December 13, Third Sunday of Advent

Luke 3:7-18

Kristin White

That “brood of vipers” piece really gets all the attention in this gospel, doesn’t it? Truly. Once you heard it, did you really hear anything else that John the Baptist said?

This is a finger-shaking kind of a text, from a finger-shaking kind of a prophet. And I have to say that in my life as a daughter, a student, and a priest, I don’t tend to learn best by people shaking their finger at me. And I have to say that in my life as a mother, a teacher, and a priest, finger-shaking (from the pulpit or anywhere else) doesn’t tend to work all that well.

It’s too bad that this is how the passage begins, because we’re probably many of us inclined to stop listening. But if we can get past it, and instead find a way to step into this message, there’s rich learning here to find.

First, notice that the crowds are coming to John – not out of curiosity, or to provoke, or be entertained…they’re not looking for him to do a party trick. The people in the crowds are coming to him because they want to be baptized. They want to follow the same God that John follows. And John’s response to them, after that first part about the vipers, is the question: “Who told you to flee from the wrath that is to come?” Who told you to run away from the hard parts? He says. And there’s a disconnect here, because it seems to me that this crowd isn’t running away. They’re coming toward him, toward the water, toward the faith that they don’t really even know about yet. “Bear fruit that is worthy of repentance,” he says, and then more scary finger-shaking stuff about children from stones and the ax at the root and the tree in the fire.

But the people stay put. They don’t run away, at least not from this wrath as it comes, as he calls them names. The people in these crowds don’t leave when John the Baptist tells them the frightening things that will happen if they don’t do what God wants them to do. Instead, they ask him: “Well, what should we do?”

And this is where it gets interesting. Because, given all the rhetoric from a finger-shaking prophet up to this point, I would envision his response being some call to seemingly impossible feats of strength and discipline in which people prove themselves worthy to belong among a very faithful, likely very small, group of followers. “Go run up that mountain barefoot over all the sharp rocks,” I could imagine John saying. Or “give away all your food and everything else you own and then leave everything familiar,” I could imagine (someone else will say something that sounds like that in passages still to come…). I expect John to tell the people to do hard things, to prove they really mean it. And then maybe a little bit more about vipers and an ax and some fire. And a little more finger-shaking, just to underscore it all.

But John doesn’t say any of that. “Do you have two coats?” he asks. “Give one of them to somebody who doesn’t have any coats at all.” “Do you have more food than you need for dinner tonight? Give some of that food to someone who is hungry.” And when the tax collectors come to him, Jewish people whose job it is to take money from other Jews and give it to the Romans who are living in their land, John doesn’t tell those tax collectors to quit their jobs. He says that they should do that work justly. And the same thing is true with the soldiers. He doesn’t tell them to lay down their swords and leave, only not to use their power to threaten or steal.

So step back with me, and look at this story again. People come to John to be baptized. He says some things that might cause us to stop listening, and interlaced in that are a couple of really important pieces: don’t run away from the things that are difficult; do works that bear good fruit. And when the people ask what those good works are, he names things that every single one of us is capable of doing: share your extra coat with someone who is cold, give food you don’t need to people who are hungry. Don’t cheat. Don’t bully. Don’t steal. Be satisfied with what is fair.

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A few years ago I read a book called Switch. It was written by Chip and Dan Heath, two brothers who spent time researching change and the processes that work most often leading to healthy and lasting change. Not surprisingly, finger-shaking was not a common attribute for positive change. What did surprise me, though, was that complex solutions were not high on the list, either.

We live in a time when problems are so complex and convoluted, so long-developed over time that only a similarly complex and long-developed solution to whatever it is would seem to make sense. Poverty. Terrorism. Hunger. Gun violence. Bigotry. These are big problems. And if I’m listening to them with an ear to what I expect John the Baptist to say, the solution to any part of any one of those seems like it would need to involve difficulty, and suffering, and lots and lots of syllables.

The thing is, though, that the findings of this book were that the simple solutions were the solutions that took – simple…not always easy. And they came, not from white papers and conferences with panels of titled experts, but from people close to the issue, people who talked to each other.

It makes me wonder, once we get past his finger-shaking brood-of-vipers business, what the words of John the Baptist might have to offer us today, right here:

·      Don’t run away from situations that are difficult

·      Do the kind of work that bears good fruit…things like:

o   Giving your extra coat away to a person who’s cold

o   Feeding hungry people with the food you don’t need

o   Being just in your dealings

o   Not using your authority to intimidate or hurt people

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The problems we face into as a society, as a world, in this moment, are problems on a grand scale. And maybe it’s easier to shake our finger at the magnitude and enormity of it all, and then turn and flee from the wrath it brings. After all, we have plenty of coats. We have more food than we need for just today. We have jobs and roles that afford us a certain power and recognition and, seemingly, security.

But I wonder, in the simplicity that lies at the heart of this gospel, what might happen on an individual scale if we did what John compelled the people in that crowd to do. I wonder what might happen, if we all did those very simple, very do-able things. And I wonder what the outcome might be, if we did them on a grand scale – by church and community and country.

