Father Snort

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

July 10, 2016 - Proper 10

Luke 10:25-37

Prejudice & Segregation Have No Place In God’ Kingdom

Jesus blew some minds and likely ruffled some feathers with his response to the lawyer’s question, “Who is my neighbor?” As understood in Leviticus 19, an Israelite’s neighbor was one of his own kin, a fellow Israelite. Neighbor was therefore narrowly interpreted so that loving others outside of Israel was not required. Certainly loving a Samaritan was not required. In fact, Samaritans were so hated and vilified by Israel, that being loving toward one of them may have even been seen as the wrong thing to do, or at least something that brought scandal and gossip.

“I heard Joe was being friendly with a Samaritan the other day.”

“Ewe! Do you think he ate with one of them? They’re not friends, are they?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think we should be seen with Joe anymore.”

“No. Not if he’s going to consort with those types of people.”

Into this insular nature and narrow definition of neighbor, Jesus told the parable of the Samaritan who helped the Israelite. The people hearing Jesus’ story couldn’t have wanted to identify with the priest or the Levite who saw an Israelite beaten half to death and went on by, leaving the man dying by the side of the road. They would have had to identify either with the Samaritan or with the beaten man who received help from the Samaritan. Either way, they were rather uncomfortable, their minds blown, wondering “how could a Samaritan be good?”, and also struggling with the point of Jesus’ parable. Their narrow definition of neighbor didn’t fit with God’s kingdom. They were segregated into Israelites and everyone else, and that segregation didn’t fit into God’s kingdom. Their prejudice and feeling that all Samaritans were bad didn’t fit into God’s kingdom.

Jesus showed them that there were bad Israelites and good Israelites, just like there were bad Samaritans and good Samaritans. Some were willing to hear and accept Jesus’ teaching, and others were not. The problems of prejudice and stereotypes still assault us today and often erupt into acts of violence, like the shooting of the police officers in Dallas last week. Such violence can lead us to double down on prejudice and stereotypes, to double down on fear and mistrust of others. I think Jesus was pretty clear that such doubling down on fear, mistrust, and stereotypes has no place in God’s kingdom.

Such was the conclusion of one man who attended the rally in Dallas and was leaving just before the sniper’s bullets began to fly. I read in the Huffington Post about this man, Kellon Nixon who had taken his son to the rally and left towards the end of the rally as some bad actors, not associated with the rally, began shouting negative things. Mr. Nixon is a 34 year old black man, a pastor at a church in Dallas, a husband and father, and in reflecting on the killing of the police, and running for his life and his son’s life, he said:

You start to think it’s me against the world. And with that type of mentality, we’ll implode as a people…We’re all one race at the end of the day. If we get a ‘me against the world’ mentality ― last night I was thinking, maybe it’s not black lives matter or all lives matter, maybe it’s just my life matters. Maybe it’s just my family’s life matters. I had to recover from that spiritually.

I had to be reminded that love conquers all.

He then talked about showing mercy, and like in our story today, that mercy did not come from where he expected it to come. He said

At a point in my life, I sold drugs, and the honest truth is that the mercy that was extended to me wasn’t by other drug dealers, it wasn’t by African-American men. But it was by two Anglo-American officers that found me with drugs and they extended me mercy. And from there I was able to be a husband. I was able to be a father. I’m a pastor and a preacher now. And at the same time, when I’m in a three-piece suit, from the police I’m treated worse than when I was a thug.

So it proves to me that everybody’s not bad,” he continued. “That everybody wearing a badge is not bad. That every African-American is not bad. But we have to change our concepts. We have to change our ideology in this country. We’re so segregated in everything. We’re segregated in our schools still. We’re segregated in our religion. We’re segregated in churches. And it destroys us.

Segregation, prejudice, doubling down on fear and insularity does destroy us. It was destroying Israel in Jesus’ day. Israel was meant to be a light to the nations, and yet in Jesus’ day they had turned insular, segregated from the rest of the world, and prejudiced against others. Their insular nature and disdain for others was hiding the light they were meant to share and destroying them as a people. It is hard to have a heart that is prejudiced and segregated only against a few without that heart eventually turning prejudiced and segregated against many, or even most. Indeed, there were factions and prejudices within Israel, various groups fighting among themselves for who was following God’s laws the right way and who was anathema.

Their prejudice and segregation was a cancer, and Jesus said, “No more. Love one another. Show mercy. Stop being so self-righteous than you constantly notice other people’s sins and shortcomings while ignoring your own. Stop thinking you’re better than anyone else just because you are an Israelite or just because you are this particular brand of Israelite. Be united in loving one another and showing mercy. That is the way to eternal life.”

Those same words could be said by Jesus to the church today. “No more. Love one another. Show mercy. Stop being so self-righteous than you constantly notice other people’s sins and shortcomings while ignoring your own. Stop thinking you’re better than anyone else just because you are a Christian or just because you are this particular brand of Christian. Be united in loving one another and showing mercy. That is the way to eternal life.”

I know that we in the Episcopal Church think that we’ve got the best possible way of being a Christian and following Jesus, and that is true, except of course that it isn’t true. Being an Episcopalian is absolutely the best way of being a Christian for me, but not for everyone. There are plenty of ways of being a Christian, plenty of denominations that just wouldn’t work for me, but they work great for other people. That’s part of the beauty of the Body of Christ. We get to be very different in many of our practices and ways of life, but we are still united in Jesus.

I like to think that being a Christian is the best way for everyone, and yet there are so many wonderful people out there who aren’t Christian. They love people and show mercy, and they are therefore our neighbors and brothers and sisters.

There are bad actors within any group, within any ethnicity, race, religion, etc., and we tend to want to classify whole groups based on those bad actors. It is a way of self preservation based on fear. Jesus tells us, however, that doing so does not preserve our lives, it actually destroys them. In Luke 17:33, Jesus says, “Those who try to make their life secure will lose it, but those who lose their life will keep it.” Trying to keep our lives secure through fear, segregation, and prejudice ends up destroying our lives. Embracing others and taking the risk to love those whom we fear brings us eternal life in God’s Kingdom, not only in the next life, but in this life as well. It’s risky, but that’s life in God’s kingdom, and risking life together is the only way forward, the only way that doesn’t lead to destruction.

We are the Body of Christ, broken on the cross, sealed in the tomb, and resurrected to life everlasting. We carry the light of Christ, and we have been charged by Jesus to risk our lives for the sake of others. We have been charged to love others, to show mercy, to call everyone neighbor. And so I leave us with the words of a rock band called Rush from their song, Everyday Glory.

If the future's looking dark

We're the ones who have to shine

If there's no one in control

We're the ones who draw the line

Though we live in trying times

We're the ones who have to try

Though we know that time has wings

We're the ones who have to fly

We follow Jesus into the uncertainty of love, denying our fear, prejudice, segregation, in order to show mercy to all, living his kingdom of love and light. Amen.

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

July 3, 2016

Proper 9, Year C

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

“???”

“Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." These seem curious words to me, curious words for Jesus to leave with his disciples. He had sent them out to prepare the way for his coming into cities and towns. Seventy of his disciples, sent two by two, to stay with people, cure the sick, and to let them know that the kingdom of God had come near to them.

Then, the disciples returned, overjoyed that they were able to cast out demons in Jesus’ name, and who wouldn’t be. That was pretty awesome work they were doing. To cast out a demon meant you had some pretty strong Spirit of God working through you, which might boost one’s feelings of importance, not to mention that you’d just been a major help to someone desperately in need. So, I can guess there might have been some ego inflation going on and Jesus reminding them what was truly important. He was coming. Jesus was coming, and the kingdom of God would come not just near, but be fully among them once he arrived. Jesus’ presence, Jesus’ healing and grace was why they should be rejoicing, and they got to have a part in bringing Jesus’ healing and grace to others.

Boy do we need Jesus’ grace, healing, and love nowadays. Truth be told, we always do and always have, but there are times when that need is more apparent. Folks are worried, wondering, and divided over Brexit. Folks are worried, wondering, and divided over our upcoming presidential election, not to mention being worried and wondering over domestic and international terrorism, mass shootings, economic uncertainty, to name just a few, and people are divided over what to do about all of it.

