August 9, Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

1 Kings 19:4-8; John 6:35, 41-51

Bryan Cones

Poor Elijah must really have been having a bad day.

It’s hard to tell from this short passage what has been going so poorly for this great hero and prophet that he is ready to curl up and die. It might be helpful to remember that we are joining Elijah in the middle of his story. This part of his story started with a great contest between Elijah, the prophet of the God of Israel, and the prophets of the Canaanite God Baal, imported by King Ahab of Israel along with his Canaanite wife, Jezebel, who incidentally gets all the blame for the king’s behavior. The contest ends with a victory for Elijah, in which God sends fire from heaven in answer to his prayer. To the victor go the spoils, so Elijah then kills all 400 of those Canaanite prophets—he was a warrior prophet after all—and the king and his queen are understandably angry and so have been pursuing Elijah, which is how we find him under the broom tree.

Elijah is running away, and with good reason. He’s probably a bit angry with God, too, since he is suffering for doing what God told him to do. He’s at the end of his rope, and he’s ready to throw in the towel.

How you ever felt like Elijah? Have you ever felt like running away? Maybe you did. Did you ever get angry when what you felt like was the right thing to do blows up in your face, or when you had to face the consequences of something you have done? Maybe you know what it’s like to be angry with God. Maybe you’ve also been ready to throw in the towel, like Elijah. What was that like for you?

Which brings us to today’s story: Instead of letting Elijah die, God sends a rescue mission. There is an angel and miraculous food: bread and water, enough for a 40-day hike. God still has plans for Elijah; there is more to his journey. And so Elijah gets up and goes on his way, knowing more or less where he was going—but maybe not what for.

Have you ever experienced your own angelic intervention, your own messenger from God to encourage you? Maybe someone knew just what to say at just the right time. What has sustained you in your own wilderness times? Maybe you have discovered strength to get up and carry on, even knowing that there was still a long road ahead. What was that like for you?

There is an end of a sort to Elijah’s story: He arrives at Mount Horeb, where he experiences God in a most unexpected way: not in a great wind, not in an earthquake, not in a fire, but in the sound of sheer silence. And in that experience God reveals to Elijah the prophet’s purpose, and gives Elijah his marching orders for his work. It’s a turning point for Elijah—a new moment of clarity.

Have you had a moment like that, when things finally make sense, or you begin to see more clearly the road you have been traveling or even the purpose of your journey? Maybe you had your own silent moment with God, when you realized you had never really been alone, and all along God was drawing you to where you belong. Maybe you discovered guidance for your next steps. What was that like for you?

Which brings us back to how we get from here to there, how we go from wandering or fleeing to following where God is leading you, how we go from desperate and exhausted to nourished and ready to travel, how we come to arrive at the place where God wants us, so we can experience our own moment of clarity. What is the food that sustains us in all those moments, the same food that nourished Elijah?

Jesus proposes in the gospel that he is that food, that feeding on his wisdom, in the community of his followers, feeding “on him,” is the nourishment that God sends. From the beginning of the church we Christians have seen in this eucharistic banquet that food, food for runaways and wanderers, food for the desperate and exhausted, food for those on their way, food that can sustain us to the end. This food not only satisfies our hunger, it is also the sign of God’s own hunger to nourish us, the same manna the fed the Israelites in the desert, the same food that sustained Elijah, the bread that Jesus shared with those who followed him. It’s the same bread.

To eat this living bread is to join our story to their stories, and the story of all God’s people. All of our stories of running away, of wandering, of finding the road, of discovering God's place in our path join Elijah's and the Israelites and Jesus and his followers. In sharing in this bread, we are really fed by God just as they were and really participate in the story of God’s people, because our many stories become part of that story, too.

Even more, our sharing in this living bread creates us as the church, the people who feed on the living bread of Jesus, the people who share God’s hunger to nourish the world and to nourish each other on this long journey. And all of us, wanderers and runaways, searchers and those who think we know where we are headed, wherever we are on the way, we belong here, both to be fed and to feed each other.

What is it like to be a part of this church, to be a part of the story of God’s people, to be nourished here by Jesus, the bread of life, and also to share God’s hunger to feed others? What is that like for you?

August 2, Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; John 6:24-35

Bryan Cones

As I was reflecting this week on today’s passage from Exodus, I couldn’t help but think of another “feeding story” of sorts, this one less miraculous. This one’s not in the Bible though, but part of another “canon”: the Hunger Games trilogy for young adults by Suzanne Collins.

