To watch this sermon on video, click here and go to minute 24:42.

One day, when I was a young kid in southwest Minnesota, I was down in the basement of our house, and I was playing with fire. I held a piece of paper against the exposed coils of an old-style space heater, the kind where the red coils were easily accessed through a thin wire casing. The edge of the paper glowed with a new fire, and the fire licked around the paper until I successfully blew it out. The whole experience was vivid with sensory details: brightness, heat, curling ash, the acrid yet pleasant fragrance of the flame. 

Then I heard a rustling and turned to my right. There stood my mother, watching me silently. I felt a flood of fear.

She quietly but firmly told me to go upstairs, and I remember sitting in the living room while my parents calmly asked me what I had done, and why. They were reasonable, sensible, appropriate. In fact it’s possible my father wasn’t even there: memory is tricky; if he was there, he was like Aaron, the brother of Moses – immensely important, but quiet. My parents gave me some basic reminders about the dangers of playing with fire.

All was well, but I felt shaken, because in that terrible moment when she confronted me, my mother’s face was not that of a friend, or at least an easy, consoling friend. Her face seemed to shine with fire.

Sometimes people comment on spiritual topics such as the meaning of suffering, the problem of evil, and so on, and I am troubled by what they say. When someone says, “Everything happens for a reason,” I think to myself, “No, everything does not happen ‘for a reason.’ Horrible things happen, but they are not God’s will, or part of God’s great plan. We live in a phenomenal, serendipitous universe in which Almighty God enters from below as the Humble One. God is the uncontrolling Creator who calls to us from the future, inviting us, but not forcing us, to make good moral choices in this unpredictable, heartbreaking, wondrous ethical arena.”

That’s my full rebuttal to the claim that “Everything happens for a reason.” I stand by it, but I concede it’s pretty long-winded. I rarely say such things out loud because most people don’t want me to mansplain systematic theology, and I want to have friends. If I had to fit all of that on a mug or a t-shirt, I might just say, “Everything doesn’t happen for a reason, but God makes good use of everything.”

That’s still a lot to read on a mug or a t-shirt. Ideally we would forget about catchy theological one-liners and talk about these things in healthy conversation.

To watch a video recording of this sermon, click here.

In the opening scenes of the 1994 Coen Brothers film The Hudsucker Proxy, we find ourselves in a spacious boardroom on the top floor of an Art-Deco building in New York. It is 1958, but the furnishings and fashion all seem more at home in the Roaring Twenties. Men in suits are gathered around a gleaming conference table, hearing a financial analyst report on the condition of their company, Hudsucker Industries. His report is rosy. Talking above a stirring soundtrack, the financial analyst says:

“... We’re up 18 percent over last year’s third-quarter gross, and that, needless to say, is a new record. Our competition continues to flag and we continue to take up the slack. Market shares in most divisions are increasing and we have opened seven new regional offices. Our international division is also showing vigorous signs of upward movement for the last six months, and we're looking at some exciting things in R&D. Sub-franchising – don't talk to me about sub-franchising; we're making so much money in sub-franchising it isn't even funny. Our nominees and assigns continue to multiply and expand, extending our influence nationally and abroad. Our owned-and-operateds are performing far beyond our expectations both here and abroad … the Federal Tax Act of 1958 is giving us a swell writeoff … and our last debenture issue was this year’s fastest seller … So, third quarter and year-to-date, we have set a new record in sales, a new record in gross, a new record in pre-tax earnings, a new record in after-tax profits, and our stock has split twice in the past year. In short, we're loaded.”

I sometimes recall this scene when the officers of this parish submit their reports to the vestry. Now, I concede that our treasurer has never (so far!) reported that “we’re loaded.” But sometimes our reports are rosy, in their own way: in recent months, attendance has consistently ticked upward; our finances are in sound (if modest) shape; our capital campaign is going well; we’re restoring and repairing our buildings and grounds; there is a lot to encourage us these days. “St. Paul’s is on the move again!” someone said in a recent email. 

Someone stopped me this morning after one of the masses to tell me how surprised she was to hear in today’s first reading that Rebekah wore a nose ring. “I have never heard this story before!” she said, mostly joking but, I think, a little startled to hear that a matriarch of Rebekah’s stature would … wear a nose ring.

When I heard the story, I confess I noticed the nose ring, too. It’s an unsettling image for me as well, but not because I don’t approve of nose rings. They’re fine, of course! I do not wear one, for the ordinary reasons that I do not want to, and I do not think I could really get away with doing it. Earrings are about as far as I think I can go. (And I further understood this morning that our fellow member of St. Paul’s was being funny, and I’m sure she knows that her own joke was on her.)

