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Fourth Sunday after Epiphany: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28; Psalm 111

The season of Epiphany is one where Jesus is revealed. Over the past two weeks, we have heard stories of Jesus calling his disciples. Today we hear another story, of Jesus preaching at Capernaum. There “he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes”. So there was something different in his teaching.

At Capernaum he also confronts a man who had “an unclean spirit”. When the man cried out, Jesus rebuked the spirit, saying “‘Be silent, and come out of him!’” The onlookers were amazed, both at his teaching with authority and his ability to command an unclean spirit.

We do not, in the Episcopal church, say much about authority. And yet we need to know how to recognize authority, and identify those who claim authority with no justification. Who do we believe? In an era of artificial intelligence and fake news, this is not a trivial question. Just this morning I read about a set of websites that use AI to create fake obituaries after sudden deaths. In one case, they even falsely said that a young man who died in an accident had been murdered.

Recognizing authority is not a new problem. In today’s reading from the Hebrew scriptures, Moses tells the people of Israel that there will be other prophets who follow him. The Israelites are warned that if they do not heed a prophet sent by the Lord, they will be held accountable; on the other hand, prophets who speak in the name of other gods, or who have not been sent by the Lord, “that prophet shall die”. The Lord reminds people that they have to recognize who really speaks for the Lord.

Obviously, recognizing authority is critical not just in our lives as Christians, but in our lives as citizens. Paul provides some guidance here in our reading from Corinthians, when he reminds us that “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up”. Looking for love may help us discern those who speak with authority. Does what someone says increase love? Does it build connection and inclusion?

In the documentary shown this week, A Case for Love, which was inspired by Bishop Curry, we heard stories of people who had acted with love, and the impact of their choices. When we act in love, and use love to encompass everyone, we bring healing to people and to the world. We can even act in love towards those who have done terrible things: we do not need to deny the things they have done, but it is only if we treat them with love and respect that we have hopes of change.

Recognizing authority is a challenge. What our gospel today reminds us is that the authority may not come from those we expect to hold it. Jesus was, after all, just the son of a carpenter, not a scribe or a pharisee. And yet he had authority.

Let us keep looking for love.

Third Sunday After the Epiphany, January 21, 2024: Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1 Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20; Psalm 62:6-14

Today we are asked how well we listen. What do we hear, and what do we do with what we hear? We are not, as a society, very good at listening, especially to things we do not want to hear. So today’s readings speak in a very real way to the world we live in.

We start with Jonah. Having rescued Jonah from the whale, the Lord sends him to the city of Nineveh to warn of impending doom: in forty days, the city would be destroyed. In case you’d forgotten, the reason Jonah ends up in the whale is that the Lord wanted to send him to Nineveh, and he ran away. This time, Jonah does as he is told. He listens to the Lord.

Much to Jonah’s surprise (and probably to the Lord’s) the people of Nineveh listen the first time. They put on sackcloth, and they repented. In the section our lectionary leaves out, we hear that the King puts on sackcloth and sits in ashes, and calls for everyone to fast. And the Lord changed his mind: Nineveh is not destroyed. The people of Nineveh had listened and acted.

In our gospel reading, we also know people are listening. Mark tells us of the process by which Jesus gathered those we know as his disciples. He sees Simon and Andrew, and calls them, offering to make them fishers of people. And apparently without pausing, they joined him. Soon he sees James and John, and calls to them, and they too leave, abandoning their father to finish mending the nets.

It’s a bit shocking in our modern world to read of those who took what turned out to be momentous decisions wihtout apparently hesitating. Most of us would think of all our obligations and sort out those before throwing it all up and following some rando who offers to change our lives.

In our lives, the calls we receive are less dramatic. We don’t normally have to go sit in sackcloth on ashes to get through troubles. We are not usually called to abandon work and family to serve God. But we may hear other, less dramatic calls. What does it take to hear them? Do we listen? Do we act?

First Sunday after Christmas, December 31, 2023: Isaiah 61:10-62:3;  Psalm 148; Galatians 4:4-7;  Luke 2:22-40

In today’s gospel we leave the intimate scene in the manger that dominates Christmas images. With his parents, we travel the short distance to Jerusalem. There his parents follow Jewish law and present their first born son at the Temple and dedicate him to the Lord. At the temple, Luke reports that Jesus was recognized by two people. Simeon was elderly, “righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him.” He had been told he would not die before he saw the Messiah. When Simeon holds the infant, he proclaims thanks to the Lord, saying, “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace, according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.”