It sounds maybe too simple, and I don’t mean to underplay the significance of the problems of this world. But when I think about the most frightening things that I see on the news every day, what seems absent to me is a human response. Fractiousness and isolation have taken too much hold. And on a large scale and on a small scale, people are hungry. They’re cold. On a large scale and on a small scale, people have been bullied, and stolen from, and made to be afraid.

And a scary-looking, locust-eating, hairshirt-wearing prophet shakes his finger, and tells us to repent of all that. He tells us to turn ourselves from turning away in the ways our own fear might cause us to. He’s preparing us, for a day when the valleys will be exalted and the hills will be brought low, and a pathway carved out in the desert. He’s preparing us to prepare the way of the Lord. John reminds us that we have enough to share, that we have enough to live with decency and justice, and that we have enough to extend those gifts to others who deserve and should have them, but don’t – and probably won’t – until we learn to share what we have. He’s preparing us again and still, together with the people in those crowds, for baptism.

“I baptize you with water,” John says. “But one who is mightier than I is coming.”

December 6: Second Sunday of Advent, Year C

Baruch 5:1-9; Luke 3:1-6

Bryan Cones

What’s in a name? Or more specifically—what’s in your name? What does it mean to you?

I remember as a kid hoping that my name might mean something: I was disappointed that I didn’t have a good saint’s name or family name, some hero for me to emulate, so I looked up “Bryan” and discovered that it was Irish-ish, and it meant something like “high” or “noble.” I wondered if my name meant that’s was what I was supposed to be, or if my parents had chosen for me it because of its meaning, because that’s what they hoped for me.

I’ve often wondered if parents choose names for their children that way, as blessings or even prophecies: for example if Margaret and Chris named their daughter Grace so that she would always know that she is God’s gift, or if Martha Jacobson’s parents knew that she would be as hospitable as her biblical namesake. Or did her name make her that way?

My partner David keeps a list of people from the news whose names seem oddly connected to what they do: there’s David Dollar, an economist at the World Bank; Tito Beveredge, who is the head of a liquor company; or one of my favorites is the Rev. Robin Hood, who is an activist on behalf of the poor in Chicago. Maybe best of all is Art Goodtimes, a proponent of recreational marijuana in Colorado.

That’s actually a pretty biblical way of looking at names: Abram gets a new name when God makes a covenant with him, and so does Sarai, his wife; Jacob becomes known as “Israel,” “one who wrestles with God,” and becomes the father of the nation.

Today’s reading from the prophet Baruch promises a new name for the people upon their return from exile: “Righteous Peace, Godly Glory.” Elsewhere prophets announce other beautiful names for the people: Isaiah promises that those who do justice will be called, “Repairer of the Breach” and “Restorer of Streets to Live in.” These names reflect the particular callings of those who bear them: One of the unique privileges of the people of Israel then and now is to bear into the world the name of the God revealed at Sinai, to be the living witnesses of the relationship between God and Israel revealed in the Torah and in the history of God with the people.

That’s true in the Christian story as well: As we approach Christmas, we remember that the two figures whose births we recall both have their names given to them by the angel Gabriel: Jesus means “God saves,” and John, “gift of God.” Both of them get titles to signify their ministry: baptizer for John, and Jesus “the Christ,” or anointed. Jesus, too, plays the name game: Simon he renames “Peter” or “Rocky,” the rugged foundation of the new community of faith.

So what’s in a name? What’s in your name? What does it mean to you? If God called you to service as a prophet or apostle, what name might God give you? Or are we not important enough for a special name of our own?

Those of us who have been baptized actually did get a special name like that, part of it is all our own, unique to us, and part of it we all share. Along with our given names—David or Paul or Beatrice or Emma—came a title, a new last name of sorts. We are all named “of Christ”: Amy of Christ, Bruce of Christ, Rene of Christ. Each of us is a unique and unrepeatable part of the body of Christ, each of us with a calling of our own within it. In our baptism God has charged each of us with bringing into the world our own dimension of the mystery of Christ, to allow our own unique gifts to bring forth the healing or the peace or the justice or the kindness or the wisdom of Christ, each in our own unrepeatable way.

One of the “comings” of Christ we are preparing for this Advent is the revelation of Christ that appears in each of us and in this church, the mystery of Christ that can only come into the world in us. And this is the place and people where we, as a body, nurture each other into bringing forth the fullness of Christ in this place, in this moment, as the body that is this church.

Which brings us to the troubles of this week, which we can’t ignore, or to the troubles of any week, or to any of the sufferings of the world: Just as it was and is Israel’s vocation to bear the glory and peace and righteousness and mercy of the God of Israel into the world, so it is our Christian calling and privilege to bear Christ into this world, as God’s response to the brokenness and pain, God’s answer to what Margaret Duval two weeks ago in her preaching about stewardship powerfully named the “casual violence” that plagues us, violence that erupts in so many tragic and calculated ways.

Each of us has the capacity to bring into the world in our own unique way, as our own unique selves, a part of the body of Christ through which God desires to save the world. And it is up to each of us to listen for and discover the very concrete ways we might reveal that presence of Christ: in our family lives, in our workplaces, among our friends, and in the marketplace, so that those around us can experience the healing and love of God in Christ as an antidote to the violence that surrounds us and as an invitation to something new and altogether different.

