Sermon for the Third Sunday in Easter
April 22, 2012
Luke 24:36b-48

This morning I want to continue a theme I picked up in my sermon on Easter Sunday.  On Easter we used the gospel reading from Mark, which ends pretty abruptly at the tomb with the angel saying he is not here, he will meet you later in the city.  I talked on Easter about what an open ended message that was for all of us.  In Mark’s resurrection, we are not shown any images of what the risen Christ might look like.  Instead, we are told to go out into the world and expect to have our own experiences of the risen Christ.  I said that Mark points us toward a future with Jesus that is still unknown, an unseen future into which we must live.

In this morning’s gospel reading from Luke we have a contrast with Mark’s simple tale and at the same time, some connection with the message that our future with Jesus is yet unwritten.  Luke’s story today gives us a lot of information about Jesus that we didn’t get from Mark.  We have Jesus appearing in the presence of the gathered disciples who are startled frightened.  We have Jesus making himself known in the act of sharing food with the disciples.  We hear that Jesus’ life and death is grounded in the scripture and tradition of God’s unfolding revelation to Israel, and finally, we hear the charge that the message of Jesus is to be proclaimed to all the world, beginning in Jerusalem.  Luke gives us a lot more information about Jesus, but a bit of the background of Luke’s message brings me back around to the theme of an unknown future with Jesus.  It also makes me think of Jor-el.  

You remember Jor-el, right.  No not some obscure figure in Hebrew scripture, though the name does sound like Hebrew.  Jor-el was Superman’s father.  He was well known to those of us who lived with stacks of DC comics and who considered ourselves followers the caped crusader.  You may remember the story.  Superman ended up on Earth because his planet, Krypton, was about to be destroyed.  His father, Jor-el, packed him of in a home-made space capsule--not unlike Moses’ mother putting him in the Nile--and sent him off to earth hoping that his son would find a new life.  In that capsule, Jor-el packed a few essential things his son would need to make it in the new world.  

In a similar way, Luke is preparing Jesus for a journey into a new situation and he is sending him out with the essentials he will need for his new life.   Luke’s world, like that of Jor-el, has been rocked in ways that make it difficult for Jesus to remain in Jerusalem.  Let me explain.  

It is believed that Mark’s gospel was written twenty or thirty years before the others, and that between the time of those writings, the Romans sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the temple.  When Mark wrote his gospel, the Jesus movement was centered in Jerusalem.  Christians were seen as a sect of Judaism and the home of Christianity was certainly in the ancient holy center of God’s people.  By the time the time Luke and Matthew and John’s gospels were written Christianity’s future was moving out into the larger world of the Mediterranean.  There were those in Jerusalem who thought maybe the new sect had brought on the trouble with Rome.  The Jesus movement was not as welcome in Jerusalem as it had once been.  Christianity had moved along trade routes and come to life in Asia Minor, Greece and Rome.  The later gospel writers were writing for a new audience, and along with the stories of Jesus they packed a few essentials for life in a new and unknown future.  

Like Matthew with his great commission and John who has Jesus in a long discourse hand over his mission to the disciples, Luke includes a commissioning in which he says that the message of the gospel is for the whole world.   The list of essentials we hear Luke including as he commends the message of Jesus to its future in the world includes basic elements of the faith that you and I still recognize.   

First, Jesus becomes known in the community of those who gather in his name.  We know that to still be true.  There are all kind of ways Jesus can become known to us, but they all start here, in this place where we tell the stories and where we offer our hopes and our lives and eventually ourselves as disciples.   Then there is the basic central message that Jesus becomes known to us in the context of a shared meal.  For two thousand years the bread broken by Christians on this, the first day of the week, has marked us, transformed us and fed us.  The meal we share at the table can seem to us an everyday act of piety and it can be the deepest of mysteries.  This table fellowship with the risen Christ will continue long after we are gone.   Another of the basics is that Jesus puts previous revelation in context and is himself put in context by those same scriptures.   This one is especially important for Luke.  Luke, who goes on to tell the story of the new Church in the book of Acts, wants to make sure we know that Jesus is the keystone in salvation history.  And finally, Luke wants us to know that the message is to be spread to all the corners of the earth.  Christians have a mission in the world.  All of these are packed away with care by Luke and handed over to a world and a future Luke could not have imagined.  Luke seems to have chosen well, for these Christian essentials still provide the structure and framework of our faith.  

Of course, another theme kind of jumps out as we read the story from Luke this morning.   In today’s story, unlike the Emmaus story which precedes it or John’s breakfast on the beach, Jesus’ eating of the piece of fish is used to provide an extra level of surety about the truth of the risen Christ.  A ghost can’t eat a piece of fish, but the risen Jesus can.  Luke wants us to know that this part of the story is true.  That would seem to be the hardest part of what Luke and John and Jor-el had to do.  Some things you can pack along with what you are commending to the future, but how do you pass along what you have come to cherish in your heart about this person, this experience you are having to let go of.  Maybe the answer, at least in the case of Jesus, is you don’t.  Jesus will be ok out there.  Jesus will make himself known among new people in new ways.  We know that to be true.  You’ve given us the basics Luke.  We can work with those.  In fact we are called to keep working with those basics in this new world.

