What is your mission?

What exactly are you planning to do when you leave this building, or when you log off this zoom call, and begin your new week?

What work or project will you take up in the coming days?

What are you preparing to do that is quintessentially you?

We all have a purpose. We all have something to do, or something to be, that matters. Most—probably all—of us have many missions at once, or different missions depending on the time of our lives, or the experiences we’ve had. I once thought my mission was church music, and so I became an organist and choir director. I wasn’t wrong, exactly, but my mission shifted. Then I thought my mission was couple and family therapy. Again, not wrong, but it shifted again. Then came deacon, and finally priest. But maybe my actual mission is being a good brother. Or maybe I have multiple missions, including priest, brother, friend, husband, companion of dogs. In recent days I’ve thought my newest mission is to save at least one life that is threatened by the destructive decisions of the Supreme Court. But some missions seem less noble, and yet prove their worth over time: I have a mission to keep pursuing the sport of long-distance running, not just because exercise helps me feel good, but because it has inspired two of my friends to pursue their own dreams for physical health, and the three of us keep encouraging each other. I think that makes it a mission.

In April 1991, four months from my 21st birthday, I came out as gay, first to a Lutheran pastor who counseled me, then to friends, then siblings, and then my parents. Finally I wrote a letter to my uncle Ray, my dad’s brother, letting him know.

Uncle Ray was an understanding person. He was a well-read newspaper editor in a small town (Worthington, Minnesota, my birthplace), and he was an accomplished historian. He also had a delightful sense of humor, and a way with writing. His letter back to me did not disappoint. “Damn discrimination,” he began. And he repeated it: “Damn discrimination.” Uncle Ray lamented the difficulty so many people had with sexual orientation in that era – an era all too similar to this one. He assured me that he was an ally.

“In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your children shall prophesy, and your young people shall see visions, and your old people shall dream dreams.”*

Are these the last days? Well, if we think these are the last days, we would not be the first generation to think so. Empires and social orders have collapsed, again and again, across all recorded human history. Each era of peace and prosperity is followed by war, catastrophe, and world-changing upheaval. In such frightening times, it is understandable to think that these are the “last days” — the last days of our political nation; the last days of all that we have assumed, and all that we have known; even the last days of earth’s imperiled ecosystems. Everything seems to be falling apart.

But if these truly are the “last days,” there are a couple of silver linings.

Last week I was in Denver for a conference, and my Lyft driver was taking me back from a Catholic cemetery outside of town. I had gone there to visit the graves of relatives on my mother’s side. I hadn’t been to Denver since my childhood summers, when we would pile into our family’s un-air-conditioned van and make the 670-mile trip. I remembered that hot van as my driver took me east and south, back into the city: Denver seems to be surrounded by a vast nothingness, an unforgiving, semi-arid, high-desert landscape. I know there are horse ranches, and I recalled that Denver’s football team is the Broncos. (Denver just acquired a fabulous quarterback, much to the disappointment of his former city, but that doesn’t come into this story.)

The cemetery trip was part two of a three-part pilgrimage I made in Denver, carefully scheduled around the conference, to pay my respects to my family. The first stop, on day one of my visit, was a selfie in front of the Colorado capitol building, the scene of a memorable 1970s family photo. Back then, the capitol grounds featured huge flower beds, and the differently-colored flowers spelled out words, like “Colorado,” and perhaps the state flag. Now, the grounds are just grass. Unhoused people camp around the perimeter. Everything looks a bit tired and worn.

Have you ever been wrong about something – about something important?

If so, how exactly did you find out that you were wrong? And what did you then do about it?

If you are like our sibling in the faith, Simon Peter, then you will find out you were wrong about something in a vivid dream. You will dream that a sheet descends from heaven, and on that sheet are images that reveal to you that you were mistaken. Peter saw animals that were off limits for pious Jewish people to eat. This dream persuaded him that he was on the wrong side of a major argument in the early church about who belongs in the community and who does not. The other side won: non-Jewish persons were welcomed into the Jesus Movement without the requirement that they be circumcised and follow other Jewish laws and customs. The Jesus Movement became the Christian Church, culturally diverse, expansive, a movement and mission that traveled beyond its Jewish origins. Jews and Gentiles alike came together as siblings in the faith.

Abortion should be legal and safe.

Women should have full access to reproductive healthcare.