The scene I’m thinking of comes as the heroes Katniss and Peeta are coming to the end of their “victory” tour after surviving their first trip to the arena, which culminates in a grand banquet at the presidential palace. The juxtaposition of the poverty and unrest of the districts, and the starvation in their own District 9, and the conspicuous consumption of the Capital is put in sharp relief by that feast. Those few invited to the party, eager to taste every delicacy, routinely consume a beverage that causes them to expel what they’ve already eaten—blessedly off camera—so that they can begin again. The Capital embodies a hunger and thirst that can never be satisfied. Katniss and Peeta are repulsed at the obscene behavior—as the author means us to be as well.

What a contrast to the story of the Exodus: Having just escaped an ancient equivalent of the Capital, the Israelites are now beginning to miss the “fleshpots,” the slave food that their Egyptian masters provided. God responds with free food for a free people, the miracle of the quail and manna—sustenance that rains down from heaven falling on all the people equally, providing what today’s psalm calls the “bread of angels,” which is “food enough” for everyone says the psalm.

It’s a tale of two very different stories, stories that produce two very different worlds, and different accounts of what it means to be human together. As Americans and as Christians, we inevitably inhabit both of them.

I don’t think it much of a stretch to suggest that Collins’ Hunger Games is a dystopian riff on the most negative aspects of our society and global economic system, which produces extravagant wealth and luxury for a few, and bare subsistence for many. The story of Exodus on the other hand doesn’t suggest extravagance or luxury—the heavens don’t rain down red velvet cupcakes or tiger shrimp or buckets of wine. On the contrary, there is both restraint and limit: There are rules that govern the divine abundance. Each Israelite can only collect what they need for the day; any manna kept overnight will rot and be worthless. At no point can the Israelites forget that they are dependent on God’s open hand. It is enough—an abundant enough, but not infinitely so. It’s an “enough” that asks a divine question of the story that drives our American cultural imagination, with its high value on the production and acquisition, even the hoarding, of wealth.

It also proposes a divine question to us who live in this society: Just how much is “enough”?—recognizing that being able to ask the question reflects the privilege of having one’s needs met. When does one’s own share and use of the divine abundance become instead a “fleshpot,” something that reflects our enslavement rather than our freedom? When does a savings account, or a retirement account, or even a parish endowment become an end in itself?

These are deeply spiritual questions that cut to the heart of who we are and who we are called to be. They are also political and economic and social questions about what it means to live with other people in community, about our duties and obligations to one another in society. As those who are baptized, and therefore those who share the privilege of partnering with God in the care of the poor and vulnerable, in the healing of the world, and in the revelation of the reign of God, they are questions we cannot avoid asking, for our own well-being and that of our neighbors. At its heart, the question that lies beneath them all is: By which story shall we live? And what difference does it make?

I am struck by Jesus’ promise in the Gospel of John, to those who feed on the wisdom of the story he tells: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” What Jesus is promising is the opposite of the glorification of hunger and thirst in the Capital: It is the freedom from being driven by the need to possess and consume. It is the freedom from the slavery of striving to keep up, of feeling ourselves always in a deficit, always lacking something, never good enough.

It is not only the physical freedom of having “enough,” it is the spiritual freedom of knowing ourselves as creatures, dependent on a faithful God and called to relationships of justice and freedom with others. It is the freedom we practice as we celebrate this Eucharist, through which we are shaped in the pattern of divine abundance that produces enough for every living thing. Imagine if that freedom we practice here shaped not only our hearts, but the whole creation in which we live and are called to serve.

July 26, Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Ephesians 3:14-21, John 6:1-21

How much?

How much is all that we can ask or imagine?

Really. What’s the fullness, the greatness, the grandeur of our imaginations?

Today’s first reading is a prayer for the church. What comes just before it is Paul’s hope that the people of the Church at Ephesus will not lose heart, that God’s people will remain steadfast, faithful. And then, this prayer: that the people of this beloved church will be strengthened through the Spirit; that Christ may dwell within them, within us, from generation to generation; that they and we might be filled with all the fullness of God. Paul ends this prayer, glorifying the God by whose power at work within us is able to accomplish more than all we can ask or imagine.

I wonder. I wonder what all it is that we can ask, or imagine. I wonder what muscle, what capacity, what willingness we have…to wonder.

After all, we live in a reasonable world. It’s reasonable to expect that things will be as they have been, that our lives should be comprehensible. It’s a reasonable expectation, to assume that what we see will be what it seems: that water will stay water; that five loaves of bread will remain five loaves of bread, and feed a reasonable number of people accordingly; that people who are dead will stay dead…and will not get up and start walking around.[1]

So in this world filled with smart and reasonable people, it makes sense that somebody would come up with a logical explanation for how 5000 people were fed after sitting down on a “great deal of grass” there on a mountain, on the far side of the Sea of Galilee.

