Father Snort

A mother gave her daughter a soothing bath when she came home from school angry, frustrated, shouting, and in tears. Now that was a loving response. She saw her daughter hurting. Past the tears, anger, and probable shouting and disrespect, this mother saw her daughter in desperate need of some soothing, some love, and some being cared for. Past some possible misdeeds, this mother saw a cry of hurt and brokenness, a loving response.

This particular loving response, however, is not some a new law. We’re not just going to start drawing baths for each other anytime someone is upset, rude, or disrespectful. For one thing, not all of us are going to have fresh baked cookies and bath bombs on hand, every time we see someone stressed out and in need of some soothing, and for another thing there are a whole lot of us for whom the bubble Frank Sinatra cookie bath would not be a pleasant, soothing treat. The bath was given because this mother saw a cry of hurt and brokenness, a loving response, not a law.

What do we give to God? Everything. I don’t mean that we should give God everything or we aught to give God everything. I mean, whether intended or not, we give God everything.

The kindnesses we give to the people we know and love, and the kindnesses we give to the people we hardly know are given to God. Similarly, the hurt, contempt, and indifference we give to the people we know and love are given to God, and the hurt, contempt, and indifference we give to the people we hardly know are given to God. Our votes even are given to God, and I daresay most of us are doing are darnedest to vote in a way that honors God’s kingdom, even when we vote differently from each other. So, don’t let anyone tell you that vote goes against God’s kingdom or God’s way just because you vote differently than they do. Do contemplate seriously how your vote does or does not follow the ways of God’s kingdom; realize also that by “God’s Kingdom,” I don’t mean particular religion or religious practice. By God’s kingdom, I mean the beauty, light, and love of everything that is. Everything we do is giving to God’s kingdom.

This story is not about an either/or, in-group/out-group, one side over another conflict in which we get to declare “Jesus good" and “chief priest and elders bad.” Both sides in this conflict brought some to follow more closely the will of God. The deeper music was not whose religious practices were best. The deeper music was the seeking of God, the seeking of justice, peace, and love that pervaded both religious practices. The deeper music of justice, peace, and love is made by all of us together, every voice important: yours, mine, those we love, those we struggle to love. The deeper music is God’s presence, God’s way, and God’s will of justice, peace, and love which runs through all of us, every person a part of each others’ song.

As much vengeance as there is in the world, that is how much we are to forgive. In doing so, we unburden ourselves. The cloak of anger and resentment loosens its grip, until we can eventually let that heavy cloak fall to the ground and be clothed instead with the cloak of light, the cloak forgiveness, healing, and love.

Who do we say Jesus is? Is Jesus the one who makes us perfect so that we can be around other perfect people? Nah. That’s not who Jesus is, and that’s not what the church is. The church is the broken, the beaten, the blessed, and the damned, people who need healing, gathering together for strength and support. The church is people who are imperfectly following Jesus and receiving his love and grace, to be healed and blessed in order to bless others.

Let the weeds grow along with the wheat, Jesus said, so that we don’t all get damaged by pulling the weeds out. Imagine if everyone who wanted to pull the weeds out of society or out of the church was able to do so. There wouldn’t be any wheat left. Everyone would be pulled up and cast out because everyone is a weed in someone’s eyes. So, Jesus said to let them grow together, and leave the weeding to God at the end of the age.

We’re God’s garden after all, and rather than leave the weeding to us who are tossed about by our emotions and our brokenness, we leave the weeding to God who is not only loving, but who is love itself. I can trust love to do the weeding. There are parts in me that need to be weeded out. There are parts in all of us that need weeding. There are certainly parts of society that need weeding, so we leave the weeding to God who is love, and we follow in the way of Love, focusing on loving and blessing, rather than constantly fighting against others.