We’ve got demons in our world, don’t we? Fear, anger, and hatred begetting ever more fear, anger, and hatred. We fear the problems in the world which lead us to anger and hatred, and then that leads to more fear on the part of others and even more anger and hatred. In the midst of all of this, Jesus reminds us, “I watched Satan fall from Heaven like a flash of lightning.” Jesus has seen the great enemy fall and be completely conquered, and that fall didn’t occur through fear, anger, and hatred, nor through worry, wonder, and division. Satan’s fall came through Jesus loving so completely, that he trusted God, put his life into humanity’s hands, allowing us to kill him, so that through his death, life, resurrection, restoration of all creation would come. Hatred, anger, and rear did not cast down Satan. Jesus’ love cast down Satan.

As it is written in Proverbs 10:12 - Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offences. The love of Jesus on the cross covers all offences. In the end, the resurrection of Jesus will make all things new, and all of the bad and evil that has been done throughout creation will be redeemed, transformed in the resurrection, and seen and understood forever as the good that was intended.

And in the meantime…? The restoration of all creation has not happened fully yet, but Jesus’ church is here now to prepare the way. As Jesus sent the 70 to prepare towns and villages for Jesus; coming, the church is here to let people know of Jesus’ resurrection and the restoration of all creation, and the church is here to heal and cast out demons. We may think that we don’t see anything so dramatic as healing and casting out demons, but it is happening everyday in the church.

In this world, our beliefs and our notions of being right divide us so that love that we might feel is often left lying on the side of the road, discarded by our rightness and our perceived righteousness.

Then we see two men in the church, so deeply divided over the issue of homosexuality that even the words they use to describe their beliefs are abhorrent to each other. They sit down to talk and listen to each other, continue to disagree, but also understand that they are both seeking what is right and good in Jesus. They embrace, and leave as brothers who love each other. People are being healed and demons are being cast out.

Many people in our world and even in our city are left alone and isolated, not really belonging. They turn to the places where they think they have found belonging, being lured into drugs, prostitution, murder, enslaved by those whom they thought loved them.

Then we see a few people who don’t quite fit in. Some are new to the community, others desire something more than to wallow in the poor hand they’ve been dealt. They find embrace in the church, a community that truly loves and welcomes them with no strings attached. They are taken under the wings of a couple of particularly caring people who shepherd them further into this community built upon the grace and love of Jesus. They find love, acceptance, belonging, a home. People are being healed and demons are being cast out.

A man has skin cancer, but he has no insurance. He knows, rightly or wrongly, that the systems intended to help people who fall through the cracks are broken, and there is no way he can get the seemingly simple operation he needs.

Then he asks help from the church where he eats breakfast every Friday. He finds someone willing to help shepherd him through the process, be his advocate, pray with him, even help with some of the initial financial costs. With the church’s help and guidance, he gets through the seemingly broken system and has the surgery. People are being healed and demons are being cast out.

A long-standing family feud continues to bubble just beneath the surface. The dance of avoidance and well-practiced politeness begins to grow tired, and then a misstep. The dancers fall, the walls of politeness crumble, and the anger and resentments boil over, burning all involved.

Some in the family are reminded of the love and forgiveness of Jesus. They remember that we are all broken and only break each other out of our own brokenness. They hear the words of Jesus on the cross, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” Compassion begins to form. Tears are shed not only for the self but also for the other. A first apology is made, not the practiced dance of avoidance and politeness, but the initial faltering steps of descent towards the grace of Jesus and the long road toward to the new dance of reconciliation. People are being healed and demons are being cast out.

Each of these vignettes are stories of St. Mark’s. They could also be stories of churches around the world where the presence of Jesus casts out demons and brings healing. The presence of Jesus among us and within us is what makes us the church. Like the seventy who were sent by Jesus to minister to people and to bring news of the Kingdom of God through Jesus, we too are commissioned by Jesus to cast out demons and to heal each other. We’ve been commissioned by Jesus to take his presence with us wherever we go. We’ve been commissioned by Jesus to bring our faith in him wherever we go, and we’ve been commissioned to talk with others about our faith, to talk with others about Jesus and his kingdom of peace, healing, and love.

That is the kingdom that will come fully one day, not through any effort of ours, but purely through Jesus. In the mean time, like the seventy whom Jesus sent, we’ve been sent on ahead to live and share his kingdom, to bring healing to division, to bring faith to fear, to bring peace and reconciliation to anger, and to bring love to hatred. We’ve been sent on ahead to bring Jesus with us, and to rejoice, in him, in his love, his peace, his faith, and his healing in this world which so needs it. Rejoice, for the kingdom of heaven has come near, and it is present with us amidst all the toils and dangers of this world, for in all of it, Jesus is here. Amen.

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

June 19, 2016

Proper 7, Year C

Luke 8:26-39

“Somewhere to Cast Our Demons”

Earlier this week, while beginning my preparation for today’s sermon, I posted the following on Facebook. “We need to stop hunting wild hogs. Without them, we’ll have nowhere to cast our demons. Amen.” There were several comments, some people taking the post very seriously, some rather disgruntled by the theological or huntingological implications. My favorite comments, however, came from my cousin Nicki, who reposted what I had written. In response to one rather disgruntled response, she wrote, “I thought it was funny. Father Bradley Sullivan is my cousin. I know his sense of humor...I used to change his diapers.”

Saying we need to stop hunting wild hogs so we’d have a place to put our demons was all I had at the time for a sermon starter, and it gave me a chuckle so I figured I’d share. Then I started thinking that metaphorically speaking, it’s not that bad of an idea…not the wild hogs part, but the idea that we really do need somewhere to cast our demons.

When the legion of demons begged Jesus not to cast them into the abyss, it seems that they were speaking of the abyss mentioned in Revelation (bottomless pit from which the demons came). Imagery of the abyss from which the monsters and later demons come goes all the way back to the great deep of Genesis from which fountains of water came forth to drown the earth. Therefore, they abyss is often associated with water, the seas where the great monsters and the Leviathan dwell.

So, the demons begged Jesus not to cast them back into the abyss, and it seems that Jesus granted the demons’ request by sending them into the pigs, and then they ended up going into the abyss anyway as the pigs rushed headlong into the lake and were drowned. In the spiritual realm, the demons went back to the abyss.

For us, in our world today, our society and our world are like the man amongst the tombs. We are rife with legions of demons: demons of anger, demons of fear, demons of hatred, just to name a few, and we desperately need somewhere to cast our demons. I should say we need somewhere other than each other to cast our demons. In our country, we tend to take our anger, fear, and hatred, and cast it all over each other. Sometimes we cast our demons onto each other through our fearful words and angry rhetoric. Sometimes we cast our demons onto each other through hurtful actions that separate and divide us. Sometimes we cast our demons onto each other with sprays of bullets into unsuspecting nightclub patrons, moviegoers, prayer groups, or elementary school students.

As much as the exceedingly vast majority of Americans would never cast their demons onto others by shooting them, there is a connection between our speech, our words and actions, and the bullets that fly. Fear, anger, and hatred lead only to greater fear, anger, and hatred, and eventually to division and killing. As Bishop Doyle wrote in his response to the mass shooting at Pulse nightclub last Sunday in Orlando:

The Internet is already full of unchristian, disrespectful, and horrific responses supporting the shooting and demonizing Islam.

The reality is that we in this country are responsible for creating a place where hate speech is glorified, unnecessary weapons of mass destruction are freely accessible, and violence is cheered.

Yes America, we are reaping what we sow.

I too believe we are reaping what we have sown, and I’m not talking about guns. I’m talking about the ways we talk to and about each other and especially how we talk to and about the other. There is so much fear, anger, and hatred constantly being spewed out in conversations on the internet, in coffee shops, on the radio, the TV, even in churches and in our homes. We have been setting an enormous blaze with our talk. As James wrote in James 3:5-10:

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! 6And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by Gehenna. 7For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, 8but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. 9With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. 10From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so.

