"The Next Big Thing": A "No-Notes" Sermon

I delivered this sermon at the Chapel of the Apostles in Sewanee, TN on December 19, 2012.  

It was a satisfying challenge to preach without notes!

"Treed," a Sermon/Poem on Zaccheus

Here's a morning prayer sermon I preached at the Chapel of the Apostles in Sewanee, TN on November 28, 2012.  Click here for the video.

Luke 19: 1-10

Treed

Orange-leafed trees are blown wholly free, 

their trunks exposed. All gnarls can be seen. 

Nakedness is our cold call in this season ahead 

as we wait for Christ’s coming—king and baby.

Why did Zaccheus climb the tree?
His curiosity proved costly:
Giving money to the poor was just the half
of what a dinner with the Son of Man would mean.

Did Zaccheus know that his gift could
never be enough? His holiness fell short.
And yet salvation, impossibly, came:
though he was no young and rich ruler,
who, striving for perfection, left (un)spent. 

Christ’s loving storm removes the leaves from 

even our most secreted branches.

The wind picks up. A hum of voices nears. 

Do we know who is coming? Really?
And still we hide above the hushed crowd 

hoping that our status quo will hold.

But we cannot evade his recognition 

or his terrible warm call to serve. 

There is nothing to say but yes
to set a table and feast on forgiveness.

The Lord’s presence clothes our bare weakness 

with His reckless generosity. We
respond only to learn a holy lesson:
that the giving of half our store to the poor 

must always fail some crucial test.

And yet we commit to giving more.
Sated, Zaccheus too would serve more still.

Changed, we resist Jesus’ departure
for a final ascent up the mount before
his descent into waiting Jerusalem.
Quiet, full, and with Advent’s space ahead 

we climb that sycamore again for a new view 

not to hide, but now to see need waiting 

as the generous invitation that it always is.
We need a graceful tree so we may see.

Philip's Wild Baptism: Sermon delivered at Chapel of the Apostles

[Click here for the video.]

Today we celebrate Philip, a deacon and evangelist of the early church.  His actions issue an uncomfortable challenge to us liturgy-loving Episcopalians.  In fact, Philip is rather strange to us.  He takes off into the wilderness after a word from an angel, jumps into the chariot of an Ethiopian eunuch and preaches, I mean preaches, the good news.  Then, apparently ignoring the eunuch’s perfectly valid question about what’s preventing him from being baptized (oh, I don’t know -- a nine-month catechumenate class, a sponsor, an alb, the examination and baptismal covenant, a blessing of the water, some chrism, the Paschal candle, definitely a priest to preside), they both plunge into a nearby waterhole for a bath.  (I’m not sure there was a Trinitarian formula in there, either.)


Sure, sure.  That was the early church.  They did crazy stuff back then.  We can’t just go around baptizing whomever at whichever body of water we happen across, making disciples of all nations, teaching them about Jesus’ commandments . . . Oh yeah: the Great Commission.  That pesky Great Commission.


What prevents me from being baptized?  None of us wants to answer, “The church.”  Yet sometimes that seems to be how we respond.

Gabi and Jorge are Mexican immigrants living outside Portland, Oregon.  They didn’t carry their marriage certificate north, which means they couldn’t prove that they were married to the local Roman Catholic priest when it came time to baptize their daughter Ana.  This was a problem without a solution for all involved, and so Gabi and Jorge knocked on the nearby Episcopal church’s door instead, distraught.  All seemed to be going well until it became obvious that the couple expected a private baptism on a Saturday a couple weeks away, on Ana’s first birthday.  The prayer book expects all baptisms to be public and ideally to be performed on five particular Sundays a year.  The next date fell some months away.  What would you do?  What would Philip do?  Philip’s fearless evangelism serves an active, even uncontrollable Spirit at work in the world around us.

A master teacher was nearing death.  Her students were very concerned.  One finally asked her, “What will we do once you’re gone?  To whom will we turn?”  The teacher looked about her, taking in the anxious stares of her pupils.  Behind them she could see the far bank and hear the coursing current of their valley’s river.  “All I’ve been doing these many years was sitting on the riverbank handing you river water.  When I die, I hope you will notice the river.”

