The Parable of the Extravagantly Forgiving Father

Brad Sullivan

4 Lent, Year C

March 6, 2016

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

The Parable of the Extravagantly Forgiving Father

Everyone needs forgiveness.  We need to give forgiveness, we need to receive forgiveness.  We need the grace and healing that comes with forgiveness.  That’s because we all have scars and wounds inflicted upon us over the course of our lives, and we are also all the cause of other peoples’ scars and wounds.  As much as we need food, water, and air, we are starving and suffocating without forgiveness.  Without forgiveness, our past wounds keep on hurting us over and over, and they keep us from living the life of God’s kingdom.  Everyone needs forgiveness.  That’s why God gives forgiveness so extravagantly.

We call the parable which we heard today, “The Prodigal Son,” or the wasteful son.  He spent his inheritance wastefully and extravagantly and then came back to his father, penniless and starving, begging for his father to let him work as one of his servants.  The father ran out to him, having already forgiven him, and restored him, not as a servant, but as a son, and he threw a huge party in celebration that his son was back, essentially back from the dead. 

So, the title “the prodigal son” makes some sense, although, “the extravagantly forgiving father” might be a better title.  Calling the story “the prodigal son,” however, ignores the other brother, the one who stayed with his dad, helped around the house, and then was indignant when his brother came home and was given a party.  That, and the anger he had?  Totally understandable.  It wasn’t fair, he was basically saying, and he was right.  It wasn’t fair.  Of course he was angry, and forgiveness isn’t about being fair.  Forgiveness is about what we need.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote a book on forgiveness which came out of the process of healing and the choice of forgiveness after apartheid in South Africa.  He begins the book with a story of a woman and her daughter whose husband and father had been tortured, beaten, stabbed, dismembered, and killed.  They were speaking to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the murder of their husband and father during apartheid in South Africa.  They ended by saying, “I would love to know who killed my father.  We want to forgive them.  We want to forgive, but we don’t know who to forgive.”

The perpetrators of this crime didn’t deserve forgiveness, but they needed it, wherever they were.  The mother and daughter, also needed forgiveness.  They had a need to give forgiveness.  That was their desire.  Archbishop Tutu wrote about them in his book, The Book of Forgiving:  The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World.  He wrote about the need we have to be forgiven and the need we have to forgive.  He writes:

To forgive is not just to be altruistic.  It is the best form of self-interest.  It is also a process that does not exclude hatred and anger.  These emotions are all part of being human.  You should never hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things:  The depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger. 

However, when I talk of forgiveness, I mean the belief that you can come out the other side a better person.  A better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred. Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood, making you almost dependent on the perpetrator.  If you can find it in yourself to forgive, then you are no longer chained to the perpetrator.  You can move on, and you can even help the perpetrator to become a better person, too.

The brother in Jesus’ parable had a need to forgive.  After rumbling with his anger and resentment for a while, he needed to release those emotions and forgive his brother so that he was no longer consumed by the anger and resentment, so that he was no longer hurting himself.  Forgiveness is the key to the parable Jesus told:  Our need for forgiveness, our need both to give and to receive forgiveness.  The parable really should be called the parable of the extravagantly forgiving father.  Then the focus is not on how we mess up, but the focus is on who God is, our extravagantly forgiving Father.  How beloved are we of God that he forgives us so extravagantly?

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, (1 Corinthians 5:18-20)

God knows that we only hurt because we have been hurt.  We only break others only because we have been broken.  As Archbishop Tutu writes: 

People are not born hating each other and wishing to cause harm.  It is a learned condition.  Children do not dream of growing up to be rapists or murderers, and yet ever rapist and ever murderer was once a child…Forgiveness is truly the grace by which we enable another person to get up, and get up with dignity, to begin anew. 

So, God has given us forgiveness and reconciliation to him, and then he has granted us to be his ambassadors that we might give forgiveness and reconciliation as extravagantly as he.  Our ambassadorship is not easy, of course, because forgiveness is not easy.  It was not easy for God to forgive and to reconcile the world to him.  We hear time and again about God’s vengeance and his wrath.  You can bet our sins anger God.

Just as with our rumbling with our anger and resentment, God was angry at humanity for the harm we cause each other.  Rather than exact vengeance on humanity, however, God took that anger and vengeance upon himself, becoming human, becoming Jesus, and suffering himself, suffering his own anger and vengeance on the cross.  God’s forgiveness of us was not easy, but it was and is extravagantly given. 

The anger and resentment we feel when we have been hurt is, like God’s anger and resentment, understandable and justified.  We need, however, to rumble with it and eventually to release it so that it no longer poisons us.  Such is our need for forgiveness, both to give and receive forgiveness.  And so we are ambassadors for Christ, constantly working to give and receive forgiveness, and constantly telling others of the extravagant forgiveness God has given us through Jesus, and of the healing that comes through forgiveness and reconciliation.  Such healing is not easy, because forgiveness is not easy.  We see in the cross of Jesus the difficulty of forgiveness, and whenever we forgive something in us has to die in order for that forgiveness and new life to happen.  Forgiveness is not easy, but it is needed, for restoration, for resurrection, for healing and new life.  And we are ambassadors of Christ in his extravagant gift of healing through forgiveness.  So I leave us with this prayer from Archbishop Tutu, called “The Prayer Before the Prayer.”

I want to be willing to forgive

But I dare not ask for the will to forgive

In case you give it to me

And I am not yet ready

I am not yet ready for my heart to soften

I am not yet ready to be vulnerable again

Not yet ready to see that there is humanity in my tormentor’s eyes

Or that the one who hurt me may also have cried

I am not yet ready for the journey

I am not yet interested in the path

I am at the prayer before the prayer of forgiveness

Grant me the will to want to forgive

Grant it to me not yet but soon.