So what’s in a name? What’s in your name? How will you reveal the mystery of Christ this Advent to a world in need of what only you can bring? 

November 29, First Sunday of Advent

Jeremiah 33:14-16; Luke 21:25-36

Bryan Cones

Preaching teachers have long told their students that a good homily is prepared with the Bible in one hand and a newspaper (or its current digital manifestation) in the other. And that’s often good advice, except when the contents of both tend toward grim: In the news almost constant word of violence and unrest, and in the gospel dire predictions about the upheaval that comes before the end of the world.

Today’s gospel is not unlike the one we heard just two weeks ago from the gospel of Mark, with its “prediction” of the certain destruction of Jerusalem, which had already come to pass. This Sunday it is Luke reflecting on the same event, maybe 15 or 20 years after Mark, and still no Jesus riding to the rescue. As a regular preacher, I’m starting feel like a broken record, or, for those of you unfamiliar with records, a corrupted MP3 file.

Reading from both sources, gospel and news of the world, it might be easy to get a little discouraged—maybe a lot discouraged, or even overwhelmed by all the bad news. Maybe we are tempted to lose hope. Perhaps our feelings start to reflect our seasonal color, and we might all get a case of the Advent blues.

But if we look a little more closely at today’s passages, we might find a treatment for our Advent seasonal affective disorder, some words of hope to keep us going. The first comes from the prophet Jeremiah, who promises that “the days are surely coming” when God will fulfill the promise to Israel: a righteous king from the house of David, who will bring Jerusalem peace and safety. Now Jeremiah is no Pollyanna prophet: His promise comes just as Jerusalem is about to fall to Babylon and things are about to get a lot worse for the people. Nevertheless, God’s faithfulness is unshakeable, Jeremiah says, and this defeat will not be the last word.

Luke, too, though promising signs in the heavens and catastrophe on earth, counsels not despair or fear, but courage and watchfulness: “Stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” God’s reign of justice and peace is coming, Jesus says, as surely as the leaves on the fig tree sprout as summer nears. God has already won the victory. Our task is to keep watch for the certain Advent of Christ, not in great signs or catastrophes, but in the slow unfolding of God’s own natural time.

Now with so much bad news in the world keeping us distracted, it may take some effort to see those leaves unfurling. But I wonder if at the edges of the world’s troubles, we may catch a glimpse of the Advent we long for. I can think of two icons that I have been praying with this past year that have given me hope.

The first was a photograph some time around the Ferguson protests: a young African American boy, maybe 10, tears in his eyes, his arms flung around a white police officer in riot gear, and the officer returning the embrace. I have no idea what the story of that photo is, but in my imagination they were resisting the story of anger and fear that everyone else was telling, creating a little picture of God’s reign, however brief.

The second came a few weeks ago here in Wilmette at Village Hall, after two and a half hours of very angry “testimony” about a possible affordable housing development. The meeting was tense with fear and an undercurrent of racism. I was so angry myself that I couldn’t even speak, much less contribute anything helpful. And at the very end of all that, a person I can only describe as a gentleman, in every sense of that word, stood up and spoke kindly and honestly, and tried to acknowledge everyone’s fears, and suggest to us that maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that. And though, as one of only two African Americans in the room, he had every reason to be as angry as so many other people were, he was considerate and thoughtful, and for me painted a picture of a different direction we all might take.

I don’t know about you, but I could use some more of those icons, more pictures of hope to carry with me this Advent. I’d even like to take part in painting a picture like that. So this Advent, I have a proposal, a treatment for the Advent blues: I’d like to suggest we ask God for more icons like these. Here’s how I am going to do it, and maybe you can join me if it seems good to you, or maybe you can think of another way that works for you.

Every morning I am going to ask God to show me just where Christ is coming into the world, to help me see the images that are surely all around me of how God’s reign of peace and love and justice is coming just as surely as the leaves of spring. And all day long I am going to try to be watchful and alert, with my head raised in the certainty of God’s presence, whether listening to the radio, or talking with my coworkers or friends, or online or on Facebook, or walking down the street. And in the evening I am going to try to reflect on my day and mark those places where I saw Christ’s advent, and then thank God, and ask for an opportunity to be helpful, so that I can help God paint an alternative picture of the world as it might be.

And if we all do this together, I’d also like to propose that we share what we see with each other, at home or at church, so that like those ancient Israelites, and those first hearers of Luke’s gospel, and Paul’s Christians in Thessalonica, we might find our hearts strengthened as we await the sure and certain springtime of our God. 

Thanksgiving Day

Deuteronomy 8:7-18, Luke 17:11-19

Bryan Cones

Last Sunday as I was leaving church, I got a text from my partner, David—three exclamation points. When I opened the text there was a picture, of this, a small brown egg. But not just any brown egg: It was the first egg from our most recent flock of hens, and with it comes the promise of going outside every day, and finding two or three or four or even five eggs from the hens who live in our backyard. And the wonder of finding yet another egg never gets old.