Jesus tests Philip in John’s gospel today by asking him where they’ll buy bread for all these folks (not too many bakeries up there, my guess). Poor Philip’s imagination is not up to the test. He doesn’t even make it to the question of where – he’s stuck on the how. No way is there enough money to pay for bread for all this multitude of people, even if there was a Panera right there on the mountaintop with them!

The disciple Andrew doesn’t fare any better. He finds a kid with five barley loaves and a couple of fish. But his imagination has the same regulator as Philip’s. “Here’s this little thing,” he says. “But what is it among so many?” No way is this enough. No way could this feed everybody.

It’s reasonable, isn’t it? It’s logical to guess in this moment that Jesus takes the five loaves and the two fish from that bag lunch offered by some little boy to a skeptical disciple. It makes sense to think that people see Jesus give thanks for that meager offering and decide to open their own picnic baskets and share what they have with their neighbors.

I could ask for that. I could imagine that happening.

But here’s the thing. God does more. This story of the feeding of the multitudes gets told six times in four gospels. And the only reasonable explanation for that, as far as I can tell, is that something extraordinary is taking place, something that defies our comprehension…otherwise, it seems like one telling might have been sufficient.

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“Now to God,” Paul prays, “who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly more than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory…forever.”

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It turns out there is enough of everything, all over the place. In fact, somebody along the way thought it was important enough to mention that there is even enough grass. Jesus says “Make the people sit down.” And they can. Because, John’s gospel tells us here, “There was a great deal of grass in the place.” Who knew? But apparently there was. You need a place to sit down? We have a great deal of grass for everyone to be able to do just that. So the people sit. And Jesus gives thanks. And there’s enough bread for everyone to eat, enough fish, enough that everybody is satisfied. There’s enough to fill twelve baskets afterwards, so that nothing is lost, nothing wasted.

My guess, this is more than the disciples and all the people in that crowd could have imagined. My guess, this is more than they could have asked for.

I would be confounded too, in their place. I would stop short in front of 5000 people without six months’ pay and a mountaintop Panera; I would see the limitations of a kid’s sack lunch to feed the multitudes. It’s unreasonable. It’s beyond our scope of comprehension.

It’s reasonable to expect, in Jesus’ time and in our own, that people would have enough to eat, that they would make travel plans accordingly, that a prophet could talk about his beliefs without having to worry about his head winding up on a platter. It’s reasonable, now, to believe that people can go safely to work, or to a movie theater, or just to drive a car, reasonable to believe that no one would attack them or take them to jail, logical to expect that they would live through those experiences.

The thing is, Jesus lived in an unreasonable time. He walked this earth when people were starving and suffering and bleeding and dying, at a time when a tyrant would kill a prophet to save face before his dinner guests. And the thing is, we live in an unreasonable time, too. We live in a time when those things that seem secure and justified…are really, sadly, not always so.

We live in a time that defies logic, just as every time, ultimately, has. We live in a world that, as it is, is not as it should be.

And so I guess in this moment that I need more than a sweet story about people doing what they ought to do. I need more than it’s reasonable to ask, more than I can logically imagine. I need to believe in a God who does what we cannot, who imagines beauty and fullness we cannot even begin to fathom. Because, friends, “miracles, and not lessons in sharing, are what we really need.”[2]

More than we can imagine? It’s unreasonable. And that’s what God does.

Because, in the end, there is enough. In God’s economy, there is more than all we can ask, more than all that we can imagine. There is more available to those followers of Jesus on the mountaintop than what they alone brought in their own backpacks, more than what they themselves have to offer.[3]

And “maybe the disciples, like us, need to be reminded that even when we do not have what is needed, what is needed is still at hand…(but it’s going to) come from God or from others, because in God’s economy that’s how it works. What you have is enough, because it is never all there is.”[4] No, it doesn’t make sense. No, things are not as they seem. And thanks be to God, for that.

So we bring our five little loaves and our two fishes. Heck – we bring our limited imaginations, our realistic doubts, our fear of asking or wondering, our lack of curiosity. We bring our own need for food in the wilderness when we’re hungry and exhausted and when nothing is working and everything seems to come up short and we’re veering toward cynical because that’s all that makes sense. We set it all down before God, who blesses and breaks and gives, and breaks and gives, and breaks and gives, until everybody, everybody, everybody has had enough. That’s how much – enough…and more than enough. God gives us unsensibly, illogically, unreasonably more than we can ask, more than we could ever imagine. And nothing is wasted.