When Luke spoke of Jesus being foretold in scripture he was referring to the promise of an heir of David restoring the kingdom of God.  He was thinking of Isaiah whose suffering servant would provide a homecoming for the exiles.  He had in mind psalm 22, my God, my God...which mirrors the story of the crucifixion.  Maybe it is still up to us in our time to continue the work of looking at history through Jesus.   We were told that scripture proves the truth of Jesus.  Maybe Jesus is also the embodiment of the prophet’s call for a new kind of sacrifice of self giving and service to the poor.  In our time, for many, the mission of making Christ known is centered at least as much in service to others as in words about God and Jesus. Christians have gone back and forth between those two calls since the beginning, and I am certain that the call of our heart whatever it may be in that two sided mission is important for our world in our time.  In this new world of ours the hope of meeting Christ in the community gathered continues, and in our best times we challenge ourselves to see Christ in new places and among people who are very different from us.  As the world becomes smaller through communication we have to look for ways to experience the risen Christ in a community where some of us are Christians and some are Muslim, Jews, Hindu and on and on.  Luke, who so obviously trusted the experience of Jesus showing himself to the disciples, sent us not just a story about one moment in history, but a lens through which we might watch for the risen Christ in our own time.  

The truth of the story that luke so desperately want to convey really can’t be given.  I am often dismayed as I hear the early evangelists trying to convince us at such a distance of the solid reality of what they are proclaiming.  I hear them, but I can’t always feel the certainty they want to impart.  That’s the way it is when you have to release your most cherished beliefs into the unknown world of the future.   The deepest, most profound truth of the story has to do with experience and that has to be lived.   And we know something about that too.  We experience the risen Christ in little ways and in profound ways.  In the face of another person, in moments of insight, in a voice that reassures us in hard times, in the call to love and serve, in lives changed.  We live those moments and then we return to this place with its community,  and table,  and lore of scripture and tradition.   Here we put our experiences of the risen Christ in the context of their experiences.  Here we find encouragement to keep watching and expecting to meet him in new ways in lives yet unseen.  JB   

A Sermon for Easter, 2012

Mark 16:1-8

Alleluia Christ is risen!

I don’t think I’ve ever begun an Easter sermon in any other way.  Those words mean Easter.  They are Easter.  But as I hear them this year, I wonder what we are supposed to think of such a claim.  Christ is risen.  We come to this morning from all kinds of lives, with a variety of experiences and levels of engagement with the Christian faith.  For some, the words, Christ is risen, may speak of the event that changes everything, a concrete moment in time when the rules were turned upside down.  For others the words may be just another outrageous claim by a church who asks its members to believe the wildly impossible as a condition of belonging.  If you are wondering about what kind of claim this risen Christ idea might be able to have on your life you are in good company.  This is a good place for such questions.

I know also that I’ve never approached an Easter sermon without wondering how best to welcome all the people who don’t get here that often.  If you haven’t been to church in a while I am delighted that you decided to come this morning.  Really.  As far as I’m concerned, this is your service.  It’s easy for the regulars to be here, but some of you have had to do some traveling to be present today.   Maybe you’ve had to ignore some of your serious questions about the church.  Maybe you decided to test the waters of Church again after a long hiatus and were afraid the preacher might draw attention to those who don’t come very often.  Oops.  Sorry.  Many are here, I’m sure, out of pure love for someone who asked you to come with them this morning.  What a nobel and worthwhile calling.  I am so glad you’re here.  

And for all of you who are here throughout the year and those who are visiting friends and relatives.  Welcome to this glorious morning of music and color and celebration.  I look forward to this day all year long, to the hymns, the crowd, the children the Easter outfits the flowers.  All of it.  But again.  What is it about?  What do those words, Christ is risen mean.  Given half a chance, I’d love to try and explain it to you, but this year I have been warned off that task by a fellow named Andrew Sullivan whose article you may have seen in the most recent issue of Newsweek.  

The line on the cover said, Forget the Church, Follow Jesus.  Turning to the article, I read, “Christianity has been destroyed by politics, priests, and get-rich-quick evangelists.  Ignore them.”   Now I can go off on get rich quick evangelists and politicians with the best of them, and because of that, I sure didn’t appreciate seeing myself lumped in with them like that.  Evangelists, politicians and priests.  Humph.

But reading on, the point became clear enough.  Part of the problem with Jesus is that everyone has their take on what he means and what he is about, what people who follow him should be about, how they should act and what they should believe.  It is so easy to take possession of the newly risen Jesus, bending him to our own limited views and purposes.  Even when those purposes seem so right…..maybe even when they are right.  The problem begins says Sullivan when we start accusing others of not following Jesus, or not understanding what Jesus is about, or claiming that those who don’t agree with us are enemies of Jesus.  You can hear all of that and more in the political headlines this week.  And you can hear people in my business talking pretty easily about what jesus is calling us all to do.  I have my lists,  maybe you have yours.  Sullivan says that kind of infighting about the message is a big part of why people give up on the Church.  I say it again,  if you happen to be here today because you’re willing to give the Church another chance, God bless you. I only hope I don’t screw this day up for you.  Of course I do have some help in the form of a gospel reading we don’t usually haul out for the main service on Easter morning.  