The blaze we have set with our tongues, with our words both written and spoken, is a blaze of fear, anger, and hatred, and fear, anger, and hatred are our demons. These demons have divided us, made us weak, and turned us against one another. These legions of demons have done to us what Jesus did to the legion of demons that we dwelling in the man. While the demons were together, acting in the man as one, they were strong. No chain could hold him. No people could restrain him. Once Jesus cast the demons into the herd of pigs, they were divided, and they were weak. They rushed headlong into the abyss, the very place where they feared going.

As a country, as a church, as the Body of Christ, we have been divided by the legions of demons of fear, anger, and hatred. We have been weakened by our divisions and have been rushing headlong into the abyss. We need to stop casting our fear, anger, and hatred on one another, and we need to find another place to cast them. We need to find a safe place to cast our demons so that they won’t continue to cause greater harm, and the only place we can cast our demons without them harming others is God.

One way of casting our demons upon God is prayer, particularly prayers of lament, as I wrote earlier this week. We read in the Psalms prayers of lament, prayers of people who are so fed up, that they are crying out to God, even blaming God for the problems that beset them, asking God to seek vengeance upon their enemies. Some of these prayers make a turn and offer blessings and praise to God; some of them do not and simply end with these prayers of anguished cries, calling for God’s vengeance and questioning God’s justice.

We need to bring back the prayer of lament so that we can cast our demons upon God rather than upon each other.

It sounds easy, especially for the preacher man to say that we should cast our fear, anger, and hatred upon God rather than each other. I realize that with some of my preaching about loving our enemies, not seeking retaliation, it may seem that I’m rather detached from the violence and hatred in our world. I am not. I fear for my children’s lives. I remember riding my bike a half a mile or more away from home, spending whole days down by the creak behind our neighborhood, totally unsupervised. I can’t imagine my kids doing that nowadays. I’ve come into adulthood in a world in which being shot by a sniper while stopping for gas along a highway is a viable reality for me and my children. I am afraid for my children and the world they are inheriting. I want to protect them. I want to stop anyone who would harm them, and in the moment, if someone was trying to kill them, I have little doubt that I would do everything in my power to stop them, even if it meant killing the killer. I don’t know if that goes against what Jesus taught or not; I simply know it is what I would do.

At the same time, I know that the more I dwell on those thoughts and fears, those plans for horrific eventualities, the more the demons of fear, anger, and hatred fill my heart and guide my actions. I know that I can’t with any success rail against the things in this world that I don’t like. All my fearful and angry writing and speech will do is add fuel to the fire, increase the blaze, and cast even more demons upon others already plagued with demons of their own. I’ve done more than enough of that already, as have many of us, or all of us.

We need to stop all of the blame and simple solutions for the problems in our world, given as ways to alleviate our fear, anger, and hatred. One easy target has been the government, folks saying the problems started because we took prayer out of schools or removed the 10 Commandments from government building. Before we start blaming governments or states or school districts for removing prayer or Christian symbols and practices, we need to look at the potential of logs in our own eyes, remove them, and then lead by example. Saying, “the problem is that they took prayer out of our schools,” is simply casting a demon of blame upon the world. Such a statement makes someone else to blame, and makes the problem someone else’s to solve.

The problems of casting our demons upon others is a problem that is all of ours to solve. Render to God what is God’s. Give the demons of blame to God. Pray to him your blame of someone else. Or even blame God and pray that to him. God can take it. God would probably appreciate the honesty. God is the appropriate place to cast our demons, because unlike everything in all creation, our demons can’t hurt God.

Render unto God what is God’s to deal with. Render unto God our demons of fear, anger, and hatred, so that he can cast them out. Like the woman last week who came to Jesus full of sin, weeping upon his feet, we need to come to Jesus full of demons and then weep them out at his feet.

When we weep our demons out at Jesus’ feet, we will likely feel powerless. With that, we find yet one more demon with which we struggle: our powerlessness. We want solutions to the problems in our world and we are mostly powerless to make those solutions happen. So we rant, we criticize, demonize, we divide.

Divided, we rush headlong into the abyss. We weren’t made for division. We were made to be unified in Jesus. Unity does not mean unanimity. With all of our difference, we were all baptized into the one body of Jesus Christ. “All baptized people are called to make Christ known as Savior and Lord, and to share in the renewing of his world.” (BCP p. 531 - Ordination: Priest)

We were not made to share our anger for the destruction of this world. We were made to share our faith for the renewing of this world

We certainly need to share our fears, our anger, and even our hate with others, but for the purpose of seeking help in bringing those demons to God. We are meant to help each other cast our demons out upon God. As baptized disciples of Jesus, we are meant to do for each other what Jesus did for the man suffering from a legion of demons. We are meant to help each other find a herd of wild hogs and help each other cast our demons there. I realized just likened God to a herd of wild hogs, and I probably just secured 10 more years in purgatory for it, but the analogy holds true. We need a place to cast our demons, and that place is God, and we need to act as Jesus for each other, helping each other to cast our demons upon God, rather than upon each other. Rather than remaining divided, rushing into the abyss ourselves, we cast our demons upon God so that they will run into the abyss, and we will remain united in Jesus. Amen.

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

June 12, 2016

Proper 6, Year C

Luke 7:36 - 8:3

“A Woman After God’s Own Heart”

Imagine sitting down for dinner with Jesus at Simon the Pharisee’s house. It’s a fairly nicely appointed house, not a rich man’s house, but you can see that this Pharisee is well off, nonetheless. They had low tables and didn’t use chairs, so you’re sitting or kneeling at the table with several others, servants have brought bowls for you to wash your hands, and the meal is about to be brought out. Then this woman begins weeping behind Jesus, poring her tears onto Jesus’ feet and wiping them off with her hair. You’re getting quite uncomfortable at this point, waiting for Simon to do something, and thinking to yourself, “Well, this is awkward.”

Jesus, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind in the least. Apparently he likes a foot massage, and was not in the least bit interested in what was proper. Then, rather than Simon, the host speaking up, Jesus begins speaking to Simon. You think he’s going to talk with him about lax security around the city that this sinful woman could even enter, or possibly congratulate him on being a gracious enough host for not kicking this woman out immediately, but that enough was enough. Instead, Jesus insults Simon for not being a gracious enough host, not offering him a kiss or water for his feet. Pretty rude of Jesus, you think, to insult their host. Then, Jesus comes way out of left field and says this woman’s sins were forgiven because of her rather unseemly behavior. Didn’t Jesus know anything? She didn’t even bring an animal to be sacrificed by the priests.

What you didn’t know was that Jesus was reading at least the Pharisee’s mind, maybe yours too, and the Pharisee, Simon, wasn’t concerned that the woman was there, nor that she was crying over Jesus’ feet and wiping them with her hair. He was concerned that a “sinner” was touching Jesus and that Jesus seemingly didn’t know that she was a sinner and try stop her. Simon questioned Jesus’ prophetic powers and ministry.

Jesus, for his part, wasn’t really concerned with social norms, nor his status in the guests’ eyes as a prophet, nor a perfect follower of the Jewish animal sacrifice system. Jesus was interested in repentance, forgiveness, grace, and love. He didn’t see the woman’s actions as impertinent, out of place, or awkward. He saw a woman who deeply desired reconciliation with God. He saw a woman who was in anguish because of her sins. He saw a woman who wanted to repent wholeheartedly, a woman who was falling, a woman who needed grace, forgiveness, and love.

As for the woman, we don’t know what she had done that she was considered “a sinner.” Nothing in the text says what her sins were; Jesus simply says her sins are “many.” Interestingly also, nothing in the text indicates that she wasn’t supposed to be there. Simon, the Pharisee didn’t ask her to leave or to stop what she was doing. You’d think if she was an intruding and the whole thing was totally improper, that someone would have spoken up. Perhaps they were all too taken aback, just sitting in uncomfortable, awkward silence. We don’t know.

We don’t know what her role was in being there. Perhaps the Pharisee, as a religious leader, regularly had people to his house, even those he did not know, his household serving them, as part of his work in teaching about God’s law. Total speculation on my part, but it could serve to explain why the woman was not asked to leave, or how she was there in the first place.

However she got there, the woman was not concerned about being improper or awkward. She loved much, was torn apart on the inside by the guilt of whatever sins she had committed, and she desperately wanted forgiveness. So, when she heard Jesus was at the dinner party, she boldly sought him out to seek forgiveness. She put aside any shame she had, did not hide, or pretend, or make up some story. She sought Jesus out wholeheartedly, brought what she had, and did for him what she could out of a deep desire for a new beginning.

