This sermon, offered by The Rev. Andy Jones at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Madison Wisconsin, on March 18, 2018 is built on the readings assigned for the Fifth Sunday in Lent in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary.

You can find those readings here.

It has been a difficult week.

Yesterday we said goodbye to Betsy Greene, a longtime member of St Andrew’s, Betsy was 68 years old and died after a two year struggle with a brain tumor.

On Thursday we said goodbye to Joan Smith, another longtime member of St Andrew’s.  Joan’s husband Jack died just about a year ago.  They had lived in a memory care unit for about a year and a half prior to Jack’s death and Joan has lived there by herself since he died.  Joan was 85.

But on Wednesday, on Wednesday, Mother Dorota and I stood right there, in the gate of the altar rail, at ten o clock in the morning, and we rang the Sanctus Bell seventeen times as we read seventeen names.  One sounding of the bell and one name a minute, for seventeen minutes.

A minute is a long time… ring the bell, wait about 15 seconds for the sound to fade, read the name, and spend the next 40 seconds in silence, remembering, or looking forward to, your own kids when they were 14.  Fourteen years old.  Just like

Alyssa Alhadeff

Martin Duque

Jaime Guttenberg

Cara Loughran

Gina Montalto

Alaina Petty

Alex Schachter

or when they were 15 like

Luke Hoyer

Peter Wang

or 16 like

Carmen Schentrup

or 17 like

Nicholas Dworet

Joaquin Oliver

Helena Ramsay

or 18 like

Meadow Pollack

A minute is a long time to think about their teachers:

Scott Beigel

Aaron Feis

Chris Hixon

and to wonder what you would have done in those horrifying 6 minutes….

We stood here in this space on Wednesday morning, ringing that bell, reading those names, as tens of Thousands of students walked out of over 2,800 schools across this country.

Children!  Your children, my children, our children, confronting us with the fact that we have not done enough to protect them and demanding change, demanding that we do something.  That we do… something.

It is the season of lent so those seventeen minutes, and the time we spent here later that evening in a service of Lament for our Culture of Gun Violence, were pent of time for us to hear these words…

“We confess that we have sinned against you, in thought word and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.  We have not loved you with our whole heart.  We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves” (BCP page 360).

If we weren’t careful we also found ourselves confronted by the words of the confession from Enriching Our Worship…

“We repent of the evil that enslaves us,

the evil we have done,

and the evil done on our behalf” (Enriching Our Worship 1 page 56).

It is the fifth Sunday in Lent.  We have been on this journey for a while now.  And the pain of this past week…  It’s pretty understandable that we would arrive here this morning exhausted, struggling, seeking some comfort and assurance.

The beginning of the Collect for the Fifth Sunday in Lent begins…

“Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise…”  (BCP p. 219).

Deep, deep longing and desire that the world might be changed; that our hearts, that everyone’s heart, might be changed so that we might, as a community, love God’s command and realize a world where God’s dream, that we might all live as one.

And then we hear from the Prophet Jeremiah, speaking for God when the peole of Israel are in exile in Babylon; their nation being dismantles so that they no longer recognize a home in the reports that come to them; their identity as a people being snuffed out; their customs and way of life restricted and denied…

The Prophet Jeremiah promises on God’s behalf

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33b).

God promises us – I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be my people.

And we hope, we long for that day when hearts are opened and god’s desire for us to love our neighbor as ourselves flows into and out of us and we live as one, in peace.

It is perhaps that hope for the realization of God’s dream and vision for all of creation, that gets us through moments like this past Wednesday.

That gets us through moments like this past Ash Wednesday, Valentine’s Day!

It is perhaps that hope that gets us through the aftermath of tragedies like the ones in

Las Vegas

Dallas

Orlando

San Bernardino

Colorado Springs

Roseburg, Oregon

Chattanooga, Tennessee

Charleston, South Carolina…

That is a horrifying list… and that only gets us back to June of 2015!

And there it is again.  Right there.  That sick feeling in the pits of our stomachs that just won’t go away, even when we turn our backs, when we try to pretend it hasn’t happened again…

Our hope might sustain us for a while…

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

But hope, by itself, isn’t enough….

Because my brothers and sisters…  God has already written that law in our hearts!

That’s why we are here.  That’s why these stories hit us so hard…  Because with God’s law written in our hearts… our failure to act, to protect our children, strike us as sins of commission and omission –   things that we have done, and things that we have left undone; as a failure to love God with our whole heart and our neighbors as ourselves.

Here in the season of Lent we cannot but see these events as

the evil that enslaves us,

the evil we have done,

and the evil done on our behalf.

God’s laws, written on our hearts offer us hope, but they also call us to act!

In a Letter to the Diocese of Milwaukee, written four days after the shootings in Parkland Florida Bishop Steven Miller writes:

Lent 2018 will forever be for me marked by this tragedy not only because it occurred on Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, but also because one of those killed was a member of our faith community. Her name was Carmen Schentrup a young woman who was a leader in the youth group at St. Mary Magdalene Episcopal Church.  I ask you to join me when you remember all the victims of this tragedy, the living and the dead, the physically and the spiritually wounded, in praying especially for Carmen, her family, and the people of St. Mary Magdalene Church

On Ash Wednesday we prayed these words, “Accept our repentance, Lord, for the wrongs we have done: for our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice and cruelty.” Hearing these words in the context of the events of the day is for me a call to action.

