside wall, you’ll hear a satisfying clang. I asked Barbara if it would harm the machines for the font to stand empty for a time. (I was thinking it might be powerful for folks to encounter an empty font this week, on this side of Easter.) “It wouldn’t be good for the font system,” she said. The mechanism is meant to continually hold and move water. 

A short reading from The Doctrine of God, by Katherine Sonderegger:

“Love is the Truth of God, but also the Beauty. God is sublime, a zealous Good. Love alone is as strong as death, its passion fierce as the grave. To know this God, the Living Lord, is to hunger and to delight and to hunger once more. Theology should pant after its God, the Love that is better than wine, for God is beautiful, truly lovely, the One whose Eyes are like doves.”

Love is the Beauty of God.

Love is beautiful.

You’ve been to weddings. You’ve appreciated how carefully couples plan everything, the invitations, flowers, party favors, placecards, dresses, suits. The goal is beauty: on this day the couple and their community celebrate love, and love is beautiful.

To watch this sermon on video, click here.

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?”