Let’s talk about hellfire.

Nobody really wants to, I’m almost sure of it. At best, “hellfire” is a dated, cartoonish notion from yesteryear. Or it’s the kind of thing people think of in a ho-hum, thoughtless way. “Go to hell,” you might say to someone, but you’re not really being serious, or literal.

But at worst, “hellfire” is abusive and traumatic. I have a friend who grew up in a part of the country that provided his childhood imagination with plenty of religious material to feel scared about, even terrified about. Even now, in midlife, he can feel haunted by the horrible, inhumane warning that if he does the wrong thing, or if he thinks the wrong thing, he will be sent to hell when he dies. And hell is a furnace of eternal hellfire.

A friend, priest, and mentor of mine once said, “I will tell you what draws me to Christianity.” She said this while leading a confirmation class that Andrew and I were taking, in 2005, the year we were confirmed as Episcopalians. “I will tell you what draws me to Christianity,” she said. “At the center of Christianity, right at the center, is a dead innocent.”

I will never forget this. She is so right, so dead-on, so undeniably correct about this. You and I may love Christianity for many reasons. We may love Anglican/Episcopal Christianity in particular for our gorgeous prayers, our lovely Nativity carols, our open-minded embrace of disagreement and creative tension, our global appeal as a profoundly inclusive, thoughtful, and innovative Communion. These are all good things. But we must never forget that at the very center of our faith is a dead innocent.

If you are angry, I hear you. If you are enraged, I understand. There are many reasons to feel anger right now.

Maybe you are angry on behalf of young women (many of them still girls) in Texas who are in excruciating, catastrophic crisis.

Maybe you are furious with people who resist, or flatly reject, the coronavirus vaccines. There are stories of frontline healthcare workers who remain uncertain whether they want the vaccine: maybe that confuses you, in addition to angering you. There are different levels of resistance to the vaccine, from understandable wariness about the FDA’s slow approval process, to fierce defiance of the whole thing as a hoax, or a liberal plot.

Here’s something fun we could do. Let’s list the things we don’t like about Christianity.

I’ll go first.

I don’t like how elusive and indirect and mystifying Christianity is, right at the very center. Our savior dies and rises again: Yes. I believe this and I proclaim “alleluia” year by year when we preach this Good News to one another. But I have so many questions. He could eat in their presence, but also move through walls. He invited Thomas to touch him, but told Mary Magdalene not to touch him. And Thomas ended up not touching him. Or did he touch him after all? The text doesn’t say. Come on now.

To watch a video of this sermon, click here.

Twenty-four years ago this summer, a film opened in theaters that featured a hero who gave his all to save humanity, even offering himself up to be eaten alive.

The hero’s name is, simply, the letter K. He is played by Tommy Lee Jones. K is one of the Men in Black, a secret organization that monitors and controls alien life on this planet. K and his partner J go to the Flushing Meadows Corona Park, in Queens, where, naturally, an alien cockroach several times the size of a human being is attempting to steal a tiny galaxy, encased in a cat’s collar medallion. The cockroach wants to exploit the galaxy’s subatomic energy, you see, in an evil plot to commit genocide. It’s just the usual kind of thing that happens to the Men in Black, on a Tuesday.

Shall we go and sit under the broom tree?

If we do choose to sit together under the broom tree, we will be in good company.

We will find Elijah there, as we just heard. Elijah has given up hope. There is a price on his head, and he is fleeing in fear. In his flight from danger into the wilderness (where, if anything, there is even more danger), he forgets the truly awesome experience he recently had, when God passed by, extremely close by, in the sound of sheer silence. He forgets that God gloriously helped him in a political triumph. Exhausted, harried, at his wit’s end, Elijah crumples to his knees and sits down under the broom tree.

To watch this sermon along with the service, click here.

God as Bread.

I can see it.