In any case, I found the nose ring unsettling, too, because a thought flashed through my mind: Does the nose ring imply that Rebekah is now her husband’s property, to be led around like livestock? Maybe not, but in this story, the nose ring definitely is part of a betrothal rite, an item among the exchange of goods and gifts between two families when a marriage is formalized. It was probably a harmless symbol of Rebekah’s new family’s wealth. 

To watch a video recording of this sermon, click here.

“What have we here?
said the wolf in the children’s story
stumbling upon people doing kind, small things.
Is this small monster one of us?”

This is a line from a poem by Naomi Shihab Nye. I’ll share the whole poem a bit later, and as you’ve likely already seen, it’s printed in your bulletin.

“What have we here?
said the wolf in the children’s story
stumbling upon people doing kind, small things.
Is this small monster one of us?”

The wolf in the children’s story: perhaps the wolf is that exiled part of our inner selves, that ravenous, heedless, unnerving, dangerous, violent part of our inner selves, sharply critical, occasionally insightful, but rarely merciful. The wolf perceives others as it perceives itself: a “small monster.” The wolf inside me: it wants to kill or destroy; often hungry, it will eat whatever it hunts, it cares not what. Or who. “When I want to do what is good, [the wolf] lies close at hand.”

.הנני

“Hineni.”

That’s the Hebrew word Abraham uses, more than once, in the disturbing story of the Binding of Isaac. God calls Abraham, and Abraham says, “Hineni.” Isaac calls to his father on their three-day walk to Mount Moriah, and Abraham says, “Hineni.”

When the professor took roll in my seminary Hebrew class, she would call each of our names and expect us to reply, “Hineni.”

“Hineni” means “Here I am.” It is spoken again and again in Holy Scripture. Prophets and priests, servants and sovereigns, and in the Christian Testament Mary of Nazareth, say this whenever God speaks to them, calls out to them, summons them.

I wonder, though, if anyone says this word with more vigor and terrible courage than Abraham, who says it only to hear God give him a wretched command, and then says it again when his son calls out to him and asks him a poignant question, an awful question, a heart-wrenching question: “Father … the fire and the wood are here, but where is the lamb for a burnt offering?”

To watch a video recording of this sermon, click here.

What is most important to you?

What rises above everything else – truly, everything else – as the most important thing or task, practice or creative pursuit, person or being, in your life?

They say addiction is about putting a substance on top as the most important thing. The love of money, the love of novelty, the love of attention: Maybe you put a vice or a guilty pleasure on top as the most important thing. I know I have done that.

What is most important to you?

Matthew is one of the four evangelists in the Christian Testament. “Evangelist” is a word that means “one who proclaims the Good News.” Each of the four Gospels are proclamations of the Good News by a particular community, not just one person, let alone a definitely male person. (Was the beloved disciple in John, the first-hand witness to the life of Jesus for John’s Gospel, actually a woman? Maybe! Some scholars suspect that to be true.) As for Matthew, was he the same Matthew the tax collector we met last week, the man who sat in his tax booth until Jesus called him to join the movement? Maybe. We’ll never be sure. And it may not matter too much. It’s more helpful for us to remember that in all of these accounts of the Good News, a particular community stands behind the text. Matthew’s Good News looks at Jesus through the lens of a particular community.

And more than the other three, the community that gave us Matthew’s Good News seems to enjoy lists. Matthew opens with a big list, the genealogy of Jesus. Now, Luke has a genealogy, too, but in Matthew the family tree of Jesus enjoys pride of place. We are meant to understand that Jesus is the fulfillment of the messianic hopes of God’s people. And even though all four Gospels give us a list of disciples, it seems particularly fitting that Matthew includes such a list, and that the list is given pride of place in today’s Good News.

This week, an unhoused neighbor and I had words. Neither of us was in a happy mood. It wasn’t a pleasant conversation. This is at least partly because it happened at the wrong time of day.

I’ve noticed that often I follow a daily emotional arc, in my effort to get ahead of the chaos that swirls around Uptown in these hard times. In the early morning I feel quiet, thoughtful, insightful, sometimes even serene. Then, at the proper beginning of the workday, I feel anger: a righteous anger, something akin to a “mama bear,” even though I am not a mama, strictly speaking. As the sun reaches its zenith, I feel more regulated and steady, working alongside staff and volunteers with level-headed reliability. For an hour or so in the mid-afternoon, I feel tired, in need of rest. Then I rally in the late afternoon and feel energized and in good humor, leading to a relaxing evening with follow-ups and a look at the next day’s tasks. That’s the pattern; that’s the arc. I’ve noticed that other leaders here at St. Paul’s follow their own emotional arcs, but I’ll let them describe their own experiences.