Can I even form the words

Forgive me?

Dare I even look?

Do I dare to see the hurt I have caused?

I can glimpse all the shattered pieces of that fragile thing

That soul trying to rise on the broken wings of hope

But only out of the corner of my eye

I am afraid of it

And if I am afraid to see

How can I not be afraid to say

Forgive me?

Is there a place where we can meet?

You and me

The place in the middle

The no man’s land

Where we straddle the lines

Where you are right

And I am right too

And both of us are wrong and wronged

Can we meet there?

And look for the place where the path begins

The path that ends when we forgive.

Amen.

Changing the Narrative

Brad Sullivan

3 Lent, Year C

February 28, 2016

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

Luke 13:1-9

Changing the Narrative

-          Did you hear about those poor Galileans whom Pilate killed?

-          Oh that was awful.  Pilate is a monster isn’t he.

-          I hear he mixed their blood in with their sacrifices.

-          What?  That’s sacrilege! 

-          How would that even work?

-          I don’t know.  They must have been awful people though.

-          That’s true, for God to have something like that happen to them.  Oh hey Jesus, did you hear about those awful Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices?

We don’t know exactly what the conversation was, but Jesus responded by asking them if they thought the Galileans whom Pilate killed were worse sinners than anyone else.  By Jesus’ response and by what we know about how people tend to talk about things, we can guess that Jesus was spot on, and the conversation about the tragedy of the day was quickly turning into nasty stories about those awful Galileans and thanksgiving to God that the speakers were not like those awful Galileans. 

The people talking about the Galileans were trying to make sense of their world.  They’d heard about this awful killing by Pilate.  They were probably horrified, sad, frightened, and threatened all at once, and so their brains did what peoples’ brains do.  They started making up stories to go along with what they had heard, to make sense of it. 

We do this all the time.  Someone is very rude to us, and our brains immediately start making up stories about that person, about how they’re just a jerk, or about how they’ve got some misplaced grudge against us.  In reality, the person who was rude was just having a bad day, and we met them in a bad moment, but we don’t know that story.  We only know the stories our brains make up about what a perpetual jerk that person is.  It doesn’t matter to our brains if the stories are true or not.  Our brains are hardwired for story.  Stories are how we make sense of our world, and when our brains make up these little stories, we get biochemically rewarded for having made sense of the world.  It also helps that we usually make ourselves the heroes and others the villains in these stories, right?

So that’s what the people talking about the dead Galileans were doing, and then Jesus did what he does so well.  He said, “That’s not the right story, guys,” and he gave them a new story.  “No, they weren’t worse sinners than anybody else.  Tragic, unexpected death can happen to anyone at anytime.”

“Well thanks a lot, Jesus.”  Our brains hate that.  Chaos, uncertainty, threats to our survival.  Our brains want to rest easy, knowing that we’re going to be ok.  Jesus keeps saying, “Guys, you can rest easy, knowing that you’re going to be ok, you just don’t get to do it by making up stories about how terrible everyone else is and about how righteous and therefore ‘God protected’ you are.”

In Matthew 5:21-22, Jesus said,

‘You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. 

We often devalue each other in order to make ourselves feel more secure, and Jesus says that when we do that, we are making ourselves less secure.  We’re pouring God’s judgment upon ourselves whenever we hate another person.  We’re pouring God’s judgment upon ourselves whenever we make up these stories in our own minds about how terrible someone else is. 

It seems crazy to us that just hating someone is tantamount to murder, but Jesus says it is.  It makes sense that a murderer is deserving of death, but are we really deserving of death in God’s eyes just for hating each other?  Well, yeah.  Jesus is pointing out just how darn important we are to God.  We are God’s children, the apple of God’s eye.  So when we are hateful and hurtful to each other, yeah, it really upsets God.  Imagine a parent whose child is being bullied so that they feel badly about themselves and withdrawing inward.  Do you think that parent is going to be pretty hacked off at those other kids.  That’s how God feels when he sees us hating and hurting each other.  That’s how God feels when he sees us making up our stories about how others are the villains and we are the heroes.

“Get the log out of your eye,” Jesus says.  How can you say to your neighbor, “Friend, let me take out the speck in your eye”, when you yourself do not see the log in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (Luke 6:42) 

We’ll also see the other with compassion rather than self-righteous judgment, because when we take the log out of our own eye, when we see clearly our own mess, then we can see another’s mess with greater compassion.  When we see ourselves clearly and accept our mess, then we are no longer threatened by someone else’s mess. 

Further, Jesus teaches, there is something greater than ourselves in which we can place our security.  There is something greater than our own power and our own righteousness in which we can place our security.  There is a greater story than the countless self-serving stories our brains make up.  That something greater is our eternal, loving Father, and that greater story, is the Gospel story of love and creation, sin and redemption, second chances and reconciliation.

That’s the story Jesus led the people to when he told them the parable of the fig tree.  He first had to break them down and divest them of their false, self-serving narratives.  Then, laid bare, empty, and not the least bit afraid, Jesus clothed them and filled them up with the true story of God’s love for us and his striving with us.

In the parable Jesus told, there is the worthless fig tree which is taking up good soil and producing nothing, and the gardener says, “Give it another year.  Let me work with it. Let me tend it and care for it.  Let me give it even better soil, and we’ll see if it can then bear fruit.”  Looking at the idea of the garden, where were we all planted?  The Garden of Eden.  The fig tree is humanity.  Jesus is telling us that despite how often we give up on ourselves and how often we give up on each other, we’re in his garden, and he wants to keep striving with us. 