Bread is crusty. It can have sharp edges, especially when the baker slices it down the middle before putting it in the oven, or makes a cross cut for our Thanksgiving bread we share here week by week. I eat the top crust of crusty bread last, because it is crunchy and chewy, both, and I always save the best for last. God is … crusty? Yes. And sharp. God is not just soft and tender. And God is, in all times and places, the best, and God endures at the last.

“Jesus said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.”

Grace Church feels full right now.

We are full of activities. We are reopening. We are starting new faith formation projects, including a new group for women, and more for people of all ages in the fall. (And the fall approaches!) Our men’s group is meeting in person soon. We are hosting a play produced by our own Olivia Vessenes. There are several memorial services coming up. I officiated a wedding a couple days ago, and took a call about another one as I was on the way there. People are coming to church to clean, organize things, tend the gardens, fill our space with life again.

But we also are full of feelings.

In 1986, at the age of 16, I was a busboy and a dishwasher at a steakhouse in the village of Mendota, Minnesota. I still remember the radio blaring in the restaurant kitchen, with songs like “I’m Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves.

Since then, in Episcopal churches, I’ve continued to work as a busboy and a dishwasher, many, many times.

I want to begin with a poem by Robert Frost.

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

“So Eden sank to grief.” Today we step into Eden and watch as God walks at the time of the evening breeze, and confronts the human ones. God asks them God’s eternal question for all human beings: “Where are you?” Now, surely God knows where we are. But God knows that we do not know where we are. Like Eve, the mother of all human beings, we know we want wisdom. We know we want enlightenment. We know we want answers. Adam wants these things too, though he cowers in silence while the serpent shows Eve one path to wisdom. A problematic path — a terrible path! — but a path to wisdom nonetheless.

It’s a bad news / good news thing.

The bad news: times are not just hard; they’re terrible. Whole nations face existential catastrophe in the face of climate change. Countless millions of people are being caught up in global patterns of migration, and political resistance and violence confront them on nearly every shore. The U.S. is undergoing a long-delayed and much-needed, but searingly painful, reckoning with racism and systems of oppression. We are enduring a long era of partisan rancor that threatens democracy at a time when we need it the most, and authoritarianism is on the rise worldwide. India is experiencing what can most accurately be called a holocaust as the coronavirus rages through the subcontinent, and there is a long list of nations that may not get adequately vaccinated before 2023. Life expectancy is leveling off, and for the first time in generations, younger citizens in this country do not expect to enjoy standards of living as good as—let alone better than—their parents.

I’d like to share three short illustrations of friendship, for our reflection.

I will begin by reciting a poem from the nineteen-eighties. It is actually a verse of lyrics from a song. If you recognize this song, well, that might say something about your age, but please know that I am also old enough to be deeply familiar with this shard of folk wisdom. Here’s the poem:

Thank you for being a friend,
traveled down a road and back again.
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a confidante.
And if you threw a party,
and invited everyone you knew,
you would see the biggest gift would be from me,
and the card attached would say,
“Thank you for being a friend.”

Andrew and I have made the dubious choice these past seventeen years to be the caretakers of dogs who belong to the noble but challenging dog breed of Shiba Inu. One optimistic website calls them “small, fox-like, happy dogs!” In their sunny description of the breed, that website under-reports the vexing dimensions of the Shiba personality.

One fine day in 2005, we took our first Shiba, Stella, to our friends’ house for a few hours. They had a fenced yard and Stella explored her new green paradise. But the gate was open. We spent nearly an hour running through that whole neighborhood, chasing Stella and strategizing in real time about how best to corner and catch her.

Easter is a season of great celebration, not just one day, but fifty days to sing and say alleluia at the news that God has brought life from death; that the powers of Sin and Death have been routed; that human history and even the destiny of the whole earth will culminate in the triumph of God.

But we are right to wonder with our brother Thomas at these things. We are right to feel fiercely a true desire to see these good things for ourselves, especially now in a time of plague, when the power of Death appears to be ascendant, and not routed at all; and when the forces of systemic racism and oppression seem to be strengthening, even spiraling; and when even the living planet itself is under existential threat.