Lent is the season in which we prepare to reaffirm our baptismal vows and identity. At baptism, we renounced the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God. We will reaffirm that identity at the Great Vigil of Easter.

I believe I cannot be faithful to that promise unless I stand up to the growing gun culture in our society and those who perpetuate it. My baptismal identity requires me to confront those evil powers and ask others to join me in calling them to account. My citizenship in Jesus’ kingdom requires that I make that way of living the model for life here on earth. If God’s will is life, not death, and we desire that God’s will be done on earth as in heaven, how can there be a place for weapons in everyday life? I think the only thing God wants us to be armed with is his word, his righteousness, and his salvation.

Please join me in working to reduce gun violence by working to make it harder to commit.

Yours in Christ,

The Rt. Rev. Steven Andrew Miller, Bishop of Milwaukee

This Saturday, March 24, all across this country, and abroad, the Bishops of the Episcopal Church will join with our children as they “March For Our Lives.”  There will be a march in Washington DC and there will be sister marches in major cities in every state of the union.  Bishop Miller will be marching with parishes from this diocese and we will be walking with our brothers and sisters here in Madison.

Right now the march is scheduled to begin on Library Mall at 10 am.  We will march to the Capital where we will hear a series of speakers and then we will march around the capital, joining our voices and standing in solidarity with the children, your children, my children, our children, we are begging, wo are demanding, that we do something, something, to protect them and to make us all safe.

I ask you to pray and to consider joining us as we march.  We will send out an email to the parish list serv later this week with details about how you can join us as we gather to march as a community, as Jesus’ hands and feet in this world; as we allow the law that God has written on our hearts to move us to action; as we work to bring about God’s will for us; as we choose life over death.

Amen.

This sermon, offered by the Rev. Andy Jones at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Madison, Wisconsin on February 18, 2018, is built around the readings assigned for the First Sunday in Lent in Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary.

You can find those readings here.

Here is a recording of the  sermon

And a transcript of the recording

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.

Please be seated.

So here it is the first Sunday in Lent, a penitential season, and so it’s probably a good time for me to make a little confession to you all.   Every year about this time, as the season of Lent approaches, I, Mother Dorota and I, and clergy all across the country, start to think about and look for ways to make you all uncomfortable in church.  We stop saying Alleluia, we take away the flowers, change the words of the liturgy that we’ve been using…  We try really hard to make church feel strange and just a little bit unsettling starting on that first Sunday of Lent.

But this past week as I pondered the limited resources that are available to me as I seek fulfill this goal, it occurred to me that we probably didn’t need to do anything special at all to make you all feel like you’re in the wilderness.  All you have to do is turn on the television, turn on the radio, and you see things that we use as guideposts, as markers along the way, being obliterated.  We see people hurting one another.  We see people screaming and shouting at one another and fighting over things that we would never have imagined that people would argue about in the first place.  People whom we know and love are falling sick.  People whom we know and love have died, just in this past week.  And so we are already in the wilderness.

In fact, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that life in this world is life lived in the wilderness, because this world is broken and hurting, and people all over, even we feel lost.

That, I think, can make it really difficult to remember the words that were spoken to Jesus in his baptism and the words that are spoken to us in ours.  “You are my beloved child.  With you I am well pleased.”

It’s easy, I think, to lose track of those words and that truth with all of the evidence to the contrary that’s thrust upon us every single day.  How do we remember we are God’s beloved?  I think in Jesus knows full well how difficult it is to keep track of that reality.  As he come out of the wilderness and strides purposefully in to the region of the Galilee he is proclaiming “The time is fulfilled. and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

Jesus was walking in to a world, having just left the wilderness, that was no less broken hurting or lonely than our own. it is the human condition and his people were being oppressed by an invading army.  People were being marginalized.  People were hurting one another and fighting over details that seemed insignificant in the face of those words – you are my beloved.  With you I am well pleased.   So he knew that he was called the claim and proclaim the truth of God love.

Listen to what he says.  “The time is fulfilled…”  so all of our Scriptures, everything written, everything handed down, everything treasured by our people are pointing to this one moment when God will break into the world in a new way and set all things right.  We will be restored to right relationship with God and with one another.  And all of creation, and all people will be reconciled one to another and to God!  That’s what Jesus is proclaiming as he walks into the Galilee!

He’s also saying that “the kingdom of God has come near.”  It’s not something far-off, something up in the heavens.  It’s not something to experience after you die.  The kingdom of heaven is here and now, and we can experience it together, as a community.

Pretty radical things to say.  And especially radical in light of all of the evidence to the contrary.  How do we cling to those truths?  How do we remember those things that have the power to give us the “peace that passes all understanding” when all we have to do is walk out the door and be reminded the world is still a broken, hurting, and a lonely place to be?

Jesus says “…repent, and believe in the good news.”   Now the word repent carries a lot of baggage because it gets misused a lot.  But what it really means is to turn away from the things that are distorting our nature; that are stealing our joy, and our life. and our love.  To turn away from things that alienate us from one another, and from ourselves, and from God, and to turn back to the God who wants us to live life abundantly, joyfully, boldly, and lovingly.

