“Let her alone; why do you trouble her? She has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, and you can show kindness to them whenever you wish; but you will not always have me. She has done what she could; she has anointed my body beforehand for its burial. Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

“Let her alone.” Listen, if you can, to that strong command. “Let her alone.” Jesus says more to his churlish, resentful friends in this paragraph-long speech — he says more by far — than he’ll say in his own defense against his accusers, later on, at the sham trial. He is speaking to his own, to his friends, to his beloveds, to his family. And he is unhappy with them. And they know it. They remember it. This rebuke is recorded more than once: the first Christians cherished this memory. They wanted us to cherish it too.

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Look up, and see. Raise your eyes and look at the cross, at Jesus on that cross. Jesus rises above us, in glory. Lift your head. Feast your eyes.

Even for those of us who struggle to see with our physical eyes, or see only in ways other than physical, we are a visual species. “I see,” you say, as you finally understand a complicated point. “I feel seen,” you say, when you experience another person truly empathizing with you. “Why can’t you see that?!” you shout to your friend, who has failed to understand your good motive, or your sensible solution.

We humans imagine (imagine is a visual word). We see.

When Mark the evangelist tells us their version of the Good News, their portrayal of Jesus the Crucified and Risen One, Mark takes pains to focus on the centurion seeing Jesus hanging dead on the cross, as Jesus does here in this room, in this sculpture rising above us, high enough for all to see. The centurion sees Jesus on the cross, and only then does he grasp the truth that almost no one in Mark’s Gospel has fully comprehended: the centurion says, “Truly this man was God’s Son.” He sees, and in seeing, he understands.

Don’t miss Mark’s point here: we can’t understand Jesus, who he is, why he matters, until we see him giving away his whole life in love, on the cross.

This homily is a short “starter” homily that encourages the assembly at our 5:00pm liturgy to add their own insights and reflections in conversation with the preacher. Gathered in a circle in the early evening, we enjoy this evening Eucharist as a more intimate form of worship on the Lord’s Day.

***

We just sang a portion of Psalm 19, perhaps one of the most beautiful psalms in our collection of these one hundred and fifty extremely ancient hymns. Psalm 19 sings of the splendor of creation, of the sun joyfully running its course through the sky, of the flaming spheres of the cosmos singing a song without music, proclaiming a message without words.

Then there are a couple of verses that sound beautiful, but maybe strike you as a little ho-hum. Verses eight and nine, which go like this:

This homily is a short “starter” homily that encourages the assembly at our 5:00pm liturgy to add their own insights and reflections in conversation with the preacher. Gathered in a circle in the early evening, we enjoy this evening Eucharist as a more intimate form of worship on the Lord’s Day.

***

A crucible is a metal container, roughly in the shape of a cup, that you heat to very high temperatures to manipulate chemical compounds. But in history, the word crucible has also referred to a lamp that is placed near a crucifix. Crucible … crucifixion … excruciating. These words are related. I wonder if the objects they describe are also related — the alchemist’s device and the devout Christian’s chapel lamp. Think about it: the alchemist uses the crucible to put chemicals under the pressure of intense heat. Perhaps, by the light that burns near the cross, you can endure the pressure of seeing things you normally would not see, or would not want to see.

In my years as a couples therapist, I studied the work of David Schnarch, who coined a new term, the sexual crucible, to describe what couples need to do if they want to grow and change together, toward the goal of reviving and invigorating their long-term, monogamous relationship. One member of the couple needs to take a calculated and dreadful risk, by telling the other person what they want, or who they are; they need to tell them something honest that the other person needs to hear.

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Let’s do some systematic theology, shall we? I’ll try to keep it interesting, and relevant. It may even be urgently important! Let’s do some theology together. Ready? Okay. Here we go.

If I take a hammer and bear its weight down upon a nail, the nail will comply and descend into a plank of wood. (Or it will slam onto my fingernail and bruise me badly.) Aristotle would call this an example of efficient cause: I employed a hammer to cause the nail to go into another object.

But there are three other classic, Aristotelian types of causes, three other ways one can make something happen, or bring something into being, or change something. There is the efficient cause, which I just described. Then there is the material cause: hammer, nail, wood, and fingernail — these objects are made of metal and trees and human flesh. The material causes the interaction of the four objects, simply by being the “stuff” the four objects are made of.