In any case, one day this week, an unhoused neighbor bumped into me during my mama-bear hour.

Click here and go to minute 26:19 to watch this sermon on video.

Some time ago I was talking with someone about renting our space downstairs, and we were discussing the complications of parking and basic safety, given the various challenges posed by our neighborhood, which is of course on the front lines of the ongoing Seattle housing crisis. After several generations of national political and cultural conflict, major cities like Seattle have seen a slow, yet devastating, dismantling of the social contract: we simply do not live in a nation that reliably works together, giving people a hand when they need one, everyone doing their part, all citizens understanding that each of us receives good things from the whole, so each of us therefore should give and serve; we should do our part.

Of course this has always been a problem, down the whole history of the United States, and if I have failed to see that, it is only because I have enjoyed privileges that allow me to look away. Founded by slave owners, our nation gave the vote to women only about a century ago, and we seem always to have been quarreling with one another about how best to build and sustain a just society. It may just seem even worse now, and worse for more people, but the struggle has endured throughout this country’s relatively short life. 

To watch a video of this sermon, click here.

Creation is splendid.

God creates a vast, blazing array of burning globes that fling themselves eternally outward from God’s first, fierce bang of energy and light. Our light by day is a cheerfully yellow star in the long stride of middle age, and our great night light glimmers with a silver sheen. God invited these lights into being, and they complied. 

God creates an astonishing, lush tapestry of trees and flowers, sea creatures and birds in flight, cattle and creeping things. Even the rats that bedevil our office building: even they are part of God’s splendid creation, if a troublesome part. And then, on the same epochal day when God creates the creeping things, God says, “Let us make humankind in our image.” And God proclaims humans and all the creatures of the earth very good.

Let me begin by saying that I do thoroughly love the City of Light, Paris, one of the greatest world cities, perhaps the greatest world city. I love walking in Paris, exploring a market in Paris, gazing at stained glass in Paris, figuring out labyrinthine museum floor plans in Paris, and above all drinking espresso and eating baked bread in the morning on L’Île Saint-Louis in Paris.

I love it all.

But I struggle with Paris. Specifically, I admit with embarrassment that I struggle with the language in Paris. I was a careless and inattentive French student. In high-school French class, I focused less on the House of Être and the genders of nouns, and more on the thrilling and vexing crush I had on one of my classmates. (But you know, that’s kind of French of me, now that I think about it.) And then I moved through young adulthood without studying languages other than English, and now I am right down the middle, a disappointingly average adult who finds it hard to learn new languages.

Click here to watch a video of this sermon.

This past Monday I arrived in Minneapolis for a conference and decided to take the light-rail train. I was staying downtown but needed to go to the Mall of America to buy a gift for my niece. I boarded the train and watched southeast Minneapolis rush by, noticing some of the many changes that have transformed this region since I last lived there, in the 1990s.

Suddenly, a man behind me exploded in anger. He shouted obscenities into his phone. He simmered down, but then he filled the train again with another startling outburst. After the third or fourth episode of rage, a woman a couple of rows in front of me got up and walked to the forward part of our train car, where there were more people. This left me alone with the angry man in the back half of the train car.

Click here to watch a video of this sermon.

There were several times in my childhood when my father would hold me close, hold me tight. Then a mischievous spirit would steal over him. He would begin to tickle me, and as he did so he would embrace me even more tightly. And then he would begin a chant which always delighted me. He would say this, with increasing energy and excitement: he would say,  “You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away. You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away. You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away.”

Oh, how I treasure that memory, and the unshakeable bond it reveals that holds me close, even now, to my father. And how I long to form and share this bond with others. I do not have children but Andrew and I are closely bonded, and we vigorously welcome dogs into our household and our family. As I’ve said to a few of you, one of our current three dogs – yes, three! – one of them has wandered into the very center of my heart. Now, I do truly love all three of our dogs. I do. But I confess I sometimes take Dash into my arms and hold him close, and I whisper a chant inspired by my father, but corrupted a little by the guilt of my sin of favoritism. I whisper to Dash – very quietly, because I am absurdly afraid the other two dogs will hear it – I whisper, “I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most. I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most. I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most.”

Cleopas and their companion encounter the risen Christ later in the afternoon, as evening is approaching.