She couldn’t turn her life around. This woman was stuck in whatever sins she had committed. Even her touch brought the Pharisee’s ire, and she couldn’t claw her way back from being anything other than what she was reported to us as being, a sinful woman. She needed Jesus’ grace and love to declare her forgiven and to give her resurrection, a new start. The difference between this woman and Simon the Pharisee was that unlike Simon, the woman knew that she needed resurrection, knew that she needed Jesus’ grace, forgiveness, and love.

Looking at another sinner who needed repentance, we have our story this morning of King David. David is seen as the greatest king Israel ever had. He was devout in his faith in God, and he led the people to remain true to God, not running after false idols as so many kings after him had done. David was also a murderer, and adulterer, and very likely a rapist. When David saw Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, bathing, he wanted her and being the king, he got what he wanted. Being that he was the king, Bathsheba probably didn’t have much say in the matter. She probably didn’t exactly figure she could just say, “No thank you, your Grace.” So we now have David as an adulterer and likely rapist. Then, when Bathsheba became pregnant by David, he had her husband Uriah killed by placing him on the front lines of battle and then commanding that all others draw back so that Uriah faced an army alone. Now we have David as a murderer, to hide his adultery and rape.

Like Simon the Pharisee, David was blind to his sin, until Nathan opened his eyes with the story he told of the rich man who took the poor man’s sheep. Nathan was very clever in showing David what he had done, and David was completely incensed at the injustice and greed of the rich man in the story. Then Nathan dropped the hammer on David. “You are the man,” Nathan told David, and at once, the scales fell from David’s eyes, and he realized what he had done to Uriah and Bathsheba. Once his eyes were opened, David repented with his whole heart. “I have sinned against the Lord,” David said, and truly meant it.

With all that David did, his terrible, obvious sins against God and other people, David is called a man after God’s own heart. He obviously wasn’t during the time of his adultery/rape/murder affair, but David had been called a man after God’s own heart before he was king, and he repented wholeheartedly after his affair.

It’s hard for us to reconcile that. Adulterer, rapist, murderer: forgiven. It doesn’t seem fair, and it’s not. God isn’t fair. Grace isn’t fair. Imagine King David was not a lofty king living thousands of years ago, but a regular guy, not well off, living now in Bay City. Imagine he raped a married woman by coercing her into having sex with him against her will and then conspired to have her husband killed. Once her husband was dead, imagine this Bay City degenerate took her as his wife, she having become pregnant by his rape of her and knowing full well that he had had her husband killed. She’s probably terrified at this point. Then, imagine this man coming to his senses, realizing what he’s done, and that realization cutting him to the very core of his being. Imagine this man desperately wanting to atone for his sins, desperately wanting forgiveness, probably going to jail, and imagine Jesus declaring him forgiven. He’d still be in prison, but forgiven by God, beloved of Jesus.

That doesn’t seem fair. Thankfully, grace isn’t fair. Thankfully God isn’t as concerned with our notions of fairness as he is concerned with his beloved children. God sees us all as both perpetrators of sin and victims of sin. We are victims of sin, from the moment we are born. Even those born to loving parents begin almost immediately to be broken in thousands of little ways as they grow, and as they and as all of us grown, we end up breaking others out of our own brokenness. Whether our sins are obvious and known or hidden and known only to ourselves or only to God, all of us are sinners, broken people who break others out of our brokenness.

So back to the woman in our Gospel story today. Unlike Simon the Pharisee, the woman knew she was broken. She knew she had broken others out of her brokenness. She knew she needed grace. She knew she needed a new start, and so she sought out Jesus and humbled herself at his feet. She didn’t try to put on a show of how good she was so that he would accept her. She came to him full of sorrow, full of weakness, full of regret, and full of need.

Now, this woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and dried them with her hair has usually been labeled a prostitute, people assuming that the Pharisee’s description of her is euphemistically calling her a prostitute. Of course anywhere else in scripture, when a woman is making her living via prostitution, she is simply called a prostitute, so if she were, Luke would probably just have written that she was a prostitute, but he didn’t. Labeling any specific sin for this woman forces the reader to miss the point of the story. If we can label her sin, then we can focus on that particular sin, and many readers can disassociate themselves from the story because they don’t share that particular sin. The point of the story, however, is not what her sins were or weren’t. Her sins were many just like all of our sins are many. The woman is any one of us. The point of the story is her repentance and Jesus’ love and acceptance of her.

Rather than label the woman with any particular sin, I recognize that the woman was brave. She was a model of approaching God in humility and self-awareness, in authenticity, and in boldness, seeking his grace, forgiveness, and love. She is a woman after God’s own heart.

Jesus was never interested in people who thought they were better than others. He had little time for those who believed they did not need repentance. Jesus had a heart for those who knew themselves to be sinners, who knew they needed God’s grace, and who came seeking God’s grace. Rather than thinking ourselves to be better or less sinful than the woman in the story, we need to remove the log from our eyes before judging her speck…or better yet, we need to come to Jesus with ointment and tears and the log still in our eye, and ask him to remove it. Ask him for resurrection and the new start that we all need throughout our lives. Following the example of the woman after God’s own heart, trusting in God’s unfair grace, we too, all of us, anyone, can approach Jesus in humility and self-awareness, in authenticity, and in boldness, seeking his grace, forgiveness, and love. Amen.

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

May 29, 2016

Proper 4, Year C

Luke 7:1-10

“That’s Now How the Force Works!”

The faith in Jesus of the centurion in today’s Gospel reading was absolute and his faith reminds me of the faith of another soldier, a man named Finn, former Storm Trooper turned good guy in the latest Star Wars movie. Finn’s faith was not in Jesus but in the Force; for those who aren’t familiar with the films, the Force is a mystical, well “force” which some people in particular can partner with to do extraordinary things. They call it using the Force, but there are only a very few people who can use the Force, and they must be trained in order to do so. Finn was not one these people, in fact, he knew almost nothing about the Force, but he had heard about it, and he believed in it.

He had been a soldier, a Storm Trooper for the evil First Order which was trying to subject the entire galaxy to its tyrannical rule, and Finn decided he wasn’t going to fight and kill for them. So he switched sides, joined the Resistance, and went back to a First Order base to try to disable their defenses. Being a former soldier of the First Order, it seemed that he would be able to do so, until it turned out that he actually had no idea how to do so. He had returned there to save a friend who had been captured. The man who was there with him was rather incredulous, reminding him that all of their friends and indeed the entire galaxy were counting on them to disable the defenses. So Finn, who knew almost nothing about the Force, replied, “We’ll work it out; we’ll use the Force.”

“That’s now how the force works,” his companion replied. Finn knew almost nothing about the Force, and yet he trusted in the Force completely. The centurion knew almost nothing about Jesus. He’s never met him. He just heard that he could heal people, and he trusted in him completely. He believed Jesus could heal his servant, just by speaking a word. The people around Jesus had to be thinking, “but that’s now how healing works!” He was nowhere close to the servant at the time, and in fact had never laid eyes on the servant. Jesus’ ability to heal an unknown, unnamed man from a great distance just by speaking a word wasn’t how healings had ever gone before, and yet the centurion trusted in Jesus that he could do it. That’s what got Jesus’ attention, the faith of the centurion. “Not even in Israel,” Jesus said, “[had he] seen such faith.”

This centurion was a non-Jewish foreigner who was a part of the force used by Rome to keep their occupied territories in line. He was likely viewed as an enemy to most Jews, possibly even to Jesus, and yet we are also told that this man had built a synagogue for the Jewish people where he lived. Rather than treat the people harshly, which his job may have had him to, he treated his potential enemies as friends, and they in turn treated him as a friend. By all accounts, this centurion was a good man with a bad job, following some of Jesus’ teachings without even having heard them, but even that wasn’t what got Jesus’ attention.

The centurion’s trusting faith was what got Jesus’ attention.