I could say that about our whole backyard “farm” as we like to call it: Four raised vegetable beds, a berry patch, and an extra bit of dirt where David, hilariously, grows a patch of corn. And from it we get every year hundreds of onions and carrots, piles of peas and green beans, and so many raspberries and blueberries that our freezer is full and we haven’t bought a jar of jam in two years. Even now the last greens of fall are still alive under a plastic tunnel. And did I mention tomatoes and butternut squash?

The harvest is so ridiculously abundant that we end up giving tons away. When we went on our camping trip this summer, I asked my neighbor, a former coworker and now parishioner, to please come and take anything she wanted, because so much would go to waste. And she did—loads of beans and tomatoes. And because it was even too much for her family, she pickled green beans and tomatoes, which she then gave back us to enjoy—what earth had given deliciously transformed by the work of her human hands and human mind.

That little postage stamp of a city backyard has become for me an image of what we are celebrating today on Thanksgiving: the ridiculous abundance of creation that has the capacity not only to feed us, all of us, but also preaches a better sermon about the capacity of God to give than the one you are hearing right now. And what a marvelous image of God’s self-giving, what we call “grace” in the Christian tradition. A Franciscan friend once preached about God’s relentless giving in the image of a fruit tree, of a God so eager to give us good things that creation is constantly pushing it out toward us, starting in the roots of an apple tree to squeeze out an apple on the other end, and not just one apple, but bushels and bushels on a single tree.

And then there is energy that powers it all, the light from the sun, which a spiritual director I once heard likened to the grace of God: a relentless engine of light and energy going in every direction. And just a small portion of that solar power falls on our planet moves the air into wind and weather, the heat of which draws up water to create rain, and the light of which is the foundation of the life that feeds us. God’s hunger to give is all around us, and above us, underneath us, in my case, in my back yard, even coming out the back end of a chicken. And lest we think that all of this is just for our benefit, the psalmist reminds us that God’s generosity is meant for every created thing.

So what is our response? What acts of thanksgiving might we take part in today? Obviously we could begin by acknowledging this great gift with our heartfelt thanks, like Leper No. 10 in today’s gospel, apparently the only one who recognized the source of his healing. Perhaps he could be our patron saint today, opening our eyes to the many riches God is pouring out upon us, right in front of us.

Perhaps we might also see God’s generosity as an invitation to partner with God in magnifying and transforming the gift. As our first reader Bill Doughty pointed out to me yesterday, and as he proclaimed today in that first reading, living in the Promised Land required human effort too, copper to mine, and crops to plant and harvest, grapes to ferment into wine—it wasn’t all just lying there. I would be a bad partner indeed if I didn’t acknowledge that the abundance of my backyard farm has a great deal to do with the gardener, David, who sees his work in the dirt as part of his partnership with the Holy One who planted that first garden in Eden. And those pickled green beans didn’t come that way on the plant: No, that was the result of Meghan’s partnership with what earth has given, now remade by human hands.

And then there is the “giving” part of Thanksgiving: While it may be obvious that the blessings of God flow without measure on all the earth, like the sunshine itself, it is equally obvious that these gifts aren’t shared in such measure. Our partnership with God is not just in magnifying the good things of creation, but in seeing that these gifts make their way in just measure to all for whom God intends them. And I’d propose that’s not just for the sake of justice, though that would be reason enough, but also that we may share with God the joy and pleasure of seeing how these gifts are transformed by those who receive them. In that way, perhaps, we may participate in the givingness that is the very nature of God, and so enjoy with God the wonder of beholding the full flourishing of all that God has made. 

Feast of Christ the King

Kristin White

John 18:33-37

I’ve never had a king. Not in the literal, flesh-and-blood “don’t-get-in-trouble-with-that-guy-or-else” kind of a way. I came of age in the 1980s, and I remember the curated courtship of Charles and Diana, remember waking up in the night to watch their royal wedding. As a lifelong Episcopalian, I do love a parade, and that was as pretty as any I’ve seen. In the end, though, when I think of what it is to be king, the pageantry of it all seems sort of beautiful and quaint, maybe an interesting distraction, but ultimately not relevant to my life. And I kind of want to ask  that queen, or that king: “Who are you, really? And why are you doing this?”

Today is the day we celebrate as Christ the King Sunday. The readings all talk about sovereignty and dominion. And I wonder, as I imagine someone coming to us today, I wonder how the church might respond to those same questions: Who are you, really? And why are you doing this? Our response matters, for us and for those who would ask. Because in this time of Paris and Beirut and Baghdad and now Mali, in this time of debates and budget cuts and refugees, those twin seductions of fear and isolation are very much with us. And I don’t believe that the church can afford, in this moment or any other, to be a quaint distraction, finally irrelevant to people’s lives.

I want to ask if those are the real questions behind Pontius Pilate’s defensive words to Jesus in today’s gospel: “Are you the King of the Jews?” Jesus doesn’t seem to think it’s Pilate’s question anyway. “Do you ask this on your own?” he says. Is there a chance that what that threatened and anxious governor wants to know of the strange prisoner before him is this: “Who are you, really? And why are you doing this?”