Women and girls are full and equal members of our community, and a primary purpose of our community is to dismantle patriarchy.

Here are other ways to say these things:

It is unchristian to make abortion illegal and unsafe.

Jesus stood against those who denied healthcare to women.

The bible takes pains to introduce us to women in positions of leadership: the bible instructs us to dismantle patriarchy.

“We will go with you.”

What a lovely thing to say.

They will go with their friend, who has told them, “I am going fishing,” his way of saying, “I am going back to doing the thing I know how to do. I am going back to my day job.” Their response is simple, and supportive: “We will go with you.”

Together, and at work doing the thing they’ve known how to do their whole working lives, these seven friends pass a bad night. They catch nothing. This disappointment follows a couple of very recent traumas: the violent execution of their leader and friend, and then his bizarre, ineffable return into their midst. Deeply rattled and unnerved, shaken to the core by all that they had experienced, they went back to their old ways … and then even those old ways failed them. Their nets are empty. A whole night’s work wasted.

Can we relate?

Click here to watch a video of this sermon.

Two men in dazzling clothes appear to the women, and tell them something astonishing.

Two men in dazzling clothes.

Maybe it’s me and my husband Andrew, who has worked for Nordstrom for nearly 31 years, and therefore enjoys a lifetime discount. Yes. Andrew and Stephen stand at the empty tomb in dazzling clothes from the Nordstrom flagship store, saying astonishing things about life rising up, about death being routed, death now little more than some flimsy burial wrappings (Nordstrom doesn’t carry those) left behind by the Risen One who has no need of them and has already gone from here, off to rouse and raise others, off to carry the Good News of resurrection life across all borders, through all locked doors, into the stoniest of hearts, into hearts broken seemingly beyond repair.

Jesus went out with his disciples across the Kidron valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered.

He brings us back into the garden.

What will we find there?

A thousand thousand flowers: riots of color, rushes of fragrance. The intensity of goodness can be stunning. Someone forgave you, and you’re almost knocked off your feet by the relief. Or someone asked your forgiveness, and your faith in human strength and integrity is restored. Someone is born, and you can hardly breathe for the joy. Someone is found; someone is embraced; someone has come home. Or someone is baptized. Oh, the gladness I feel about our four baptisms this Sunday. I want to shout about it. I am fit to burst.

There are still other joyful flowers in the garden. There’s the thrill of infatuation, the delight of the chase, the brilliant flash and splendid fury of passionate love. And there’s another kind of thrilling love: after twenty, thirty, for some couples more than seventy years, you find that you and your beloved are family, forever, and the goodness fills you like steel-cut oatmeal and strong hot coffee in the morning. Now that I think about it, maybe that kind of lifelong love is not a flower; maybe that is a tree, in God’s garden.

He is an innocent victim.

He didn’t do it.

But he isn’t anybody’s fool, either.

We hear him pray for the forgiveness of his enemies, of his executioners, and we might mistake this prayer for weakness. It is not our way. We want our hero to triumph over the enemy. We want a satisfying fight sequence. We want a win.

But here’s the thing: forgiveness is less theatrical, but vastly more difficult than vengeance. This Lent, a few of us looked at forgiveness from the perspective of a couples therapist and author. Her name is Janis Abrahms Spring, and she works with couples on major betrayals — affairs, abuse, the hardest stories. Her take on forgiveness is that it requires the participation of the offender. So if I hurt you and then leave your life, or die, then in this view of forgiveness, you can’t forgive me, because I’m not there to earn that forgiveness. You can only do the healthy work of acceptance, on your own.

For many years after my mother’s death, the smell of lilies reminded me of a funeral home on Snelling Avenue in St. Paul. We all went there in late June of 1996 to see my mother. In my memory, this Minnesota funeral home really went for it on the funeral flowers, marking coffins at head and foot with giant arrangements of lilies and gladiolus.

But lilies go further back for me. They reliably remind me of Easter morning. And the feeling associated with my childhood Easter mornings, and with all those lilies, is excitement. I caught the magic back then: my church knew how to do Easter, and those early years of following the drama of Holy Week were my earliest formation for the vocation I have now. Lilies were always there.

I honestly do not think that anyone in this room or online could do anything that would truly break our bond as human beings in relationship with one another.

There is nothing you can do that would break your bond with me.