The centurion, by Roman thought was above Jesus, and yet he made no pretense about being greater than Jesus. He was asking Jesus for help, and he understood from what he had been told about Jesus, that Jesus had authority over creation. “I submit to you, Jesus,” was the centurion’s message. “I’m asking you for help; I believe you can do it, and I’m not going to ask for anything more than that. You don’t need to come here. I don’t need to see. I believe in you so strongly, just say the word and he can be healed.” Those around Jesus were likely thinking, “but that’s not how healing works.”

Maybe not before, but it certainly did that time. The centurion trusted in Jesus, and he understood submitting to those with authority over him. He understood Jesus to have great authority, and so he trusted in him absolutely.

Trusting in Jesus and submitting to God’s authority ultimately means we are not in control of our lives. We have personal agency and can make decisions, sure, but ultimately, our lives are in God’s hands, and control of our lives is an illusion. The centurion’s faith showed that he understood his lack of control and he, a part of the conquering army of Rome, submitted himself to Jesus, an itinerant preacher from a nothing town in a conquered kingdom. He submitted himself to Jesus because of what he had heard about Jesus, and he knew that if what he had heard was true, then he had no authority over Jesus; submission was the correct posture to take.

For us, or at least for me, submitting our lives to Jesus is not always the easiest thing in the world to do. We like our illusions of control. We trust in Jesus especially with our death, but trusting Jesus with our lives can be a little bit more tricky. I find rather frequently that I want to fully submit my will over to him, and yet it isn’t all that easy. There is the war within me between the flesh and the spirit which Paul wrote about in Romans 7. The thing I want to do I don’t do, and I do the very thing I don’t want to do. When I’m really honest with myself, I find often that I trust Jesus, but to do what exactly? Sometimes I figure my way is good enough; at least it’s known. Trusting my life more fully with Jesus may mean venturing out into the unknown, and being a good Episcopalian, change isn’t always my best friend.

Now, I have found when I do submit my will to Jesus, things turn out better. I am more at peace. Things don’t always turn out exactly how I thought they would, and usually, something of what I wanted to be has to die. Ironically, sometimes the very thing that needs to die, along with my way of doing things, is my goal of doing the right thing and being a better person.

That’s not because what we do doesn’t matter. What we do matters very much, but if we could heal ourselves, we wouldn’t very well need Jesus. I can want and try through my own efforts all I want to be better and to do better, to elevate myself, and I can succeed to some extent, but my efforts ultimately fall short of what I desire, and certainly fall short of what God desires for me. Healing doesn’t come from my efforts, from me elevating myself, but from what the Rev. Canon John Newton calls, “falling into grace.” In his book, Falling Into Grace, he says we experience grace and healing not by striving harder and elevating ourselves, but rather: we see the cross, accept acceptance, and wait in weakness.

That’s what the centurion did. Saw (or heard about Jesus) and sought him out. He then sent emissaries to Jesus, just as he was. He didn’t send soldiers to force Jesus to come, and he didn’t try to wow Jesus with his greatness. He just offered who he was and gave his request. Then he waited. No mighty act, no cajoling, the centurion just waited in weakness.

Waiting in weakness can be the biggest part of the struggle. We tend to want thing now. Amazon can overnight our purchases, and yet for Jesus, we have to wait, but that waiting can be key to our healing, and it can also mean waiting when we don’t get the healing we want. Then we find out what healing we really need. That happens as we wait in weakness and see the cross again, our own desire for healing being crucified as we accept not only God’s acceptance of us, but accept our own acceptance for life as it is, for us as we are, and then wait on God healing us in ways we were too blind even to know we needed.

We tend to know or to think we know exactly what kind of healing we want or need. I think that’s why I often struggle with the healing stories of Jesus. It’s not because I don’t believe in the stories. I do. I believe Jesus healed many people, that he loved and cared for people with a fire that we can only imagine. I believe Jesus had power and authority over all of creation. He still has that power and authority. That’s why I often have a hard time with the healing passages. I haven’t seen a miraculous, instantaneous healing, the kind we hear about in the story we heard today. I’ve heard stories of modern day healing, and I do believe that miraculous healing still happens, but I struggle with the healing texts because I haven’t personally witnessed it.

Then, I wonder about why sometimes people are healed and why sometimes people are not. Why are not all followers of Jesus healed? There are some simple answers to the questions of why and why not, answers which I think are completely false. “We or those we love don’t believe strongly enough or in quite the right way and so Jesus doesn’t heal us.” Totally false.

The most honest answer I can give as to why healing sometimes happens and sometimes doesn’t is, “I don’t know.” I don’t know how Jesus works, but I trust in him. I trust in his goodness and love, and I ask him to heal the parts of me that don’t.

I haven’t experienced as much healing of the kind we heard in the story today, but what I have experienced is healing of souls and lives. That goes to the primary healing Jesus came to give, the healing of our souls and the healing of our lives. That healing comes as we see the cross of Jesus, acknowledging that death will come to us, even the death of parts of our lives that we may not want to die. We then accept God’s acceptance of us, just as we are. We needn’t elevate ourselves to be enough for God, in fact we can’t elevate ourselves. Rather, God accepts us as we are, and our challenge is to trust in God’s acceptance and love of us. Then, we wait in weakness for Jesus to transform us through his grace.

We don’t necessarily know what that transformation and healing will be or how it will happen. Like Finn in Star Wars, we have no idea how the Force works, but we trust in it anyway. Ultimately we’re not even entirely sure how Jesus works, and yet we submit to him and trust in him just the same. We submit and trust in Jesus because of the fierce love Jesus holds for us and the healing he desires for our souls and lives. Like the centurion, trust in Jesus’ love, accept Jesus’ acceptance, and then wait in weakness for Jesus’ grace and healing. Amen.

We are who we are because God is who God is. God is a relationship of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is also one. We are made in God's image, individuals made for relationship.

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

May 15, 2016

Pentecost, Year C

Acts 2:1-21

Romans 8:14-17

John 14:8-17 (25-27)

Heaven Dwelling Within Us

Pentecost of known as the birth of the church. It is the day in which the Holy Spirit took Jesus’ 12 chief disciples, 12 followers of Jesus, and gave them power and authority to be 12 leaders of Jesus’ church. Now Jesus had more than 12 disciples, and his church already numbered in the hundreds at this point. A few days before the day of Pentecost, there were 120 followers of Jesus gathered together to fill the leadership void left when Judas betrayed Jesus. Matthias was chosen and became one of the 12 apostles, one who had been with Jesus from early on and had witnessed Jesus resurrected during the 40 days after his resurrection before he ascended into heaven.

So Matthias filled Judas spot, the 12 apostles were gathered together devoting themselves for prayer and were waiting, as per Jesus’ instructions, for the Holy Spirit. The rest of Jesus’ disciples? We don’t really know, but they were likely waiting too, wondering what was to come of them and what was to come of this new Jesus movement. Then on the day of Pentecost, 10 days after Jesus’ ascension, Jesus’ group of followers, waiting and kind of directionless became Jesus’ church with a mission to continue Jesus’ work of healing, reconciliation, and love. a fledgling band of Jesus’ disciples were transformed by the Holy Spirit into a world altering force. That’s the kind of thing the Holy Spirit does, transform, give power and authority, and unite disparate people into one.

On that morning when the Holy Spirit came among the disciples, tongues of fire rested upon them, and they began to speak in other languages so that all who heard them speak, heard them in their own native tongue. This was a reversal of the confusion of languages that had happened all the way back in the book of Genesis with the tower of Babel. In that story, the peoples of the earth all had one language, and they united together to build a great tower, reaching up into heaven. There was no great and lofty purpose for this, they simply wanted to “make a name for themselves.” They weren’t seeking each others’ good; they simply wanted to marvel at their own accomplishment. Then the LORD said, "Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another's speech."

In the story of Babel, God confused our speech to limit us so that we wouldn’t be able to accomplish as much mighty acts and feats as we wanted. It’s not difficult to see why. Many of our mighty accomplishments come with great human suffering. The pyramids of Egypt, one of the seven wonders of the world, were built by slaves. Men and women, beloved of God, were used up and discarded, their lives valueless to their Egyptian masters, all so that a few pompous Egyptian kings could have really pretty places to place their corpses. To this day, we still marvel at the pyramids, I marvel at the pyramids, and in our marveling, we forget what matters most, what matters to God, the human cost of building such marvels.