Does this mean, that once we accept Jesus, that bad things won’t happen to us, or we will be perfectly shielded from tragedy or unexpected death?  No.  Even while loving Jesus and loving each other, we can still die unexpectedly and suddenly.  When people do, however, our brains don’t need to make up stories about how they must be bad and such tragedy can’t happen to us. 

Jesus has given us the true story, that when we die, either tragically and unexpectedly or at a ripe old age, we continue on living with the Gardener.  We need not fear death because in death we are transformed from life to life. 

Accept and believe that story, Jesus says, and then let it be the story not only of your death, but of your life.  Let yourselves trust in God enough that you no longer have to make up stories about each other when you harm one another, but instead, I was going to say “put manure around each other,” following the parable Jesus told, but that doesn’t quite seem to work.  Jesus is saying that when you hurt one another, strive with each other.  Offer to one another, the compassion and forgiveness that God has given to you. 

Rather than making up stories about one another, accept he story in which we are all deserving of death, because we all have hatred in our hearts, and accept the rest of that story in which God does not say condemned, but rather says, “forgiven,” the story in which God calls us beloved. 

Accept and live the story in which there is still uncertainty in the world, but that uncertainty spurns us on to greater love, greater forgiveness, greater urgency in our desire for reconciliation, because when we love one another as God loves us, we don’t want one more day to go by with the other still hurting.  When we have enmity in our hearts toward someone and we’re living God’s story, then we don’t want one more day to go by without having embraced that person and offered and received forgiveness and love.  Living God’s story, trusting in his story, and placing our security in his story, we change the narratives we make up about others, no longer making them villains, but calling them beloved and forgiven.  Amen.

We’ll Live It Best We Can Anyway

Brad Sullivan

2 Lent, Year C

February 21, 2016

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

Luke 13:31-35

We’ll Live It Best We Can Anyway

            I think we could classify today’s reading as an epic faith by the Pharisees, and a pretty darn good win by Jesus.  The Pharisees were trying to get rid of Jesus, trying to make it look like they were on his side.  “Herod’s trying to kill you, Jesus, you’ve got to get out of here.  We’ve got your best interests at heart, and we need you to go so you don’t die.” 

Of course they were lying.  We know from Chapter Nine, that Herod was not trying to kill Jesus.  He was actually pretty interested in who Jesus was.  People were saying he was John the Baptist, and Herod was thinking, “I’m pretty darn sure I had John the Baptist beheaded not too long ago,” and he was curious about who Jesus was.  Herod wasn’t a good guy, but he wasn’t trying to kill Jesus.  Even when Jesus was going to be crucified, Herod didn’t have any burning desire to have Jesus killed.  He said, “send him back to Pilate.”  Again, Herod wasn’t a good guy, but he wasn’t trying to kill Jesus. 

The Pharisees were lying because they wanted to get rid of Jesus.  They were trying to frighten him away.  Like the Devil before him, they were trying to deter Jesus from his mission.  And Jesus had to have been thinking, “guys, I’m going to be crucified before too much longer, and your little death threat is supposed to frighten me?  I’m going to be killed; it’s supposed to happen, just wait a little longer.”

So Jesus turns their failure into a chance for teaching once again.  Jerusalem was supposed to be center stage for God’s glory in the world, not the place known for killing the prophets.  The Temple was in Jerusalem.  When Solomon dedicated the Temple, he said it was to be a place where all of Israel could look to and remember God’s glory, his love, his forgiveness and mercy.  Nations were supposed to flock to Jerusalem, drawn there by the light of God lived out in Israel, and yet, Jesus told the Pharisees that Jerusalem was the place where the prophets were killed; he told his disciples that the Temple would not stand and all would be thrown down because of the ways it had been misused.

Despite the Pharisees scare tactics, Jesus remained undeterred from his mission.  He named the truth, the darkness and said, “I will overcome it.”

We also have lots of opportunities to be overcome by darkness, to give in to fear or discouragement.  I was giving into discouragement not long ago, and Bill Bullard sent me a text with words he had seen earlier which read:

We profess a faith in God through whom all things are possible.  When we apathetically accept the status quo, we implicitly demonstrate a lack of faith that tomorrow might be better than today.  God should not be mocked in this way.  Our faith should be much more steadfast.

Those words cut me to the heart, and they also gave me hope, reminding me to trust in God through whom all things are possible. We had our vestry meeting yesterday, and we were talking about challenges facing the church and challenges in our lives, and we prayed together about these things, and then Debra said, “You know what, we also need to give thanks for all of the wonderful things in our lives and in our church.  There is so much negativity out there that we need to remember and give thanks for our blessings.  We need to be filled with that light and see that light, that we can be light bearers for others.”  So we prayed together thanks for all of the light and the blessings in our lives and church as well.

It is easy to be overcome by the craziness of the world, to be deterred from God’s mission of reconciliation, from living as the light in our lives and in the life of the church.  Bishop Doyle points out in his book, A Generous Community, that we live in a VUCA world.  VUCA means “Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, & Ambiguous. 

That pretty well sums up much of today’s world.  There is so much change happening so quickly, that many places where we used to find sure footing are no longer places of certainty, or those places are no longer even here.  We live in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and uncertain world, and it is easy for us to be discouraged by such a world.  It is easy to listen to the lies of the Pharisees that all is going badly.  The lies of the Pharisees saying things like “the church is dying,” or “things aren’t going to get any better.” 