“But as it is,” Jesus says, “My kingdom is not from this world.”

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Last Sunday Bryan preached a remarkable sermon about telling the truth in the hardness of this time – of Paris, of the shootings that continue to happen, of the death that is too much with us. He shared that truth, in his words, “Because I’m your pastor. And I love you.” He shared the promise of our baptism: that God does have a plan for the hope of the world. And that plan? It’s us.

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More than a year ago, we dug in hard to the question of who we are, really, as St. Augustine’s Church, of why we do what we do. We had conversations all over the place – among vestry and wardens and clergy, at coffee hour, by email, at adult forums. We wanted to say something real and true of our mission. And this is it:

We invite people into our midst.

We connect with God and each other.

We equip ourselves as disciples.

We ask God to send us forth.

When we created this year’s annual giving campaign, the thing that made the most sense was to share who we are, really, and to talk about why we’re doing this. We’re telling the story of being Shaped by Mission in letters and pictures, in newsletter reflections, in people speaking of their experience as Margaret will today.

Who are we, really? We are a church that, when we found out four days before Christmas last year that a girls’ choir from Kenya had arrived in Chicago without a place to stay, members of St. Augustine's invited them to stay in your homes. We invited them to sing at our Christmas Eve service, invited them around our table, invited them into our lives: ice skating and learning to ride a bicycle and watching for the first snowfall of their lives. Who are we, really? We’re a church that connects our lives of worship inside this space with the hard things and the beautiful things happening out in the world – a church that on the Sunday after the President’s eulogy at Clementa Pinkney’s funeral, at direction not my own, turned together to connect our voices as we sang about God’s Amazing Grace. Who are we, really? We are a church equipping ourselves from smallest to tallest, with children carrying the stories of Jesus into our lives. Who are we, really? We are a church asking that God will send us forth, just as we prepare to send out a truckload of gifts; so that 35 families who otherwise might not have Christmas presents, now will.

As I thought about this sermon today, and the stories and pictures that people have shared, and will, it made perfect sense that I would be talking about our giving campaign on Christ the King Sunday. Because every one of those stories and pictures offers a glimpse of the kingdom. A kingdom not of the world as it is, but of the world as it should be.

I’ve been thinking of Bryan’s sermon all week, in a call-and-response kind of a way. The phrase I can’t get out of my head is this: “Because I’m your pastor. And I love you.” It drew me in, and compelled something from within me. And I hold that for the church, together with those questions: Who are you, really? And why are you doing this? I hold it all, with the tragedy in our world and in our communities and in our own lives. I hold it all, standing against the fear and isolation that would seduce us into thinking we can build a fortress that promises our own security. And what I hear us say, together, to that question: Who are you, really? Is this: We are the Church. We invite and we connect and we equip and we send. And what I hear us say, together, in the face of tragedy, and to people understandably seduced by fear and isolation, and to people who suffer the results of that seduction…what I hear us say, together, to the question: Why are you doing this? Because we’re the Church. And we love you.

On this Sunday of Christ the King, I give thanks for you – for a church that I would describe as many things, but never quaint or irrelevant. I give thanks for a church that really is Shaped by Mission, a church living into God’s call in a world that starves for a worthy hope. I give thanks for the church I love. And I ask that you give as generously as you can, to help us be who we are, as fully as we are able. I will tell you that I’m not asking you to do anything that I do not. As a sign of our commitment to this parish, John and I pledge 10% of our income to St. Augustine’s.

I’m glad to talk about the practicalities of what would be possible as we all give from our generosity. Please let me know if you want to talk more about that. What I will say to you now is that when I heard about Beirut and Paris, about refugees and poor people who need a place to be welcome…when my dear friend was diagnosed with cancer…when doctors admitted my sister’s husband to Intensive Care last Thursday…what I wished for them all was that they had this church. I wished for them all to have St. Augustine’s.

And I know that we can’t be everywhere. But we can be right here, as fully as we are able.

Who are we, really? And why are we doing this?

Because we’re the Church. And we love you.

November 15: Twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Daniel 12:1-3; Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25; Mark 13:1-8

Bryan Cones

I wish I could stand here today and tell you that Sunday church is a place of safety, a kind of shelter from the storms of the world, an hour when we can close those doors and shut out the sometimes horrific things we human beings do to each other, or a place where we can forget about the suffering that bad luck or just being in the wrong place at the wrong time can bring.

I wish I could tell you that grace of God and these four walls and this beloved community could protect us from the destruction rained down in Paris, or from the funeral last Tuesday of a 9-year-old boy targeted in an alley in Englewood, or the random shooting of a beautiful young woman from Evanston, or even from the more everyday sorrows of cancer or disability or grief.

I wish I could tell you that being good, and following Jesus, and saving plenty of money for retirement and living in a nice community and being a responsible citizen could guarantee that nothing bad will happen to you and will keep your children safe.

I wish I could tell you that because I’m your pastor, and I love you, and want the best for you, and I want all that for myself and my family as well. But I can’t tell you any of that, because I'm your pastor and I love you, and because we all know it’s not true, and I wonder if that’s one of the reasons we come here on Sunday.