So, knowing our propensity for marveling at our own magnificence while ignoring and totally devaluing other human beings, God chose to confuse our language, making it more difficult for humanity to work together to accomplish great marvels.

That is, until the Holy Spirit came upon Jesus’ apostles and transformed them into the church. For the first time, a religion was no longer the religion of only one people. People throughout the world could unite under Jesus through the power of the Holy Spirit. The power and unity that the Holy Spirit gave had a purpose, and that purpose was not for marvelous wonders so people could make names for themselves. The power and unity of the Holy Spirit united people of all nations and languages so that they could care for each other and value each other, the least and the great alike, and continue the work of reconciliation and love which Jesus gave in his Gospel..

God entrusted to the apostles and through them to the whole church, what God had not entrusted to people since the earliest days of human civilization: the unity to accomplish great things. The Holy Spirit united the church and gave power and authority so that Jesus’ disciples could do great things, but not marvelous wonders. They could do the same kinds of great things that Jesus did, caring for people. If that ain’t good news, I don’t know what is. The well being of people is the one purpose for which God entrusts us with the power and authority of his own spirit to accomplish great things: only for the well-being of people.

The greatest things the church accomplishes are, of course, the very things that often go unnoticed by others. Grand structures, buildings, institutions, those are things people notice, but that’s not why God gave the Holy Spirit.

- During times of plague, and the sick and dying had no one to care for them but a few strangers who happened to be disciples of Jesus, that is why God gave the Holy Spirit.

- Helping children who have difficult home lives and less than stellar role models, providing good role models for them and loving them, that is why God gave the Holy Spirit.

- Allowing black South Africans, who suffered decades of apartheid, to forgive their abusers and embrace them as brothers and sisters, that is why God gave the Holy Spirit.

- Choosing unity over division, love over being right, personal sacrifice for the sake of another, that is why God gave the Holy Spirit.

That is the Jesus movement. Continuing the Jesus movement is why God gave the Holy Spirit. God gave the Holy Spirit so his mission of reconciliation and love could be lived out within his church. The Holy Spirit can do what even Jesus could not do, dwell and move and work among multitudes of people all at the same time. Jesus left the disciples so that the Spirit could come. The Spirit comes to us, where we are, God’s light inhabiting our bodies so that the love and reconciliation of Jesus can be lived out in us. Poet Mary Oliver wrote:

The spirit likes to dress up like this: ten fingers, ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest at night in the black branches, in the morning

in the blue branches of the world.

It could float, of course, but would rather plumb rough matter.

Airy and shapeless thing, it needs the metaphor of the body, lime and appetite,

the oceanic fluids; it needs the body's world, instinct and imagination

and the dark hug of time, sweetness and tangibility,

to be understood, to be more than pure light that burns where no one is--

so it enters us--in the morning shines from brute comfort

like a stitch of lightning;

and at night lights up the deep and wondrous drownings of the body like a star.

God took no pleasure in our trying to ascend to heaven by some mighty act of building a great tower. God took no pleasure in our trying to be great, but not because God does not take pleasure in dwelling with us. Rather than have us harm each other and enslave each other to build some great tower to reach into the heavens, God sends the light of his Holy Spirit so that heaven may dwell within us. We need not make a name for ourselves because God has already given us a name, and that name is beloved. So to continue Jesus’ work of reconciliation and love, to continue the Jesus movement, God has given us his spirit and united us as one church so that Heaven will dwell within us and through us. Amen.

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

May 8, 2016

7 Easter, Year C

Acts 16:16-34

Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20-21

John 17:20-26

Everyday Glory

I often pray, generally every day, at least once every day, and generally if I’m praying for something that I want, I’ll say a sentence or two about it, but sometimes I find that it’s something that I’m desperate for God to say yes to, and so I’ll not just give the one or two sentences, but then I’ll think, “Is there any other way that I can ask this and make sure to cut off any loop hole that God might be able to wiggle out of saying yes. I feel that’s a little bit like Jesus’ prayer for his disciples at the end of John’s Gospel. He’s praying that the disciples would be one, that they would be united in his love, and in all of the different kind of ways that he asks this, we find an awful lot of passion in this prayer.

We call Jesus’ arrest, crucifixion, and death, his passion, and we also find in this prayer his passion for his disciples. He is giving this passionate plea to God the Father that God will take care of them when he has gone: when he dies and when he ascends. Jesus knows he is not going to be with them much longer, so he gives this impassioned plea to God, making sure God can’t wriggle out of it in any way, and what does he pray for?

He prays for unity and love among not only his disciples who are there but also among future generations of disciples who will come to believe in him through their words. Ultimately, then, Jesus prays that his disciples will be formed in and live out the image of God in which they were made. John says “God is love.” We understand God to be a unity of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bound together so completely in love, that they are one. So Jesus is praying that his disciples would be one as he and the Father are one, that they would love one another, that they would know the Father’s love. He’s praying that his disciples will live out the image of God in which they were made.

Then, Jesus also prays that they will behold his glory, the glory that he was given before all of time. What kind of glory was he hoping that they would behold? Is this a prayer that they would see his heavenly glory as we hear about being revealed in Revelation in the heavenly city and heavenly throne that comes? I think quite possibly, “yes.” He’s praying that they will see this full revelation of his heavenly glory at the end of all time or at the end of their lives, but glory does not only come then.

They see his glory also when he is resurrected. They see his glory also when he is arrested. They see his glory also when he is crucified. I could call this “earthly, everyday glory,” Jesus’ glory of accepting death, accepting the cross, and trusting in God for the resurrection. This everyday glory is the kind of glory we get to experience (hopefully) every day.

I’m stealing the phrase, “everyday glory,” from the band Rush, and one of their songs called, “Everyday Glory.” I’m not going to play the song; I tried playing a Rush song on my guitar months ago, and I think we can all agree that was a mistake. So today I’m just going to give you the chorus:

Everyday people. Everyday shame. Everyday promise shot down in flames.

Everyday sunrise. Another everyday story. Rise from the ashes a blaze of everyday glory.

Well, that’s accepting the cross, dying, and being resurrected right there, the kind that happens in our everyday lives. “Everyday people. Everyday shame. Everyday promise shot down in flames.” The wonderful messiah that everyone thought Jesus would be as he accepted his death on the cross, shot down in flames. Everyday sunrise - Easter. Another everyday story. Rise from the ashes a blaze of everyday glory, and there we have resurrection.

In our everyday lives, then, what does everyday glory look like? We rise from the ashes to what? We rise from the ashes to Jesus’ prayer, to unity and love. That’s the everyday glory that Jesus prays for us, that we would behold his glory in our lives. That everyday glory, that everyday resurrection, that everyday unity and love doesn’t just come through resurrection; that is the resurrection. The everyday glory comes through the cross.

Here we are back in Lent again, and of course the prayer of Jesus is a prayer from Lent, his prayer for his disciples just before he is arrested and crucified, but the prayer teaches us something more about resurrection. It teaches us that glory is not greatness. It can but, but today, we’re talking about glory as waiting, and trusting, and letting something die.

That is the everyday glory that Jesus is praying for his disciples, that they would trust in God as he has trusted in God, even to the cross. Jesus is praying for his disciples that they would wait patiently for God, even as Jesus waited patiently in the tomb. I don’t know what three days feels like when you are dead, but I imagine it feels like an eternity.

Jesus prays for his disciples that as he died on the cross, that they would let die within themselves whatever is keeping them from unity with one another, let die within themselves whatever is keeping them and love for one another. Jesus showed us the way, on the cross, to everyday glory, and so we are called to follow him to the cross and to let die within us whatever needs to die, those things that we hold fast to in order to prevent ourselves from being harmed. We don’t want to be wounded again as we get wounded throughout our lives and so we armor up, and Jesus is saying, “Let go of that armor.”

We need to become weak. We need to let ourselves die.

Then, letting ourselves become weak, letting ourselves die, God takes over, and we allow ourselves the freedom to follow and to trust in God, trust in his way, in his way, trust that even though we may not know what in the world is going on, we’re going to trust in God. As we do that, we find that we embrace death. We embrace the cross, and then, from the ashes of that death, rises everyday glory.