Following Simeon’s hymn, the prophetess Anna, who was 84 and “never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day”. She saw the infant, she praised God and spoke of the child to everyone “looking for the redemption of Jerusalem”.

I am struck by the response of these two elderly people. Maybe we have Christmas all wrong. We talk about the magic of the day for children, but children have little difficulty creating magic in their lives. It is those of us who are older, who have lived with the griefs and challenges of life, who know how difficult it will be for the children we love, who most need Christmas. We need the reminder that life is not just work and hardship, but that there is salvation and hope. Our work at Christmas is not just for the children, but to remind ourselves of the hope that

Both Simeon and Anna see the child, and know hope. They announce that hope to those around them. It may be difficult among the busy-ness of preparing for Christmas, doing all the things that need doing, that it is about hope. May we listen to Simeon and Anna. As we listen to them, we can admit that we welcome the hope of salvation that has arrived with Jesus.

First Sunday in Advent, December 3, 2023: Isaiah 64:1-9; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18

This is the first Sunday of the new church year, and the Gospel for today ends by telling us to “Keep awake”. Soon, Jesus is telling his followers, the world they know will pass away. But no one knows when it will happen, so you have to stay alert. This is not a prescription for long term sleep deprivation, though, but one for long term attention.

While Jesus tells his followers that this end time he is telling them of will happen soon-“this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place”-we know many generations later that it has not happened. Or it has not happened in the way we understand it. So what do we do?

We may not be facing the end times, but we all have finite lives. And it is important to pay attention. We need to pay attention to the world around us. And we need to live in the world following Jesus as best we can. If we do, we will be ready for the things that come our way. And there is much we can pay attention to these days: the environmental crisis, the ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, the refugees fleeing violence and an unforgiving climate, homelessness, child poverty, growing racism and antisemitism, the list could go on. None of us can act on all of these, but we do what we can where we are.

The season of Advent is a season of preparation. As we prepare for the arrival of the Christ child, we need to also be aware of the longer story. As we pay attention, there is also hoe from Paul: Christ will “strengthen you to the end”: “God is faithful”. As we wait, as we pay attention, we are not alone. That is another thing to which we need to pay attention.

25th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 28, November 19,2023: Judges 4:1-7; Psalm 123; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Matthew 25:14-30

When I first started reading today’s gospel, I groaned inwardly. This parable of the talents so easily slides into “being rich is good, and you’ll get richer”. After all, the slave with 5 talents trades with them and doubles his wealth, as does the slave with 2 talents. The slave given only one talent was afraid of losing it. When the master returns, he rewards the first two and then punishes the third, who is thrown into “outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth”. I’ve always had a soft spot for the third slave, who had little and was afraid of losing it.

But as I read it, I began to play with the biblical word “talent”, a unit of money, and the English word talent, or gift. And I started to think in the way I do in my day job as a teacher. Every teacher knows that their students have different abilities, skills, and knowledge. When I was in high school, I had a crusty Russian teacher who would ask students who were struggling if they did well in math. She then showed how learning a language was like learning math: she tried to help them use their gifts in a different context.

In my history classroom, some gifts and skills are more useful than others. What I and most teachers try to do is what my high school Russian teacher did: to help students use the skills and gifts they have as well as they can, to build on what they have to get a bit further.

God has given us each gifts, what Paul calls “gifts of the spirit”. We have choices about what to do with them. How do we share them? How do we ensure that the gifts we are given multiply? How can we avoid being so risk averse, like the third slave in the parable, that we don’t dare share our gifts? So often we are, like the slave with one talent, afraid that we won’t be good enough, holding ourselves to impossible standards. But whenever we share our gifts, even feeble ones, they somehow increase. Sharing our gifts is a risk, but it is a necessary one.

It’s not about making money. It’s about making God’s kingdom.

All Saints, November 5, 2023: Revelation 7:9-17; Psalm 34:1-10, 22; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

Today we observed the feast of All Saints, when we remember the saints who have shown us the way. In the calendar, All Saints on November 1 is followed by All Souls day on November 2, when we remember all those who have died, whether or not they are saints.

In many Catholic cultures, there is a tradition that the time between October 31 and November 2 is a time when the dead can visit us – a source of many Halloween traditions. The Mexican traditions of Día de los Muertos (All Souls) encourage people to remember their ancestors, not just those they have known: the visual displays in ofrendas, with pictures and gifts, are a vivid reminder of those who have gone before us.