For the record, the church is not dying, and while there certainly is darkness in the world, there is also an immense amount of light.  There are difficult times.  There is uncertainty, and sometimes, things do go badly, but we are not to be discouraged by those difficulties.  We are to trust in God, continue living his mission, and have faith that through him all things are possible.

That’s how Jesus lived when he taught his disciples when he told them not to worry, not to fear.  When the Devil tried to get him to quit, when the Pharisees tried to frighten Jesus, he lived and taught that there are times of discouragement, and when they come, “we’ll live it best we can anyway.”

In teaching his disciples not to worry, he told them that for one thing, worrying isn’t going to do you any darn good.  For another thing, worrying demonstrates a lack of faith in God.  So, “do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”  In a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, “do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”  That’s what we’re striving for in our lives and in the church.  We’re striving for God’s Kingdom, to fulfill God’s mission of reconciliation, and when we’re discouraged, we trust that God will fulfill our needs as we live out his mission.

At St. Mark’s right now, we’ve got a group that is gathering called, “New Wineskins.”  We’re seeking to discover new ways that we will live out God’s mission both within the community of St. Mark’s and beyond.  I again offer an open invitation to come on Sundays at noon.  Come dream with us, pray with us, study God’s Word with us, and discern together the ways God would have us live out his mission in our lives and in our live together as Jesus’ Body at St. Mark’s. 

Some of these new ways are already happening with our Friday morning breakfasts at church.  There are many people who won’t come to church, feeling sometimes like they can’t because of their sinfulness, feeling at other times like they won’t because of negative associations with the “institution” of the church.  Folks will come, however, to breakfast here on Friday.  While not part of the worshipping community, they are part of the community of people who meet weekly for a shared meal and fellowship in our parish hall.

New relationships and connections are being formed as we gather together, and divisions are ending.  I have been invited to attend a Roman Catholic baptism next weekend at Our Lady of Guadalupe.  There is no assumption that the Episcopal priest is going to become a Roman Catholic, nor is the family of the young man being baptized going to become Episcopalians.  We’ve simply gotten to know each other, and we’ve prayed together, so that they’d like me to be there, to be a part of this young man’s baptism.  You bet I’m going to be there.

There are plenty of ways to be discouraged in our volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world, but there is plenty of light out there and in here too.  As a modern day prophet and singer/songwriter, Terri Hendrix, wrote in the song, Hey Now:

Kiss the evening sky and say bye, bye, bye.

Tomorrow knows no sorrow like today.

And should it come to pass today’s no better than the last,

We’ll live it best we can anyway.

We’ve all had highs, we’ve all had lows.

It’s a fact of life that everybody knows.

And should it come to pass today’s no better than the last,

We’ll live it best we can anyway.

http://www.terrihendrix.com/

            Despite all of the fear mongering of the Pharisees, the light of Jesus is thriving. The church is thriving.  Despite times of discouragement, we’re going to continue on believing in Jesus.  We’re going to continue on living out his mission.  We’re going to continue on trusting in Jesus’ words, “Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom,” “and should it come to pass today’s no better than the last, we’ll live it best we can anyway.”  Amen.

Endure, Master Wayne

Brad Sullivan

1 Lent, Year C

February 17, 2016

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

Luke 4:1-13

Endure, Master Wayne

  

            In The Dark Night, the second in the most recent trilogy of Batman movies, Bruce Wayne was considering giving up being Batman.  The Joker had the city of Gotham pretty well under siege, and he promised to stop if Batman would simply give up fighting and turn himself in to the authorities.  As he was wondering what he should do, he had a conversation with Alfred who had raised him since he was a little boy.  He said:

Bruce Wayne:             People are dying, Alfred. What would you have me do?

Alfred Pennyworth:    Endure, Master Wayne. Take it. They'll hate you for it, but that's the point of Batman, he can be the outcast. He can make the choice that no one else can make, the right choice.

I have a feeling that fatherly, sage advice was similar to what God the Father might have been whispering to Jesus when he was in the wilderness being tempted by the Devil.  In the second temptation of the Devil, Jesus was being given the opportunity to give up all that he was doing in order to fix everything.  The Devil was offering to Jesus the glory and authority over all the kingdoms of the world.  That had to be a tempting offer, and not just because Jesus wanted glory.  Jesus had glory.  He talked about returning in glory and the glory he had in the presence of God before the world existed.  Jesus had glory coming out of every part of himself in the transfiguration.  

What Jesus didn’t have was obedience from everyone.  Jesus didn’t have the ability to force his perfect will onto people.  Jesus loved people and wanted them to believe in God and to live the ways of God’s kingdom.  He wanted that so much that he died for it.  He wanted that so much that when the Devil offered it to him, you know it had to be a tempting offer. 

You’ve got a long, hard mission ahead of you, Jesus.  Preaching, teaching, healing, people loving you, using you, hating you; hypocrites, dust, beating, scorn, blood, pain, death, and all for what?  So that people will still often choose not to live God’s kingdom?  No, bow down to me, and I’ll give you the authority you need to complete your mission.  No one else will even have to do anything.  It’ll be done, here and now.  Bow down to me and accomplish your sole purpose. 

That was tempting.  Avoid pain and suffering, claim here on Earth the glory that is yours from the foundation of the world, and force people to obey you.  Have power over people to make everything go the way you want it to go.  No more getting frustrated at people’s poor choices.  No more having to put up with others in authority choosing the wrong thing.  No more enduring the short-sighted, wrong-thinking of well-intentioned idiots.  You can be in charge and make every decision be the right decision.

