View Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 25B] Jeremiah 31.7-9 Psalm 126 Hebrews 7.23-28 Mark 10.46-52 May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word. Amen. The healing of a blind man, the healing of blind Bartimaeus, involves the blind man calling out to Jesus, Jesus asking him what he wants, then granting him sight, and saying, “Go, your faith has made you well.” It’s pretty easy to accept this story at face value, as the story of a miracle, of Jesus’ power and lordship being demonstrated. But this is not a story about a miracle, even though a miracle is part of the story. We have to pay attention in Mark. Mark is the gospel people know the least of. Even outside of church, many people know the stories of Jesus’ birth; stories of wise men and angels, but that’s in Matthew. Maybe people have heard of the “good Samaritan,” even if they don’t know the point of that story, but that’s in Luke. And people know of “doubting” Thomas, and of Jesus appearing before him to prove the reality of the resurrection, but that’s in John. There are no wise men, no parable of the Samaritan, and the resurrection appearances in Mark are extremely spare in any detail or color. Mark begins with John the Baptizer as the forerunner of Jesus, with the baptism of Jesus, and His temptation in the wilderness, and then–bam!–we’re right into Jesus’ ministry. Everything in Mark is focused on action. It is in this continual narrative of action that Mark reveals who Jesus is and what His message is. Mark reads very much like a screen play, emphasizing action with the common use of “immediately” (euthus) as a connector. Mark reads like a screen play in his use of the historical present. (“And now he comes to Jericho ...,” which is unhappily rendered in our translation using the past tense, “And they came to Jericho ...”) So, if we have to pay attention to the action in Mark, then we need to pay attention to what has come before our lesson. Mark has set the stage. Here, Bartimaeus, who seeks Jesus out, is healed immediately. Back in chapter 8, a man who did not seek Jesus but was brought to Him, is healed of his blindness, but the healing is gradual. The blind man in ch. 8 took time to see, and then in the rest of ch. 8 the disciples did not see who Jesus was. He had to keep explaining, then He was transfigured in His glory before them, and then they still didn’t get it, but focused first on who was greatest and then on who would sit at Jesus’ right and left hands in His kingdom. And here we are, still in the midst of that journey into insight, into the realization of who Jesus really is, while ...

Play Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Twenty-second Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 24B2] Isaiah 53.4-12 Psalm 91.9-16 Hebrews 5.1-10 Mark 10.35-45 May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word. Amen. What does it mean to serve? In looking at this question, let’s look first not at someone in a humble station, but at somebody who is in charge, the boss. Those of us who have worked in larger organizations of any kind all have had experience with who’s in charge, whether we call him or her C.E.O., president, superintendent, commanding officer, or whatever. Regardless of how effective a C.E.O. may be in executing the mission of the company and in maximizing shareholder return, how he or she is known in the company can be revealing. Let’s imagine a C.E.O. whose name is David Copperfield. He may be known, by people who do not know him personally, as “the chairman” or as “Copperfield”. There may be a number of nicknames, which in the nature of business nicknames are unlikely to be complimentary. “Dave the knife” or “Copperhead” may speak of a certain competitive admiration from members of other businesses, or even from shareholders, but if someone who works for the company calls the C.E.O. by such a nickname we get an immediate signal that employee morale may bear closer examination. In my corporate career I had my share of good bosses and ones who were less good. One thing I learned was that regardless of other behavior, the most reliable test for whether or not someone was a good boss was who he or she thought you worked for. If the person in authority ever starts thinking and acting as if you work for him or her, rather than for the company, that’s as big a red flag as you can find, and it’s a flag that’s accompanied by such other signals as the executive secretary who refers to the boss–when you’re talking to her to get to see him–not as “David” but as “the chairman”. Well-run enterprises are managed by people who recognize and practice that each person in the organization is an asset dedicated to a purpose which is separate from the personal interests of the managers. In today’s Gospel lesson, James and John don’t quite get that. They are focused on their own perks, on what’s in it for them. And they’re a little cocky about it, answering Jesus that they are able to drink of the cup of which He will drink. He doesn’t condemn them. He simply points out that while they will drink of the cup of martyrdom from which He will drink, they are asking for something which they should not ask for. Jesus doesn’t condemn them, but the other disciples do, because in their minds any advantage that James and John might gain is one gained at their expense. They think of the kingdom as a ...