You may not be familiar with the resurrection story in Mark’s gospel.  We just heard the whole thing.  At least what we heard is considered the oldest version of Mark’s Easter story.  You may know that Mark’s gospel was written at least twenty years before the other three gospels.  The other writers had Mark’s gospel and some other material, but they owe the heart of their stories to Mark.  Those other gospels are much longer than Mark’s because the others added not only stories, but theology and explanation to their gospels.  John and Luke, for instance, have Jesus appearing to the disciples several times after his death.  John and Luke want sightings of Jesus to take place in the context of a meal.  John has Jesus cooking on a beach.  Luke has him break bread at an inn at Emmaus.  Matthew not only tells the stories, he preaches them as well.  When Matthew has Jesus tell a parable, he then has Jesus proceed to tell us what the parable means.  Matthew, Luke and John tell the resurrection story in light of what the Church is already coming to understand and believe about Jesus.  You can feel the interpretation narrowing as the meaning of “Christ is risen” is defined.  

Mark, on the other hand, tells a very open ended story.  He is not here, says Mark’s angel.   Go into the city and he will meet you there.  No word about what will happen.  No expectation about what comes next.  Jesus will be there and together you will do what comes next.  Mark’s Easter revelation is simply that Jesus isn’t where you expected him to be.   He has gone ahead of you and will meet you in the new place.  

Whether you are a regular at these services or are here for the first time today.  Chances are you have some pretty fixed ideas about Jesus and the Church and God.  I know I do.  

What I’m hearing today is that even the best of those beliefs, even my most cherished ideas about what it means to follow Jesus may need to be held lightly.  Mark’s Easter message is challenging in its announcement that the disciples’ new life with Jesus lies out there, in a future yet unseen.  This day is not about reinforcing ideas and convictions as much as it is about freeing us to discover what may still be.   Jesus isn’t where you left him, says the angel.  He’s waiting for you just ahead, down the road a bit.  

Maybe the message of this Easter day has to do with meeting Jesus in some new place in our lives.  If Jesus has been companion and comforter for you, maybe the risen Christ will be teacher, challenger of the status quo, prophet.  If Jesus is champion of the poor, maybe the Jesus you meet in town can help you wrestle with what it means for God to love the rich as well.  Maybe if Jesus has become a sign of God’s, or maybe better, the Church’s judgement, then the risen Christ might be the one who convinces you finally that you…..that you are worth whatever effort it takes for the two of you to walk together in the new life.  To enter that new life with Jesus, whatever shape it might take, we first have to hear that he isn’t where we left him.  He’s moved on and wants us to join him.   

Mark’s gospel--the oldest version anyway-- doesn’t give us any examples of what it means to experience the risen Christ.  No encounter stories.  No surprised disciples.  In this sparse telling of the tale we don’t read about how others met Jesus.  We are instead encouraged to go out and meet him for ourselves.  Our celebration today really isn’t about today, it’s about tomorrow and the next day and the next.  And it is about discovering anew the depth and variety of meaning in the cry that has echoed in the world for all these centuries, the cry that announces the beginning of another new chapter in our story, the cry that points us toward the new life we have only to go out and meet.  Alleluia, Christ is risen!     JB

Sermon for the Last Sunday of Epiphany

February 19, 2012

Recently, in my preaching, I have been talking about Jesus in new ways, ways I didn’t learn in my early life in the Episcopal Church.  Of course what I really have been doing is trying to reclaim some language I had ceded to some other Christian folks who I always thought were just a little too comfortable talking about Jesus.  Anyway, I have been talking a lot recently about the up-close God whose name is Jesus in ways that seem new to some of you and to me as well.  I’ve made jokes about people wondering if I have gone off the deep end, and even Mary has been looking at me a little funny lately.   But there is a way I have always been taught to expect Jesus to be present.  It is a teaching I received as a child and one for which I am very grateful.  From a very early age I was taught to expect to meet Jesus in the Eucharist.

I was taught that somehow, Jesus was in that bread and wine.  Now I have been wanting to talk about the Eucharist for a while--to do some basic introduction of what we are about in this central rite of our tradition and this seems like a good time.  There is a strong connection to the last Epiphany gospel we just heard, but we will get there in a a minute.  What I have come to understand so far about the Eucharist is that we do meet Jesus there, we do meet God there and it happens in all kinds of ways.  It happens in different ways at different times in our lives.  