I know it’s not true because a few years ago I visited a neighborhood in Syria called Yarmouk in Damascus, bustling with blocks and blocks of low rise apartments and shops, and full of beautiful, kind, hospitable, cultured people, eager to become friends and to make peace together. I know that neighborhood now to be a smoking ruin, completely destroyed in a suicidal civil war.

I know it’s not true because of a 45-year-old friend of mine, a handsome, funny, thoughtful and exceedingly kind person, a man devoted to his partner, who has always done good work, and is a model citizen, and was diagnosed with cancer not two months ago, and is now in hospice and hopes he might make it to Thanksgiving.

I know I’m not the only one who can give examples like that, who can testify that life isn’t safe, and that being good and going to church and believing in God don’t guarantee protection from any of the dangers of the world.

But even if I could get up here and lie to you, and tell you everything will always be OK, these three readings today would expose me immediately. All three of these scriptures were written for days like to today, for times like these, and for people like us, when the world seems to have gone completely mad, and the faithful are wondering just what God is up to, if anything.

The gospel makes it sound like Jesus is foreseeing the Temple’s destruction, but the community of the gospel writer, 30 years later, has already heard the news: Jerusalem is a smoking ruin, just like my Syrian neighborhood, razed to the ground by an earlier group of thugs in a breathtaking assault meant to inspire terror all around.

Daniel’s community, just 200 years earlier, was reeling from the tyrannical rule of the Greek empire that preceded the Roman one, complete with the unrelenting desecration of the Temple and the abuse of human beings that would shame even ISIS.

And the preacher of the long sermon we call the letter to the Hebrews, which we’ve been reading from these past weeks, decades after Mark, is pleading with her beleaguered community, whose members are about to throw in the towel, because, despite the resurrection, nothing has really changed. The Temple is destroyed, Israel’s hopes are dashed, and the Christian community itself is now under threat.

All these believers are asking the same thing: What’s the plan? How is God going to rescue us? When is Jesus going to come back and fulfill his promise? When is all this going to be over? And Jesus really isn’t much help: It’s just going to get worse, he says. “These are just the birth pangs.” So don’t expect him to parachute in anytime soon.

So is there any good news to be had? Anything helpful at all? Of all the places we could look, it’s the writer of Hebrews, one of the weirdest books of the New Testament as far as I’m concerned, who finally at the end of her long sermon gives the best counsel. It boils down to something like: Remember your baptism and keep coming to church. In other words, don’t give up on being Christian.

Remember your baptism: For us, perhaps, it means a constant return to the baptismal covenant we all renewed just two weeks ago at Grace LaRosa’s baptism.

It means remaining faithful to this fellowship, this Sunday gathering, to coming here week after week for a taste, in the words of the Bible and the sacrament of the Eucharist, a taste of the world that God wants for all of us.

It means resisting evil, whether in the form of grotesque violence, or in the hidden fears and hatreds that feed it, which are alive and active here in Wilmette every bit as much as they are in Chicago, or Paris, or Syria, or anywhere there are human beings living together.

It means proclaiming in word and example the Good News of how God is transforming the world, of how in Christ God has changed even death into life.

It means serving Christ in all persons—all persons, everybody, everybody, everybody, no matter where they are from or how they got here, or how they worship God or even if they do, or if we agree with them or even if we like them.

It means striving every day, striving in the ways that God provides to us, for justice and peace, and for the dignity of every human being.

Finally, the preacher to the Hebrews says, we must “provoke” each other to these good things, not let each other become discouraged and overwhelmed, even to get after each other when we do. Christian life, after all, is a marathon, not a sprint, and sometimes we just have to gut it out.

Because God really does have a rescue plan for the world, a path to the new creation God wants for us. The thing is: We’re it. It’s us, it’s the church, at least in part, the continuing presence and power of Christ in the world, God’s community of first responders and relief workers, reconcilers, healers and peacemakers, even provocateurs, whom God has called in Christ to take part in the renewal of the world. And it’s through the everyday bits and pieces of faithful living that God is bringing forth God’s dream for creation.

None of this, of course, will keep us safe, or comfortable, and in fact it may be both dangerous and challenging, but it sure seems to me something worth living for, and maybe even dying for. 

October 25, Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 10:26-52

Bryan Cones

Last weekend, while at home for my brother’s wedding, I watched a lot more football and baseball than I normally do. I also watched a bit more daytime TV, more Good Morning America and Rachel Ray, than usual. I was mesmerized by what I was seeing: During football and baseball, about every third commercial was an advertisement for one of two fantasy sports websites: FanDuel and DraftKings. They were particularly intense: Both promised big prize money, both left the impression that playing fantasy sports could change your life, or at least you would have a lot of fun you weren’t otherwise having. After I had seen the commercial 50 times, I was wondering if I shouldn’t go ahead and sign up, since if I used the promo word “punter” FanDuel would match my $200 with $200 of its own.