Play Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin   The Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 23B2] Amos 5.6-7, 10-15                Psalm 90.12-17             Hebrews 4.12-16              Mark 10.17-31   May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word.  Amen.   “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  The rich young man goes away from Jesus, sorrowing, when he is told that he must give all that he has to the poor.  From this teaching many have concluded that Jesus is teaching a radical communitarianism, that possessions are in themselves suspect and that we must divest ourselves even of what has been earned.  But we need to be careful here.  Is Jesus in fact teaching that we should embrace worldly poverty?  That’s certainly what St. Antony of Egypt believed when he heard this passage in worship one day.  He was a rich young man who did sell all, to live the rest of his life as a monk in the desert.  That’s what St. Francis of Assisi believed, when as a rich young man he embraced poverty and required those who became his community to do likewise.  And throughout Scripture the poor are described as closer to God because they are more reliant on God.  So, are we to turn our backs on material blessing?  Not necessarily. We need to pay attention here to the exchange between the rich young man and Jesus.  The young man says “... what must I do ...?”  He’s asking how he can earn salvation.  And Jesus tells him, “You lack one thing ...”  In other words, “You, my friend, have a particular problem.  You are seeking to earn salvation, and it cannot be earned.”  Jesus is telling the young man that salvation is unmerited; it is a gift.  We all need to pay attention.  The message that Jesus gives to the young man and to His own disciples is essentially the same one you can see on the sign in the recovery community, which says “Let go and let God.” It is a message that reminds us that the kingdom of heaven is God’s gift, and not something that we can merit.  Remember what Jesus told His disciples when they were squabbling about who was the greatest?  He said that whoever receives a child in His name receives Him (Mark 9.38).  In other words, status counts for nothing with God.  Then He taught that we must receive the kingdom as a child (Mark 10.15), as ones who do not question the gift offered.  And now, teaching specifically in response to a question which asks, “How can I earn salvation,” He says, “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible” (Mark 10.27).  We can’t save ourselves, any more than a camel can pass through the eye of a needle (Mark 10.25).  We can’t save ourselves, but God can, and God ...

Play Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 22B] Genesis 2.18-24 Psalm 8 Hebrews 1.1-4; 2.5-12 Mark 10.2-16 May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word. Amen.   It will, perhaps, not come as a great surprise to you that our Gospel lesson today is one which comes up in seminary classes on preaching. Why? Because it is considered to be a “hot potato”. In every congregation there are a number of divorced people, and Jesus does come across as pretty strong, so seminarians are alerted that preaching on this Gospel “requires sensitivity”. Now, you may consider me to be foolish, but I am bound to say that I don’t agree that we have a hot potato here. We never need to apologize for Scripture. What we have is Good News, the same Good News that we each promise to testify to, both in word and in deed. Jesus does take a strong line about human conduct, but in doing so He makes it clear that when we fall short of the mark it is because there is a mark, there is a plan, there is a state of holiness to which we are called and for which we have been created. The Pharisees pose their question in order to test Jesus. In turn, Jesus asks what Moses commanded. When He asks this, He is asking what the divine Law provides. He is speaking to people for whom the first five books of what we call the Old Testament are known simply as the Law, and are understood to set forth the specific commandments of the Lord for how to live in covenant with God. So, what Jesus is really asking is, “How are you to live in covenant with God?” The Pharisees don’t really answer this question. They quote procedure to Jesus, not the substance of faithful adherence to the covenant, and Jesus is quick to point out that procedure and substance are two different things: “Because of your hardness of heart [this procedure is allowed]” (Mark 10.5). Jesus is speaking in a society in which a woman is expected to be subject to a man. She is expected to be married, or under her father or another male relative. (This society still exists in much of the Middle East.) So, if a man does not give his wife a certificate of divorce, she is considered to be without honor and will be left destitute. In other words, Jesus is pointing out that the Mosaic procedure the Pharisees have quoted is intended for the (albeit minimal) protection of women. But, and far more importantly, Jesus looks beyond this procedure and focuses on substance. He quotes from both accounts of creation in Genesis, that “... from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and ...