Some of us have come from traditions that have very specific teachings about how Jesus is in the bread and wine.  They teach that somehow, though the elements still look like bread and wine, they are actually changed into the body and blood of Christ in the prayer at the table.  You may have been told that it is important for you to believe that.  Others may have come from traditions where communion is not celebrated often or maybe not at all, and where it is seen mainly as a commemoration of Jesus’ last night with his friends.  It is a good thing for Christians to do, but there is no magic there.  The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church and some others use a wonderfully ambiguous term to describe what we believe about the bread and wine, one that invites, intrigues and leaves a lot open to interpretation.  We say we believe Christ is really present in this sacrament.  Really present.  We don’t say or worry about exactly how that happens.  We just expect it to be true.  

And it is true for many of us in many different ways over our lifetimes.   Sometimes we come looking for strength and we find it.  Sometimes we seek forgiveness and there it is.  Sometimes we come with no idea what we are looking for and we are surprised to find ourselves renewed in some way we didn’t know we needed.  Other times we come and go without much sense of having received anything, but even those times may be seen to have conveyed something as we look back on them later.  In the Eucharist we get a little glimpse, a little taste of what God is like.  We touch for a moment the God who is for us, who loves us and welcomes us and is poured out for us.  We come to the table, we receive communion, and we go back to our seats and mostly, we never tell anyone what just happened.  We don’t often talk about what we have received--what we have experienced.  We keep quiet and we carry the experience with us as we go out from here into the world.  

It is a little like what happened to Peter, James and John.

The story of Jesus being transfigured on that mountain is always the gospel reading for the last Sunday in Epiphany.  We have been hearing other stories--the magi finding the baby, the healing stories, the casting out of all those demons--all pointing to God present in the world in a new way in Jesus.  This final story is the most dramatic.  Here, Jesus shines with the light of God in his person.  For just one moment, Peter, James and John see Jesus as he really is.  The curtain is lifted for just a second and they glimpse the reality behind the words and the healing and everything else that will follow.  They are given a great gift in this experience of light.  As they come down the mountain, they want to focus on what has just happened, they want to enshrine the moment and Jesus tells them that would miss the point.  They are not to discuss what has happened until he has been raised from the dead.  He tells them ‘the time to tell about this experience will be later, when you are living out my purpose in the world.‘   This gift of clarity will strengthen them, fuel them and remind them of what they are about as they take on the life of being the body of Christ.

Whether we climb mountains with Jesus or take him in our hands in the humble elements of bread and wine, we don’t bask too long in the experience.  We are sent out, changed and marked by the experience to be Jesus in the world.  That “changed” business is another part of what I learned about the Eucharist as a child.  It changes us.  The collect for today quotes St. Paul who says we are being changed from glory into glory until we are transformed into the glory of Christ.  The transfigured Christ is a glimpse of the true nature of not only Jesus, but of ourselves in Christ, an image we are probably not ready to see.   We come to the table week after week to take Jesus into  our hands and we go away marked in ways we may not even notice, ways we may not even have imagined to hope for.  But somehow, God is at work--Jesus is at work in the mystery that is the Eucharist.  And somehow in that process we are made new.

Our seminarian, Susan, was telling me about her trip to the holy land.  She encountered a group of monks in the desert who, when they put the bread in her hands at communion said, “become what you receive.”   In a few minutes when you receive the bread and wine at this table you will hear those words.  The response says it all.  Your line will be, “the body of Christ.”   JB

Again, it has been a while since I posted anything.  That is largely because since August, I have not been preaching from a text.  This past Sunday I learned that I could record my sermon on my i-phone and I ended up with a record of what was said.  The problem you will see as you read this is that I don't talk in very writable form.  I apologize in advance for the punctuation in the following transcript.  I have tried to make it readable, but a proper edit would take me all week.  One of these days I'll figure out how to let you listen on the church's web site.  For now, here is the sermon.

Sermon Preached on the Second Sunday after Epiphany

January 15, 2012

Ok.  I’m looking for a show of hands here.  How many of us would like to improve the quality--the living of our lives?  How many of us have some idea that we would like to be better people?  How many of us have imagined a life where our living reflects our deepest, most heartfelt values even better than it does now?   Now, how many of us think we can get there on our own.  Yeah.  Welcome to Christianity.  

Welcome to the whole Judeo-Christian tradition, the story about the God who intervenes in the world in lives of people who long to make it to a better place, often a better place they can’t imagine.   They just kind of have this intuition, this hint.  They know there is a better place; they somehow know they can be more than they already are.  We are talking about a God who meets those people and says, “let me help you make the journey to that new place, let me get you out to that new place.”   Welcome to Christianity.  Welcome to our faith in which there comes a time in the history of God and people when God says, “you know, it’s time for a new way of joining you and leading you to the next new place, one that will be a surprise to you but that is really what your best heart desires.  I’m going to do that in a new way.”    

And so we get to the season we celebrate now, the season of Epiphany, where the new way of being among us to help us, to lead us, to help us make our way to the new place is a very up-close and personal way.   No longer are we aided by a God who has to be sought in a temple or has to be begged to come near--a God we only see as fire at night or something like that.  Our God is very near and comes among us in a very personal and up-close way, and that personal and up-close God has a name.  And the name of the personal up-close God is, of course, Jesus.