I wonder if as a priest some day I’ll ever feel like I’m sitting beside a river of God’s grace handing out the sacraments to a polite line of Episcopalians but we’re all forgetting to notice the river?  I think at times I’ll feel, probably because some of my parishioners will feel, that my primary job is to service the church’s liturgy before I serve God and the Trinity’s unpredictable Spirit.  I’m going to pass by some baptisms if I fall into that sort of thinking, because I’ll be forgetting to notice the source of love from which we all, as a church, quench our thirst.

Of course, God’s grace is all around us, not tied up in a lonely river coursing through the spiritual landscape of our lives.  But if that’s the case, we people of God ought not be tied up in our churches alone.  There’s plenty of gas-guzzling chariots full of confused passengers out there.  We just need more of us out in the wilderness pointing out to folks the refreshing, saving waters around them.  Noticing font after font and after font that God provides for us inside and outside church doors.


The Episcopal Church offers candidates a beautiful, powerful baptismal ceremony filled with covenantal words to live by.  We have structured our very Christian identity around the sacrament of Holy Baptism.  We’re talking about an indissoluble bond that God is establishing.  This is serious stuff, which is why it’s a great idea to run a 9-month catechumenate program.

But a funny thing happens when we consider more closely what a high view of baptism entails: two opposing approaches emerge.  One makes us comfortable: it involves careful preparation of the candidate and attention to detail while planning the liturgy.  But a high view of baptism also suggests we don’t wait another minute to baptize someone who asks for it and understands its meaning, at least as much as any of us can understand the mystery of God’s impossible grace.  What prevents me from being baptized?  Heck if I know!  Let’s do this!  Who am I, Lord, to do otherwise?

Let’s say you’ve spent weeks planning a baptismal service.  You finish baptizing the folks who have been preparing months for this moment, and then you ask the congregation: Who else feels called to be baptized right now in the cool waters of God’s grace?  When in return you hear a Spirit-filled “Baptize me!,” and you start getting worried about the propriety of your question, lean on the promise of an indissoluble bond established by God and let the Spirit do the rest.  (Then tell your bishop.)


All of us, not just future priests, are called by Jesus Christ to get out there, I mean out there in the wilderness bringing the stranger to baptism, pointing out the wonders of God’s love like there’s no tomorrow.  This is the good news: God’s love is a ridiculous, all-in, always surprising kind of love, and God loves everybody, including you.  What is your salvation to you?  Where is its joy?  Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that Jesus has commanded you. And remember, Jesus is with you always.  His river is ever-flowing, and it will cleanse us, every one.

Sandy Cove

At ten I faced its rolling waves
mesmerized by the promise of
days spent bodyboarding, eating
cheez whiz on crackers, tracking sand
into the trailer, simple meals at night.

The sand shifted mightily from year to
year: the steps to the beach at times
dangled precariously above ground.
Other trips it seemed the whole shore
swelled wave-like through the back door.
Many similar waters did that.

My friend’s beach trailer sold, but by then
high school had swirled us away.

More time still: my wife and I
overnighting in a beach cottage. Walking
the slick shore we happen upon
—as if I’d walked into my past—
that same cliff, those curls, lonesome now
with the trailers gone. The sand is down,
I can tell, even without the stair marker.

I remain fixed there
uncomprehending the loss
unsettled by the sand swells.

That hidden cove haunts:
cleaving pitifully to its sandy trove
protected by a gnarled cliff that spun off
days’ worth of tight left-breaking curls, the
morning waves fish-filled aquariums,
so quickly drained.

Being Wronged by 9/11

I gave this sermon today in Spanish at the Chapel of the Apostles in Sewanee, TN (video and full text here, English text below).



We saints are going to judge the world? Judge angels?! That’s what Paul claims, and it’s pretty intimidating. Good judgement comes only with God’s help. It requires time, prayer, listening and discerning God’s Spirit as She wends her way through the texts of our lives. Most of all, good judgement requires practice, and our churches can offer a space to learn and grow in our wisdom as we seek to live in this world as God would have us live.

So let’s practice our judgement on a tragedy that took place 11 years ago today. Where were you when the Twin Towers crashed down? How might God judge this crushing blow: the deaths of almost 3,000 people, the destruction of dozens of buildings, the lasting devastation to the economy?  How might God judge the American response? The outpouring of compassion for victims, but also the flags flying from windowsills, anti-Muslim hate crimes, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?