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The army is assembling on the hillside. The enemy is forming a battle line. They are in lockstep, forming into ranks and files. They brandish dreadful weapons. They are so numerous they cannot be counted. They are not a group or a team or even a crowd: they are a swarm. They are younger than our elder warriors. They are older than our untrained youth. They stand tall. 

Here is how the prophet Joel describes them: Like blackness spread upon the mountains a great and powerful army comes; their like has never been from of old, nor will be again after them in ages to come.

Consider their weapons. One of their most awful weapons is disinformation: the enemy persuades people in our land to believe conspiracy theories, to assume the worst of our leaders, to be cynics. Civil discourse about civil rights can hardly stand up to snide, combative personal attacks. Everyone plays the Gotcha! game, and eventually everyone loses. There are so many lies and distortions floating around, nobody can believe the truth, or even trust a few basic facts.

o watch this sermon on video, click here.

I intensely dislike stains on my clothing. When I notice them for the first time, when I’m standing up at a restaurant or walking after lunch, my morale plunges. I groan. A stain on my clothes can ruin my day. In my compulsive hatred of stains, I suffered grim disillusionment when OxyClean came on the market and I discovered that it’s not great for oil stains. And those little Tide stain sticks? No. They don’t work, especially on oil. Oil is my nemesis. In my household, I take command of all laundry activities while Andrew governs the kitchen, and oil is despised in my realm as much as it is essential in his. This is a happy problem, but I intensely dislike stains.

And so I smile when Mark the evangelist tells us that Jesus is dressed in clothes so clean, clothes so spotless, that they dazzle in a way that “no one on earth could bleach them.” No stains! Jesus gleams. He is perfect. Undamaged. Unmarred. Clean and bright and beautiful.

I don’t like weakness. I don’t like failure. I don’t like to feel lost, and forlorn, and sad. I don’t like feeling foolish, looking foolish, acting foolish, being the fool.

So … why, why does the Risen Christ appear most powerfully, most helpfully, most beautifully when I am weak, when I am grieving, when I am failing, when I am the fool?

The risen Christ appeared to me on the worst day of my life, making it simultaneously the best day of my life. On the day when I painfully chose sobriety, I was confronted not only with my own weakness and grief, but with my own wrongdoing. And in that confrontation, I found peace. I found acceptance. I found painful correction. And I found a path to health, a path to strength, a path to usefulness. 

But it has always been like this. I am not alone. I am not unique.

Everyone knows there is no monster under the bed. Come now, you are sensible: you know that monsters are only a harmless metaphor. Same with demons. People aren’t possessed by demons; we all know that. Our ancient forebears did not know about mental disorders caused by chemical processes in the brain. They didn’t know that everything can be explained, in due course, by sound research and careful study. 

The medieval Church, led by shrewd theologians like Thomas Aquinas (who read his Aristotle with understanding), slowly created what we know as the university: a center of study and inquiry that teaches us to trust the ready evidence of our senses. When I worked as a therapist I often reminded myself that all behavior — no matter how awful, strange or exasperating — all behavior makes simple sense. If a couple’s marriage is collapsing around them, their dilemma was caused by ordinary circumstances and events, not mysterious or monstrous forces. If a person seeking therapy is depressed, and another one is anxious, and yet another has anger problems, all three have readily explainable challenges, not demons. They’ll benefit from realistic and skillfully designed therapies.

In short, no, there is no monster under the bed.

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Water is delightful and dreadful. Water makes life possible, but water kills. Water bathes, but water drowns.

We are made mostly of water. It roils within us, flows with purpose through our arteries and veins, surges along countless labyrinthine pathways that lead everywhere inside our bodies, carrying nutrients, carrying oxygen, carrying life.

And God’s Spirit hovers above the water, including the water inside us. She hovers; she broods; then she plunges. She swoops down, and with the Word of God she stirs the chaotic water into order, into rhythm, into beauty, into life.

We enter this community by water – water that is both delightful and dreadful. 

Since 2011, this parish has enjoyed living water — that is, water that moves — at the entrance to our sanctuary. We placed our new font there because, again, we enter this community by water. We can dip our hands into this moving pool of water, this miniature ocean, and remind ourselves of our Baptism. One of our theologians in residence, Eleanor Bickford, was baptized on this feast day last year. Now three years old, Eleanor still touches the water each and every time she passes the font. She continues to teach us this key insight: We enter by water, by water delightful, by water dreadful.

