Sermons
Sermons are not written to be read on the page, but heard in the preacher's voice as part of a church service. They are also written for particular listeners at a particular place and time. For these reasons, it is a little absurd to offer a collection of sermon transcripts, divorced from the contexts that gave rise to them. Having said that, readers may find a few valuable ideas and images in these transcripts, and it is in that hope that I share them here.
It is hard to talk about sin.
We don’t want to offend people. We don’t want to turn off newcomers. We don’t want people to think that this is one of those churches, the churches that love to find things wrong with people. Churches can perversely be better than almost any other institution at identifying enemies, and then mistreating them. Churches can be home to legalists, to humorless scolds, to angry and judgmental people who are blind to their own self-righteousness. And that, we hope, is not us.
I have four sisters and two brothers. (That seems like too many.) I have never known life without a whole lot of peers. (For this reason, while seminary is not always easy, it is always, for me, deeply familiar.)
My favorite day of the year, even now, is Christmas Day. My father is generous and thoughtful, and he always made Christmas special. Every Christmas morning I would, like all sensible children, awaken at 4:30 a.m. to begin the Great Descent of the Stairs, to see what Santa and my parents brought me. And when, finally, at the mid-morning hour of 6:30 a.m., my parents would give us permission to run downstairs, I would hurry down to find a pile of treasures, some from Santa, some from my parents. My loot pile was flanked by a little banner my dad made, with my name on it. In all of this, I learned important life lessons from my father. I knew even then that the name banner was his idea, not Santa’s, a thoughtful way to make a child in a big sibling group feel unique, special. I learnedthat giving good gifts is a love language.
Human beings are good at hiding.
We have had a lot of practice. We have been hiding almost as long as we have been human. We first went into hiding at the time of the evening breeze, when the LORD God walked through the garden calling out, “Where are you?” We are so good at hiding, we even know how to hide from ourselves. The longer we lurk behind our masks, the more likely we are to mistake those masks for our true selves. The LORD God is never fooled by all of this, but we often are.
Once I heard a story about a corrupt politician in the 1920’s named John A. McCarthy. He was known as “Fishhooks” McCarthy. He lived and worked on the Lower East Side in New York. Every morning he would faithfully stop at St. James Church on Oliver Street to say his prayers. His same prayer each day was this: “O Lord, give me health and strength. We’ll steal the rest.”
I do not hate my father, and I never will. I love my father. I admire and respect him, too. He is a retired appellate-court judge in Minnesota. He has a lifelong interest in family law, and has written eloquently on the rights and needs of children under the law, an issue that carries great importance during these hard times. He taught me to study the scriptures seriously, and carefully. He was and is a great father to seven children. His generous spirit revealed itself most fully every Christmas morning, but it was always discernible, always present in some form, throughout the year. He loves to read. He and his wife Sandy dote on their sweet little Westie dog, named Finnegan. My father is temperate, balanced, reasonable, just. He loves a good funny story. He honored his parents and was a lifelong friend to his older brother. He taught me how to be a good husband. He inspires my midlife interest in health and fitness. He has spent his life practicing the rare art of skillful kindness: he is kind, but not haphazardly so, not in a fluffy or silly way. He is thoughtfully kind.
I typically listen to a couple of different podcasts when I’m walking our dog in the evenings. (Dogs are great, but they are not great conversation partners.) Once a year, one of my favorite podcasts takes a break from its usual topic and drops a “Conundrums” episode. The three journalists step back from discussing the issues of the day to consider fun conundrums submitted by listeners.
A couple of examples... Would you rather be attacked by 20 horses who are the size of ducks, or by one duck who is the size of a horse? Or how about this one: Would you rather stop aging at 30 and live for 30 more years, or stop aging at 70 and live for 70 more years?
My husband Andrew and I decided to take on a challenge this summer, a challenge posed by me: we decided to watch all 23 films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, from Iron Man, released in 2008, to Spider-Man: Far From Home, which hit theaters this summer. There are 23 films in the MCU, as it’s called, but really there is just one story, one myth, about a hero or heroine who surrenders to a power beyond herself to discover her identity, and then go on to fulfill her destiny.
Judas had gone out.
If this were a stage play, we would see on center stage the table, surrounded by Jesus and his anxious friends, one lonely spotlight trained on them. Beyond a wall, stage left, Judas is … “out,” dimly lit, going about his task, which is to assist the forces of darkness now arrayed lethally around and against Jesus.
Today we reach the shore of a lake and we see that Jesus has cooked a fish breakfast on a campfire.
(A campfire: This campfire might stir our memory. Didn’t we see a campfire not too long ago? Yes: Peter huddles beside a campfire that is burning just outside the house of Annas the high priest. Peter tries to warm himself on that terrible night when he betrays his friend three times. And so, maybe he is approaching the seashore campfire this morning with a growing anxiety: will the risen Lord mention the unmentionable? Will he name Peter’s betrayal, and hold him to account for it?