Good Morning America was an experience of whiplash: First there was generous coverage of the plight of an NBA athlete, Lamar Odom, who not only has the misfortune of being related by marriage to the Kardashian family, but also suffers from serious addictions that left him drug-addled, injured and unconscious in the kind of establishment that is only legal in Nevada. Following immediately on that story was “news” of a new, FDA approved injectable chemical that acts like a sponge inside your face, lifting aging skin and helping users appear to be more youthful. It turns out that wrinkles aren’t the problem so much as facial drooping.

Then NFL football commentator and talk show host Michael Strahan appeared not only on his show Live with Kelly Ripa, but immediately after on Rachel Ray, selling his new book, Wake Up Happy, in which he shares his own tips to happiness. He also has a new clothing line that can help you look happier, too, no matter how you feel.

These examples are all parodies of our society’s vision of the “good life,” notable more for the vulgarity of the portrayal than for their basic accuracy. We can find the good life in the excitement of the game, or in the rush of a get-rich-quick scheme, the pleasure of experiencing how what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas (though not always), or in looking younger than you are, or in the celebrity status that draws the eyes of millions to your life’s drama, with focus on every titillating detail, or brings fans eager to lap up your reflections on your success.

These are all examples from a certain pop culture range—and perhaps those are not the particular distractions that tempt us—but I think we could look at any kind of media and find ample expressions of these same visions of life, whether in the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal or in Forbes or Sheridan Road magazine, or even driving up and down Sheridan Road, or on the screen of any of our mobile devices, where our heart’s desire may only be a click away. What they have in common is reliance on appearance, on illusion and fantasy, with little substance to provide a vision for the kind of life that God wants for human beings.

Which brings us to today’s gospel story, a parable about a person with impaired vision, and how he comes to see clearly again. It may be tempting to imagine that this story is not really about us, because Bartimaeus is described as blind, though any of us that wear glasses or contacts would probably be considered “blind” in the ancient world. But this gospel story is at least in part about impaired spiritual vision, coming after Jesus’ disciples have over and over again failed to understand who Jesus is, and what his mission entails, and the place his mission must end. It’s the outsiders, such as Bartimaeus, who get it.

I see in these contemporary examples similar parables, images of how our cultural blinders bend the divine light of reality and prevent us from seeing things as they are, or, worse, propose visions of the good life that are in fact terribly destructive to us when taken to extremes. These contemporary example have got me wondering how my own vision gets distorted, and what it would take to get it corrected so that I can see again? What would it take for any of us to see more clearly the life God has envisioned for us? What might we ask Jesus to remove from our field of vision so that we could see clearly the life God proposes for us?

I can say for myself that I was grateful to have as a contrast to all that my brother and sister-in-law’s wedding, where I was surrounded by many couples, including my parents, who by grace and faith had chosen the vision of commitment and fidelity in the practice of Christian marriage. I was inspired by my brother and sister-in-law’s courage as they made their promises to each other, and as we who had gathered with them made our promises too. Their wedding reminded me of the importance of community of practice in keeping my vision clear, when there are so many other lenses out there that might seek to impair my sight with an alternate view.

That got me thinking of this community and our own practices of seeing clearly: of gathering here Sunday by Sunday to examine ourselves by the light of scripture, and by the divine vision of the world proposed in this eucharistic meal.

I see in this assembly examples of people who seek to live that vision, and notice in myself the desire to cultivate relationships with people who are for me examples of clarity. Perhaps we cultivate those relationships in the practice of gathering on Tuesday nights with “modern men of faith,” or at a Saturday morning Bible study, or by taking time out each week to knit a prayer shawl, or read and discuss a book online.

Or maybe we find that clarity in service together, by welcoming our Family Promise guests this week, while also asking clarifying questions about why our society tolerates conditions that leave families without safe housing. Maybe such practices leads us to a Wilmette Village Board meeting about affordable housing in our community, or a press conference about gun violence, or a demonstration about peace or economic justice.

“Your faith has made you well,” Jesus says to Bartimaeus. It strikes me that all these practices are indeed practices of the faith that makes us whole and well, that help us keep our vision clear, and that like Bartimaeus we have this role in our healing: to commit ourselves over and over to the practices that help us to recognize the distortions around us, and to have clarity about what God is calling us to. I wonder if, at our best, that’s what Christian churches, and our church, might be for the world around us: a community always asking Jesus to help us “see again,” practicing the faith that heals, always seeking clarity as we follow the way of Christ. 

October 18, Feast of St. Luke

Kristin White

2 Timothy 4:5-13, Luke 4:14-21

During a call shift the summer I served my student hospital chaplaincy in seminary, we had an especially frightening emergency. A teenage boy had fallen from a significant height. We knew that he was being flown to the hospital by helicopter. We knew that his parents were in another city at the time, and driving frantically to get to the hospital to be with their son. We knew that the situation was very, very serious. And we didn’t know any more than that.

What I remember of that night was the waiting. Two teams gathered in the largest treatment space in the ER unit: the hospital trauma team, and the pediatric trauma team. Doctors and nurses and other staff stood lined up around the walls of that space, waiting for the noise of the helicopter, for some sign that the boy who had fallen had arrived into their care. They were silent. There was a kind of tension in that room, with all the people gathered, people who were particularly and especially equipped for this moment, ready to do work that would mean life or death. I remember the silence. I remember the palpable tension of gifted people poised for action.