Play Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 21B] Num. 11.4–6, 10–16, 24–29 Ps. 19.7–14 Jam. 5.13-20 Mk. 9.38–50 May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word. Amen.     In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic novel, The Brothers Karamazov, the catch phrase of the middle brother, Ivan Fyodorovich, is “Everything is permitted.” Ivan espouses a strong rationalist, atheistic philosophy that leads in part to the murder of his own father. The world inhabited by Ivan (at least in his own mind) is one in which there is no right or wrong, only decisions of greater or less utility. As radical as this worldview may be, it is a worldview that has been adopted by much of our popular culture, but in observing this let me be quick to point out that the kingdom described by Jesus is no less radical; indeed, it is more radically different still. It is a world in which our Lord describes personal choices at the extreme fringe of contemplation: cutting off a hand; cutting off a foot; plucking out an eye. It is a world in which these choices are described in the context things beyond even that extreme fringe of contemplation: a hell of fire and self-consumption. Cutting off a hand sounds radical, as it should, and yet we have become so inured to a culture in which “everything is permitted” that we don’t often pause to consider just how disordered an absence of moral distinctions is. We can certainly select examples of evil that will elicit universal condemnation–evils like the Nazi death camps of the Holocaust–but such agreement comes about because a death camp is so far beyond the experience of almost all people that it doesn’t seem quite real, and so does not seem to present to each individual an individual moral choice. And why have I used the example of a death camp? I am reminded of this example because of what Elie Wiesel records in his famous memoir of the Holocaust, entitled Night. Wiesel writes of arriving at Auschwitz with his father: Not far from us, flames were leaping up from a ditch, gigantic flames. They were burning something. A lorry drew up at the pit and delivered its load—little children. Babies! Yes, I saw it ... It was a nightmare ...  My father’s voice drew me from my thoughts: ... He did not want to see the burning of his only son. My forehead was bathed in cold sweat. But I told him that I did not believe that they could burn people in our age, that humanity would never tolerate it. ... “Humanity? [he said] Humanity is not concerned with us. Today anything is allowed. Anything is possible ...”  (Night, trans. S. Rodway. London: Robson, 1974.) Anything is possible. Everythingis permitted: the Holocaust can be seen as the culmination of a nihilistic self-focus that makes no distinction ...

Play Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 20B2] Jeremiah 11.18-20 Psalm 54 James 3.13-4.3, 7-8a Mark 9.30-37 May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word. Amen.   “Draw near to God and he will draw near to you” (James 4.8a). I am reminded of this teaching from James when I think about the visit I had with a prisoner in a county jail in Mississippi. Let’s call the prisoner “Ken”. Ken was not a member of the parish. I got to know him because he would stop by the parish office occasionally. He’d pick up pecans from the rectory yard in season, or he’d stop by and ask for help with food. Once or twice he just dropped in to talk. One night Ken knocked on my front door, at about 1 in the morning. I woke up a little alarmed, and went to the door ready for trouble. I saw that it was Ken, and asked him what was going on. He was drunk. He said he’d had a fight with his girlfriend; she’d kicked him out, and he was on the street. I told him that he was over-the-line in coming to the house, particularly at 1 a.m., and said that if he had a problem with a fight he had better go to the police. He left. A couple of days later I heard he was in jail. I decided to go see him, knowing that he had no church. You see, I figured that when Jesus tells us to visit prisoners, He’s not telling us to just visit the members of our own flocks. So, I walked over to the jail. The first thing Ken said when I came in the visiting room was that he wanted to apologize for pounding on my door in the middle of the night. He had gone to the police, and the police had arrested him for public drunkenness, and then his girlfriend had pressed charges for him hitting her (although it was pretty obvious that she hit him too). We talked about his situation, and I made the point that life would continue to be a series of problems unless and until Ken decided to change how he was living. I suggested that he needed to get active in a church, both for spiritual reasons and to get to know a group of people who could be part of a network of mutual support. Ken said that he was “alright with God,” that “he’d given his life to Jesus” when he was fourteen. And so I had to ask, “Then what are you doing sitting here in jail?” Now, before you think I was being abrasive, or that I’m saying that people who get in trouble with the law are necessarily bad people, let me go back to what James had to say, “Draw near to ...