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And so, to that God, by whose power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to that unreasonable and generous God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

[1] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2015/07/sermon-on-the-feeding-of-the-5000-preached-for-pastors-musicians-and-church-leaders/. Thanks to Nadia Bolz Weber for this inspiration for a whole new sermon written on a Saturday night. I never do that. But this time I did.

[2] ibid

[3] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/nadiabolzweber/2014/08/sermon-on-lembas-bread-the-feeding-of-the-5000-and-why-i-hated-pastoral-care-classes/

[4] ibid

July 19, Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Ephesians 2:11-22

Bryan Cones

In modern Israel there is a wall, that divides the Israelis from Palestinians. It was proposed originally in the 1990s and built beginning in 2000 to prevent suicide attacks, and in some ways it has been successful at that, but it has also come to symbolize the almost intractable divide between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as the profound inequity in the quality of life on the different sides of the wall, with Israelis living in relative wealth and security and Palestinians in concentrated poverty and insecurity. The wall starkly embodies the distinction in the first reading: On one side lives the “commonwealth of Israel,” while on the other side live “strangers to the covenant of peace.”

It’s hardly the only wall of its kind to embody such a distinction—the Berlin Wall was like it in a way, as is the system of fences and walls that continues to grow along the U.S.-Mexico border. Chicago used to have an impressive wall of high-rise projects, the Robert Taylor Homes, along the Dan Ryan Expressway, which, along with that expressway, served to remind Chicagoans where, depending on their color or class, they were supposed to be. Even with those high-rise buildings torn down, it’s pretty easy to see where all over Cook County, those walls still exist, marking who lives in the commonwealth and who is a stranger.

Those are the kinds of separating walls the writer to Ephesians is talking about: dividers that separate one kind of human being from another, often as a reflection the hostility between them, and to distinguish who belongs, and who does not. Ephesians is probably referring to a specific wall in the ancient Temple in Jerusalem, that separated the “The court of the Gentiles” from the area reserved for Jews. That outer wall warned that anyone from outside the people of Israel risked death if they passed beyond the boundary. That “dividing wall” separated Jew from Gentile, “members of the commonwealth” from those “without God.” Embedded there we can still hear that ancient hostility, between Jews and Gentiles, as well as our modern ones: Christian and Muslim, rich and poor, immigrant and native—you get the idea.

In the face of these dividing walls, and frankly contrary to reality both now and then, the writer of Ephesians makes the shocking claim that Christ by his death has broken down that dividing wall, and erased the hostility that created it. In place of the wall, there is now a new building, made up of living stones, with Christ as the cornerstone. The border where there once was a wall, with hostile forces on either side, now stands the dwelling of God on earth, Christ in his living body, the church, the symbol of the “new humanity” God is creating in Christ.

Ephesians is talking about us, of course, the people called to stand in place of the wall or maybe even at it, as witnesses to the new, reconciled humanity in which no one is a stranger to the commonwealth, but all are citizens with the saints and members of the household of God.

That’s a grand vision but hard to square with the actual hostility that besets our world, hostility that burst forth again this week in Chattanooga, and that continues to endure all over. It’s so widespread that I wish the writer to Ephesians would have given us a few more tools for living as the reconciling edge of this border zone. I have been thinking of a couple tools that have been helpful to me, and I wonder if they might be helpful to you.

The first has to do with noticing in ourselves and being mindful of the seeds in us of the hostility that divides us from other people, those times when we find ourselves reacting in anger or fear, and taking the time to be curious about them. I remember when David and I lived in our old condo, our neighbors moved and sold their place to two brothers. I noticed in myself anxiety about my new neighbors—the two brothers were African American— and it took me a while to admit that the source of my fear were the kinds of racist attitudes and stereotypes about African American men that I would never want to admit, but that clearly were still at work in me.

That experience made me wonder what other unacknowledged fears lurk in me, and those irrational responses are good signals to me to be mindful of what’s really going on. That embarrassing experience of my own racism has made me more curious about how those same fears are at work in my city or in our country, and how they have produced the dividing walls that keep me and us from experiencing that new humanity in Christ.

The second tool came from our Friday morning group that gathers at Panera after our 7 a.m. Eucharist. We were talking about how to be helpful to people experiencing difficulty of various kinds, things like violence or addiction, and I think it was Richard Adams who counseled that we should seek always and above all to be kind, because we never know what is going on inside another human being or what is happening in their lives. His counsel made me wonder what dividing walls might be torn down simply by kindness, and by giving everyone we meet the benefit of the doubt, and trying to learn more about their stories.

