Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

You've heard me talk about this before, I 100% do play the

lottery and I 100% think that the lottery is a total disaster. And it's not

healthy. It's not a moral system. And, I completely play it. And the whole time

I'm thinking about all the good that I will do. There will be enough money left

over for a little remodel of the house, but I've got a lot of plans to do good

for the world, of course. But this time as I was mulling over the 480 million,

that was unquestionably going to become my coming my way, one of the things

that I was really thinking about is why do I do this to myself? Why do I care? And why do I play this? What

is this? And I mean, obviously part of me is like, why wouldn't you, right? I

mean, give it a shot. ...for myself, I think what is this thing? Why am I

caring? And I realized, as I was

thinking about all this money that I thought I could do such great things with,

one of the things I was really realizing I wanted was this idea that overnight,

just like that, a switch could be flipped, and I wouldn't have to worry.

I thought I wouldn't have to worry about anything when it

comes to financial issues for my family, for me, for my brothers, for my

parents, for my kids, for any of it, probably their grandkids and great

grandkids. I'd have it. We'd be all set. And that is so attractive. Oh, my

goodness. What an amazing possibility that I wouldn't have to worry anymore. Snap,

one day, one thing happens and I'm fine. And I could say to my soul, soul all

is well, relax, eat, drink, and be merry we're finally ok. And you all can

laugh with me at this because you know what it's like, whether it's the lottery

or not, you know what it's like to have that desire.

We were walking past one of the glorious churches in New

York City and on impulse, I wanted to go in and offer a prayer for my friend's

grandmother. So, we stopped, and I did, and I can still remember the dim

lighting, the coolness of the space, and the comfort and kneeling in prayer.

Very soon after that, we learned that something had gone terribly wrong and my

friend's grandmother had died, died very suddenly and unexpectedly.

It was a total shock to everyone and there was deep grieving.

And while my rational mind knew that none of this had any connection with my

simple prayer. It was a very long time before I prayed again. Maybe you've

encountered unexpected moments in your life that seemed to challenge your faith

in new ways, challenge your sense of God's love, your worthiness, and your relationships.

If not, perhaps you've seen someone else in this struggle. I didn't consciously

think of prayer as being scary or anything, I just didn't think about it.

Years later, I was pregnant with my son and there were

questions and concerns about the pregnancy. And I found myself lying in bed in the

dark one night. Trying to stitch together, some humble prayer starting with, I

don't know God if you're there, but wanting so desperately for my child to

live. Prayer's tumbling out in the dark and silence of night can sometimes

overcome our daytime resistance. Maybe you found yourself in the midst of a

sleepless night, found yourself unexpectedly in prayer.

Substitute Samaritan with another identity that gives us a

better sense of how these words might have sounded to those who heard them in

the earliest years. If we substitute that, we also have the chance to

substitute who it is that's been injured. Is it a stranger? Is it someone who

we'd never encountered before?

Or might we be the one who was injured and suffering? Would

we care what the identity was of the one who came to help? No, I think we would

just thank God that someone that stopped had cared. So, who is our neighbor?

Who are we called to extend mercy to? To potentially receive mercy from? It has

nothing to do with identifiers that separate us from one another.

It has to do with mercy, with kindness and compassion and

love. These may not seem like big things, but they can change everything. And

perhaps they are everything. When I think of love of neighbor and mercy and

kindness, there are names and faces in this congregation that come immediately

to mind. People who just always seem to be checking in checking the pulse of

individuals, checking the pulse of this community. To look out for people who

might have needs. To be in response to those needs, whether it's within this

community or in the broader Cincinnati community.

In case it's been a little while, since you were in math

class, remember that geometry is the study of shapes and forms. Some simple and

some very complex, some flat and some multidimensional. And calculus on the

other side is the study of the rate of change made complicated by instantaneous

rates that lead to integral movements toward an infinite answer.

I wish someone would have told me a long, long time ago that

math is actually just a lot like God. Maybe then I would have liked it a little

bit better or understood it a little bit better. Maybe if you love math, you're

thinking, now I understand God.

We observe God like math in many forms, many shapes from

many angles while the world around us is constantly changing. And as

Christians, we are constantly making instantaneous decisions about how to

observe and perpetuate God's divine nature in the world. Our decisive actions

say something true about her integral, whole self. Geometry, the study of

shapes and calculus the study of change, are actually a lot like God. Algebra

then is the human side of the equation, because algebra deals deeply in

generalizations and assumptions about how it all adds up. That's why we usually

start with algebra. that's why we usually

start with prejudice and fear, safety, and security. We usually start with the

less complicated side of God, just like we start with the least complicated

side of math.

In the Bible in Daniel, Jobs, Zacharia, Chronicles, Isaiah, Proverbs, Psalms, all over the place, they talk about God as a refiner, purifying, cleansing, and making things new. But to be transformed, to change, you have to be willing to let go of your footprints to let them fade here, so you can make new ones there. Or maybe let go of the beautiful image in your mind of the footprints you're going to leave on some beautiful road, in order to let your feet sink a little deeper in your place.

Either way what you're doing is letting go of your expectations for your life to follow your call. And we know it's never easy. You're going to have to go through a little fire. So, when those would-be disciples from our story today, tell Jesus that they are in, that they are ready to follow, but just have one little thing, one little thing to take care of over here.