And Jesus said, “Thanks Devil guy.  The offer is tempting, but I can’t force everyone to love God and each other by turning my back to God.  As much as I’d like to make everyone do the right thing, that’s not the way the Father and I work.  I have to suffer the pain of watching the ones I love make terrible choice after terrible choice.  I have to love them enough to let them.  I have to endure.  I have to take it.  I have to lead and teach and love even when I’m outcast and hated for it.  I have to make the choice that no one else can make, the right choice. 

For us in the church recently, I’ve seen our church leaders more and more making the right choice.  Looking at our politics and general way of society nowadays, division is the name of the game.  We’re so afraid that the wrong people will end up getting their way, that we have become incredibly divided in our nation.  I would argue that we have bowed down to the Devil, to Satan, the Adversary, the bringer of division.  The polarized ends of our society have wanted to force the decisions go how they want them to, and to Hell with those wrong-minded people.  While seeking to do good, the polarizing, demonizing, divisions in our society are bowing down to the Devil and bringing about so much harm.  It is a temptation all of us fall prey to.  All of us want to at some point bow down to the Devil that gives power so that we can have our way.

That was the temptation of the Bishops of the Anglican Communion meeting in London about a month ago.  They were meeting to determine, among other things, how the Anglican Communion could remain united amidst deep differences around issues of human sexuality, marriage, Biblical interpretation.  Division was knocking at the door.  The Devil was offering power to those threatened by the actions of the Episcopal Church.  Kick them out.  Excommunicate them.  Make them leave the communion, and no longer be bothered by them. 

Well, contrary to what is printed in a lot of main stream papers, the Bishops did not choose to follow that offer made by the Devil.  The Episcopal Church was not excommunicated.  For three years, the Episcopal Church will likely have a diminished role in the councils of the Anglican Communion, but the Communion held.  The bonds of affection which united us in Jesus held over the temptations of the Devil.  We are still one in mission.  We are still one in Jesus.

The clergy and lay leaders of our diocese have faced a similar temptation as we have struggled together for the last four years over the same issues.  Like the Bishops of the Anglican Communion, when we have met at diocesan council as we did this weekend, our diocese has chosen not to give in to the temptation of the Devil, but to remain united.  We have chosen to remain united in mission, and we have chosen to remain united in Jesus.  As we addressed issues which brought up our differences even yesterday, leaders gave heartfelt pleas for folks to vote their way, and they also said that whatever the outcome, we would remain united. 

In both cases, the bishops of the Anglican Communion and the clergy and lay leaders of our diocese have chosen to resist the temptations of the Devil and chosen instead to follow Jesus.  They have chosen to endure all the well-intentioned, wrong-minded people.  They have chosen to see them as wrong-minded, yes, but as well-intentioned and wrong-minded.  They have chosen to see them as brothers and sisters.  They have chosen to give up the power of division and to take on instead the weakness of unity, the weakness of reconciliation, the weakness of striving together, the weakness of Jesus, who gave up his power for the sake of love and chose to be hated, to be an outcast, to be mocked, to be condemned and killed, for the sake of us, his beloved. 

Each of us faces the same challenge within the church, within our daily lives and relationships.  When we fight with those we love, we are often tempted to choose the power of being right and trying to force our rightness onto others.  We’re tempted to choose the power of ending relationships so we don’t have to endure or strive together, so we can be right and make life go the way we want it to.  When strife and crime start happening close to home, we’re tempted to build higher walls, have more security, and to retreat away.  Yet, as Jesus’ disciples, we are guided to follow Jesus, to take on his yoke, to take on the weakness of unity, the weakness of reconciliation, the weakness of striving together, the weakness of stepping out together in into the areas of our lives and the areas of our city that frighten us. 

Resisting the power of the Devil and his division which serves only ourselves, we take on God’s mission of reconciliation together, as one church.  We endure for the sake of Jesus’ beloved.  We endure for the sake of his love, and we leave the wilderness of striving together in our differences strengthened to live God’s mission of reconciliation.  Amen.

Feasting On Reconciliation

Brad Sullivan

Ash Wednesday, Year C

February 10, 2016

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

Feasting On Reconciliation

19^th century Anglican priest and famous preacher, Phillips Brooks, gave a sermon entitled, Nature and Circumstance, in which he preached about Jesus’ teachings on greatness and the two worlds in which we find ourselves:  the world of men, and the world of the kingdom of God.  In this sermon, he wrote about Nicodemus questioning Jesus’ teaching that men must be born again to enter the kingdom of God.  Father Brooks said:

“Nicodemus wanted Christ to meet him in a lower world, a world of moral precepts and Hebrew traditions, where the Pharisee was thoroughly at home.  But Christ said, ‘No, there is a higher world; you must go up there; you must enter into that; you must have a new birth and live in a new life,-in a life where God is loved and known and trusted and communed with.”

-          Phillips Brooks, Sermons:  Nature and Circumstance

Jesus brought to his followers a realization of these two worlds in which we live, and he continually encouraged his followers not to be satisfied with the things of the world of men, but continually to strive for greater things of the kingdom of God.  Jesus taught in our Gospel reading today, “Beware of practicing your piety before others,” and instead “pray in secret so that your heavenly Father who sees in secret will reward you.”  Through the prophet Isaiah, God taught that he does not desire the religious fasts of the kingdom of men, but desires fasts from human strife and discord.  Fast from the ways you harm each other and feast on justice, mercy, reconciliation, and love.  Feast on Jesus and the ways of the kingdom of God.