I don’t really know if practices like mindfulness and kindness can break down the walls that separate people from each other, but they seem like the kind of tools that might make a difference. At any rate, the vision and promise of a new humanity, healed of division, in which no one is a stranger to the covenant, in which everyone is a citizen and a member of God’s household, and a church devoted to that vision, makes me eager to keep trying.

July 12, Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost – July 12, 2015

Mark 5:21-43

Game of Thrones has got nothing on the Bible.[1] At least, that’s what one of my favorite commentators has to say about today’s gospel. The drama and the intrigue, the sex and the violence, the family relationships gone…complicated, the will to power at any cost, and the need to secure that power once it’s achieved, to avoid vulnerability, to save face…that’s the stuff of everything from Game of Thrones, to House of Cards, to Boss, to Orange is the New Black, to most movies you’ll find on screens big or small.

And today’s gospel fits right in. King Herod hears from his people about this Jesus, this disrupter who talks about prophets and honor, who sends his followers out without provision (and they go) to heal people and cast out demons (and they do). Herod’s people come to him, worried that this is Elijah, or an old prophet returned, or…John the Baptist…who they were pretty sure was dead.

This anxiety prompts the only flashback scene in the gospel of Mark. Herod has had John arrested because John keeps making noise about Herod taking his brother’s wife. He’s so angry at moments that Herod wants to have John killed, but he’s also afraid of this John the Baptist, and he’s perplexed by him, and strangely protective of him, and interested – in spite of himself – in what John has to say.

So in the midst of all this confusion and drama, Herod hosts a big birthday party for himself. His daughter performs at the party, and as a show of grandiosity in front of his courtiers and subjects, Herod makes a point of offering his daughter anything she asks for. What she asks for is John the Baptist’s head on a plate.

Game of Thrones has got nothing on the Bible.

All the elements are right here – a king’s draw to a woman married to another man, that other man being the king’s brother…the show of power in arresting someone for laying bare the truth…the demonstration of prestige before the king’s followers, and the brutality of doing murder to avoid embarrassment.

That plotline could find its way into any show on HBO or Netflix, any movie being released in theaters this weekend. And sadly, we can find elements of it all over our newsfeeds: disputes between nations and people, relationships complicated and confused, murder for the sake of saving face, perpetrators of terror against nations…and communities…and against people we love, with those most vulnerable suffering the greatest cost.

It is no light thing to recognize that this narrative finds play in the world as it is, in the world of our imagination, in the world of who we have been. It’s heavy, and daunting. And honestly, I want it to be different.

Several times, as a preacher, I have noted that our passages from scripture are chosen for us. It’s a way for me to distance myself from texts that I find unhelpful, readings that I would not address if I did not have to, instead dangling them out at arm’s length just as far away from myself as I’m able to do. If I did choose the readings that I preach, you would hear a lot of the first chapter of John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God…and from God’s fullness have we all received, and grace upon grace…” We would frequently pray the words of Psalm 46: “God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved. God will help her at the break of day.” And Philippians 8: “Whatever is true, whatever is just, whatever is honorable, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on these things…and the God of peace will be with you.” And, truth be told, if I were choosing the passages I preach, you probably wouldn’t hear many stories like today’s gospel.

As it happens, we do have some discretion in these summer months, when we only have one reading before the gospel lesson. As preacher, I could have chosen Amos, an Old Testament prophet with a plumb line, preaching on justice and a land laid waste by the sword. Honestly, I held that up against today’s reading from the Letter to the Ephesians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.” I held the two up against each other, and I chose the one that spoke of blessing. I chose the one that spoke of God’s good pleasure to gather up all things in heaven and on earth, to gather them to God’s own self.

And maybe it was the news of one country on the brink, and another, and another, or the terror inspired by threats of violence, and violence done and done again. What I needed to hear today, and perhaps you did too, was of the “pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people, to the praise of God’s glory.”

We already had one prophet murdered. I left the other with his plumb line to be remembered another day, and chose a word of hope over a word of judgment.

And.

And I’m guessing that our nightly news has nothing on the city of Ephesus, that they had troubles at the time of this letter just like every place and every time. Those Ephesians had plotlines of their own to contend with. The sex and the violence, the drama and the intrigue, the will to power and the desire for protection, the family complications, the need to save face. All that was as true at the time of the writing of this letter as it was at the time of Herod and John the Baptist, as true as it all is now.

So I wonder if this passage of hope, instead of serving as a break from that world-as-it-is reality, rather becomes a proclamation of defiance. Yes, this is true. And here’s what is more true.