Jesus says turn back to God and believe the good news, believe a better word here is trust.  Believe is a verb.  Believe means embrace, internalize, accept, know.  Trust the good news.

Trust that you are beloved of God and that with you God is well pleased.  Trust that the time is fulfilled and God’s promises are coming true.  And trust that the kingdom of God is here and now, for you and for me, and for all of us.  And do all of that despite all of the evidence to the contrary.  Not an easy thing to do.  Jesus knew that.  Jesus shows us a way to hang on to what is at the core of our being.

Before Jesus strides purposefully into the Galilee proclaiming that the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near, Jesus goes into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan.  Now I’m not suggesting that any of us do that.  That would be a difficult thing, I think, for any of us to endure.

And I also want to point out that in the other gospel accounts of Jesus is like there’s a lot of detail about what that temptation looked like and the conversation that Jesus had with the tempter.  But here in Mark’s gospel it’s very spare, a few short lines, which leaves room for our imaginations.  And in fact, I think, leaves room for our own stories.  So if we were to step into the wilderness to be tempted what would that look like for us; to be tested, what would that look like for us?

Just a couple of days ago, on Ash Wednesday, we stood in this place and listened to the Invitation to the Observance of the holy Lent, and in that invitation we hear,

“I invite you, therefore, in the name of the church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance…”

We are called during this season to look for the obstacles that we have erected between ourselves and God; the things that keep us from turning back to God; the things which we carry around in our past and in our memories that leave us hiding behind the bushes and sewing clothes out of fig leaves for fear of encountering the God who loves us.

The invitation goes on,

“I invite you to the observance of a holy Lent… by prayer and fasting and self-denial…”

to engage in a conversation with God that’s stripped of its distractions.  To find a place to be quiet, to be alone with God, to speak what’s in our own hearts and to listen.

And then finally the observance of a holy Lent

“…through reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.”

Going back to those promises.  Remembering what God has said to us.  Remembering what God has said to us through the person of Jesus Christ, and claiming them as truth.

We are God’s beloved and with us God is well pleased!

This season of Lent is a time for us to resource ourselves.  To build ourselves up, to claim those promises for our own, so that when the world tries to counter that truth with evidence to the contrary we can be strong in what we know and what we believe.

This season is a time for us strengthen and fortify ourselves with the truth; time for us to focus on what is holy, and true, and life-giving, and the beautiful, so that when the world floods us with images that aren’t any of those things we have something with which to balance them.

The world can very quickly take away the peace that passes all understanding and this season of Lent is about building ourselves up in that Peace, finding it again and claiming it for our own. I have to tell you that that’s not the end of the story.

This season isn’t so much about us, as it is about the world that would try to steal this peace from us.  Jesus hears his identity proclaimed in his baptism, and he goes out into the wilderness, and he successfully resists the temptation.  He’s strong in who he is.  And he’s also strong in what is called to do.

And so he walks out of the wilderness into a world that would deny everything that he says and is, and begins to proclaim,

“The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news.”

All of the peace that we find this season and in one another, and in this place, is preparing us to follow in his footsteps… and to go out those doors into a world that is broken, and hurting, and lost, and proclaim a different narrative in the one year on the evening news; to tell one another, to tell everyone we meet “You are beloved, and we are one.  And we can live together, respecting each other’s dignity, recognizing what is holy in one another, and working to serve each other and to serve God here in this place.

The season of Lent, it’s like boot camp!  We are being prepared to be sent out.  In the process of that we will find a peace that passes all understanding, and then we’re called upon to jeopardize and to risk that by going out that door.

Thanks be to God that we have one another and this place to which we can return; to be strengthened, to be filled, to be taught, to listen, and to teach one another, so that together we can bring those prophecies to realization and fulfillment.

The kingdom of God has come near.

Amen

This sermon, offered at The Church of the Atonement in Fish Creek Wisconsin, is built around the Gospel reading for Proper 7C in the Revised Common Lectionary. 

You can find those readings here

In today’s Gospel reading Luke the Evangelist drags us right into the middle of what, for the disciples and for Luke’s readers, would have been a real nightmare.

On the other side of the Sea of Galilee, in a country populated by a foreign people, people who looked different, who spoke another language, people who neither valued or observed their religious traditions and customs, Jesus and his disciples are confronted by a man, bloodied and bruised by the chains used to bind him, who can’t even speak his own name because he is so tormented by the demons that afflict him.

In just a few short sentences Luke has set up a horror story better than most of the movies we’ll find on late night TV.

Now I don’t know where a boat trip across the water to a foreign land, populated by people who look different from us, people who speak a different language and worship differently than us, people who have spent time among the dead bound by chains would rank on your hierarchy of horror…

Come to think of it… I guess there are a lot of people today who do in fact find that pretty scary prospect…

But the demons, I think that the demons we encounter in this story have to rank up there pretty high on our list of scary stuff.

Now, that may be a hard line to swallow, talk about demons in church can make Episcopalians pretty squeamish, but just let’s just run with this for a few minutes.

We could spend a lot of time talking about what Jesus and his contemporaries meant when they referred to demons. And we could spend a lot of time talking about what we mean when we say a person is tormented by demons, and yes we do still use those words… but I’m not sure that either of those conversations would result in consensus or even general agreement. I am however, willing to bet that we could all agree just what those demons, whatever they are, just what the demonic, whatever that is, do to people and to communities where they manifest themselves.

