Proclaim by Word and Example

This sermon was preached on April 19, 2015 at Grace Episcopal Church in Medford, MA. The texts for this sermon were:  Acts 3:12-19 ,  1 John 3:1-7 ,  Luke 24:36b-48 , and  Psalm 4 . At the end of a major holiday or even a minor one like this strange Massachusetts thing called Patriot’s Day I’ve been hearing about, I am often left with a profound sense of “Well, now what?” I think that emotion is heightened after Easter and Holy Week, the climax of our faith, come to a close. On Easter, the empty tomb is filled to the brim—with joy, triumph, meaning, and new life. But after the day itself fades and the lilies from the altar are given away one by one, the emptiness of the tomb begins to weigh heavy on my heart. Christ is risen, but now what? The truth is that Jesus is still gone to me, in so many ways. The Gospel passage from Luke today brings Jesus’s presence back to us. It is the second appearance of the resurrected Christ in Luke’s Gospel. In the first, Jesus walks...

This sermon was preached on Saturday, April 4, 2015 for the Great Vigil of Easter. The texts for this sermon are found here . Everyone loves a good comeback story. When, at the last minute, just when all hope seems lost, our hero overcomes the villain, the underdog surges ahead, the ball soars through the net as the buzzer sounds. We heard several stories tonight celebrating moments of the salvation story just like that, when God stepped in at the last moment to deliver his people. We heard how the animals clambered onto the ark as the rains began to fall. We heard how Abraham’s knife was stayed by an angel right as he was about to bring it down on his son. And we heard how the waters of the Red Sea crashed in over the pursuing Egyptian chariots just as the last of Israelite refugees scrambled safely onto the shore of the other side. The story of Easter is part of that story. It is the same story and it is also a different story. This time all was lost. Despite the mockery of th...

This sermon was preached on April 4, 2015 for Holy Saturday at Grace Episcopal Church in Medford, MA. The texts for this sermon were:  Lamentations 3:1-9, 19-24 ,  1 Peter 4:1-8 ,  John 19:38-42 , and  Psalm 31:1-4, 15-16 . Today we are gathered at the darkest moment of the Christian faith. The body hangs still and brutalized on the cross, Christ’s most loyal disciples have scattered. The nightmare of Good Friday is over, but the night lingers on. Jesus is dead. Into this moment, enter our two characters from the John passage today. Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, wealthy, privileged and powerful elites of Jewish religious sects, people who had the most to lose by associating with Jesus. Indeed, John tells us that Joseph’s fear of the Jewish authorities kept him from revealing his discipleship to Christ. And yet here, right at the moment when he has everything to lose and nothing to gain, Joseph asks Pilate for permission to bury Jesus’s body. Nicodemus, who firs...

This sermon was preached on Sunday, March 29 for Palm Sunday at Grace Episcopal Church. The Gospel for this sermon is:  Mark 14:1-15:47 . “She has done what she could…whenever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” Every Sunday we hear Jesus’s request that we remember his new covenant whenever we break bread and share wine together. In this Gospel, in Mark’s passion, Jesus asks us to remember something else—his anointing by the woman from Bethany. Her name has been lost to history, and, if we let her, she’ll disappear back into this long Gospel passage today as well. I might have passed by the importance her bold gesture, too, had I not encountered her just the other day at the high school, when some of our Peace team members and local clergy joined in a teen-led discussion helping friends in need. Our group started out by listing the problems our friends were facing—everything from the girlfriend who’s not e...

This sermon was preached on March 8, 2015 at Grace Episcopal Church. The texts for this sermon were:  Exodus 20:1-17 ,  1 Corinthians 1:18-25 ,  John 2:13-22 , and  Psalm 19 . On Thursday morning, the lights in the office started flickering strangely. Carol, our church administrator, and I had just enough time to exchange a look before the fire alarms began blaring. Thanks to twelve years of public schooling, my reaction to fire alarms is very well ingrained. I mentally ticked off the rules in my head: no time for coats and bags, leave everything behind, walk calmly to the nearest exit, don’t reenter the building. When I was little and frightened of the scary noises, the fire drill instructions were like a promise. Follow the rules and everything will be fine. Today’s Exodus passage presents perhaps the most iconic rules of Western civilization. The Ten Commandments. A foundation of stone for the Israelites stand on in the desperate confusion of the desert wildern...

This sermon was preached on Sunday, February 22, 2015. The texts for this sermon were:  Genesis 9:8-17 ,  1 Peter 3:18-22 ,  Mark 1:9-15 , and  Psalm 25:1-9 . We’re talking a lot in church about wilderness this Lent. If you were with us on Ash Wednesday, you may have picked up a little Lent kit bag of your own piece of wilderness to take home with you. As I was setting up that devotional space in my own home, carving a nice, neat spiral in the sand, I realized I carry a lot of ideas about what wilderness is already even before I open the Bible. Sometimes I like to think about wilderness as a beautiful, pristine place, unspoiled by modernity or urban life. I picture an idyllic, sun-lit meadow, filled with chirping birds and no evidence that any other human being has ever existed—not even a footprint! I carry that image of wilderness somewhere within me each time I venture into nature. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been out in nature filled with peaceful sereni...

This sermon was preached on Sunday, February 15, 2015 for the Feast of the Transfiguration at Grace Episcopal Church in Medford, MA. The texts for this sermon were:  Exodus 34:29-35 ,  2 Peter 1:13-21 , and  Luke 9:28-36 . I don’t know about you but I’ve gotten pretty tired of things getting transfigured by dazzling whiteness. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve done my darndest to stubbornly hang on to my childhood wonder and joy at the sight of each new snow-covered world storm after storm. But the enormous effort that takes has somehow robbed me of my ability to connect to Christ’s transfiguration with emotions of awe and astonishment. Then I came across some writing by an Episcopal theologian named Martin Smith that made me question if that was the only way to access this story. Martin Smith wrote about his experiences as a spiritual director—a kind of life coach who helps people grapple with their spiritual practices and beliefs. Part of his job was to ask people the right que...