We see in Jesus’ teachings about fasting and prayer, a collision of worlds.  The people were living in the world of their religion, a good world, in which they were seeking to fulfill their religious duty and to be good men.  Jesus was, however, trying to pull his people up to a higher world, to his kingdom in which they deeply encounter God and therefore deeply love each other.

In the lower world of religious practice, much of what was done made little difference in the world or even in the self.  Much of religious practice in Jesus’ day dealt with ritual purity.  Follow a set of religious rules, and you’ll be righteous before God.  In the higher realm of God’s kingdom, those practices don’t matter.  As Jesus taught concerning ritual hand-washing before eating a meal, ritual cleanliness before God doesn’t really matter in the kingdom of God.  The cleanliness of our heats is what matters in God’s kingdom. 

In our context of Lent, ritual fasting can be a very helpful tool toward opening our hearts to God’s way for our life.  The fasting itself, however, does not make one righteous before God.  In the higher realm of God’s kingdom, Jesus makes us righteous before God.  In the higher realm of God’s kingdom drawing near to God through Jesus is the way of life.  In the higher realm of God’s kingdom, believing in Jesus, his teachings and ways, and faithfully seeking to love others as he loves them is our way of life and the feast he would choose for us.

In the higher realm of God’s kingdom, then, our fasting would be to fast from whatever hinders us from drawing near to God, to fast from whatever hinders us from believing in Jesus, to fast from whatever hinders us from following in Jesus’ ways, and to fast from whatever hinders us from loving others as he loves us.  

Fast from whatever is keeping you from reconciling with another.  Fast from whatever keeps you from prayer.  Fast from whatever keeps you from seeking justice, loving mercy, and respecting the dignity of every human being. 

In the kingdom of men, we get to judge one another and proclaim our righteousness by comparing ourselves to those we see as less righteous around us.  That was the trap of the Pharisees.  In the kingdom of God, however, we are freed from this trap.  As Bishop Doyle writes, “Christians are free to follow their conscience and are free from the burden of judging or changing others.  Christians are prohibited from indicting and sentencing those who are different because of the freedom we have in Christ Jesus.”  Jesus frees us from making ourselves righteous by noticing the speck in someone else’s eye.  Instead, Jesus loves us, even with the log in our eye, makes us righteous through him, and frees us, thereby, not to judge the other but to love and serve the other.  Jesus frees us from the trap of the world of men and allows us to live in the kingdom of God.

I invite you all, therefore into a holy Lent.  I invite you to seek the higher world of Jesus’ kingdom.  I invite you to fast during this season, to fast from anything that keeps you from reconciliation and love.  I invite you to repent of the ways that keep you from living Jesus’ kingdom.  Finally, I invite you to feast on Jesus during this season of Lent.  Feast on his forgiveness and love.  Feast on his reconciliation and healing.  Feast on his ways and his presence.  God bless you.  God loves you.  Amen.

Leaving the Locker Room

Brad Sullivan

5 Epiphany, Year C

February 7, 2016

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]

Leaving the Locker Room

I was at a men’s retreat this weekend with the men of St. Mark’s in Richmond.  Kristin is their go to supply clergy when their rector is away, and she supplied for him last summer when he was on sabbatical.  So, the congregation knows and loves her and our kids, and the rector, Bert, thought it would be nice if they got to know me to, so I was invited on the retreat.  They actually call is a “gathering of men” because “retreat” is just not something men do.  So we gathered for great food, fellowship, games, various beverages, Bible study, skeet shooting, fishing, Eucharist, etc., and I contacted the men on our vestry yesterday afternoon and said, “this thing has been great; we have to do one here.”

So on Friday night, one of the men who leads a weekly Sunday Bible study, led us all in Bible study.  It was a thematic study of sports and sport analogies in the Bible (of which there are many), and we looked at these passages, what these sports analogies teach us about our faith, and how the Super Bowl can relate to our faith.  Admittedly, I was kinda skeptical at first, but it worked. 

From Philippians 3:12-14, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal.”  There are four quarters of football, and the team lays aside their previous touchdowns and their previous mistakes, that’s the team that’s gonna win.  For us too, we cannot live in the past, forever grasping on to that one glorious moment, or forever haunted by the sins of our past.  We have to let our past go, give that to Jesus and follow him.  From 1 Corinthians 12:12-20, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.”  Special teams doesn’t win the game; offense doesn’t win the game; defense doesn’t win the game.  It takes the whole team playing together to win.  Within the body of Christ, no one person or group fulfills God’s mission of reconciliation.  The whole church, working together fulfills God’s mission of reconciliation.

So, can we get some Gospel truth from the Super Bowl?  Yeah, we actually can.  When we’re watching the Super Bowl this afternoon, we can think of Jesus and the church a little bit. 

Looking then at today’s Gospel story from Luke, we heard the story of Jesus’ transfiguration.  Jesus’ glory was revealed.  The glory of the Lord was shining out of and through Jesus, and the glory of Jesus full and true humanity was shining.  Here is a true human, guys, fully reconciled and connected to God.  Whenever Moses was near to God up on the mountain, when he came down, his face was glowing.  The nearer we are to God, it seems that the glory of God, in whose image we were made, radiates through us.  Jesus revealed this truth of himself and this truth of humanity to Peter and James and John on the mountain.  He showed them his glory as if to say, “Here’s who I am guys, and here’s who I am leading you all to be.  I am the fulfillment of the law and the prophets.  Follow me, and fear not, for I am restoring all things to God.” 