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“…[We were] born not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of [humanity], but of God.”

Here is another way this verse has been translated and proclaimed:

“[We were] born not by natural generation nor by human choice nor by a [person]’s decision, but of God.”

In short: We were born of God.

In being born of God, we belong to God. And we belong to God first: our belonging to God supersedes any claim we may have on ethnic or genetic heritage, or any privilege we enjoy in this divided and unjust world; our belonging to God runs deeper than any human affairs or accidents that brought us to this place and time; our belonging to God explains our very existence, far more than the decision a parent made to have a child, far more than any human decision, any human cause, any human circumstance, that gave rise to you, or to me.

We were born of God.

Watch a video of this sermon here.

I want to be with family this year. You likely understand this feeling. My father died less than a month ago, and while his death was a holy one — he was full of years, and he died with great dignity and serenity, despite a grave illness — I am grieved by his death; and though the great St. Francis rightly teaches us to greet death as our graceful sibling, and though our faith rightly teaches us that death has lost its sting, it is still … well …

I want to be with family this year.

And so I had a quick reply when my sister Sarah texted me and my younger sister Elizabeth the other day. She wrote, “Anyone interested in an afternoon or evening at my house, in my front closet, going through Daddy and Mother’s correspondence box?” I answered instantly, with two words: “for sure,” except of course I’m still relevant and hip, so I spelled them “f-o s-h-o.” Fo sho, I’ll be there in that front closet, with family, looking through old letters.

Rejoice! We have been set a daunting task. Praise God! Our job is difficult. Alleluia! We face a strong challenge in our life of faith, one that will demand much from us: it will exhaust our intellects; it will wear out our bodies; it will break our hearts. But we are glad about this, because what’s worse than having no purpose, feeling underemployed, lacking direction? Happily, that is not our fate. We are delightfully busy with an immensely important mission.

And even better, we know that we can rely on one another, passing the tasks back and forth, spotting each other, caring for each other. And of course we do everything with the great benefit of God’s power.

Turn.

Turn!

Turn around. Go back. Take yourself off this path. This way lies destruction, even death. This is not the path of life.

Turn from the path of anxiety, the path of depression, the path of despair. On this path, you are likely to throw up your hands in helpless exasperation. On this path, you will read about war, seemingly endless war, and you will start to feel numb. The news will stop informing you for action, and simply dull you into defeatism, into complacency, and finally into quiet collusion with the very forces of dreadful violence that you once found so outrageous. Turn from this path. This is not the path of life.

I love wizards. The wizard archetype, that is: the elderly artisan at the edge of the village, the wise one, the skillful — and usually a bit odd — person who possesses great intelligence, but is also cleverly gentle, strategically kind, consciously tender. Think of the sages from the east, searching Judea for a small child because they looked up at the night sky and understood what they saw. Think of a grandparent who smiles warmly — and knowingly — allowing the smile to travel all the way up to their twinkling eyes. Think of an old woman with her long white hair braided in back, her ancient face alight with youthful wonder; or think of an old man with his long beard sewn with one or two dazzling gems: is he weird? No … Well, a little bit. But he’s also ingenious.

The wizard is wise and gentle, then, but they are also powerful: our fantasy stories vest wizards with magical abilities, and the wizard is so skillful at the magical arts that they have no need for simple charms or pedestrian wands: they can simply raise one hand and silently summon mighty forces to our aid.

Jesus said, “Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.”

Evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn: four watches in the night. We could also be a little old school and call them Vespers and Compline, Matins, Lauds, and Prime: five of the nine monastic times of prayer that carry a religious community through a night and a day. Jesus tells us to stay awake through these wee hours. And then he goes on to meet us in each of them. 

Jesus meets us in the evening: soon after he gives us this warning about keeping awake, in the Good News according to Mark, Jesus gathers in the evening with his disciples, in a private room, and shares a meal with them. Then, as evening yields to night, he leads them to the garden, where he prays fervently, in agony, for the bitter cup to pass from him. And he tells his disciples, once again, to keep awake—but of course they don’t. They doze. Will we? Whatever we do, Jesus meets us in the evening: he meets us in our sundown gatherings, in our homecomings, in our slumbers, in our restlessness, in our private shadows, in our hauntings.