It seems clear that they prefer the 5:00pm liturgy at St. Paul’s. 

It all lines up, when you look at it. They get together later in the day, as the sun is descending in the west. They are away from the center of things, which for them is Jerusalem, but for us at St. Paul’s, I suppose, is upstairs, in the bright morning. As they walk together, they talk and discuss, and they need a long walk for this discussion, because the news of Resurrection is always disorienting, always provoking not answers but questions, not a definite way forward, but a crossroads. Then, their encounter with the Risen One happens when they are circled around a Table, much like this one. And Cleopas and their companion are “journey, not destination” people: they are on the road back from Emmaus almost as quickly as they arrived, their steps motivated not by a firm plan, but by a desire to understand, a desire to be close to Christ, and a desire to share that Good News with others. 

Yeah, these two hikers are 5:00pm liturgy people.

Two people were on a long walk, and the Risen One appeared to them. He asked them what they were discussing, and “they stood still, looking sad.”

“They stood still, looking sad.”

This is reasonable. It makes perfect sense. The news of Resurrection is complicated. It is even traumatic. They are on a long walk, but they aren’t celebrating after a sumptuous Easter dinner. They are “talking [about] and discussing” all that has happened. That may sound calm and contented, but the Greek word we translate as discussing could also mean reasoning, debating, questioning, or even arguing. They are reasoning about all that has happened. They are debating all that has happened, questioning it, arguing about it.

You can watch a video of this sermon here, at minute 31:20.

We tend a lovely garden here at St. Paul’s. But it is also terrible. We tend a lovely and terrible garden.

First, the loveliness. Our siblings in the faith – Prue, Daphne, Daryl, Catharine, Houston, and others – cultivate lush greens and bright flowers, taking care of God’s earth in the one square of land in all of Uptown Seattle that is not paved over, or trapped beneath a building. We recently restored the labyrinth, a spiritual path that many of our guests and members follow, some of them literally dancing, as they make their way to the center and back again, drawing ever closer to the Spirit of God.

Our garden is about twenty years old now, and it rises above our more seasoned Bolster Garden, where many of our beloved dead are buried. We created the labyrinth garden after we took down an old house, and briefly debated building a much-needed parking lot on this valuable plot of real estate. But we are garden people at St. Paul’s, not parking-lot people, and our choice in the early aughts to cultivate a garden right here – in the center of the city – is a lot like our choice in the early sixties to stay here, and rebuild here, rather than escape up the hill to a bedroom community, cut off from the thrum of city life.

You can watch a video of this sermon here, at location 01:42:10.

The earth herself shakes with Good News, and the faithful women are there to see and feel it. They came to the tomb, but not to visit their beloved dead, not to accept the finality of death, not to “pay their respects” — “pay their respects,” what a flat phrase. No, these women had been paying attention. Like all the other disciples, they had heard his many predictions of resurrection on the third day, but unlike them they had taken it all in. They had listened carefully. Then – again, unlike the other disciples – they stayed and kept watch as Jesus died, and they stayed and kept watch as he was buried. These are not fools, not silly optimists. They have seen death. 

But now they are back to see something else, again because they listened. They paid attention. They remembered his promise that life would defeat death. And so, when the earth herself shakes with Good News, the faithful women are there to see and feel it.

[Spoken from the imagined perspective of Judas Iscariot.]

I am Judas Iscariot. Do you want to look at me?

If so, I think I can endure your gaze. I think I have endured worse.

The New Testament is not kind to me. All four evangelists record my story, or better said, they record my small yet enormous—and horrible—part in The Story. Luke says that I trip over a rock, and my bowels gush out. He is not wrong. I seem to be tripping over that rock all the time, for all ages. Have you ever felt like this? Have you ever been so consumed, so torn apart, by anguish and regret … or maybe by that most deadly combination: fear, and loneliness, and small-minded resentment … that your guts are roiling and want to gush out?

Maybe not. Maybe you have your moments but you are generally better than all that. That’s fair.

You can watch a video of this sermon here, at minute 39:40.

Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus replied, “I AM.” … They stepped back and fell to the ground.

***

When this room is uncomfortably crowded, the pews are holding about two hundred people. Now multiply that by three: fill this room three times, fit to burst, with people, and you have a “detachment,” also called a “cohort,” by Roman imperial standards. Judas summoned about six hundred officers, a mix of government soldiers and temple security. They assembled – presumably in rank-and-file formation – outside the garden gate. The Light of the World was inside the little garden of olive trees, waiting for them with his small clutch of friends.