Then, once the excitement and joy of the moment was over, Jesus basically said, “ok, back to work.”  Why did Jesus take those three disciples up the mountain with him?  Perhaps just to pray.  That’s why Jesus went up there; maybe he didn’t know the transfiguration was about to happen.  We don’t really, know, but in any case, once it did, they didn’t stay there in that moment, stuck forever in the past.  They moved on into the future or into the always present moment, continuing God’s mission of reconciliation. 

Prior to this, the twelve had been sent out by Jesus to begin their work on God’s mission.  They’d done great, preaching and healing, and then, after they all came back, Jesus was curious what people had been saying about him and asked, “who do people say that I am,” and the people had been saying that Jesus was John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets.  Then, Jesus asked the disciples, “who do you say that I am?”  Peter nailed it, declaring Jesus to be “the Christ of God.”  Jesus went on to teach them more about that, about how he will be killed and be raised on the third day.  He taught them that as his disciples, they too needed to take up their cross and follow him, telling them, “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.” 

So the disciples had been doing great.  They started their ministry living out God’s mission.  They declared and began to understand who Jesus is.  They were a little perplexed by the “if you lose your life for my sake, you will save it” part, but they were working through that, and then, Jesus takes Peter and James and John up the mountain to pray. 

It was like halftime, and Jesus was in the locker room with the team giving them some instruction, a pep talk and then showing them, the game plan.  “Here’s where we’re going guys:  restoration, reunion with God.  We’re going toward reconciliation and true humanity.  I know it’s tough and scary, but when I told you not to fear losing your life, I meant it.  Look here are Moses and Elijah, alive and well.  Here’s the glory of God and the glory of true humanity shining through me.  Trust me guys, I really am restoring all things, and living out God’s mission of reconciliation, it’s leading somewhere great!  Now let’s get out there and let’s play some ball.” 

So they got this great halftime talk and they got to rest in the locker room for a bit, and then Coldplay and Beyonce stopped singing, halftime was over, and it was time to get back in the game. 

The very next day, there was a boy who needed healing.  There was gospel work to be done, and for some reason, the disciples couldn’t do it.  They’d done great at preaching and healing before.  Perhaps they were daunted by what they had heard and seen on the mountain.  Jesus had been talking about his coming death on the cross which disturbed the disciples.  Perhaps they were still stuck in that moment and just not ready to face the world again.  In any case, Jesus showed them that as his disciples, they really did get to keep doing the work he had given them to do.  The encounter they had on the mountain with Jesus’ transfiguration gave them strength and encouragement, nearness to God, but it was not a place they were going to stay. 

I think of our worship in a similar way.  We have an encounter with Jesus in the words of Scripture and in the Sacrament.  We get instruction and encouragement.  We also have a model for our lives with the liturgy.  Our liturgy teaches us to give thanks to God first in everything we do.  Our liturgy teaches us to read and study scripture.  Our liturgy teaches us to pray for ourselves and for others, to examine our lives, offer our sins to God, and to ask his forgiveness that we may be freed from the past and press on toward to goal.  Our liturgy teaches us to encounter Jesus in the ordinary things of life, and then our liturgy gives us an encounter with Jesus in the bread and wine. 

Our worship is a place where we are meant to return, but like the mountaintop of Jesus’ transfiguration, our worship is not a place where we are meant to stay.  In what our liturgy teaches us, it is like practice or a halftime speech.  We get to rest.  We gain strength, support, and instruction for our lives from an encounter with Jesus.  Afterwards, we give thanks that we get to go forth from here to continue as Jesus’ disciples, living out God’s mission of reconciliation.  At the end of each service, halftime’s over, and we get to go out there and play ball.  Amen. 

Giving God Away

Brad Sullivan

4 Epiphany, Year C

January 31, 2016

Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Bay City, TX

Luke 4:12-30

Giving God Away

So, the people of Nazareth weren’t all that taken with Jesus, were they?  In Matthew and Mark’s gospels they were scandalized by Jesus as soon as he started preaching to them.  He was from Nazareth and they didn’t think the hometown kid could really make it so good; who was he, preaching to them?  In Luke’s gospel, however, we get a very different picture of what happened.  The people of Nazareth were awed and amazed at what Jesus had taught them, and by the works he had performed in Capernaum.  They note that Jesus was Joseph’s son, and they seem to be especially proud that a hometown boy was there, proclaiming fulfillment of Isaiah’s words of God’s grace.  “This is fantastic!”  They thought.  “We’ve always been a kind of nothing little town, and now we’ve got one of our own who’s already done great things and will do even greater things for us.  He’s one of us.  Now we’re gonna be great!”

Then, Jesus kind of let them down with what he said next.  “Yes, I’m from here, but my mission, and God’s grace is not just for you.  Heck, it’s not even primarily for you.  Just like Elijah and Elisha, I’m going to bring God’s grace to everyone, Jew and Gentile.”  As if that wasn’t bad enough, he was basically telling the people, that while it was the year of the Lord’s favor, it wasn’t necessarily going to be too terribly favorable for them. 

See, the stories he told of Elijah and Elisha were about both of those prophets preaching and healing folks who weren’t Israelites, folks who were Gentiles, and Elijah and Elisha were preaching to and healing Gentiles because they had been rejected by Israel.  Israel at the time was under the rule of some pretty bad kings, and they were no longer faithful to God, so God was taking his salvation elsewhere.  “Like Israel of old,” Jesus was saying, “y’all aren’t really as faithful to God as you’ve led yourselves to believe, and the good news is going to reach the Gentiles with much greater effectiveness than y’all.  Essentially, you’ve squandered God’s grace, so it’s moving on.”