“Here is the man!” said Pilate.
“Idou ho anthropos!” said Pilate, in Greek.
“Ecce homo!” said Pilate, in Latin.
Man, anthropos, homo: this is the Human One.
We have four portraits of Jesus in our holy book. (Five, if you count Paul’s unique perspective.) John, unlike Mark, Matthew, and Luke, does something unique with the trial of Jesus: all four tell us that Jesus was flogged and mocked, but only John places this trauma in the middle of the trial.
For many years I have been a fan of “The West Wing,” a political show that offers a positive view of government, with respect for leaders on both sides of the aisle. Whatever your political views, I wonder if you can appreciate a particular scene in which the president admits that he was wrong, that he simply did the wrong thing. He did this wrong thing not because of his party affiliation or his political agenda, or really for any reason other than the fact that he was a flawed human being, and he listened to his fears, and he messed up. He could have denied his wrongdoing and fought against those who wanted to punish him for his mistake, but he chose to cop to it. And here is what he said:
Moses had to find a veil and pull it over his face, because his face was terrifyingly ablaze with the glory of God. The people couldn’t bear to look. He glowed with the wonder of his conversation on the mountain with God. For the people, this was just too much. They not only couldn’t stand to converse directly with God; they couldn’t bear even to see the reflection of God on the face of their leader. But when Moses went back up the mountain, and again began to converse with God, he took the veil off. God has no need of such things. God does not hold a veil over our faces, no, God is better known as the One who takes our faces into God’s hand, lovingly, the way a parent would draw a child’s face upward, holding onto the child just below the chin. And then God looks upon us, more frightening still, converses with us, and the terrible, wondrous, wrenching gleam of God’s glory blazes on our own faces. We shine. We radiate the light and the glory of God, we who are but dust and ashes. No frail attempt to hide can shade us from that light. No flimsy piece of fabric can veil us from this mystical connection with the divine.
This is my first video recording of a sermon, thanks to parishioner Mark Fearer. I preached at the Wednesday evening service at Emmanuel Church-on-the-Hill, Alexandria, February 27, 2019 (the feast of poet George Herbert). The sermon begins about five minutes in. Thanks Mark!
Photo: the chapel atop the Mount of the Beatitudes, in the Galilee region of Israel.
Do you need forgiveness? Have you done something you regret, and for which you need another person, or God, to forgive you?
Do you need to forgive? Has someone done something against you that grieves you, something for which you need that person to apologize, and make amends? Maybe that person is gone, or unwilling, or otherwise incapable of meeting you in your sorrow about what happened. Then what? Now what?
Over the past couple of years, one of my guilty pleasures has been the TV sitcom called “The Good Place.” In the pilot episode we meet Eleanor Shellstrop, a young woman from Arizona who wakes up on a comfortable couch in a quiet office lobby. Looming before her is a huge sign that says, “Welcome! Everything is fine.” A friendly, well-dressed, white-haired man named Michael (played by Ted Danson) calls her into his inner office and tells her that she has died, “her life on earth has ended, and she has entered the next phase of her existence in the universe.” Michael reassures her that upon her death, she went to the “Good Place.” Eleanor discovers that her whole life on earth had been recorded and judged: every moral choice she made had been evaluated on an elaborate point system, and she had earned enough points to go to the Good Place.
In 1996, moviegoers like me excitedly watched the first installment of Mission: Impossible, the franchise of films that follow our superspy heroes as they attempt to defeat the bad guys against terrible―well, impossible―odds. In this first film, we find Tom Cruise’s Ethan Hunt on a high-speed train with a couple of disavowed spies, including Luther, played by the charming, mellow Ving Rhames. Luther, despite his usual calm affect, is growing visibly anxious as Ethan tells the team that they are going to break into CIA Headquarters, in Langley. Luther finally is speechless, his eyes filled with worry.
I wonder if you have come into this room today with feelings of guilt or remorse. If not today, maybe another day: maybe you came to church at some point in your life with a heavy burden on your shoulders. Maybe you carried regret, or the kind of inconsolable sadness people sometimes feel when they made a big mistake, or fell short of expectations, or just got way off track.
Church people argue about lots of things. They debate the virgin birth, bodily resurrection, what miracles are, whether there’s an actual hell, and on and on. One of the smaller arguments church people have (when they should probably be doing something more productive) is the question whether Jesus had siblings. Some say no: his mother was always a virgin, they say. Others say yes: the Gospels mention brothers of Jesus, and in his teachings Jesus uses childbirth as a metaphor, suggesting that he probably helped his parents with home births, which gave him sermon material to work with.