They say there are five different kinds of love languages. What are they? Well —

There are Words of Affirmation: a verbal expression of love, from the simple “I love you” to something more complex, like, “I am sorry, and I want to make it right.” (My honest apology affirms your dignity as one who deserves my respect.)

Then there is Gift-Giving: that thoughtful present you weren’t expecting, wrapped tightly with a sprig of rosemary knotted into the ribbon.

If you visit Jerusalem, you will find many corners of the city where Franciscan caretakers say certain things happened: Jesus prayed in this olive grove here; he wept over the city there; he carried his cross along this covered, ancient, urban alleyway, now lined with shops for tourists.

There are two locations where tradition says Jesus was raised from the dead. One of them, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, is probably the actual place. When you enter that church, you quickly come upon a stone slab where — or perhaps near the place where — the body of Jesus was prepared for burial. But if you turn to the right, you can climb a narrow, darkened, winding staircase that takes you up to a level of the church that encloses a hill, the hill, the hill of Golgotha. There, surrounded by a sea of flickering lanterns, you can glimpse — and even touch — some of the rock of the original hill, and say your prayers before an enormous, gilded icon of the crucified Christ.

If God were a superhero, all of this would be so much easier. Our enemies would be routed. Just when we think all is lost, God would soar back through the sky and destroy all evil.

If God were a sorceress, all of this would be so much easier. Drawing a sparkling flask from her robes, God would have just the right potion at hand to defeat the virus, and the magical skill to conjure enough vaccine for everyone.

Even if God were an efficient government agency — well, that is less colorful but even that kind of god would be reassuringly predictable. The temple staff in Jerusalem, whose tables Jesus dramatically overthrows: they seem quite comfortable with the vision of God as Bureaucrat.

If God were any of these things, all of this would be so much easier.

That God is not only not these things, but not a thing at all — that God does not exist in a finite way as we do, but rather is the essence of existence itself — well, this can often feel quite disappointing.

Jesus, like Noah, is in the wilderness, for 40 days, surrounded by wild beasts.

(40 days away from everyone and everything in your usual life: as we all probably know all too well by now, this is what the word quarantine means.)

Noah’s quarantine is a 40-day rainstorm on a fathomless, borderless ocean, locked in the belly of a boat with beasts of every kind. The quarantine of Jesus takes place in the arid moonscape of the Negev Desert, crawling with wild beasts. (Water can drown us, but its utter absence can also kill us.) Wilderness, then, is a deathly landscape of extremes. And in that dangerous place, we are surrounded by wild beasts. Not evil beasts, necessarily, but wild. They are not tame. They are not safe. They can be our companions, and even our teachers. But the wild beasts are not neutral. They are not fuzzy kittens or cute puppies.

Andrew and I have a friend named Virginia, and last month, Virginia’s mother, Janice, died just nine days after her 94th birthday.

It was a holy death. Janice was crowned with wisdom and full of years, a faithful matriarch, a masterful musician, a dauntless traveler, an avid Francophile, a delightful baker and artisan, a prophetic environmentalist, and an inspiring and skillful faith leader.

Janice’s life story inspires all who knew her to engage the world and all people as she did: with an open and bright mind, a creative and adventurous spirit, a full and faithful heart.

Even in death, Janice inspires ever more life.

Jonah!

I have spent a lot of time with Jonah. I invite you to join me as I take yet another look at this remarkable, absurd, and deeply human prophet.

We walk on the beach today alongside our brother Jonah. We catch up to him on a fresh new morning in his life, a second chance, a new day. He has just been through a rough period, to put it extremely mildly. He jumped on a boat bound for the end of the world — or western Spain, whichever came first — because he thought he could outrun the reach of God’s arm. But the sea stirred itself up at God’s command; and then Jonah’s ship seemed to come alive in roiling distress, threatening to break itself apart; and finally an enormous fish obeyed God and swallowed Jonah up, gulping him into the tomb — and also the womb — of her guts. (Unlike Jonah, the great fish dutifully does what God says.)