Play Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 19B2] Isaiah 50.4-9a Psalm 116.1-8 James 3.1-12 Mark 8.27-38 May the Lord by in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His Holy Word. Amen. “But who do you say that I am?” This is the question Jesus asks His disciples, but more importantly, it is the question He asks each one of us. In the gospel account, the disciples–despite the fact that they have now accompanied Jesus throughout His ministry in Galilee, and have witnessed His miracles and received His teaching–still don’t really understand who Jesus is. They try to fit Him into whatever set of their own expectations they think might work. Peter does get it right (with God’s help!) He says, “You are the Messiah,” but then makes it clear that he doesn’t understand what this means. Like the crowd in our lesson from last week, who say, when Jesus has healed the deaf and mute man, “He has done all things well [!],” Peter wants to focus on the signs and wonders that accompany the coming of the Christ, and so he takes Jesus aside and says something like, “You need to stop speaking of suffering and rejection, let alone dying. You are here to bring the good news of the redemption of Israel.” And what does Jesus do? He rebukes Peter in language that is strong enough to read, let alone receive: “Get behind me, Satan!” Which brings us back to that question, “[W]ho do you say that I am?” Let’s put that question in the context of Mark’s telling, before we put it in the context of our own lives. In Mark, this whole lesson is the scene around which the entire story pivots. Up until this point we have heard of Jesus’ ministry of teaching and healing in Galilee, of the call of His disciples, and of His disputes with the Pharisees, but now the arc of the sixteen chapters of Mark changes direction, for Jesus Himself changes direction, and now sets His face toward Jerusalem. Jerusalem—the holy place of God where Jesus will be betrayed and killed. Jesus says that He will rise again, but Peter and the others seize upon the issues of betrayal and death. Peter’s not listening, or if he is he’s not paying attention, because if he’s paying attention he’ll realize that when Jesus speaks of rejection He is echoing what Isaiah taught long before, when he described the servant of the Lord as saying, “I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting” (Isaiah 50.6). What the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One of God does is not just open the ears of the deaf, loosen the tongues of the mute, make the lame to walk and the blind ...

Play Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 17 B2] Deut. 4.1-2, 6-9 Psalm 15 James 1.17-27 Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23 May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His holy Gospel. “[E]very perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (Jas. 1.17). Unless you have been out in the desert, or isolated up North or in the mountains, or on a ship at sea, you have never seen the thousands and thousands of stars in all their brightness, and seen satellites fly past, because you can’t. The sky is filled with too much man-made light–all of the house and street and business and automobile lights of all of the people around you, that shine into the sky to reflect off of water vapor, and so prevent you from seeing the stars as they really are to be seen. But the fact that you cannot see the stars doesn’t mean that they are not there. It doesn’t mean that they have not been there for billions of years before you, and will be there after you have left this earth. They shine forth despite weather, artificial light, whether you look or care. It’s the same with God’s grace, only more so, for God’s grace is timeless. The Father of lights reaches out with grace, in love. He is Creator not in any tense, but as the One by whom all Creation exists from the beginning. And to the extent that we do not know and experience God’s love, it is because we have allowed something else to get in the way. That’s what Jesus speaks of when He says, “[T]here is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out ... [F]rom the human heart ... evil intentions come ... evil things come from within, and they defile a person” (Mark 7.15-23). Evil comes from within in this sense: We put our own will before God’s. And when we put our own will before God’s, we cannot experience His grace. When I was a small child I once started staring into a mirror. I got right up to the glass, and stared to the point that my eyes didn’t focus correctly. I started just seeing my own eye, or my face distorted. I’m told that staring into a mirror this way is not uncommon in childhood. But what really got my attention was that my grandmother happened to come into the room, and on observing me said, “Don’t look too long in a mirror, or you will see the devil.” That really scared me (I was only about five), and for years I would avoid mirrors. I don’t avoid mirrors anymore, but neither do I stare into them. I guess I have come to agree with my grandmother and her ...