We’ve all got weeds within us. We are also all wheat. God, who is loving and who is love itself will sort that all out. We are not weed pullers; that is not our religion. As disciples of Jesus, (and quoting Ziggy Marley), “love is [our] religion.” Our place is to love one another, both the weeds and the wheat, and to grow together in the Way of Jesus, the Way of Love.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Emmanuel Episcopal Church

June 7, 2020

Trinity Sunday, A

Genesis 1:1 - 2:4a

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Matthew 28:16-20

Some of you have heard before a story I told of a former youth, now a young woman, who told me that all I do is talk for a living. She was joking around, at least kind of joking, and during times like this past week, I kind of feel like that is all I do, is talk for a living. When I see people being killed; see the violence in our streets; see hundreds of years of racism, of overt and covert oppression, and of mistrust throughout our society because of it, I want to do more than just talk. I want to make some kind of lasting change and difference in the lives of people directly affected by the racism, violence, and mistrust, and I want to make that change quickly and right now, but I can’t. Not alone, not immediately.

So, being that I can’t make some enormous, immediate change for the good, I figure I will go ahead and spend a few minutes talking, and I am going to talk about grace, love, and communion with the hope that these words will also address the racism, violence, and mistrust that we have all been witness to over the last week, months, years, and lifetimes.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. That is how Paul ended his second letter to the Corinthian church. With all else he had written them, addressing the good, the bad, the joys, and the strife, he left them with grace, love, and communion.

Grace: Compassion and understanding, true forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation, and the new life and beginning that comes with that healing.

Love: Choosing to see others as beloved, to act accordingly, to give up one’s own will and way in order to be of service to others out of true caring for them.

Communion - Sharing that love and grace together; living and striving together through joy and sorrow, beauty and pain.

Grace, love, and communion is the way of relationship, the very image of God in whose image we were made. We call God, “Trinity,” the three persons of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit bound up together so completely in love that they are one. Now today, on Trinity Sunday, we could go on and on, round and round about definitions of the Trinity, but I find overly defining God to be rather tedious and kinda boring. Like reading about a definition of a guitar rather than playing a guitar, I’d rather play with the Trinity a little bit instead of just define it.

Three persons bound together in love, God being relationship itself, I imagine conversations between the persons of the Trinity, conversations among God, each person of the Trinity contributing to the wisdom of the one whole God. I wonder, then if God might have limited each person of Godself so that the three persons of God had to be in communion with one another to have all knowledge and wisdom. God choosing that among Godself in order to fulfill relationship.

I like that idea as I imagine some of the conversations God might have had as I see changes in God’s desires and actions throughout scripture. Looking at ancient Israel and God’s command for animal sacrifice, we see that very command change throughout scripture. I imagine a conversation beginning with God the Father.

“Well, we need some sort of animal sacrifice to keep the people focused on us.”

“Dad, no we don’t. True worship is doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with us.”

“Boys, would you two stop arguing? Animal sacrifice is kinda how the humans do things. We can have them use it to focus on us for a while, and we’ll teach them justice, mercy, love, and humility as they go.”

Three persons united as one God, striving together for the sake of creation and for the sake of Godself. Wrestling together, dancing together with grace, love, and communion. That is the way of God as Trinity in whose image we are made.

As much as I want to just go and fix stuff immediately by myself, that doesn’t even seem to be how God chooses to work. Even if I could, I would just be imposing my will on others, denying them grace, denying them love, and certainly denying any communion between us.

If we’re going to fix anything in our lives and in the world, we need to do it together, striving together with grace, love, and communion. That means striving together with those whose views we find awful and crazy and striving together with those whom we believe see us as awful and crazy. Each one of us is limited in our knowledge, experience, and understanding. We need one another to find ways forward that don’t just impose one group’s or person’s will on others. That’s how we get riots and police brutality.

Striving together with grace, love, and communion means listening deeply to the differing sides, listening especially to ways we are called up short. After all, we cannot remove the speck in another’s eye without first removing the log from our own eye.

Part of my personal log removal is reading, Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad. The understandings of white privilege and systemic racism which for yeas I refused to believe in, I am finally coming to understand and accept by listening to and learning from a black muslim woman. I need her wisdom and experience because I am limited in my understanding and experience. Listening to her and coming to accept the ideas of white privilege doesn’t mean suddenly believing that I am the bad guy, and that’s not what she’s saying. Choosing to accept the ideas of white privilege and systemic racism and choosing to accept that I have a part in that does mean that I am choosing love, grace, and communion with those whose beliefs I found threatening. Doing so isn’t particularly comfortable, and there is pain in the wrestling and striving, but I have also found divinity there.