Now I’ve got to tell you that Jesus has not always been a word that comes quickly to my lips.  I was raised an Episcopalian.  I heard a lot and thought a lot about God.  I eventually began to get interested in the Holy Spirit because I knew there was something going on here but I didn’t know what that was about.  I didn’t use the word Jesus very much because I had heard that name used in a lot of ways that were sort of problematic.  When I was a kid and I would hear the other kids ask, “do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?”  I would say something like, “I’m an Episcopalian.  I don’t think we do that.”   That’s just where I was.  That’s what I grew up with.  That kind of talk just didn’t sound good to me.  Growing up there was always a draw to have that kind of a friend that these people were talking about, but it was coupled to what I always took as an off-putting rigidity about ways to understand the Bible and ways to behave, and I wasn’t sure I could do those two things together in any kind of way, so I just quit using that kind of language because the “J” word used to signal hard stuff.

As I grew up in the church I began to understand this evangelical business, you know, the people who say you have to have some kind of rousing experience of Jesus in your life--and you probably have to have a controlled and tight understanding of theology--I began to put that over in a category I wasn’t going to mess with.  I certainly never would have called myself an evangelical, wouldn’t call myself that today, but I’m not sure about what I’d say next week or next year.  Because what I am coming to understand more and more, the longer I stay with this business, is that Christianity is about nothing else really, nothing else but relationship with Jesus in which we travel with that up-close and personal God to the next place in our lives.

Now as much as I have tried to separate myself from all that evangelical stuff, it’s funny.   I was thinking this morning about this sermon and what I was going to say and decided to take a break from sermonizing and check e-mail.  There was my friend John, my life-long priest buddy John, whose theology I have shared since teen-hood.  He said, ‘we just had this guy come to our area and speak.  He caught my interest. He seems to be a progressive evangelical, have you ever heard of him?’  Even John’s getting into this stuff.  I wrote back and said I have one of his books on my shelf and I haven’t dusted it off in a long time.  Maybe I should take another look.  It seems this Jesus stuff is converging on me these days.  

There is a fellow here in town with whom I talk about prayer.  We pray and we get together every month or so to talk about how that is going.  We were talking this week about how it is only in the last year or so that we have both begun to use the name Jesus and to see Jesus as the one with whom we speak as we walk along through life--as we make our journey.  I have, for years, spoken to somebody that I have called God or Spirit, but I have been reluctant to use that Jesus word, but now, here my friend and I are in this place Jesus seems to work.  What I am finding as I go through my life and I live with this God whom I meet in all kinds of ways, is that I’m beginning to have a little different take on all this stuff.  Maybe the person I pray to is Jesus.  Maybe this person I walk with is Jesus, and maybe Episcopalians can know Jesus in some kind of up-close way.

I understand that you may think I’m strange for ever having said I didn’t pray to Jesus. You may also, though--and I think it is likely true for more folks in this place--think, oh,oh.  Baker’s going off the deep end.   Well Baker isn’t going off the deep end, but Baker is discovering, as life goes on, that Epiphany--the discovering Jesus among us--Epiphany is not a one time event.   It doesn’t happen all of a sudden.  It can happen slowly and gently over time.  Until one day you look up and say, by golly he is right here.  He is nearby.  He is close.  

Now there are all kinds of ways for us to know Jesus, and that is part of what I like about this story of Nathaniel and Jesus we have today.  Nathaniel kind of had this idea that one day someone would come along who could make things better, who could lead him to a better place.  He gets talked into--invited into--going to meet this Jesus and Jesus says, “yeah, I know you.  You’re a straight up person, you’re all right.  I saw you under the tree over there.”  And Nathaniel says, “that’s incredible.”  

Now think about that.  The beginning of this friendship is nothing more than a little bit of awareness.  Nathaniel is kind of aware of Jesus and Jesus says, “yeah, I have kind of noticed you too.”   Isn’t that how friendships--life long friendships--begin.  First there’s this, “yeah, I kind of have you on my radar, ok, I know who you are.”  And then you run into each other again and then maybe at work or in school, maybe someplace you begin to have some more interaction and the relationship changes.  And as soon as you’ve had an experience or two together, then the relationship deepens some and in talking with each other you can refer to those other experiences and it just gets richer and richer and deeper and deeper.  

I think that living with this up-close and personal Jesus who comes among us, whom we celebrate in this Epiphany season, I think living with that Jesus is about moving from one level of friendship and acquaintance to another as we grow and become more and more of what we might be able to be.  And I find that in that friendship there are wonderful little changes.  This is the Jesus who loves us, forgives us before we can think about asking for it, who is just extravagant in the way he offers himself for us, and is also the one who challenges us--is also that little voice of conscience, is also that other little voice in the conversation in our head that comes up with a bit of wisdom or a nugget or something we needed to remember, and in that way, manages to change us.  Not in huge ways, I never change in any huge ways, but a little bit.  Maybe a little realization about compassion, maybe a little realization about how to take something that people say to you, maybe a little realization about how to give the tiniest bit of love back.  Little changes that may not seem like much to the people around us if we told them about them, but that seem like scaling some big mountain to us because we’ve done something we didn’t know we could do until that friendship helped it to happen.