When we become weak enough, we find that we can love, because we are no longer so strong that we don’t need love. When we become weak enough, we find that we can be unified because we must be. When we are strong, we need no one else.

To find the unity and love that Jesus prays that we will have through his impassioned, no-loophole prayer to God, he prays that his disciples will wait on God, that his disciples will trust in God, and finally that his disciples will let themselves die in an everyday way so that they could then rise in everyday glory.

An everyday people with everyday shame, with their everyday promises shot down in flames, but then an everyday sunrise with their everyday stories, rise from the ashes in a blaze of everyday glory. Amen.

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

May 1, 2016

6 Easter, Year C

Acts 16:9-15

John 5:1-9

Alms for An Ex-Leper?

In the movie, The Life of Brian, Monty Python showed a rather silly example of this idea that being healed can actually be rather difficult. The movie was a comedy, which took place in Israel during the lifetime of Jesus. Brian, a historically insignificant and unknown Jew, found himself caught up in a series of crazy situations, his life often mirroring the life of Jesus. In the scene showing the difficulty of being healed, Brian is walking through town when a man comes prancing up to him asking, “Alms for an ex-leper?” Brian is not initially interested, and there is some haggling going on as the Ex-Leper continues to reduce the amount he is asking for when he finally comes to his rock bottom offer:

Ex-Leper: Okay, sir, my final offer: half a shekel for an old ex-leper?

Brian: Did you say "ex-leper"?

Ex-Leper: That's right, sir, 16 years behind a veil and proud of it, sir.

Brian: Well, what happened?

Ex-Leper: Oh, cured, sir.

Brian: Cured?

Ex-Leper: Yes sir, bloody miracle, sir. Bless you!

Brian: Who cured you?

Ex-Leper: Jesus did, sir. I was hopping along, minding my own business, all of a sudden, up he comes, cures me! One minute I'm a leper with a trade, next minute my livelihood's gone. Not so much as a by-your-leave! "You're cured, mate." Bloody do-gooder.

Brian: Alright, well, here you go.

Ex-Leper: Half a denarii for my bloody life story.

Brian: There’s just no pleasing some people.

Ex-Leper: That’s just what Jesus said sir.

The ex-leper did admit that leprosy was awful and that he would have preferred Jesus to have come back and given him some less-bothersome, yet alms-worthy malady, so that he could have continued to ply his trade of begging alms. Sometimes, the hardest thing in the world is to be healed. Without healing, life may be kind of crummy, but we adjust and adapt and become so accustomed to how things are, that we’d prefer not to be healed over risking changing how things are.

“Do you want to be made well?” Jesus asked the man who had been ill for 38 years. I heard the suggestion recently that Jesus’ questions was not rhetorical, but an honest question. “Do you want to be made well?” Jesus had a gift to offer this man, but he would not force it on him.

Imagine the change that would come upon this man when suddenly he was made well, when suddenly he wasn’t lying by this pool anymore waiting to come into the waters. When he didn’t’ have people pitying him anymore, he whole world was going to change. Responsibilities would be now upon him. While welcome, that was probably going to be a daunting transformation of his life.

If we look at this story of physical healing and apply it to our spiritual healing, we see Jesus asking us that same question, “Do you want to be healed?”, and we find that our answers are not always “Yes.” For the healing that comes through accepting Jesus’ grace and love, through trusting in him and following in his ways, sometimes our answer to “Do you want to be healed?”, is “Yes, but not yet.”

That was St. Augustine of Hippo’s famous prayer, “Lord, please make me a Christian, just not yet.” He believed that if he were to become a Christian, he would have to change his life; he’d have to give up a rather carefree, womanizing life, and actually be dedicated to Jesus’ teachings. He believed that following in Jesus’ way would be a better life for him. He believed that it would be more fulfilling, that it would bring about more good, that he would actually enjoy life more, but he just wasn’t ready to bite the bullet and stop his carousing, carefree, party-boy life. So, his response to Jesus’ question, “Do you want to be made well?”, was “Yes Lord, just not yet.”

Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to be healed. The healing that Jesus offers means transformation, and transformation is a daunting prospect. I may know that things aren’t good the way they are, but I can’t imagine life any other way. We may hold onto our past hurts, cling to our pain, because it feels like a shield against future pain.

The man Jesus healed had been ill for 38 years. The story doesn’t say what his malady was, just that he was ill. He said he had no one to put him into the pool when the water was stirred up (when the healing powers of the water were present), and so someone else would always beat him to the water. I’ve always imagined the man as a cripple who was crawling to the water with lifeless legs dragging behind him, and perhaps that is the case, but perhaps not.

Perhaps the man could walk, he just walked slowly, fearful of what would happen if he was healed, or maybe fearful that he would enter the water and not be healed. Perhaps he was afraid that he would enter the water and not be worthy of being healed. Remember that sickness was often seen as an affliction given by God as punishment for sin. If the man entered the water and was not healed, then he was not forgiven. Perhaps that fear of being unforgiven, that fear of being unlovable was too great, and the man remained as he was.

Ultimately, that was the healing Jesus gave to the man. He cured the man’s illness, whatever it was, and in doing so, he declared the man forgiven of his sins and beloved of God. Be not afraid, be not ashamed, for you are God’s beloved, and God’s grace is more than sufficient for your sins.

Lutheran Pastor, Nadia Bolz-Weber, wrote of God’s grace being enough for her sins. She had at one point been a bit of a jerk to a parishioner, totally unknown to the parishioner, but it was weighing on her, and she needed absolution; she needed to say out loud to another human being the crappy thing she had done, and she then needed to hear the words of God’s forgiveness spoken over her. So, she called her friend, Caitlin, who was also her confessor. Of Caitlin, she wrote:

[Caitlin] knows me. Really well. And she is unimpressed with my sin. I’ve told her things about myself that I’ve not told anyone else and she still wants to be my friend. Not because she is magnanimous but because she believes in the power of forgiveness and the grace of God.

Caitlin was unimpressed with Nadia’s sins. That’s how God is with us, unimpressed with our sins. Our sins are a big deal to us, and in one sense our sins are a big deal to God. Our sins are a big deal and they matter to God because our sins are the ways we hurt ourselves and each other. Our sins are a big deal to God because we are a big deal to God. Through our sins, we end up separating ourselves from each other and from God, and God wants to be united to us and for us to be united to each other. So our sins are a big deal to God, a big enough deal that God became human in the person of Jesus and let us kill him on the cross so that he could receive all of our sins, receive all of our sins in that macabre embrace, and having taken all of our sins upon himself, could say, “Father, forgive them.”

Such is the grace of Jesus, that having taken all of our sins upon himself and having been killed by us, he has forgiven us. So, while our sins matter to God, God is also totally unimpressed by our sins, because his grace, forgiveness, and love are so much greater. The sins of the entirety of all human kind throughout all time are very great indeed: pettiness, insults, jealousy, abuse, rape, murder, genocide, holocausts. The sins of humanity are vast as the ocean, limitless as the sky, beyond our reckoning, and the sins of humanity are totally unimpressive when met with God’s grace, forgiveness, and love.

That is what Jesus offers us when he says, “Do you want to be healed?” Imagine a life not held captive by guilt or shame from past sins. Imagine a life not constantly scrambling to be good enough to be worthy of God’s love. Imagine a life not held captive by the past hurts that others have given because you have been forgiven yourself by God and therefore able to forgive others.

Imagine a life transformed, sometimes a daunting prospect, and so Jesus asks, “Do you want to be healed.” Do you want to be transformed by God’s grace? Do you want to be transformed by God’s forgiveness? Do you want to be transformed by God’s love? Do you want to let go the sins and the hurts of the past as God has let them go for you? Do you want to accept that there will be more sins and hurts in the future and let go of those as well? No longer clinging to our sins and our hurts, no longer clinging to our feelings of needing to be good enough to be worthy of God’s love, not longer clinging to all of the past and future mess, “Do you want,” Jesus asks, “to fall into God’s grace and accept that you are forgiven and beloved?” Amen.