Striving for justice and mercy, walking humbly with God and one another requires more than just talking. It requires listening, and it requires work. It requires striving together with grace, love, and communion in order to work together for change, for justice. That’s the way of God in the world, walking with us in grace, love, and communion, and as God walks with us in the world, God looks around and says, “This place is beautiful, fantastic!” God also says, “This place is also terrible and tragic.” Then, God also says, “Yes, and even now, we’re redeeming this place.”

We’re united, one in God, one in Jesus, one in love. We are all one in our need to be set free from burdens that oppress us, and we are all one in finding salvation, finding freedom from those burdens through Jesus, casting our burdens upon him and turning our wills and our lives over to him. No other issue or belief is greater than that.

The freedom that Jesus gives, freedom from whatever binds us? No other belief or issue should cause us to be divided into camps or factions, not when we all get to be ministers of Jesus’ freedom from bondage. We’re a diverse bunch of folks, with all sorts of political beliefs and backgrounds, cultures, and ideologies, and that’s just within Emmanuel. Worldwide, we’re an extremely varied group of people, but we’re not baptized into any of those political beliefs, backgrounds, cultures, or ideologies. We’re baptized into Jesus, into the freedom from bondage that he gives, and we are all ministers of that freedom, all ministers of Jesus.

Brad Sullivan

Proper 14, Year C

August 11, 2019

Emmanuel, Houston

Luke 12:32-40

Dance With the Demons

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” We live with quite a lot of fear, don’t we? Fears of all kinds and varieties. Economic insecurity, health issues. Fear of loss. We have fears of violence, fears of natural disasters destroying what we have. We have fears of the other political party gaining power (whichever political party that is for each of us). We also have fears of not being good enough, worthy enough. Fears that someone might find out the truth about us. We have fears of what the world will be like for our children and grandchildren.

These fears keep us striving against each other, trying to overcome each other, trying to make sure that if the world is not going to be ok, at least those I love and I will be ok. In the midst of these fears, Jesus says, “Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” It seems that our fears are nothing new, but they are the same fears which have been with humanity forever, and Jesus repeats what God has said throughout scripture, “Do not be afraid.” Rather than overcome each other, let go of your fears and live in love toward each other. “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Live in love with each other, and trust each other. For economic security, trust not only in yourself but also in those your love, your community and neighbors. Give to others in their time of need, trusting that they will give to you in your time of need. Rather than overcoming each other, we live for and with each other. That is life in the kingdom of God, and it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

Lutheran Pastor David Lose writes:

I think the call – or at least one of the primary calls – of the church today is to become a place where people are so rooted in the promise of God’s good pleasure, reminded of their identity as God’s beloved children, and affirmed in their inherent self-worth and dignity, that they can, indeed, see all those around them as similarly beloved and deserving of self-worth, dignity, and God’s good pleasure. The question for a Christian..[is] discovering that as we give ourselves away in relationship and service we find a deeper sense of self than we’d imagined possible. We are born for community and find a sense of self and meaning and purpose as we trust God’s promises and give ourselves away in love.”

Give ourselves away in love. That’s not an easy thing to do when we’re afraid of ourselves and those around us. Our inner demons often keep us from giving ourselves away in love. A friend of mine, Steve White, recently wrote, “Perhaps it isn’t actually about overcoming all your inner demons. Maybe it’s about learning how to dance with them.” That speaks to me not only of the fears we have about ourselves, but also the fears we have about each other. What if we don’t need to fight against and overcome our inner demons, but rather learn to dance with them, to accept them as a part of who we are. What if we also don’t need to fight against and overcome each other, but rather learn to dance with each other, to give ourselves away in love, to offer ourselves daily to God and join with each other in God’s divine dance, turning even our scars into something beautiful. That’s life in God’s kingdom, and it is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom.