Play Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 16 B] Joshua 24.1-2a, 14-18 Psalm 34.15-22 Ephesians 6.10-20 John 6.56-69 May the Lord be in my mind, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His holy Gospel. You know what the famous last words of an idiot are? “Yeah? Watch this!” Popular variants are “Bet I can!” and “Hold my beer!” Now, why would I mention this? I suppose it’s because when I first looked at the lessons for today, my first reaction was, “If you can’t preach on these lessons, you’re not supposed to be preaching.” But, guess what? That’s not really the same as saying “Bet I can!” I don’t claim to be able to preach on these lessons because of my ability as a preacher, but because of the lessons themselves. The Word of God has power, and in a season of disquiet in the Church, what is it that Scripture has to tell us today? Joshua challenging the leaders of the Israelites: “[C]hoose this day whom you will serve, ... but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Josh. 24.14-15) . Paul challenging the Ephesian Christians: “Put on the whole armor of God ... to stand firm” (Eph. 6.11, 13). And, finally, Jesus teaching: “The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life” (John 6.63), and Peter–confessing Jesus to be the Christ–rejecting the option to turn aside, with the words, “Lord, to whom can we go?” (John 6.68). Now, there’s actually a lot more that can be talked about in our lessons, and the psalm reminds us that the Lord hears the cry of the righteous, but I want to focus on the thread which runs between the quotations. The thread is that of choice, of free will, and of active discipleship. If you want to see the world and the Church “go to Hell in a hand basket”: Don’t do anything. If you come to church, just sit and listen, but don’t let it change how you live, what you say. But, doing nothing, being passive, will be hard to do if you make the personal choice to serve the Lord, and if you accept the Holy Spirit as your comforter and guide. If you want to see the Church “go to Hell in a hand basket”: Then focus on your love for the Church as a familiar and comfortable institution. Focus on your love for the Church rather than on your love for Jesus Christ, because the Church, it is sad to say, will let you remain passive. You can just show up and go through the motions. But Jesus won’t let you remain passive if and when you truly give your heart to Him. No, He’s going to set you on fire. The One who baptizes with fire and with the Holy Spirit (Luke 3.16), will claim you and embolden you when you do one ...

Play Video Grace Episcopal Church Sheboygan, Wisconsin The Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 15B) Prov. 9.1–6 Ps. 34.9–14 Eph. 5.15–20 John 6.53–59 May the Lord be in my head, on my lips, and in my heart, that I may rightly and truly proclaim His holy Word. Amen. The British archaeologist Thomas Edward Lawrence is best remembered by the rather more glamorous sounding name of Lawrence of Arabia, also the title of a 1962 feature film depicting his life during World War I, in which he served as an officer in the British army, as key figure in the Arab uprising against the rule of the Ottoman Turks in Arabia, Sinai and the Transjordan. Lawrence was a gifted linguist, and served as a sort of guerilla leader in uniting Arab opposition to Ottoman rule. In 1922 he wrote an account of war in the Middle East. The book became widely known (and I can certainly recommend it). It is entitled The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. And what, you may ask, are these seven pillars—these pillars referred to in our lesson from Proverbs? When I read Lawrence’s book, many years ago, I recall thinking that at some point it would become clear what he was referring to. Little did I know that before the war, Lawrence had begun a scholarly work on the archaeology of seven great cities in the Middle East. He lost the manuscript of this book on a train, but he liked the title so much he applied it to his war memoirs. There really is no connection between the contents of the book and the title. But what about the seven pillars in proverbs?  There has never been agreement within the Church over what Proverbs refers to. Some have argued for connections with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, or with the seven sacraments. Some have argued that seven is just a biblical allusion to perfect completeness, or have drawn connection to the “pillars of the earth” referred to at Ps. 75.3, 1 Sam. 2.8, and Job 9.6. Referring to the pillars of the earth doesn’t really help us, however, for even if we say that the house Wisdom builds is the earth (and looking around us that might be a real stretch!) we still have to discern what the pillars are. So, what I would like to do today is to work with you and with our lessons to see how we might discern together what the house is to which Wisdom invites, the house in which we may “walk in the way of insight”. The first thing we notice, in our lesson from Proverbs, is that Wisdom invites us into her house. Scripture nowhere tells us that there is some secret inner circle from which we might be excluded. Jesus makes clear that the Gospel is transparent, teaching “there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest” (Mk. 4.22; Lk. 8.17). In other words we are all invited into the way of Wisdom, the way which is ...