In the last year, many people I cared deeply about have died, so the remembrances of All Saints and All Souls seem more important than ever. The Litany of the Saints incorporates saints known and unknown, and gives us an opportunity to remember those in our personal pantheons.

This remembrance is important, because we carry things from those we have known and loved. They have all have taught us something. In honoring All Saints and All Souls, we have the opportunity to also give thanks for their lives and the gifts they have given us.

May we remember those who have gone before, and pass their lessons on to those who will follow us.

Twenty-second Sunday of Pentecost, Proper 25, 29 October 2023: Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46

The Pharisees ought to have known better by this point in Jesus’ ministry. If you ask Jesus questions, you will not come out of it well. In today’s gospel, they ask what is the greatest commandment. Jesus answers with complete orthodoxy.

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This is a paraphrase of Deuteronomy 6:5, the start of the sermon of Moses before the Israelites enter the land they are to be given. Moses tells the Israelites to “Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.“(Deut 6:7-9) In other words, Moses had told the people of Israel that this was their central obligation. To this day, Jews put a mezuzah on their doors, and rolled inside is a scroll with the Hebrew text of Deuteronomy 6:6-9, 11.

But Jesus adds another commandment: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself”. This is taken from another version of commandments given by Moses, and the full text of the verse is interesting: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord“. (Lev 19:18)

Jesus continues, telling the Pharisees that “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” Again, this was not a controversial statement. Many discussions of the Ten Commandments refer to the two tables, with the first set of commandments being our duties to God, and the second set our duties to our neighbor. You can certainly fit all of the ten commandments under these two.

These two commandments are thus central to Jews and to Christians. But we all know that both of these are simultaneously simple and hard. Jesus’ answer invites more questions. What does it mean to love God with all our heart? what does it mean for our human loves? And how should we love ourselves? Because only if we know how to love ourselves do we know how to love our neighbors.

I confess that this week, as we watch the terrible violence in Israel and especially Gaza, I was particularly struck by the full text of the verse Jesus references for the second part of his statement. “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people.” We are singularly bad at this as individuals and as societies. I suspect that I’m not the only one who remembers vividly the ways I think someone or other has hurt me. I hold grudges. And we do it as nations. We hold grudges, and we seek vengeance.

There is nothing simple about loving our neighbors, even without thinking we should not hold grudges. Yet we often feel helpless in the face of violence and vengeance. The violence is Gaza is grounded in a long history of both antisemitic violence and violence against Palestinians. In the Episcopal Church’s office of Government Relations email calling for a ceasefire, they suggest both reaching out to those with political power, and prayer. Here is what Bishop Curry said this week:

Prayer matters and makes a difference. We must pray. So, pray for wisdom and moral courage for world leaders so that violence does not beget more violence—because violence doesn’t work, and violence will not bring about a just and sustainable and enduring peace.

We can all pray. So let us pray, that we and those throughout the world may learn to love God, and love our neighbors.

Twenty-first Sunday of Pentecost, Proper 24, October 22, 2023: Exodus 33:12-23; Psalm 99; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10; Matthew 22:15-22

Today’s gospel provides a line that is often cited out of context: “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s”.

This seemingly simple answer is a way of deflecting a trick question from the Pharisees. This is always a sign with Jesus that the answer will not be as simple as it seems. “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor” seems to demand a yes or no answer. But Jesus asks first to see the coin which would pay the tax.

This may mean that he did not carry money: just as he instructed his followers to “take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts” in Matthew 10, he traveled without money and lived outside the normal exchange economy.

Whether Jesus did not carry money, or asked for it for dramatic effect, he uses the coin to answer the question. The coin has the emperor’s head on it. So that is his. What Jesus did not say, but his listeners would have known, was that we were made in the image of God.

In life, answering the question of what we owe to God and to the state can sometimes be complicated: should we pay taxes to support policies we think are unjust? What is it that belongs properly to God? How can we be faithful to God and faithful to a government that will, almost inevitably, in one way or another act counter to God’s will as we discern it? Numerous protest movements in the U.S.–abolition, Civil Rights, anti-war, pro-birth–have, after all, based their resistance on their understanding of their moral obligations.

There is no simple answer to the question of what belongs to God and what belongs to the political power under which we live. It is, instead, a question we will answer in different ways at different times. But we need to remember it is a question.