Luke describes it pretty well. This man that we encounter today doesn’t live in a house. He lives in the tombs. He is separated from his family, from the community into which he was born, and is living with the dead. If the demons weren’t enough to drive him from his home, to disrupt his relationship with the people around him, his contact with the dead makes him ritually unclean and so people now want to do everything they can to avoid him. This man’s demons, the demonic within him have alienated him, driven him from his community. They have ruptured his communion with the people whom he loves and whom we may suppose once loved him. That should sound familiar to all of us. We’ve all seen that happen. And we all know that it gets worse!

When Jesus asks this man his name he can’t answer. The best that he can do is offer the number of demons that were torturing him… Legion… “Legion” was a unit of 3,000 to 6,000 men in the Roman Army. Those demons, the demonic, had obliterated his very identity, he no longer knew who his own name, he had lost his sense of who he was. The demons had ruptured his communion even with himself.

And now unable even to utter his own name this man is alone, in the dark, living among the dead.

It’s important to focus on the effect that these demons have had on this man rather than on the demons themselves because it is the person, the child of God standing before him with whom Jesus is concerned. He is much less interested in the demons than he is in the person in need… And by placing the emphasis on the effect that the demonic has on people we are better able to see just what it is that Jesus is does in the midst of a terrible nightmare like this.

Luke tells us:

“Then the people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind.”

Sitting at Jesus’s feet. In his right mind… By casting out whatever it was that was tormenting him Jesus has called him to remember who he was, Jesus has given him back his name, identity. He has restored this man to communion with himself and, as he sits there at Jesus’s feet, with God. In so doing Jesus has given him the opportunity to be restored to communion with his family, with his community, and with the world around him.

That’s not really surprising because that’s exactly what Jesus came to do. Jesus came to teach us a new way of being together, a new way of being in communion with God and with one another, a communion founded on the willingness to take care of, to sacrifice for one another; a communion that grows out of loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. Communion, community, establishing the kingdom of God… that’s what Jesus is about. Bringing God’s vision, God’s dream for creation to fruition here and now.

Confronted with this broken community and this man who was estranged, alienated, cut off from himself and the people around him… Jesus was bound to do something to reconcile them all, to themselves, to one another, and to God.

So now I have to ask… What do you think? Did it work? Was Jesus able to restore this person to the life God wanted for him? Was Jesus able to bring this tormented person back into communion with himself and with his neighbors?   The Gospel leaves that question unanswered. We know that the man, having been relieved of his torment, wanted to follow Jesus and Jesus sent him home to tell people all that God had done for him… but we don’t know how he was received by the people who had cast him out. Luke leaves us to wonder…

But while Luke doesn’t tell us the conclusion of the possessed man’s story… he does tell us something about the way the people in the city and the surrounding countryside responded to what Jesus had done. And their response leaves us with some pretty profound questions…

Luke tells us:

“Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear.”

Why weren’t they ecstatic that one of their own had been healed of the demons that tormented him? Why weren’t they celebrating the fact that someone who had been lost was found, that someone who had been living among the dead was now restored to life? Why in the world would they be afraid and ask Jesus lo leave? Why weren’t they lining up to bring others to Jesus to be restored to the life of the community?

Maybe, maybe it was that herd of swine that rushed down the steep slope and was drowned. Maybe the financial cost of saving someone, of rescuing them from the demons that tormented them, of restoring them to communion with themselves, with God, and with the community was just to high. Maybe they weren’t willing to make that kind of sacrifice for someone else’s sake.

Maybe they were afraid of the way that restoring this person to the life of the community might change the dynamics of the community itself. How would he fit in? What would he expect from them? Would his presence in their midst call them to change? How were they supposed to relate to this person whom they had so recently tried to bind with chains?

And speaking of those chains… If this person were restored to the community how would they live with the fact that they had, for years, tried to imprison and chain him? If it was actually possible to restore someone like this to communion with the community… why didn’t they seek help for him, why didn’t they do all in their own power to heal him? Why did they compound his misery by tossing him out and locking him away?

They were seized by fear and asked Jesus to leave. It seems pretty clear that the demons in this story were having an impact far beyond the individual person they were inhabiting. They asked Jesus to leave them.

Let’s be clear.

The threat posed by someone who is tormented by demons is real. That person may be a Gerasene who lives among the tombs or they may be a tortured, self loathing, hate filled person with an assault rifle. Either way, the immediate danger that person poses to us is real.

But the story of the people of Gerasene’s response to Jesus healing, Jesus restoring, Jesus reconciling someone who had been identified as a threat reveals an even greater danger.

God calls us to communion with God and with one another; a communion founded on the willingness to take care of, to sacrifice for one another; a communion that grows out of loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving our neighbors as ourselves. That’s what the kingdom of God looks like and that’s what Jesus came to bring.

The real danger in outbursts of the demonic and the terror they cause is that we will all become infected.

That rather than work for reconciliation and communion we will build walls that further divide us.

The real danger in moments like this is that we will hold tight to what we believe is ours, refusing to make the sacrifices necessary to protect ourselves and our children because we deem the cost too high. The danger is that we will pull back into our entrenched positions, allowing the status quo to continue to consume the innocent.