Fearing each other, we end up scattered and fragmented, continually knowing that we don’t belong. We have folks who have felt like they can’t or don’t belong to the church because of their political beliefs. I know I’ve made people feel this way at times, as have other church leaders, church members, and congregations. The thing about our political views is, most people I know, on both sides of the political spectrum want the same thing: a just society which brings about the best way of life for the most number of people. Their difference is simply the ways and the roles they believe the government should have in bringing about a just society. They both have their religious beliefs tied up into that, and folks on both sides of the aisle believe in Jesus’ teachings about the kingdom of God.

Here’s the secret: The government has little or nothing to do with bringing about God’s kingdom, even though it is the tool some would use to try. God’s kingdom is given through God in partnership with us, with our living into God’s kingdom, and there is room in God’s kingdom for all of us. All of us belong in God’s kingdom, and so we need not overcome each other, but learn to dance with each other, to give ourselves away in love.

Rather than fearing that the other side may win, can we at least realize the while the other side may be wrong, it is still striving for the best system for the good of the most people? Can we accept the consequences if it turns out our fears were right? Can we trust in each other, rather than feeling threatened by each other? Cane felt threatened by Abel, and so he killed him. We hear of folks and have experience feeling threatened by each other and each others’ beliefs, so we attack each other verbally, sometimes physically, deriding each other, feeling that they want to destroy all that is good in our society, our country, and our world.

"Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit,” Jesus taught, so that he will find you not asleep, but alert and ready. Our fears and the ways we seek to overcome each other, feeling threatened by each other, are ways that we fall asleep. We fall asleep to God’s kingdom and are alert only to our fears, to our inner demons. We all have inner demons. Our families have inner demons. The church has inner demons. Our cities, our state, and our nation have inner demons. Keeping alert, staying awake and being alert is about not overcoming and striving against our inner demons and each other, but rather learning to dance together.

If we learn to dance together, we may find that we are not asleep when the master of the house or the thief comes. Whenever Jesus shows up in our lives (and it happens all the time), how wonderful if he finds us not trying to overcome each other, but instead learning to dance with each other, giving ourselves away in love. Over time, we learn how each other moves and thinks. We still step on each others’ toes, but we laugh about it.

Living into God’s kingdom, us giving of our abundance when folks are in need, receiving from others’ abundance when we are in need; living in that kingdom, we can live without fear of the other. We can offer ourselves in love, and learn to dance together. “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

Brad Sullivan

The Epiphany, Year C

January 6, 2019

Emmanuel, Houston

Isaiah 60:1-6

Matthew 2:1-12

Flawed Dreams and Unexpected Love

Happy Epiphany y’all. Christmas ended yesterday, and the joy of Christmas now continues on in the Epiphany, the revelation of Jesus, of the God-baby to the nations through the Magi, and if I’m being honest, I feel the joy of Christmas continued on into Epiphany, and at the same time, I’m having a hard time feeling the joy right now. Over the first five to six days of Christmas, I really got to feel the joy of Christmas and let everything else fade into the background. I was at Camp Allen with my family on a clergy family retreat the weekend after Christmas, and other clergy were concerned about Emmanuel after Andy’s death, and they kept asking me, “How are you?”, not just to say “hi” but actually wondering how I was, with the knowing expression in their voices, expecting a sad response.

My answer shocked several folks because I said, “I’m doing great.” One friend seemed a little confused by my answer and said, “I’m sorry, I thought you were working with Andy at Emmanuel.” “No,” I told him, “I was, I am. It’s just that for right now, I’m enjoying time with my family. For right now, it’s a great Christmas and I get to just be with my family through New Year’s. For right now,” I told him, “Andy hasn’t died. When I get back, he’ll have died again, and I’ll begin mourning again.” He got that.

So now, it’s like the regular post-Christmas blues, but magnified, and I want to acknowledge that because I’m guessing I might not be alone in that grief and struggle with joy right now. That’s ok. For those who are joyful, we get to be joyful. For those struggling with joy, we get to struggle with joy. The reality of the post-Christmas blues is, I believe, in the realization that the dream of Christmas has not fully been realized. We celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace, the birth of Jesus, the Messiah, and then we find that as before, there isn’t yet peace on Earth.