I have thought about this a lot. I really think our bond is unbreakable, even if you don’t think so, even if you think that you or I could definitely do something to break it.

Even if you think that, and even if I did do some unspeakable, terrible thing that would cross a line for you – even then, I would hold out hope that we could reconcile. I would pray for you, and keep the bond alive that way. I would apply what I learned from our connection – and from our awful struggle – in my other relationships. I would work to remain available to you if you changed your heart and mind. I would hold out hope that even if reconciliation is not possible, some sort of guarded peace will develop between us.

There is power in a name, and there is power in giving someone a name.

Legend says that my father would take each of his newborn children in just one hand, moments after our births, and proclaim our names. And so it came to pass that on a summer day in August 1970, my father took me in his right hand and said, “This is Stephen Daniel.”

I am the namesake of Stephen Kinsella, remembered as “Big Steve,” my mother’s mother’s mother’s father. I am also the namesake of Daniel Collins, my mother’s mother’s father.

I want to introduce you to four people. I am working hard to get to know them. I think I am getting my footing with a couple of them, but all four are still a little mysterious to me. And all of them will forever elude my full understanding, as everyone does. (I’m working hard to get to know everyone here at Grace Church, but there is not one of you about whom I can say, “Yeah, I’ve got that one fully figured out.” I think this might come as a relief to you!)

But here’s what I think I know about these four particular people.

“This body is junk,” my mother said, a couple of hours before she died. It was June 21, 1996. She was surrounded by her seven children, called to her bedside for her last words. I was nearly 26 years old, half my lifetime ago.

“And Joseph kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.”

If there is a more beautiful verse in all of our scripture, I do not know it.

No toxic masculinity in this moment, no diplomatic reserve, no stiff upper lip. He kissed all his brothers, too: not just Benjamin, the only other brother lucky like Joseph to be born to Rachel, Jacob’s favorite wife. All of them. He kissed and wept with all of his brothers who quietly went along with the dreadful decision all those years before to sell Joseph into slavery; he kissed and wept with Reuben, the eldest brother who had stopped the others from killing the boy Joseph; and he kissed and wept with Judah, noble Judah, who passed all of Joseph’s tests and threw himself at Joseph’s mercy. Joseph kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.

Let’s leave the planet Earth for a while.

Imagine: the apex predator species of Earth — that’s you and me, friends — has discovered intelligent life on a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, a trio of stars about 4.3 light years away, our closest stellar neighbors. We learned of this extra-terrestrial intelligence when we monitored radio transmissions of their choral music. A consortium of business and religious organizations funded the acquisition of a mineral-rich asteroid, and drilled a cylindrical hole inside it, so that they could install decks for crew quarters, navigation, food, water, surface landers, and supplies. Our engines draw power from the raw materials of the asteroid and are propelling us inside this rock at an impressive percentage of the speed of light, getting us to Alpha Centauri in about 17 years. (The effects of relativity make it seem like mere months for us.)

Click here to watch a video recording of this sermon.

How can God get your attention?

How can God lock eyes with you, literally or otherwise, and truly get you to listen?

I’ve recently told a couple of people in meetings that when I was in seventh grade, my English teacher said to my parents in a conference that “Stephen could be looking directly at me, and I can tell he isn’t listening to a word I’m saying.” This is a cute little story, and yet no one I’ve told it to expresses surprise. I want to hear you. I want to listen to you. But it’s hard sometimes. I have a lot going on. And so do you: sometimes what you’re saying doesn’t come across very well. Sometimes I look up several hours later, maybe while I’m waiting in line for the ferry, and I think, “Damn, what did she mean by that? Did she mean what I think she means?” I want to pay attention and get what I’m being told on the first hearing, but I get distracted. Or you say something distractedly, or indirectly. We’re both caught up in other things, and the connection is lost.

Or – one of us doesn’t want to hear it. Maybe I can’t get your attention because you don’t want to hear what you suspect I have to say. If so, I can relate.

The Nazarenes are mad.

Really mad.

Like, attempted-murder-in-the-second-degree mad.

Now, maybe the community of Luke’s Gospel is just being a little hyperbolic, sketching an event in a way that communicates to us something important that they want us to know. Luke likely wants us to know that Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, immediately is met with aggressive resistance, then and now. That rings true.

“The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him.”

They watched. They waited.

Maybe they glanced furtively at one another.

What will he do? What will he say?