There’s a moment in the movie The Fellowship of the Ring when this great fiery monster chases members of the Fellowship across a very narrow, very high bridge. Their leader turns to face that creature, plants his staff before him, and says: “You shall not pass!”

Those words from Ephesians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places…” together with the words from today’s psalm: “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring up from the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.” I wonder if those might serve as our staff, something for us to plant before ourselves as we face together into that truth of the world as it is and not as it should be, choosing to defy instead of being defeated, choosing hope over cynicism without pretense or escape. This might be our own way of saying, “Yes, this is true. And here is something that is more true,” our way of speaking into the chasm, and proclaiming: “You shall not pass!”

Maybe this is our staff and grounding against all that would encroach, our way of speaking into the void, defying the narrative and plotline that would consume or destroy: “This is the pledge of our inheritance toward redemption as God’s own people…” “Mercy and truth have met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other. Truth shall spring up from the earth, and righteousness shall look down from heaven.”

[1] http://www.davidlose.net/2015/07/pentecost-7-b-a-tale-of-two-kingdoms/

July 5, Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Baptism of Albert John Murphy Gill

Sixth Sunday after Pentecost

Ezekiel 2:1-5, Mark 6:1-13

Bryan Cones

Well, Albie, before we finish what we started just a few minutes ago and baptize you, it’s my job to tell you something about what your mom and dad and godparents and all of us together are signing you up for in your baptism. Lucky for me—and you don’t know this now, and probably won’t believe it in about 13 or 14 years—you parents are both wise and brave. And since they are the ones who will be leading you the most in this Christian way, I thought I would share with you what they told me about why they wanted to bring you to church to be baptized.

The first thing they said, and it’s very wise, is that they wanted to pass on to you a sense of awe and wonder about this world we live in and of which you are a part. It is special to them to have you baptized outside, here by our big lake, Lake Michigan, which reminds us of all the great waters that God created at the beginning of everything,  and called them all very good. We all come from these holy waters, and so do you, and so it makes sense that we use water to begin our life as Christians, to affirm that we come from God’s good creation, and that all creation shares in the promise of life and blessing in Christ that we celebrate in baptism. They also remind us that creation is the very first way that God speaks to us, and so with eyes of faith we see all nature as full of the glory and grace of God.

The second thing your parents told me—and this is how I know they are brave—is that they don’t know how to do this alone, they don’t know how to nurture you to fullness by themselves. Now it turns out that in addition to being a part of God’s household, you are also a citizen of the U.S., and while there’s good things and bad things about being a part of this country, one of the bad things is this terrible idea that we are supposed to do everything on our own, that it’s somehow possible to live our lives and raise our families, and flourish without help from other people. So it’s a pretty brave and wise thing to admit that we need each other.

And so your parents have brought you here to us: We’re called the church, and we agree that we need each other, and especially all of our differences of age, and culture, and color and language and ideas, to become the people God is calling us all to be. And the church is a lot bigger than just us here, and there are many ways to be church, and many ways to be a family,  and many way to be a human being, and here together we do our best to learn from all of them, because we agree with your parents that we don’t know how to do this on our own.

And the last thing your parents want to give you is a story, one that we in the church all share. In the first place it’s the story of a people, the people of Israel, and how God made them a people and led them to freedom, and taught them how to live together. That first reading today from Ezekiel is from their story, part of which is the struggle about just how to be faithful. And we’re all working on that pretty much all the time.

The second part of the story is about a person named Jesus. Those of us who follow his way—and you are about to become one of us—see in the way he lived and died and rose again, what God looks like as a human being, and so Jesus is the way we become the kind of people God has made us to be.

There’s a lot more that I could tell you about him, but you may be getting bored already. What I will tell you is that he told all of us that small people like you, teach us how to follow the way of God more closely. I think that’s because you remind us how to look at the world with new eyes, full of awe and wonder, and that we need each other not only to survive but to flourish, and that the best stories are the ones we tell over and over.

So, Albie, we are really grateful that your parents brought you to us today to be baptized, because you remind us of why we have chosen this way to live, and we are all at your service as you begin this journey.  So if your parents still want to have you baptized, and I know we want to baptize you, then let’s all stand together and renew the Baptismal Covenant that is the beginning of our life together and our guide along the way.

June 28, Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

The Second Sunday after Pentecost – June 28, 2015

Mark 5:21-43

It’s the hands that I notice.