I heard an interview on Fresh Air with Terry Gross a few days ago with Israeli author and peace activist Amos Oz. He had just died and they were rebroadcasting previous interviews, and in the one I heard, he was talking about one of his books, Black Box, and he said it was ultimately “a novel about great dreams, about great expectations, about bigger-than-life visions and, indeed, about the morning after and the sad realization that every dream come true is bound to be flawed by coming true.”

He went on to talk about the modern nation of Israel, about Israel itself being a flawed dream come true. There was such hope, such Messianic hope, in the re-creation of the nation of Israel, that it would be an idyllic, egalitarian country, that nations would flock to it and they would be a light to bring peace on Earth. With all of the good that Israel is, the reality has of course fallen short of that dream. The same could be said of the United States, of the city on a hill and light to the nations that we strive to be, and the reality that falls short of that dream, and the same can be said of the Church and every other dream we have. That’s life.

“Every dream come true is bound to be flawed by coming true.” That struck a chord with me regarding Christmas and the Epiphany. The dream of the Messiah and of peace on Earth. Did the Magi, after seeing Jesus, feel “the sad realization that every dream come true is bound to be flawed by coming true?”

Who were these guys and maybe galls, these Magi from the east? Ultimately, we don’t exactly know, but from the text, we know they weren’t kings. They were more like astrologer, pagan, mystic, tarot card-type folks who were decidedly not Jewish. So, star guiding them or not, why were they looking for or expecting some Jewish king or messiah? Israel had a king, and they went to Israel’s king to ask about this newborn king/messiah guy, so this obviously wasn’t a geopolitical greeting and first summit around a new world leader. So what was going on?

Again, we don’t exactly know, but my guess is this. These magi had heard stories from Jewish people they had lived with or encountered. My guess is further that the stories they heard included stories from the prophets about a messianic figure, about the restoration of Israel, and about the peace on Earth of God’s kingdom fully realized that such a Messiah was thought to bring about.

Perhaps they’d heard stories from Isaiah 2 about nations streaming to Israel and people beating “their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks; [when] nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Maybe they had also heard stories from Isaiah 60 about the light of God coming upon Israel, of the good fortune for all through that promise, culminating with “they shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord.” Maybe the Magi had heard that verse and therefore brought gold and frankincense to proclaim the praise of the Lord…except for poor dumb Steve who thought Myrrh would be a good idea. Poor Steve the Magi.

We don’t know how the non-Jewish, pagan Magi came to know about a baby king born in Israel and spoken of in the prophets, but my guess is that they had heard these stories of Messiah and had heard the hopes Jewish people whom they had encountered that the Messiah would be born and bring peace on Earth.

So, were the Magi then disappointed with “the morning after and the sad realization that every dream come true is bound to be flawed by coming true.” Were the Magi the first to experience what we call the post-Christmas blues because, of course, there was not peace on earth after the birth of this Jewish Messiah.

Not even when God became human, even Messiah, the Christ, came into the world was there peace on Earth. There was not perfect peace on Earth, because God still left the earth in our care. Of course life is still going to be imperfect and flawed even with Messiah, even with the Christ. Perfection was never the point of the Christ. Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, came; God became human to show us how to be human, and to join with us fully in our broken and flawed humanity. There is love.

Love is the Epiphany. Not perfection. Love, with its life, its beauty, and its pain is the Epiphany that the Magi saw. These pagan, astrologer, tarot card reading type folks who were the antithesis of Jewish devotion to God were the ones to whom God gave this Epiphany of love. They were pagan, gentile, totally other than the people of Israel. In the eyes of the religious elite, they would have been totally unworthy of any kind of blessing or love from God, and yet the Epiphany of God’s love was given to them. Pagan, Gentile, they were loved by God.

They may have had some disappointment after seeing Jesus that the messianic hopes and fervor of peace on Earth had not been realized, but I’m guessing the Epiphany of love stuck with them. During the post Christmas blues, God’s Epiphany is love. No matter who you are. No matter your religious devotion or non-devotion. No matter where you are from or what you have done. You are loved. You are so loved. That is the Epiphany of Jesus. That is how Christ heals us, how Christ helps us to become fully human, that we know, in our hearts, that we are loved. That is God’s Epiphany of love. You are loved. You are so loved.