19^th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 22, 8 October 2023; Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20; Psalm 19; Philippians 3:4b-14; Matthew 21:33-46

The Lord’s delivery of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 is very dramatic. It takes place, we learn in the previous chapter, in the third month after the Israelites left Egypt. After two days of preparation, the Israelites are at the foot of Mt. Sinai, while Moses is called to the top of the mountain, and then told to get his brother Aaron. Everyone else is at the foot of the mountain.

The mountain is shrouded in cloud and smoke, and there is thunder and lightening, and the sound of a trumpet. It was evident that something important was happening. And it appears the Israelites are grateful that God is speaking to Moses, not to them: they are convinced that should God speak to them, they will die.

What God has to tell Moses is not complicated, just ten rules for living. They deal with four big things. First, our relationship with God. Second, our relationship with time. Third, our relationship with family and neighbors. Finally, our relationship with money and wealth.

These were rules which sought to create new ways of being as the Israelites built their life away from the Egyptians. They are often simplified into two, love God and love your neighbor. But do more, pushing back against overwork and exploitation.

“Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy”. This is part of loving God, making time for God. But it is also taking time away from work. A right relationship with the world makes time for rest and worship.

Similarly, the command not to covet represented a direct challenge to the exploitation the Israelites had left behind in Egypt. After all, as we learned in Exodus 1, their enslavement had been a result of the Egyptians’ fear that the Israelites would become more numerous and more prosperous than they. The Egyptians coveted the wealth and power the Israelites had accumulated, so enslaved them.

We see the results of such covetousness again in today’s gospel. In his parable, Jesus describes tenants who covet the owner’s vineyard. They decide to kill the heir, so they can seize his inheritance. Here covetousness leads to murder. In contrast, the tenth commandment suggests a world where all are allowed to flourish equally.

A world governed by the commandments God gave Moses would be a world of peace and flourishing. We do not live in that world, if anyone ever has. Many people find themselves working two jobs, and our culture celebrates overwork. In a society where the rich have become exponentially richer over the past twenty years and the wealth of most has been stagnant or falling, exploitation is baked into our society and our laws. On television and Instagram, we are encouraged to covet the lives of the rich and famous. Our relationships with God, each other, and to time and money are all distorted.

God is calling us to think about how we live in the world. And we have a relatively simple and clear set of guidelines to transform it. How can we begin to live into it?

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 21, October 1, 2023: Exodus 17:1-7; Psalm 78:1-4, 12-16; Philippians 2:1-13; Matthew 21:23-32

The Israelites are still in the desert, and they are camping in a place with no water. The writer of Exodus tells us that “the people quarreled with Moses”, because without water they would die. Why did we leave Egypt, they wondered, just to die in the wilderness? Moses reports the quarrel to the Lord, who rather than rebuking the people, provides water: if Moses will use the staff he used to part the Red Sea to strike a particular rock, there would be water. And so it was. Whatever he thought of their complaints, the Lord knew that the Israelites needed water.

“Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” This command from Paul’s letter to the Philippians is one many have taken to heart, but which has also been the source of great harm. Some have read this verse, and others like it, as making it an obligation to not think of yourself. This reading has especially been directed at those without power; in doing so, it has enabled many kinds of abuse.

I have often read this in light of my understanding of the great commandment: to love God, and to love your neighbor as yourself. At some point, someone pointed out to me that you had to love yourself well to love your neighbor well. Yet we do not talk much about what it means to love yourself. What are we allowed? At the very least, we are allowed water in the desert.

I was intrigued this week to read that Greek texts have a word that is often omitted in English translations: “also”. Philippians 4 would then read “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.” This shifts the focus, and makes more sense with Paul’s message, which is how the church at Philippi could flourish as a healthy community. To flourish, to be a community of compassion whose love overflows, members need to be able to care for themselves and for others. Like the Israelites, they need to be able to ask for water in the desert.

Modern Christians have had trouble with the idea that we should think of ourselves, that our own needs are important. We pay attention to the need for service, to give of ourselves to others. To do this without attending to our own needs leads to people burning out. The needs of the world are great, and none of us can attend to all of them. And unless we have the water we need to live, we will not be able to respond. There is a difference between acknowledging our own needs and being full of “selfish ambition”.

It is easier to make a simple statement: think of others first. But both the writer of Exodus and Paul suggest a more complex situation. We need to attend to our own needs in order to respond to others. Only then can we be part of a community, as Paul suggests in verse 15, that will “will shine among them like stars in the sky”.