Hindsight provides clarity here, but also complication. Are we safer now? What could we have done better? I hear God’s Spirit speaking in Paul’s biting challenge for us: Why not rather be wronged?  Really?! Why not turn the other cheek, if you may? September 11 presented us with a problem that could not be solved. The lives were lost forever, the buildings crumbled. Our sense of immunity done in. What if we had but mourn the fallen, swept away the wreckage, began rebuilding, learned what we could from the fruits of hatred and violence, and renewed our nation’s efforts toward justice and peace? THAT is truly a new song that God has given us to sing from the rooftops and from the rubble.

Christians have something to teach American society, if only we’d first live it out in our own lives: God is the ultimate arbiter and granter of righteous judgement. Not humans. As Christians, our help comes from the Lord. And in the face of suffering and violence, we find our rightful place and role at Jesus’s side, whether as a disciple on dusty roads or a grieving mother at the foot of the cross.

Why not rather be wronged? To be wronged is to be made helpless, to be brought low, to be made weak. Like Christ on the cross. God gave us the capacity to judge, to discern right living.  Might we hold this gift lightly in one hand, and in the other, the terrible choice to be wronged.

Colin's Sermon Delivered at St. Paul's Cathedral Aug. 5

Tonight the NASA lander named Curiosity will make a daring landing on Mars.  After $2.5 billion dollars and eight months of space flight, Curiosity’s mission will now hang on a mere seven minutes of intricately sequenced activity to slow the 5000 pound craft from its blistering 13,000 mile/hr speed to just THREE miles/hour as it touches down.  The goal: to find signs of past or present life on the red planet.  Given the scale of the expense and thought involved, I think it’s safe to conclude that we humans really love explanations.  Especially explanations about who we are and how we came to be.

Now I’m all for science and space exploration and would definitely have wanted to be an astronaut if I thought I could fit in a rocketship, but I fear that our curiosity for the scientific explanation of our world can obscure the search for the deeper truth about who we are.  For these deeper truths, an exploration of 3500 years of human yearning for God through scripture, tradition, and reason may be more fruitful than a 127 million mile space odyssey.

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The folks following Jesus around the Sea of Galilee in today’s gospel reading thought Jesus had some explaining to do.  Listen closely to how Jesus redirects their curiosity. They start with an understandable question: “When did you get here?”  They knew Jesus hadn’t gotten into the boat with his disciples after the miraculous feeding of five thousand, and they knew there had only been one boat on the shore.  So . . . how’d you get here, Jesus?  What, did you walk on water?!  Ha.  Well, wouldn’t you know it, he did.  If Jesus was about signs, then this was the chance to bring up another one, even better than the last.  But instead, Jesus answers: “You’re looking for me not because you saw signs but because that bread filled you.”  So let’s take this response apart.  First, Jesus ignores their question.  Not sure if anyone has experienced that one before with Jesus or God?  Fortunately, when we Christians ask dumb questions, the worst thing that happens is that we’re ignored.  And then we get an answer to a question we hadn’t known to ask, which is what happens here.  Jesus says: “You’re looking for me, not for signs.  And let me tell you something else about yourself: that bread filled you like nothing before.”  Now this truth must have unsettled the crowd, but what do we do when we feel uncomfortable?  Press on!  

“Okay, Jesus, you’re right, the bread was delicious.  How did you do it?  We want to do it too!”  Tell us your secret recipe!  This inclination for knowledge is all-too familiar to us today.  Information is fast becoming the essential currency of our daily lives.  We’re feeling increasingly brainless without our smartphone crutches!  So Jesus answers, “You want to know the secret?  Believe in God’s chosen one.”  Now he’s just playing coy with us, they think.  What’s he hiding? they wonder.  Believe in the Messiah?  A lot of them probably did.  The Jewish idea that there would be a messiah, God’s anointed one, who would restore the monarchy and kick out the occupiers, was an idea that had been around for hundreds of years.  So this seems like another evasive answer.  Sure, okay, fine -- believe in a messiah. But if this guys claiming to be that same messiah, we need a little more proof. You think you’re the messiah, Jesus? They say.  “What are you gonna do to persuade us, then?  We need more signs!  How about this -- can you do what Moses did with the manna?” They’re very persistent.