I’ve known Jesus in all kinds of ways.  Back when I was a kid taking bread and wine, I knew something important was happening there, I just didn’t call it Jesus.  When I hear that voice of conscience sometimes--I used to try to get it to shut up--now I may try to listen to it a little differently.  I’m beginning to understand there’s more here than I thought.  In exchanges with some of you, in exchanges with others, in receiving love, affirmations, hope--and challenges-- from the people around me I am beginning to understand that’s who’s been there all along.  

And so I guess my message to you this morning is this Epiphany business, this Jesus who becomes manifest among us as God up close and personal--I know that’s a little weird for some of you--but up close and personal, that Jesus becomes known to us over and over again in brand new ways so that maybe at some point in our lives, if someone comes up to us and asks, “do you know Jesus as your personal Lord and savior?” you can just substitute for personal Lord and Savior a word like friend and say, “oh yeah.”  Or companion and you can say, “sure.”  Or mentor, tutor, coach.  Any of those will do.  But the goal I think for us in Epiphany is to end up in a place where we can all say, “yeah, I know this one.  I know this one who showed up among us, who bears God to us in a new way and who is leading you and me to the new place that we can only barely imagine.”   Amen

Long Time No Posting


Dear Friends,


I see that I haven't posted a sermon since June, and it seems a little funny that when I finally get around to posting one it is about money.  
Here's the thing. 


I really haven't been writing sermons down since June.  I was in Longport for the first three weeks of July and I have always just wandered the aisles and talked to those folks.  I left Longport and went to my first residency with the Shalem program in August, where the subject of my next Sunday's sermon sort of came to me while I was running one morning.  That meant I had a sermon a week before I needed it, which most of you know is pretty rare for me.  By the time that Sunday came around, I had decided to wing it, to work without a net, as it were, and I have just been doing that ever since.  I sometimes have some notes written down, but not something together enough to publish here.  This past Sunday I wanted to talk about money, and I was as nervous about the talking as some of you probably were about having to listen.  At 8:30 I stepped into the pulpit and tried to preach from a text which is part of the sermon that follows here.  Walking in at 10:30, my faithful associate, Elizabeth, mentioned that the sermon could use something more.  As the gospel reading wound down, it became apparent that I just needed to trust and talk.  I had enough of this one written that I was able to post it.  


I will work on some way to record and transcribe in the future.  I'm having fun preaching without notes, and I am sometimes surprised at what I hear myself saying.  Thanks for checking out the blog.  JB

A Sermon for Sunday, October 23, 2011

As I begin this sermon, I am thinking about a legend concerning a Virginia priest who enjoyed working youth camps in the summer.  I have always liked youth and church camp, and I know the challenges involved in opening up discussion lines about tabu subjects.  The story on this priest is that he would gather the kids early in the week and take them into the woods where he would proceed to say all kinds of things that he knew they would never say in front of him and that they never expected to hear a priest say, ever.  The idea was to plow down the barriers to real conversation early in their time together.  I was told all this by a camper who fondly remembered the experience some forty years after his time as a camper.

I think about him because I am up against a tabu subject this week and I have been thinking about how to begin the conversation.   I thought about singing you a song.  The subject is so ingrained in our culture that any number of great songs have been written about it.  The Beatles did one almost fifty years ago.  My favorite is Pink Floyd’s offering on the classic Dark Side of the Moon album.  Unfortunately the one that got stuck in head--the one that has been with me all week is one by Lyle Lovett.  And the verse that keeps playing over and over I hope will leave me after this morning.  No finance, no romance.  That’s how she told me goodbye.  First she took my love and then she took my m-o-n-e-y.  Yes, friends.  It’s time to talk about money.

Most years, when this time comes, I try to work some stewardship ideas into a sermon on one of the propers.  This year I decided to just talk as plain as possible about giving to the church.  I haven’t really paid much attention to today’s readings.  I do understand that many people don’t want their preacher talking so plain about money in church, but we’re going to get through this.  I’m going to try to make it easier on you by looking at all those reasons you might not want me to talk about money.  We’ll get through this.   Breathe.

One of the first objections is the idea that You shouldn’t talk about money in church--That somehow, our spiritual lives and our fiscal lives need to be kept apart.  Nothing could be farther from what Jesus taught.  Jesus talked about money all the time.  He talked about treasure and investments and about the concern caused by one lost coin and about the pitfalls of great wealth.  He talked to anyone who would listen about their personal finances, about how they did or did not share their money and the importance they placed on their savings.  Jesus understood with painful clarity the connection between our money and our spiritual growth and he talked about that relationship in ways that made people uncomfortable.  