The real danger in a moment like this is that we will find ourselves too afraid to seek and serve Christ in all persons loving our neighbor as ourselves because someone has labeled that neighbor a threat.

The real danger in moments like this is that we will become so fearful and defensive that we refuse to examine our own culpability in our failure to strive for justice and peace and to respect the dignity of every human being.

If we succumb to these dangers then the Demons, the terrorists, have won. Demons and terrorists aren’t nearly as concerned with their immediate victims as they are with the ripple effect of their deeds. Their real goal is to infect entire communities with terror, fear, anger, and hatred; to disrupt our communion with one another and with God. To make us forget who, and whose, we are.

We have to remember who we are and whose we are. We have to remember why Jesus came among us and what he taught us. We have to remember the promises we make every time we renew our baptismal vows. We have to fight to keep loving God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength and our neighbors as ourselves because…

Because the greatest danger of all,

in a moment like this

is that we will be so seized with fear

that we ask Jesus to leave…

Amen

This sermon was preached at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Madison, Wisconsin on March 8, 2015.

It is built around the readings for the Third Sunday in Lent Year B of the Revised Common Lectionary.  You can find those readings here.

The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul. The testimony of the Lord is sure and gives wisdom the innocent. The statutes of the Lord are just and rejoice the heart. The commandment of the Lord is clear and gives light to the eyes…  More to be desired are they then gold more than much fine gold. Sweeter by far than honey, than honey in comb Psalm 19).

I wonder how many of us have that sort of relationship with the law. Laws are designed to keep us safe, to protect our rights, to protect our property, to govern the way that we interact with one another so that we can be secure and that life might be predictable. But in the end I think we usually think of the laws as constraints, of ways to manage our behavior and the behavior of others.

The people of Israel had a very different vision of the law.   The law gives wisdom to be innocent, rejoices the heart, gives light to the eyes, is more to be desired than gold, and is sweeter than honey from the comb.   How is it that they could have such a different understanding of and relationship with the law? The wonderful Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman gives us some insight into the people of Israel’s relationship with the 10 Commandments. He says “These commandments might not be taken as a series of rules but as a proclamation in God’s own mouth of who God is and how God shall be practices by his community of liberated slaves.” A proclamation in God’s own mouth of who God is and how God shall be practiced by his community of liberated slaves. So how can we understand the 10 Commandments in that way?

Take a look at the Commandments as they are printed in your bulletin in the first reading. I am the Lord your God brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, no images of God to come between God and God’s people. And we are not to use God’s name in vain, either to swear by or swear with. Our relationship with God is defined in these first three commandments. And then there’s this commandment that functions sort of as hinge piece, here in not quite the middle of the list… Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Set aside one day a week to bask in this relationship, in the light, grace, and mercy of God’s love, and to remember who you are and who God is.

On the other side of that hinge piece there are six Commandments that describe how we are to practice God with the people around us. You shall not murder, shall not commit adultery, shall not steal, shall not bear false witness, shall not covet… all of these proclamations in God’s own mouth of who God is and how we are to practice God. All of them are about our relationships with one another, and our relationship with God.

Mother Dorota read the summary of the law at the beginning of the service as we knelt to confess our sins and ask for God’s absolution.   The first and greatest commandment is this; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul mind, and strength. And the second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. This proclamation of who God is and how we are to practice God in the world is all about our relationships and the ways that we love one another.

It was with these words ringing in our ears and in our hearts that we gathered yesterday at noon at Christ the solid rock Baptist Church. Early in the morning an email had gone out from Linda Ketcham, the director of Madison Urban Ministry, asking clergy in Madison if they would contribute to the funeral expenses for Tony Robinson who was killed on the east side of Madison Friday night. In response to that request, as several of us were promising funds to help defray those costs, Pastor Everett Mitchell of Christ the Solid Rock Baptist Church hit “reply all” and invited the Madison clergy to join him at noon to pray together and to be in solidarity with one another and with the Robinson Family.

When I arrived I had a member of our parish with me who had asked for a ride. We met two other members of the congregation who joined us there. Leanne Puglielli who has, as she said yesterday, one foot at St. Andrews and one foot at Christ the Solid Rock was seated there waiting for us.   We said some prayers. We heard some details about the events of Friday night and Saturday morning that we didn’t know.   And then we were offered the opportunity to brainstorm together about how we might, as the community of liberated slaves in Madison, continue to “practice God” as we move forward together.

Now I’m sure that there are some people who would say that we were doing something wrong in gathering together. That what we were doing was entering into the world of politics and that the world of politics is not the place for the church. But if you strip away the pejorative baggage that gets associated with the word “politics” and think about it at its core politics is really all about the way that we relate to one another in the public square; how we are in relationship with one another, how we treat one another, and that is what the 10 Commandments are all about. God’s own proclamation about how we should “practice God” in the community is inherently a political statement.

One of the clergy stood up at that gathering yesterday and said that he thought the clergy of Madison should gather together in fellowship on a regular basis. There was a murmur of ascent in the room and as he passed me on his way back down the center aisle to his seat I stood up, extended my hand, and I said, “I’m embarrassed to have to say that I don’t know your name.” For the next half an hour we went around the room one by one and introduced ourselves and named the faith communities where we serve and worship. At the end of that period of introductions we were all profoundly struck by the number of faith communities who were represented in that place and the power that we have as the church when we stand together in that way. We wrestled with things that we might do, ways that we might address what happened on Friday night. And we knew in our hearts that together we can make a much larger difference then we can as individuals.