Essentially what they are saying is that that part of their life, is separate from their act of following Jesus.

The drowning of the pigs is not good news to everyone, as it

turns out, it is certainly not good news to the swine herders, the farmers who

owned these pigs, the people whose economic livelihood depended on these

creatures of God that they have come to possess. This upheaval and subversion

of the system is not welcomed by these and not welcomed by those who have

benefited long from a system that was happy to keep the freed man in chains

rather than look for a collective salvation...

What I didn't know when I was a little child that I'm glad I

know now is that demons cannot live in the waters of baptism. And we, as God's

people, have the blessing and the great responsibility to exercise them from

our hearts and our souls, from our homes and our communities, from our nation

and from our world.

What, I didn't know when I was a little child that I'm glad

I know now, is that slavery is not that long ago, and not that far away. It is

present in our labor market and our prison system, in our economy and in our

schools, it is present in our wage gap and in our healthcare system. Oppression

is a Legion, but we are a force to be reckoned with.

READ THE TRANSCRIPT HERE

The message of the Holy Spirit was being sent to all. It was accessible to all because God is seeking a relationship with all. Today is called Trinity Sunday and it celebrates the three expressions of the Trinity that we address in our prayers throughout our services, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.Our tradition has tended to be steeped in masculine language. And that has been an obstacle for many to relate to God. This Trinity is also frequently described as, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier and there are other descriptions as well, but it's an attempt to express these three different aspects of God.

I find that human words really struggle in trying to describe God. But the focus on Trinity Sunday is to acknowledge those three in the unity of God. As our opening collect expresses, Almighty and everlasting God, you have given to us your servant's grace by the confession of a true faith to acknowledge the glory of the eternal Trinity and in the power of your divine majesty to worship the unity... God expresses through scripture, this deep longing to be in relationship with us. And that is no easy task...

Our God wants to be in relationship with all of God's people. Our Gospels are filled with expressions of God's love for God's people. Expressed in the very being of Jesus, his teaching, his healings, his embrace of all, his outreach to all, his sacrifice for all, his sending of his disciples to the ends of the earth, that all might receive the saving message of love. That all might be one.

All of a sudden, the disciples are speaking. All the

disciples, by the way. Their first language is probably Hebrew or Aramaic,

which is a dialect of Hebrew. And instead of speaking the Gospel in their own

language, they're now speaking the language in whatever language, the people

around them speak. The first thing the Holy Spirit does to make people church,

is turn them outward and give them a language to speak love to others in

whatever way they will understand.

Please notice that the Holy Spirit does not make it so

everyone else in the room understands the disciples when they speak in their

native language. It is historically culturally the custom of a lot of churches

to try to make the world look more like us and speak more like us and learn our

language.

But in the story we have today, the birth of the church

happens when the people who love God are turned outward and learn how to speak

other people's language. This is a super Supreme act of vulnerability, by the

way, learning to speak someone else's language. Have you ever tried to learn

another language?

READ THE SERMON TRANSCRIPT

Every morning at my son's Montessori school in the

Cincinnati public school district, they take two minutes to center themselves

to begin a new day. A chance to embrace their school motto, peace, love, and

PRM. Every child is given the opportunity to pray in their own way at school and

no one is excluded from this time of daily reflection, I decided to stay with

the teachers there in that place of prayer and together we begged God, "Please

do not let this be their last day."...

My seven-year-old son, and your seven-year-old son, and your

seven-year-old grandson, and your seven-year-old niece, and your seven-year-old

neighbor. They are currently being taught. They are learning from our society

that if they want to be saved, that they need to turn off the lights, get low,

barricade the doors, stay silent. And sacrifice themselves so that gun manufacturers

can continue to make tons of money off of people's anxious fears of home

invasion or worse, the pleasure at the sport of murder.

What must we do to be saved? What will shake us? What is our

foundation? And will we believe on the Lord Jesus who came that we might have

life and might have it more abundantly?...

What kind of Christians are we? Throughout Easter we've been focusing on these readings from the Book of Acts. We've been preaching from that space and we've been listening to these stories of the early church and the first believers and how they became the church.

And it's been a little bit uncomfortable for us, Episcopalians, because we're hearing stories of people going out and sharing their faith lives openly and actively with other people. And if there's any kind of Christians, we aren't, it's often those kinds of Christians. The kinds who are going out and making believers.

And I do get that, I'm one of us. I like to tease our people and myself even, but I get that. I get why we try to distance ourselves from that kind of evangelism. Because many of us have been raised up in a place where we were taught that a Christian's job is to believe exactly the right things and act exactly the right way so that we go to heaven when we die, instead of going to hell and burning eternally forever.

And therefore, when we see people who aren't part of the thing that we're a part of, we are taught to worry about them. They're not like us and that's a cause of concern for us, and for them. We're taught to hold people who believe things differently at a distance, to fear. And if we're charitable and loving in Christ's name, to work really hard to change their minds. We like to get people to believe what we believe and call that a conversion experience. This is what we're taught, not Episcopalians, Christians, like so many of us are taught to be like this.

This is a deeply unhealthy way of experiencing other people...