There are so many pieces to the story inside of a story that is today’s gospel. It takes place on Jesus’ second return from the other side of the Sea of Galilee, showing that he spends time with both Jews and Gentiles. The story draws our attention to Jairus, a leader of some stature in the synagogue who comes to find Jesus in the midst of his entourage, falls down before him, begging Jesus to come and heal his daughter before she dies. Jesus goes, and the crowd follows, and he knows – he knows when the woman reaches out her hand to touch the hem of his garment, he feels the power she claims from him. After acknowledging her before everybody, he goes on to Jairus’ house, together with his friends, together with her parents. The people say she is dead, but suddenly she is not. He takes her by the hand, says, “Little girl, get up,” and she does. “Give her something to eat,” he tells the girls’ parents.

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It matters, that Jesus spends time on both sides of the Sea, blessing Gentiles and Jews alike. It matters that Jesus goes, when he is asked – when he is begged – by a frantic father who gives up any assumption of status for the hope of his child. It matters that both people healed in this passage are female, and as such are themselves without status in that world at that time. And it matters, as well, that both are ritually unclean – the adult woman because she is hemmoraging, the girl because she is dead; that matters, because under normal circumstance, ritual law means that people should not touch them, that they should not touch anyone else. It matters that the number twelve factors in on both counts – the woman has bled for twelve years, the child is twelve years old (think of twelve tribes of Israel, think of twelve disciples of Jesus…). It matters, that both are called “daughter.” And again – those hands matter. Because it is that act of touch, forbidden according to laws and traditions – it is that hand, reaching out, that heals and raises them.

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One of the great privileges of my work is your invitation into moments in the midst of illness we do not understand, into moments at the brink of life and death. I have been with you, hands folded in prayer, hands held together, my hands anointing, your hands clutching a shawl knit for you by the hands of another, one who prayed for you while she made it.

This piece of scripture raises difficult questions: Why was the woman cured, but I am not? Why was that child raised, but mine was not? What is prayer for? Am I doing it right? Am I faithful enough?

I don’t know any more about the people in today’s story than what this text tells us. By that account, these were pretty normal people – whatever that means. Jairus was a leader in the local synagogue, and his daughter was a not-quite-teenage kid. The woman who reached out had been sick for more than a decade and had blown all her money on health care that had not only not worked, but now she was even worse than she had been.

My guess, there were plenty of other ordinary people, other normal people – whatever that means – while Jesus sailed between both sides of the Sea of Galilee, people who were not cured of their diseases, whose loved ones he did not raise from the dead. Were their hands not folded tightly enough in prayer? Did they not reach out insistently enough from within that crowd of people to touch his garment?

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Does healing only mean the cure of disease? Does resurrection have to mean not dying?

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One of the writers I read in recent days talked about a friend of his, diagnosed as a relatively young man with a disease that would kill him by inches.[1] On his diagnosis, the man and his wife grasped their hands together and prayed that he would be healed. Now, two decades later, that man is in the final stages of his disease. And he describes himself as healed – not of the illness itself, but of his fear of it.

Dabney Smith is the Bishop of Southwest Florida and was a candidate for Presiding Bishop in yesterday’s election. He is also a longtime friend of the Lee family. Bishop Lee preached the funeral of Bishop Smith’s wife three years ago. During the candidate interviews at General Convention this week, when he was asked about his view of resurrection, Bishop Smith said this: “I am a lifelong Episcopalian. I know the creeds. I know what the church teaches. But when my late wife became ill and died in six months, I was confronted with finding what I really believe. She was buried during Holy Week. The scriptures during Eastertide became very real for me. I am absolutely convinced that the resurrection is the truth. That Jesus is alive. That we are honored to be here as leaders in his name. He sends us into the world to tell people that they don’t need to be afraid of anything, because God loves them and wants to show them that in this life.”

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And she came up behind him and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be well.”

And he took her by the hand, and said, “Little girl, get up.”

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These past days, the face of our nation has seen healing that didn’t look like cure. We have caught a glimpse of resurrection, though too many – too, too many – have not been spared by death.

We saw hands raised in healing joy that hands might be joined, in the words of justice: “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were…. (The petitioners) ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right. It is so ordered,”[2] justice says.

We saw hands grasped together, in defiant commitment to the miracle of resurrection, as a people with every right not to, showed again that forgiveness is not something that faithful people feel, but something that they do. Even while their throats were filled with tears.[3] And hands pulled down a symbol over a statehouse that too long served as the reminder of a tradition that enslaved and divided. And a people, who together are more than the sum of their parts when they are alone, raised their hands, and stood on their feet, to sing about God’s Amazing Grace.

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And she came up behind him and touched his cloak, for she said, “If I but touch his clothes, I will be well.”

 And he took her by the hand, and said, “Little girl, get up.”

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Sometimes healing doesn’t look like cure. And sometimes we catch glimpses of resurrection, though too, too many die, though our throats are filled with tears.