So at that point, yeah, they got pretty upset at the hometown kid telling them that the year of the Lord’s favor had come, that they were basically going to ignore and reject it, and that the year of the Lord’s favor was going to be accepted by Gentiles rather than by them.  He was telling them, “y’all seem to want this all for yourself, for your own benefit only, and that’s not the way God’s kingdom works.  Y’all are supposed to be introducing God to the nations, not despising the nations because they don’t have God.”  They’d shut God up in a box, and God was springing out of it.  God was already there with the Gentiles, and Israel was supposed to let them know that.

So, Jesus was going to let the nations know that.  This fact apparently didn’t sit well with the people of Nazareth.  “We want you all for ourselves.  We want to control the outcome of this new prophet.  God is supposed to behave the way we want him to, the way our religion tells us he will.”  So they became angry enough to try to kill Jesus.  Their anger may have stemmed from the fact that deep inside, they knew Jesus was correct.  When we’re shamed, we often react with anger, and we’re only shamed by something if we believe there is truth to it.  The people of Nazareth seemed to know the truth of Jesus’ words, that they hadn’t been living as a light to the nations.  They hadn’t been bringing good news to the poor, release to the captive, freedom for the oppressed, and recovery of sight to the blind (even if that sight was given by another persons’ eyes, taking the blind alongside with them).  They hadn’t been living they ways that Isaiah prophesied, and then they expected Jesus to be good news primarily for them.

To be fair, that’s not an uncommon trap that people who experience grace and good news fall into.  Even Jesus’ first disciples fell into the same trap.  As Bishop Doyle points out in his book, A Generous Community, Peter and James and John wanted to build booths when they saw Jesus transfigured.  They wanted to keep control over that event and, then they could bring others there.  They would have control over that moment of grace.  Additionally, at one point when little children were trying to see Jesus, they disciples didn’t want the little children coming to Jesus.  They wanted to control access to him and to keep their places of power and authority, but Jesus wasn’t having it with them any more than the people of Nazareth.  “Let the little children come to me,” Jesus said, “For it is to such as them that the Kingdom of God belongs.” 

Jesus and the Kingdom of God were never meant to be kept as a prize for one’s own benefit.  Jesus and the Kingdom of God were always meant to be given away.  As former Archbishop of Canterbury, William Temple, famously said, "The Church is the only society that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members."  Now he didn’t say only.  The church doesn’t only exist for the benefit of those who are not its members.  The church exists for both its members and for those who are not its members, but do we sometimes find ourselves in the same trap as the disciples and the people of Nazareth, wanting Jesus primarily for ourselves, working first and foremost for us? 

If you’re anything like me, there are times when the answer is yes.  I’m guessing all of us have times when we primarily want Jesus for ourselves, and the thought of giving Jesus and the Kingdom of God away doesn’t seem right, especially if we’re giving it away to people who seem undeserving in our eyes.  Further, giving Jesus and his kingdom away raises fears that there won’t be enough for us.  If we as a church do too much work for those outside, will there still be enough Jesus left for us?  The truth is, Jesus, his kingdom, and his grace have no limits.  There is always enough Jesus to go around.  I asked last week when the good news or release from captivity has happened to us, and who was Jesus for us when that happened.  Jesus has ministered to us in all kinds of ways and through all kinds of people, and Jesus is out there too, ministering to all kinds of people in all kinds of ways and places, and he is using all kinds of people to do his ministry.  Sometimes people know that Jesus is ministering to them, and sometimes they don’t.  Sometimes people believe in Jesus when he is ministering to them and through them, and sometimes they don’t.

We heard in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians this morning, “Faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.”  If you have faith enough to move mountains but do not have love, you are nothing.  Hearts of love are even more beautiful and important to God than are hearts of faith.  “When did we see you naked and hungry and we clothed and fed you, Jesus?”  “Whenever you did so to the least people,” Jesus responded, “whenever your hearts were full of love and compassion for others.”

We are called as the church, as Jesus disciples to be people of love, people who give our love to other people.  If you listen to much Christian media lately, there seems to be a divide between people of faith, and the bad people who don’t believe.  That may work for our polarized society, but it is not what Jesus was about.  Jesus loved people, whether Jew or Gentile.  He brought faith to those who didn’t have it.  He brought hope to those who were without it.  He loved extravagantly. 

Our joy is that we too, as Jesus’ disciples get to love extravagantly, to bring hope with our love to people of faith and to people without faith.  We get to invite people to be here with us, and we get to be out there where Jesus already is, sharing love, faith, and hope, serving others as Jesus’ disciples.

In looking at the church, who we are and who we will become, Bishop Doyle writes:

The God that we choose to follow is a God who is out and among the people.  The God we follow bids us to make a Church that is…out and among the people…This God cannot be contained.  God’s mission cannot be contained…We must become a generation of church-makers who play in the waters of baptism and in the Scriptures and around God’s altar.  This is sacred and holy play through which we reenact – inside and outside church building, and in our lives – the great story of God’s creation.

We are to be about making the world into a different place…with all the tools at our disposal.  Most especially we are to make it new with God’s love, grace, forgiveness, and mercy.  We are to share and open up our church and walk out into the sweet-smelling and lush garden of creation.  We are to invite, welcome, and connect with others.  We are to share the message that God says to all people – “Come unto me all you who travail and are heave laden and I will refresh you.”…Don’t keep the little children away.  Don’t keep away those who have tried to follow Jesus and believe they have failed.  Don’t keep [from God] those who have drifted away from church…Give God away.  By all means let them all come.  And let us go.  And let us make the church together. 

Amen.