When Karen agreed to chair the fall stewardship drive, she thought of getting people together to do some reading.  Last year and this year she handed out books and encouraged folks to read, not about giving or about money, but about their spiritual lives.  She’s been at this for a while and she understands what Jesus was talking about when he said where your treasure is, there will your heart be as well.   

Another objection to this talk is I’ll feel bad about my giving.  I can help you with that.  Let me read you a list of what everyone in this parish gave last year.   Just kidding.  Breathe.  I don’t have a list of who gave what.  I do have some numbers though.  Seventy-two families gave some amount between a few dollars and three thousand dollars.  Twenty-two families gave between three and five thousand.  Ten families gave between five and ten thousand, and four families gave ten thousand or more.    Wherever you fit in this line-up, you have company.  You are not alone.   The folks who gave more have mostly just been at this longer.  Their giving has grown over time.  

Maybe the squirmy feeling we sometimes get when the talk turns to money has to do with another concern closely tied to feeling uncomfortable about our level of giving.  The preacher will ask for more than I can give.  I won’t.  Giving grows over time.  Where you are is ok.  You are on your way.  For the last ten years or so, Mary and I have given somewhere between ten percent of our gross income and ten percent of our adjusted gross income.  We certainly didn’t start there.  My first pledge was four dollars a week when I was in college.  At least one of those checks bounced.  The first time we tithed, we did so by accident.  We opened a business in 1980 and our income dropped to the point that what we gave the church amounted to more than ten percent.  Later, after I’d been ordained, I heard a priest friend giving a talk in which she said that she gave ten percent off the top.  I asked her later,  “you do?  Really?”  and she answered, “You don’t?”  


My giving has grown over the years, but my reason for giving has not changed.  That first pledge was made as my contribution toward the good work and the life a community.  My mother had died when I was a teen, my father was not well.  One sister was married and the other had gone to live with another family.  That first year in college I was wondering how my life would end up.  Where would I find support, people to walk through life with me, people to help me figure things out.  The congregation was my group.  They were my people and I was a real person in the life of that community. I belonged. I have always given, not out of a sense of any obligation, but out of a sense of participation.  

You will hear church folks talking about that ten percent number as if it is the only one that counts, but it is a goal, one Mary and I  have worked toward for our thirty years together.  Ten percent comes from Hebrew scripture where it was held out as the part of one’s production that should be returned to God as a thanksgiving for all the rest.  It is a number written deep in our tradition and it has been a standard and guide for many of us as we work at deepening our sense that God is at the center of our lives.  

Mary and I recently attended a workshop on retirement planning put on for clergy by the church.  We were sitting there with fifty other priests when the financial planner put a budget for retirement on the screen.  He had written in five percent for giving to the church and as soon as it went up, several people in the room said, hey what’s that.  You’ve got that number wrong.  That planner left having learned something.  Ten percent was our number.  It is a good number that has helped shape a lot of people’s faith over the years, but it is not the place to start.  

The best way to approach growth in giving is to look at your giving in terms of what percentage of your income you give and then trying to increase by say, a percentage point.  Even more important than that ten percent number is the concept that what we give is related directly to what we have received.  Thinking in terms of percentage-giving keeps that important relationship in view. 

I won’t ask you to give more than you can.  I will, however,  challenge you just as I challenge myself to work toward giving more.  

And maybe the last question I want to address ties back to that first one about spirituality and money.  The question is what are we being asked to support?  Should we finance buildings and staff and programs or should we be feeding the poor?  My response to that question could go on a ways, so I’ll try to be brief.  I have come to believe that the money I give to support the parish is leveraged by the way lives are changed in a faith community.  It’s like the old adage about giving someone a fish or teaching them to fish.  The worshipping community is where we are shaped over time into people who do more and more out in the world to serve others in the name of the Christ.  We are fed and strengthened for that service in this community of friends and fellow travelers.  We are called to support the life of this congregation for each other and through each other for the world.  

And one last word, not a question as long as I am plain-talking about money.  A word about pledging.  A pledge, of course, helps the leaders know what they have to work with as they plan for the coming year. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of making a pledge.  I want to tell you that a pledge is just an estimate of giving--it can be changed if need be--so maybe “pledge” is too strong a word.  But it can also be more than an estimate, it can be a goal as well.  Stretching to meet your “estimate” can be a part of your spiritual deepening process.  Growth always involves stretching and reaching a little beyond what we have done in the past.  If you have given in the past but but not filled out a pledge card, please consider making a pledge, not just to God and this community, but for yourself.  

In the next few weeks you will receive a pledge card and a return envelope in the mail.  When it arrives, I hope you will see it as an opportunity.   JB

A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday of Easter

June 5, 2011

Acts 1:6-14

Our ministry is out there. In the world. We hear it often. This Sunday worship is where we are encouraged, fed, strengthened for our work. Out there. In the world. This is where we prepare, refresh. Here we are forgiven and empowered. Here we are called back to love, which is our work in the world. In this place we remember that we are loved and in that remembering we find purpose we can take with us as we go to our various ministries. Our ministry--the ministry of Christ’s Church--is out there. Each week in our last prayer together we say, “send us out into the world, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you.” And then we go back to our families and children, our desks, our jobs, our volunteer responsibilities, our friendships, our chance encounters with strangers. Our ministry is in the world. We say it often because our work in the world is at the core of our baptismal covenant and our faith.