Does prayer work? This is what I believe: as we grasp our hands together, we become something greater than we were, when we were alone. And as we ask something of God, we grow into nearer relationship with God. We bind ourselves, reaching our hands toward the God who is always reaching out toward us: the God of healing, the God of resurrection.

[1] Michael Lindvall. “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary Year B, Volume 3. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009. 188-190.

[2] Obergefell v. Hodges, 2015

[3] Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2015

June 21, Fourth Sunday after Pentecost

Job 38:1-11, Mark 4:35-41

Bryan Cones

When you picture the scene in today’s gospel, how do you see it? What does the boat look like? Does it have sails? Is it covered, with a cabin? Does it have oars? Is it just big enough for all the disciples? Is it crowded? Can you feel the wind? What about the water—is it already in the boat? Are you wondering if it is about to sink?

How about the scene of Job in the whirlwind? By this time in the story Job has now lost everything: all his possessions are gone, his children are all dead, his wife and his friends have abandoned him, even his body is covered with sores. What does God’s voice sound like? Is it deep, or maybe high? Is it loud—or just a whisper? What does it feel like to be Job in the whirlwind? What does this encounter with God feel like? Are you comforted? Frightened? Angry?

Both passages today describe crisis, and by entering into these stories, perhaps we can feel what it’s like to experience or remember crisis: They are both existential in a way. Job has asked that most basic of questions about life: Why me? What have I done to deserve this calamity? It is the kind of question one might ask when we get a dreaded diagnosis, or we lose our jobs, or have some other tragedy befall us, such as when a person filled with hate and racism enters our church and shoots nine people at a Bible study. Why them?

 The gospel story seems even more immediate, a matter of life and death, and so maybe harder to relate to: The disciples are wondering if they are going to survive, and not at all sure if they will. Maybe this is a bit harder to imagine, at least it is for me, but when I have looked at pictures of migrants crossing from Africa or the Middle East to Europe, in rubber rafts bursting with people and about to sink, I think I see at least an illustration of what it might feel like.

Our readings today have different endings: Job ends in the middle of God’s speech, while the gospel story resolves with a demonstration of Jesus’ power. Later in Job, God restores to the main character everything that he lost.

But I’m not sure we should be so quick to move to some resolution, given the events of this week and what has been happening in the world, as if the Bible provides easy or pat answers to the storms and whirlwinds of life. The world seems to me more in crisis, and I wonder what Christian faith has to say about living in crisis, and the feeling of being in crisis, whether they are more personal like Job’s, or more immediate like those migrants in the boat. And I’m not sure that our stories in this case are necessarily very comforting. But I do think they suggest some things to think about.

One thing I think stories suggest is simply that we can’t escape the crisis: There is no getting out of the boat— or at least if you do, you aren’t going to make it. Sometimes being faithful means standing in the whirlwind, listening for the holy questions God may ask us. I think God may have questions for us about Charleston, questions about why we continue to tolerate this kind of violence in our culture, and what we might do to stop it, or God may have questions for those of us who are white, about why we continue to tolerate racist attitudes among white people that continue to victimize people of color, and most especially African American people. I think God may be asking us the kinds of questions that may take a while to answer.

Another thing I think these stories suggest is that faith and safety don’t necessarily go together. When I imagine that boat in the gospel, it is open to the elements, open to the storm. To be Christian is to be open to the world, and sometimes that let’s someone dangerous in, as our siblings in Charleston found out. One element that makes the case of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church so frightening is that its members were practicing the kind of welcome we preach, which made possible the intimacy of that violent act. I’ve heard people suggest that churches need to beef up security, by which I presume that means keeping some people out of the boat. I’m not sure we can do that and remain true to ourselves.

The last thing these stories suggest to me about faith in crisis is that we can’t do it on our own. Part of Job’s misery was that his friends and his wife had failed him; and if you’ll notice in the gospel story before the storm there were “other boats” with Jesus: Where did they go? It takes all those other boats, and all those other people, to pass through the storm to the peace Jesus promises. We are all in this together, and surviving is not something anyone can do alone.

So what’s the good news? Beyond our Bible stories, today, there is one more story that might give us something to be hopeful about: As I drove up to Wilmette this morning, I had to avoid all those runners, doing the Race Against Hate, a memorial for an African American man killed by a white supremacist right in our own backyard. That race hasn’t yet brought Ricky Byrdsong back to life, and it certainly hasn’t done away with the hate and racism that just claimed nine more lives in Charleston, but it is maybe a port in the storm, an image of what we might accomplish together in crisis, and, I hope, a sign of fairer weather ahead.