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Today we celebrate the feast of St. Luke. He lived in the first century in the city of Antioch, in ancient Syria. Scholars argue about whether he was a Gentile convert who began following Jesus, or an Hellenic Jew. The apostle Paul claimed Luke as a friend, as we see in that very curious passage from the Second Letter of Timothy today: “Only Luke is with me,” Paul says. “So get Mark and bring him, because he’s useful. And bring my cloak, and the books, and above all: the parchments.” Well, more on parchments another time. Whatever books and parchments Paul required there, we know that the Church ascribes authorship of the gospel of Luke to the saint we celebrate today, as well as the Acts of the Apostles. The patron saint of artists, physicians, surgeons, students, and butchers is known to have been a physician himself, as well as an artist.

Each of the four gospels accounts in the Bible carries its own imprint, its own particular kind of focus. Mark’s gospel moves quickly and economically through the stories of Jesus, using the word “immediately” at almost every turn to convey the urgency of all that Christ and his followers are doing. Matthew’s gospel looks at Jesus through the lens of fulfilling ancient Jewish law and promise. John’s gospel invites us into the story with otherworldly poetry. And Luke? Luke makes the gospels more whole. Luke invites in the others, the crazy relatives, the people on the margins, people you don’t see elsewhere. Only Luke releases the stories of the angel and of Mary, tells of Mary’s visit with her cousin, Elizabeth. Only Luke recovers Mary’s song: “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.” Only Luke frees Simeon and Anna in the temple to witness the holy child: “Lord, let me now depart in peace, according to your word,” Simeon sings, “for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared for all people.”

Of all the passages from the gospel of Luke that organizers of the lectionary could have chosen for his Feast, it seems interesting that they settled on this one. It’s not a passage about a woman healed, or a child restored to life, or a man taking up his mat to walk away from a troubled pool of water. This is not even a passage about Jesus casting out demons, often reframed in modern conversation as Jesus healing someone of mental illness. Instead, we have this passage: Jesus teaches around the country, and the people pay attention to what he has to say. He goes home to the synagogue at Nazareth, stands up to read the scroll from Isaiah about good news and release and recovery and freedom. As he rolls up the scroll, the people can’t take their eyes off of Jesus. He “begins to say,” the passage tells us, “He begins to say” – ‘Today this is fulfilled. And you have heard it.’

It would seem, from our knowledge and tradition that St. Luke was about the work of healing people’s bodies. Our history and tradition tell us that this was the vocation that Luke was particularly equipped to do. And I think he did. And I think there was more. I believe that St. Luke was also about the work of healing a people, that he was somehow divinely inclined toward the healing of the nations.

Luke shares with us a vision of reconciliation among all those characters who were cast out of the other narratives of Jesus’ life in this world. And so just by including them, he gives us a vision of reconciliation, of wholeness, made possible. And he goes on further to speak it into being as though that wholeness has already taken place: “He has filled the hungry with good things,” Mary sings in the Magnificat, “And the rich he has sent away empty.” “Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” Jesus says to the people in the synagogue who can’t take their eyes off of him.

I find myself thinking again of that boy flown in to the hospital where I served, after falling from a significant height. And I think of what the good news of this gospel might mean for him, both then and today. I wonder what release and recovery and freedom might mean in his young life. And I pray again in thanksgiving for that silent and well-prepared team waiting for him, who by their work would serve as agents of healing for that boy who had fallen.

I find myself thinking about St. Luke’s home town, Antioch, in ancient Syria. I think about the bombings and the bullet holes and the people fleeing with the family they can gather and the things that they can carry. I think about the art of millennia to be found there, some of it stretching back to the time of Luke’s life and before, even perhaps the icons that Luke would have written, now destroyed forever. What would good news even mean for people who have lived there? What would release and recovery and freedom look like in their lives? What would it take to proclaim the healing of Syria?

And I wonder about good news for us, for you, for those whom we serve. What does good news mean in your life? Where have you experienced release or recovery? Where have you found freedom? And how have you been healed? How have you been an agent of wholeness and healing for other people?

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In honor of St. Luke, we will pray today for healing and wholeness and peace. We will pray for those who serve to heal our bodies and our minds, for those working to heal the world around us, for those who heal in the name of the Church.

Today, and in the days to come, I also ask you to do this: please pray and reflect on the ways that God has particularly equipped you as an agent of God’s healing in the world. You may be a doctor or a nurse, a teacher or a therapist. Or you may not. Either way, I invite you to imagine yourself into that ER unit almost a decade ago, tense and silent and poised in anticipation of the life-giving work that needs to be done. How are you especially prepared to be a bearer of God’s good news? What kind of release and recovery do you have to proclaim? How is God preparing you to free yourself and others from oppression?

You have gifts to offer, each one of you, gifts that will help make this world more complete, more whole, more fully the world that God created us to be. As you do, as you share those gifts together with the gift of yourself, you claim your legacy among the company of saints, right alongside Luke the healer. As you do, you help proclaim this as the year of the Lord’s favor.

And Christ’s words echo again and still, speaking truth into being: “Today. Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”