Brad Sullivan

St. Mark’s, Bay City

April 24, 2016

5 Easter, Year C

Acts 11:1-18

John 13:31-35

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

Hearing those words makes me love Jesus even more and want to follow him and trust in him. His commandment that his disciples love one another is part of his farewell speech and prayer for his disciples before he is crucified. Jesus knew he was going to die, and he knew he had a pretty good following. He knew that if he chose to, he could have asked them to fight for him, and they would have done it. They might have even kept him alive in their efforts. Of course, some of them would have died in the process, and he loved them far too much for that, not to mention that he knew it was not God’s will.

Rather than disobey God, rather than risk harm for those whom he loved, Jesus chose to be killed. Not only that, but remember that Jesus had been working for years to reform people’s understanding of God, of their relationship to God, and of their relationship to each other. He’d been working for years to show people that love, faith, and grace are at the heart of their way of life. For the people of Israel, he didn’t abolish the law of their religion, he fulfilled it through love, faith, and grace. For the gentiles, who were added to Jesus’ movement after his resurrection, he came to show them as well, that love for one another, faith in God, and grace given by God and accepted and re-given by us, is the way of life, the way of life abundant and life everlasting which he gives to us.

This movement of Jesus, this movement of love, faith, and grace which he had spent years working on, was just getting started as Jesus was about to be killed, and he chose to trust his movement to his fledgling disciples rather than risk their lives or take up the sword against another. That is the Jesus whom we love, the Jesus whom we follow, the Jesus in whom we have faith, the Jesus who loves us and gives us grace that we might receive his grace and then offer it to others.

Love one another, Jesus said. Have faith in me, and follow me even when you doubt. Receive grace to forgive you of all your misdeeds, grace to heal you from the shame of the past, grace to offer to others just as I have offered it to you. Such is the life and the community which Jesus gave to us. When I think on that, on that community for which Jesus gave his life, I cannot help but love Jesus and want to continue on as his disciple.

That is what I see when I see the church, not an institution. There is a paradigm shift in that when we can see the institution of the church as the church, but it is not. The shift is to see us as that community of people whom Jesus loves.

Last week, Kristin and I watched Spotlight, the best picture last year which told the story of the Boston Globe newspaper breaking the story of the immense systemic abuse of children in the Roman Catholic church. As I was watching the movie and then thinking about what Jesus commanded his disciples, I kept thinking, "How did Jesus’ community of love, faith, and grace become an institution so powerful and corrupt that children around the world were being abused by priests for decades with almost total impunity?"

The reasons and many and vast and would take looking at most of church history to fully understand. Without going into centuries of church history, however, I will look at one culprit that allowed this to happen, and that is the near deification of clergy.

Children often thought of the clergy as God, or at least as speaking for God. Adults did about the same. Clergy were put up on a pedestal throughout the institution of the church so much so that no one dared go against them. The people ended up under the thumb and under the rule of the clergy, and it wasn't just the clergy's fault; the people also elevated them. There was a partnership there in raising the clergy up so much so that the people were under the clergy's thumb, the clergy claiming the place of Jesus within the church, but in the total opposite way that Jesus led his church.

While the clergy were elevated above who they actually were, Jesus descended. That was Jesus' way.

Though he was in the form of God, [he] did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death-even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6-8)

Over the centuries, the church began exalting their leaders so much so that when corruption and abuse became systemic, no one would stop it, because they couldn’t go against these exalted people.

Now the abuse of children in the Roman church is one example of how far the church often can be from the community of love, faith, and grace which Jesus began. It's a graphic example, but there are many ways that we can stray from the community of love, faith, and grace which Jesus began. We also need to remember, lest we end up casting unfair aspersions, the Roman Catholic church is also a wonderful church which full of people and clergy of love, faith, and grace. I brought up the abuse as a graphic example of how divergent the church can become from the community which Jesus began.

Looking at this example, and how it happened, the exaltation of the clergy, we don't get to just point to Rome for that one either, lest we ignore the log in our eye for the sake of the speck in someone else’s; we often elevate clergy in the Episcopal Church too. I’ve often heard that clergy are held to a higher standard of behavior than others, to which I continually counter that clergy are not held to a higher standard. People may actually hold clergy accountable to standards of behavior to which they don’t hold themselves or others accountable, but there is not a different standard of behavior for clergy and for everyone else. If there were, that would be an institutionalized system of ignoring the log in one’s own eye for the sake of the speck in someone else’s. Elevating the clergy, holding them to a higher standard, goes against what Jesus taught and is not the way of the community he founded.

Jesus didn't set himself above everyone else; he descended. He didn't set his apostles above everyone else; he said to become a servant. Jesus’ church is not a place where we hold one another to various standards of living at all, in actuality. Jesus' church is not a place of keeping score with one another, keeping track of sins.

Jesus said on the cross, "It is finished." This system of keeping track of sins and trying to make right for our sins to God is finished. No more sacrifices for sins. No more tallies. No more keeping score. No more gospels of sin management.

Gospel’s of sin management have often pervaded the church, people thinking that our prime purposes in the church is to do better, sin less, and get to Heaven when we die. Even with Jesus’ help, such a Gospel basically puts Jesus in the role of a ticket puncher. If you’ve believed in Jesus well enough and behaved well enough (even with his help), then Jesus punches your ticket and you get to go to Heaven when you die. We'd like to add that it's not because of anything I do, it's purely because of the grace of Jesus, but then by how we talk about it, by how we live, these gospels of sin management basically make it so that you're earning your way to Heaven. You're doing enough that Jesus will finally agree to punch your ticket.

Fortunately, that is not the gospel for which Jesus died. That is not the gospel Jesus taught. That is neither the faith nor the church which Jesus left his disciples. “Love one another,” Jesus said, “that’s how they’ll know you are my disciples.” Jesus’ command to us continues to show his love for us. His disciples were a bunch of screw ups, if we’re being honest (if we're going to be counting sins, that is), and Jesus entrusted his church to them not in spite of their screw ups, not because they were screw ups, but completely regardless of their screw ups. Jesus entrusted his church to his disciples because they were his beloved. We continue as Jesus’ church simply because we are his beloved.

We don’t raise ourselves or anyone else up in Jesus’ church. We don't raise ourselves above anyone else. We accept the fact that we are beloved, and that is often the hardest task in our life, to simply accept the fact that we are beloved. We accept the fact that we are beloved of God, and we e receive the great love Jesus has for us, not because we are worthy, not because we have earned his love, but simply because we are beloved. We believe in Jesus, accept his love, and follow him, even when we can hardly believe, desperately clinging to this hope of Jesus’ love for us. Even when we give up that hope and faith in Jesus' love for us, Jesus' love that catches us even and especially when we fall, Jesus love catches us. So Jesus asks us, commands us to accept his love. Accept that we are his beloved and then live and give Jesus’ grace. That is the community of the church. That is what we see, or what Jesus would like us to see, when we see his church.

Now, we often see the church as something else. We see the church as a vast institution, like how people viewed the Roman Catholic Church, but the Roman Catholic Church is not an institution. The Roman Catholic Church has an institution. The Roman Catholic Church is a community of people who are beloved of Jesus. Period. Full stop. Paradigm shift: What is the Roman Catholic Church? Not an institution, but a community of people who are beloved of Jesus. Then, the Roman Catholic Church has an institution which at times serves it well and at times not so well.

Our church too is not an institution, but our church has an institution. We have a whole institutional structure in the Episcopal Church, but that institution is not the church. That institution is what the church has created, what we have created over the centuries to serve us. The institution is the tool we have constructed to help us order our lives. The institution is a tool of the church, but not the church itself. The church itself, the is the community of the beloved. Jesus’ church is the gathered and often disperse community (those who no longer gather, those who no longer believe but are still caught in Jesus' love).

The church is that community of people who know, and love, and accept, and forget, and mess up with Jesus’ love. The church are those who believe in Jesus even amidst doubt, or stop believing in Jesus, and then fall into Jesus’ grace. The church is not those who are climbing upward and striving to heaven. The church is those who are falling, continually falling into Jesus' love and Jesus' grace. What is who we are as the church. We are Jesus’ beloved, not because of who we are, not because of what we do, but simply because we are Jesus beloved. Amen.