Now I don’t see Jesus as sighing here in frustration or disappointment.  I think he sees this instead as a top-rate teaching moment.  I think he’s even smiling a bit on the inside, but I imagine him keeping a poker face.  He responds, “My Father gives this bread, not Moses.  You ate the bread of God yesterday.”

Now they hear him, they really hear him.  “My Father? Who are you?”  You don’t talk like this unless you’re the real deal . . . or you’re itching to get stoned for blasphemy.  Fresh off the lakeside feeding, they’re inclined to ask for more, and they’re finally in touch with their real hunger.  Not for more explanations this time, just more bread.  “Sir, give us this bread always,” they say.  “I’d be delighted,” Jesus responds, smiling:  “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.”

The truth in this disjointed conversation requires listening, really listening.  The people finally got it once they began letting go of their need for explanations.  Explanations give us control.  But living in control is not the Christian way -- and I say this thoughtfully, and with great sadness as a recovering control freak.  Jesus speaks truth with love to the people, and they finally hear him. 

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Today’s Hebrew scripture reading adds another layer to our ability to hear when the truth is spoken.  To summarize the story: Israel’s armies are away at war, and King David’s stayed behind in his cushy palace.  He sees Bathsheba, and she’s beautiful, so he calls her in and impregnates her.  One of the many problems with this is that Bathsheba is married, so David commands his army general to put her husband on the front lines and he’s killed.  Then David marries Bathsheba.  Problem solved?  Hardly.  Rather, the problems are just starting, beginning with Nathan, who is sent from the LORD with a disturbing story of a powerful man who exploits a poor man.  David, being an upright, just ruler and all, is enraged at this powerful man’s actions...until Nathan replies: “You are the man!”  David didn’t see that one coming.

We are blind to many of our privileges.  And we must depend on those without a particular privilege to point out to us what we have — both so that we may be more grateful for our blessings, and to become more aware of how our use of privilege negatively affects others.  The powerful need to hear the truth spoken in love by the powerless.  This is not just the stuff of the Arab spring, but rather intimately bound up in our own lives.

Last weekend I attended a training for Hispanic ministry leaders in the diocese.    The facilitator ran the training in English and Spanish, which meant that those who were not bilingual had to be patient with frequent pauses in their comprehension.  The trainer offered us a beautiful way to experience these moments of confusion: as prayer.  She said, “I invite you to offer your discomfort as a prayer to God in thanksgiving that through a bilingual program all can be included together in this sacred time and space.”

Discomfort, huh?  That awkward, out-of-control feeling of not understanding with no explanation to be found.  This is the Christian way, when our discomfort and confusion can bring comfort and understanding to another.

I invite you to sit in on a 1 pm Spanish language service here sometime soon.  It’s beautiful and full of life and blessed with kids — and if you don’t speak Spanish, you won’t understand parts of it.  That’s alright.  You may just find a deeper truth hidden behind those stalwart English words we’ve come to know and rely upon for so long.  You may hear something new in the sort of off-beat shakers wielded by children at the altar singing the offertory song in a pitch you don’t know but can come to love; you may hear a larger, deeper truth of our church’s calling to unity under one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.  You may hear a new riff speaking to who you, who we, are.  Who are we, St. Paul’s?

At 10:30 tonight we’ll wait fourteen minutes for the signals from the Mars lander Curiosity to reach Earth.  Fourteen uncomfortable minutes.  Many of us will want to know so badly what happened: did the lander make it?  For better or worse, we’ll receive loads of explanations over the time ahead.

Trust, instead, that which has no explanation, because it is a very old and very good truth: I am the bread of life, says Jesus, and to know and believe and to experience this is really who you are.  Listen for that truth within our discomfort, and find there, my sisters and brothers, the good, good news of God.

How Can We Get More People to Come to Church?

How can we get more people to come to church?  Hispanic ministry leaders from across the Episcopal Diocese of San Diego recently participated in a training addressing that enticing question.  The answer, shared Kaleidoscope Institute trainer Patricia Millard, is bible study: with a twist.