I think that there is a real temptation in the wake, in the chaos left behind after Tony Robinson’s shooting of Friday night to adjudicate the events of that night, to decide who was at fault, to lay blame. We will hear more about the events, more details will surface, and invariably blame will be assigned. But I think that we need to be very careful as those details emerge. This morning in the State Journal there is an article that describes four events in the last several weeks where the Madison Police Department have had guns trained on them, had bullets fired in their direction, and they did not respond with deadly force. Some of those events involved white people, some involved black people, some were in affluent neighborhoods, and some were in less affluent neighborhoods. We need to be careful that we do not paint with too broad a brush as we color the events of last Friday night.

But we also need to recognize and honor the fact that a young man, Tony Robinson, is dead. And a mother and a family and a community are grieving. And that in the wake of these events we are grieving too. I think that our grief needs to grow out of the conversation that we have been having here at St. Andrews and in Madison for the last year. The Annie E. Casey Foundation report, The Race to Equity Report, have cast light on the disparities in Madison and in Dane County. We have spoken of them often, both here in this pulpit and in conversations in the parish hall around the tables at the Sunday forum.   We know that there is an illness there is a disease in Madison and Dane County. The anger and the frustration and the rage that have erupted over Friday night’s shooting are evidence of that illness. And we dare not leave that illness unaddressed.

Another commentator that I read this week, in speaking about the 10 Commandments, had this to say, “Those who ignore the divine teachings do so at their own peril – not because God is standing over them with a hammer, but because the teachings describe the way of life. To ignore them is to wander into the ways of death instead, where God’s faithfulness can be of little help.” When we do not love God with all of our hearts, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves we are wandering into the ways of death. And the event that we have seen in this city over the last several days are the fruits of that wandering.

So what can we do there will be a letter from the Madison clergy, all of the people who attended the meeting yesterday and many who could not, including our own bishop who has phoned me and is anxious to lend his support to what we are doing here in Madison. That letter will go to the media, to the Mayor, to the Chief Koval, to anyone to whom we can deliver it. It will say that the church in Madison: Episcopalians, Lutheran’s, UCC, the Methodists, the Presbyterians, Jewish congregations, the Buddhists who were there yesterday, are all standing together and demanding that the investigation into Friday night’s events be transparent and just.

And even more importantly, demanding that we address the faults in the system that have led us to a place where the city erupts in anger, and suspicion, and frustration over an event like the one we experienced Friday night.

I saw a Facebook meme the other day, there’s this picture of Jesus in the Temple overturning the tables with a whip in his hand. The people in that picture looked pretty shocked, trying to get out of his was as the coins rolled across the floor, the tables piled in a heap. The painting didn’t portray them but I imagine that even his disciples were pretty surprised at his response to what he found in the temple. It had been going on for a long time. It was part of the status quo. When you arrived at the conclusion of your pilgrimage at the Temple you were required to offer an animal without blemish as a sacrifice. And even if the animal you left home with it the beginning of your journey was unblemished it would be very difficult to keep that animal in that pristine state on that long and difficult journey. So unblemished animals were sold in the temple grounds. When you entered the temple you paid a temple tax to help with Herod’s reconstruction program and you could not use the Roman coin because it was engraved with Caesar’s image. You traded your coin of the Empire for a coin that you could offer in the Temple one with that was not idolatrous in its very manufacture. So the need for these services seemed apparent. But something had gone wrong. The synoptic Gospels Matthew Mark and Luke tell us that there was some corruption. In their Gospels Jesus as you have turned my father’s house into a den of thieves. John doesn’t say that John has Jesus say, “stop making my father’s house a marketplace.” Whatever the reason the status quo was broken and in order to change it Jesus overturned some tables. That painting that I was telling you about of Jesus with the tables turned over and people looking shocked coins on the floor and a whip in his hand… the caption said, “the next time somebody asks you what would Jesus do… tell them that turning over some tables and chasing people with whips is within the realm of possibilities!”

We are called to love the Lord our God with all of our hearts, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbors as ourselves. That is a radically political statement… political at its core! In order to love in that way, to bring about the kingdom, the vision, the dream that God has for all of us… for Madison Wisconsin, for the county, for all of creation… we may need to raise our voices. We may even need to overturn some tables as we challenge the status quo and push on the people who have power to make the changes for which the Gospel cries. If we don’t follow Jesus into the Temple this Sunday and take up that cause, then we are not “practicing God” as his community of liberated slaves in the way that the 10 Commandments God gave to Moses on Mount Sinai calls us to live.

So fasten your girdles around you. Put on the breastplate of righteousness. Take courage; follow our Lord, as we demand that we become a community that practices God together.

Amen

This sermon, preached at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church on Good Friday, March 29th 2013, is based on the readings for Good Friday in the Revised Common Lectionary.

You can find those readings here.

There is a dream that we cling to, one that we long to see come to fruition, a dream so powerful and life giving that we have pursued it for as long as we can remember.  That dream goes something like this”

“The wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9).