What I don’t say very often is that we all have a ministry here in this setting as well. Our work out there is grounded in our common life of prayer and communion, of sharing and celebration. And because it is easy to get confused about what is sometimes called “lay ministry”, I don’t talk very often about the important ministry we have to each other and with each other in the worship we do together.

Too often in the church’s life, “lay ministry” has called to mind the work that lay people do during the service on Sunday. Chalice bearers, ushers, readers of lessons and prayers are all ministers in worship, yes, and since the arrival of the current Prayer Book in the 70’s there has been a strong emphasis on the ministry of the laity in worship. That inclusion is a great gift of what we old timers still call the “new” prayer book. It is just that with a stronger emphasis on lay ministry in worship services we have to be reminded that the real ministry of the people of God is in the lives we lead outside this room and this gathering. So I try to remind us all often that our ministry is out there. But today seems like a good day to talk about the work we share here each Sunday and what the call to love might mean for us as the community gathers to be fed.

When they went to the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying, Peter and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas, son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer.

One of the most basic ways we can help each other in our various ministries in the world is to show up here on Sunday. All week long we are challenged in our call to love. What is the right thing to do? Where is justice in this situation? How do I answer him? Do I really need to make that phone call? Why did I respond like that? What should I do now? Our lives are full of questions and they are full of opportunities to be a little more caring, a little more hopeful, to go the extra mile in the service of some good. Every week we will nail some of the questions we live with good answers and actions and we will stumble and struggle with others. We walk through the doors of this place on Sunday looking for grounding, forgiveness, encouragement to go back out and do it all again, maybe a little better. One of the things that can give us courage and hope and strength is knowing we are not alone, that others are struggling and succeeding and growing alongside us. Just showing up here is a sign that you expect to find something here. Showing up is a testimony to what you have found here in the past. Some of us come through the doors each week not sure why we are coming or what we hope to find, and in such times the community becomes the answer. We are all here looking for something--we walk in and see that they are all here looking for something, they must be expecting something, this must be a place of hope. Look around. The people you see right now need your presence. Showing up makes a difference.

All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer. I sometimes hear questions about the relationship between prayer and worship and service to the poor. Someone on the Vestry retreat this year asked what will happen to our emphasis on outreach at St. Aidan’s if the rector signs up for a program centered in contemplative prayer. There are always questions in parishes about whether it is ok to spend money on bricks and mortar when there are so many in need around us. We live in a tension, a good tension between the call to action and the call to prayer. We need to be serious about both.

If you are familiar with the cycle of the Church year, you know what’s coming. Next Sunday we will celebrate Pentecost, the day when Jesus’ followers were empowered by the Holy Spirit for their ministry in the world. Today, though, Luke wants us to know that as they awaited the strength and call to go out and do, the disciples spent their time in prayer. And they prayed together. In John’s gospel today we hear Jesus praying that his disciples may be one as he and God are one. Jesus drew his strength for ministry, his call, his identity from his relationship with God. He was steeped in God in such a way that he found the strength he needed for amazing acts of healing and truth telling and even suffering. I had always heard in this prayer Jesus asking that we might be related to God as he is, but his prayer is that they may be one as we are one. That suggests that the relationship meant to strengthen us for our work in the world is our relationship with this community. The relationship that identifies us as agents of God’s love in the world is our relationship with this community. The prayer life of the community fuels and feeds our work in the world.

The community needs each of us. Who knows what our contributions will be? Who knows where the next vision for St. Aidan’s will come from? Luke’s telling in Acts of the disciples gathering in prayer lists eleven apostles. Before the Pentecost story, the eleven will have elected Matthias to take the place of Judas Iscariot. The company must be complete. Everyone is needed.

And of course, if we are looking ahead to next Sunday, we will be thinking of the day when the Church caught fire and began to grow. If you know something about that tension I spoke of between prayer and action, if you want to see the Church get to work in the world, then you know we need all the help we can get. Just as our presence here on Sundays reinforces the importance of our calling and mission for those we already know, it can serve as a powerful witness to those who are looking for a way to make a difference, in the world and in their lives. Those eleven who gathered in prayer mark a beginning, but they were just the beginning. You and I are a part of the great company who have been drawn into the life of prayer and service that defined their little community.

Everyone is necessary, even people we have never met. Everyone has gifts, stories, dreams. Everyone has troubles, shames, pains. We who would love the poor and the needy must learn to love each other and ourselves. The work of the Church is nothing less than the work of love. That work begins right here where we are welcomed, accepted, and loved, simply because we are children of God. Look around one more time. That is what we share. We are welcome, accepted and loved simply because we are children of God. Let that message sink in in this place over and over again. Then you will be ready to go in peace to love and serve the Lord. Amen