Rev. Millard, a priest in the Diocese of Oregon, visited San Diego July 27-28 for two trainings on leadership for evangelism in Hispanic ministry.  Eleven attended the first training, held at St. Andrew's in Lake Elsinore, including members of St. Stephen's in Menifee and St. John's in Indio.  Fifteen attended the second training, held at St. Phillip's in Lemon Grove, including the rector of Good Shepherd in Bonita, Suzi Holding (Canon to the Ordinary), and Anthony Guillen (missioner for Latino/Hispanic ministries for the national Episcopal church).

The Bible study begins with a conversation around respectful communication guidelines that ask participants to listen with and speak from their hearts as well as their minds.  Using the coming Sunday's gospel reading, a volunteer reads the passage once aloud.  Then each participant is offered space to share a word or image from the text that comes to mind before inviting the next person to share.  The passage is read again, and then the sharing/inviting process begins again, this time answering the question: "How does the presence of Jesus shape our ministry?"  The text is read a final time and participants respond to the question, "What is this text inviting me to do, be, or change?"  The study is concluded with a group prayer.

What's different about this approach?  And how can it build the church?  First, it's intentionally grounded in mutual respect for one another.  Participants agree to listen carefully, trust ambiguity, and examine their own assumptions as others share.  The process is also guided by mutual invitation, which grants each person the opportunity to share or pass and also the privilege of inviting the next person to speak.  Each round of questions encourages more personal and practical applications of the reading in the participant's life.  Prayer rounds out and blesses the exercise.

Increasingly, those who enter our churches -- especially those of younger generations -- expect to "belong" before they either "believe" or "behave."  This can be frustrating to the BCP-wielding veterans in our pews.  Through mutual invitation, this Bible study allows for such full participation while keeping the conversation closely tied to scripture and its impact on our own lives.  This safe space where one's own person can encounter the biblical text often leads to authentic and powerful spiritual experiences.  And relationships are formed.

Relational, authentic, and power sharing ministries are critical to future church growth, asserts the Rev. Eric Law, founder of the Kaleidoscope Institute.  But they must take place within a context that is sensitive and responsive to a variety of cultural expectations.  This issue came up often in San Diego's recent trainings.

Take the leadership self-assessment, for example.  Most of the English speakers felt comfortable diving into this sort of personally-directed listing of spiritual gifts.  The Spanish speakers, however, appreciated Rev. Millard's invitation to work in groups so that one's partner could help identify the gifts of another.

This steeper involvement of the community in one's personal understanding leads to another frequent challenge in cross-cultural communication.  Spanish speakers often feel more hesitant to respond to an invitation with a clear "no" for fear of hurting another's feelings, or worse, embarrassing him or her.  While many English speakers have been taught to use "I statements" when sharing feelings and to take responsibility for one's own emotions, Spanish speakers tend to take more responsibility for the well being of others.  This can lead to a situation in which both parties intend to be respectful but end up coming across as either offensively direct or frustratingly duplicitous. 

The key, claims Rev. Millard, is not to expect someone else to change their culturally familiar words and activities for us.  Instead, listen carefully and ask for help when we don't understand something.

A most fascinating example of such intercultural communication occurs within bilingual and bicultural individuals and groups.  Language is the primary medium through which we live out our particular culture.  Those who speak more than one language most often still depend on a single language for certain emotions or activities.  Prayer feels more comfortable in one language.  Business may be more comfortably conducted in another.  By conducting the two trainings in both English and Spanish, Rev. Millard allowed her bilingual participants to bring their full beings to the table and learn more about themselves in the process.

Rev. Millard preaches in a similar manner.  She'll begin a homily in one language and continue for about a third of the sermon before starting over in the other language.  She'll alternate several more times before ending both.  Even more impressive and intriguing, these no-notes sermons often carry substantially different messages.  This type of preaching or workshop facilitation challenges our legalistic understandings of how language interpretation ought to be done.  Instead of a word-for-word translation that often misses the larger cultural worlds that these words inhabit, she recognizes that each language community has different spiritual challenges and gifts and speaks directly and specifically to each in the appropriate language.

This means, however, that there will be times with monolingual speakers won't understand what's going on.  Rev. Millard asks her congregation and workshop participants to offer up these moments of incomprehension as prayers to God in thanksgiving that by their gracious patience all can be included in these moments' sacred time and space.