We long for a world where all things, all people live in harmony, where peace reigns and where God is always present.  But it is important to remember that this dream, this vision does not originate with us.

This is God’s dream, God’s vision for creation, for all of humankind and for all things.  God, the one who spoke all things into being; God, who created order from the void, the chaos; God who gives light, life, and meaning to all things; this dream, this vision of the created order comes from the one in whom we live and move and have our being.

This is God’s wish for us.

“They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea”

And to that end…

“from the primal elements God brought the human race, and blessed us with memory reason and skill.  God made us the rulers of creation.  But we turned against God, and betrayed God’s trust, and we turned against one another…  Again and again God called us to return.  Through prophets and sages God revealed God’s righteous law” (BCP p. 370).

But we are a stiff necked and rebellious people.  Again and again we put our own needs, our own desires ahead of God’s dream and ahead of the neighbors we have been called to love.  Our need to be “first,” to be in control leads us to exploit the people around us as we seek our own benefit, the advancement of our own agenda and needs, as we seek what looks and feels to this world like power.

“And so, in the fullness of time God sent God’s only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill God’s righteous law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace” (BCP p. 370)

But…

“He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own and his own people did not accept him” (John 1:10,11).

And so…

“For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried” (The Nicene Creed).

And,

“By his blood, he reconciled us.  By his wounds we are healed” (BCP p. 370).

By “his” blood he reconciled us?  By “his” wounds “we” are healed?  How can that be?  How does that make sense?

He was,

“Incarnate by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary, he lived as one of us, yet without sin.  To the poor he proclaimed the good news of salvation; to prisoners freedom; to the sorrowful joy” (BCP p. 374).

So how does this death, the death of one who bore no fault, no shame, who lived without sin, reconcile and heal us?  Why is that that we sit here today, at the foot of the cross, an instrument of torture and death – prepared to claim and venerate this moment as our own?  What sense does it make to say that this innocent man died for our sins?

We are the ones who are at fault.  We are the ones who have betrayed God’s trust and turned against God and one another.  We are the ones who should bear the consequences of our choices, out actions, our betrayals because we are the ones who have fallen into sin.

How does this make sense?  Let’s think back a little, to the Gospel of John to that well beloved passage people so often quote,

“For God so loved the world that God gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him my not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

Now push on to the next verse, one that is extremely important as we consider the cross,

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).

Jesus came into the world, preached, taught, showed us the way to heaven and then died for us, for our sake, in order that the world might be saved.  “Saved,” that our offense, our betrayals, that our sins be forgiven that we may live in the light of God’s love.

That our sins might be forgiven…   “Forgiven” think about that word for a minute.  What does it mean to forgive?  If I have been wronged then I am entitled to justice.  I am entitled to redress, to compensation.  If I have been wronged I have a right to demand that the one who has harmed me pay a penalty for the indignity to which they have subjected me.  If I have been wronged then it is only fair that the person who has offended me suffer the same hurt that I have experienced.  We would call that fair.  We would call that justice.

To forgive means to forgo the satisfaction that is due the injured party.  To forgive is to receive the hurt, the offense, the injury without retaliating and without nurturing the wound or fostering a grudge.  To forgive is to be willing to suffer at the hands of those who have wronged us and to refuse to inflict suffering in return.  To forgive is to step out side of the “eye for an eye” approach to life and to enter instead into a mutualistic relationship that is transformative for both the offender and the offended.  To forgive is to risk being changed and to risk the possibility that the future might be different than the past.

We have fallen short of God’s vision, God’s dream for creation.  Left to our own devices we have become stuck in a cycle of violence that consumes the lamb, the kid, and the fatling; returning violence for violence, escalating and multiplying the hurt, building pain upon pain.  We have created the world in our own image and our need for power and control has loosed bears who rend and destroy, lions who devour the innocent, and adders who seem to strike without warning or mercy.

God came into this broken world, not to condemn us for our failure to live in God’s light and love; not to demand justice, compensation and ransom; but to lift us out of the darkness by putting an end to our endless cycle of rage, retribution, and violence.  God came into this world to offer us forgiveness, something that would “fulfill God’s law and to open for us the way of freedom and peace” (BCP p. 370).

To fulfill God’s law…  It doesn’t make much sense to us because God’s law and God’s justice don’t look much like ours.  But this is what God’s law, God’s justice looks like…  It looks like Jesus, God on a cross.  God’s law, God’s justice is a love so great, so deep and so wide that it is willing to suffer; to endure hurt, wrong, and betrayal.  God’s law, God’s justice is manifested in a willingness to forgive in the hope that we will choose the way of freedom and peace.  And that transformed by the gift of forgiveness that has been given to us and by the demonstration of the power of love over sin and death we will begin to live out our vocation as the church, “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (BCP p. 855).

Amen.

This sermon is indebted to Charles Hefling and his article “Why the Cross” published March 11, 2013 in the Christian Century.  You can read his article here.

This sermon draws on the readings appointed for use on the Second Sunday in Lent.  It is focused on Luke 13:31-35.

You can find those readings here.

Jesus said that he longed to gather the children of Israel under his wings like a mother hen gathers her brood under her wings…  Is Jesus really talking about… chickens?

I grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC.  I don’t know a lot about chickens.  In fact, the summer after I graduated from college, the little bit I do know about chickens only served to cement my status as a “city kid” with my co-workers in central Pennsylvania.  Having spent the whole summer trying to disabuse them of that notion I completely blew it one day when, confronted by my first flock of live chickens I stood there, fascinated, trying to figure out where the drumstick was!  A little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing!

I don’t know a lot about chickens but I do have a pretty good idea of what happens when a fox gets into the hen-house.  a Fox in the hen-house means panic, voices raised in terror and pain.  A fox in the hen-house means the sound of running feet, carnage, blood, death.

And when a fox enters the hen-house there is nothing a Mother Hen can do but rush to her chicks defense, sacrificing herself to save them from the jaws of the destroyer.

In today’s Gospel Jesus is responding to a group of Pharisees who have come to tell him that Herod wants him dead.  Jesus’s response to that threat is dismissive.  He doesn’t seem to be worried about his own life.  But the language that he uses, the pictures that he invokes, his cry of lament over the children of Jerusalem, tell us that there is a greater threat here than the one posed by Herod.

Jesus is pointing out that the children of Israel have a choice to make and that they have, for a long time, chosen to follow not the loving mother hen, but the fox!

Herod Antipas, the fox who wants to kill Jesus, rules Galilee as a client sate of Rome.  He is a traitor, a collaborator, a participant in the oppression of his own people.  He is also the son of Herod the “Great.”  It was Herod the “Great” who had the innocents slaughtered in an attempt to eradicate the newly born King of the Jews that the Magi were seeking.  Herod the “Great” had his own children executed for fear that they were plotting to steal his throne.  So, Herod Antipas came from a long line of people willing to do anything, including killing their own chicks and the chick of others to maintain their hold on status, rank, privilege and power.  You would think that a threat from this man would be enough to grab the attention of an itinerant preacher as he makes his way through Herod’s domain and yet even here, with his life threatened by the “fox,” Jesus keeps himself focused on a much larger concern.

When Jesus refers to himself as a mother hen, and laments the history of Jerusalem as “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it” (Luke 13:34), we realize that the “fox” he is referring to is something bigger than Herod Antipas, first century Palestinian Jew.  Jesus is really talking about an understanding of the world and it’s power structures that stands in opposition to the vision, the dream of God for creation.  The “Fox” in this parable represents our tendency to take what we need and want, to subjugate others to our agenda, to marginalize and to ride roughshod over the poor, the weak, and anyone else who doesn’t have or can’t wield the power that we think we have and deserve.  Jesus is telling us that the “fox” is already in the hen-house and that there is a choice to be made.  Are we going to align ourselves with the fox in the hopes that we might be spared by the preservation of the status quo, that we might be allowed to continue to run our own corner of the hen-house; or are we going to cast our lot with the mother hen who has been trying for so long to gather us under her wings and shelter us from the power that would destroy us?

There is a choice to be made and, given the choice between the fox and the Mother Hen the fox might seem like a better choice.  On the surface the Fox seems more powerful and attractive.  The Fox offers perks and benefits, privilege and status, rank and recognition.  The Fox would seem better equipped to defend itself and us.  Surely we can cultivate and tame the fox’s rage and penchant for blood, using it to our own benefit.

But there is that little problem with putting your trust in the Fox.  The Fox has a tendency to sneak in when no one is looking, in the dead of the night, seeking to slake its hunger.  When we finally wake up and take stock we will see that some of us are missing, or injured, trampled into the hard scrabble of the hen-house floor by the Fox’s destructive rampage.  Once we have let the fox into the hen-house there is just no telling who might be deemed disposable, be discarded, be left out or even go missing altogether.  Yes, the fox is powerful, but in the end, no one is safe when there is a fox in the henhouse.  But here Jesus is, telling us that our hen-house is “left to you,” another way of saying “left desolate” because we have refused to shelter in the shadow of the wings of the mother hen.  Why are we so unwilling to turn our backs on the fox and cast our lot with the love of the Mother Hen?

It is a frightening thing to reject the fox.  It is even more frightening to step into the shadow of the Mother Hen’s wings because, as Jesus is pointing out when he shifts the definition of “fox” away from Herod towards a view of the systems and structures that dominate and shape our lives, the choice we make will ultimately define the way that we live together.

In an article published by the Christian Century in 1985 Barbara Brown Taylor, one of our most gifted and treasured preachers asked,

“If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world –wings spread, breast exposed — but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.”

Hmmm…  one of our most gifted and treasured preachers asked?  That quote didn’t end with a question mark.  It ended with a period.  But then, the question in this morning’s story about Jesus and the Pharisees didn’t end with a question mark either.  Did it?  The question was implicit in the clear distinction between two ways of seeing, and living in the world.

Jesus is asking us to turn from the way of the fox; to stop participating in structures that oppress, crush and destroy; to recognize that the fox under whose standard we stand will not recognize our past loyalty and support but will destroy as all without regard or distinction.  Jesus is asking us to take courage from his example; to have faith in God’s love and promise; and to stand, as he did, wings spread, breast exposed, and to gather his children under our wings.  To fly at the fox in defense of the weak and the poor the widow and the orphan, the forgotten stranger, the marginalized, the other…  Jesus is asking us to gather under the shadow of his wings and to let him rescue our humanity from the hard scrabble of the hen-house floor.

Amen.