It is often easy, when walking into a room, to notice, or guess, who the most important people are. If a newcomer walks into this room for the first time, who will they believe is most important to us?

They will be badly mistaken, but I suspect they’ll decide it’s the people up here in the altar area who are the most important. Here I stand on this little platform. I am raised above you primarily to make the most of good sight lines, but does this pulpit satisfy an all-too-human desire to put one person above the others? And all the people up front – we get to wear special clothes. We have copes, chasubles, dalmatics, and tunicles in our closets, grand names for grand garments. Priests wear the copes and chasubles, deacons wear the dalmatics, and the first lay Eucharistic minister wears the tunicle. We say that all four orders of ministry are equal – we insist that bishops, priests, deacons, and the laity are equal – but bishops wear shiny, pointy hats and hold splendid croziers. And even though the robe of Holy Baptism – the white alb – is something every baptized Christian can wear, only the up-front people actually wear them. Our fancy outfits belie our claims of equality. It seems as if the most important people are all up here.

But if Jesus of Nazareth walked into this room and looked around, I firmly believe that he would not identify us as the most important people in the room. He might look at the altar party, and speak to us, only after he has greeted nearly everyone else. 

To watch a video of this sermon, click here.

“Wisdom is radiant and unfading, and she is easily discerned by those who love her… One who rises early to seek her will have no difficulty, for she will be found sitting at the gate.”

We have constructed a new light-green gate to the garden at St. Paul’s. It is simple, yet also a little bit grand. It rolls gently but heavily, along a track laid down upon a new slip of concrete. When it arrives in the fully-closed position, it readily submits to a strong padlock. If you like, you could clamber over this gate and get inside, but that would be awkward, and somehow the gate quietly discourages you from doing this. It is elegant but heavy; it is permeable but strong: it is a substantial metal fence. The gate seems to say, without words, “Respect my boundary; yield to the limit I place upon you.”

I invite you to place yourself, in your imagination, at this gate. It is of course just a physical object that functions practically to strengthen security on our campus, but this gate is more than lovely enough to become your metaphorical gate – to aid you in your spiritual contemplations. Imagine yourself at this gate, and as you contemplate this image, let your heart seek Wisdom, the one who sits at the gate. Let your every thought discern her, for she takes up her post at all of the marked boundaries of our lives.

o watch this sermon on video, click here.

I was talking to myself the other day. (I like to talk to myself; I am one of my best listeners.) “Stephen, I think you need to talk to the parish a little,” I said, quietly, in my heart. “I think you need to talk to your folks about two big things that happened this week. These events affect them; they affect our life together here. Fill them in,” I finished, in my little self-talk. “Let them hear from you.” And so I will.

I begin with something difficult that happened to one of us, and I am choosing carefully, and cautiously, to call him by name. I want to respect his personal privacy, and most importantly I do not want to establish a double standard where we discuss some of us by name – usually those of us who lack a particular privilege – while being diplomatically circumspect about others. In this case, the privilege this person lacks is wealth privilege. But the events of recent days compel me to speak with responsible candor. And so will I do that, with exceeding, anxious care.

I would like to share not my own interpretation of today’s first reading, but an interpretation by an Orthodox Jewish rabbi from Chicago by the name of Yehiel Poupko. In 2015 I traveled with an interfaith group to Israel that was co-led by Rabbi Poupko. He is a friend of Christians, yet he is firmly and happily Jewish, and I often turn to him for insights about the Hebrew Scriptures, which we Christians have been opening for only twenty short centuries as part of our Holy Book.

As it happens, the story of the death of Moses appears in autumn on the Jewish lectionary calendar, too, and this year that festival, scheduled for October 7th, was marred badly by the terrorist attack in Israel. Since October 7th, of course, the war in Gaza and Israel has only worsened, and we hold in prayer all innocent life in peril, including citizens of Gaza (most of them children) and the Israeli hostages and their terrified families. As that region continues to suffer the ravages of war and injustice, I invite you to hear a Jewish reflection on the death of Moses, as we join countless people of all faiths who pray to God for peace, and for justice.