Last Sunday I preached the following sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo NY.
It was for Good Shepherd Sunday (I threatened the Dean that I'd preach on German Shepherds instead), and was on the following propers:
Acts 2:42-47
1Peter 2:19-25
John 10:1-10


In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Recently I attended a lecture at Hobart College by Bishop Gene Robinson, bishop of New Hampshire. He had a few things to say about scriptural reference points and how by imposing modern framework onto scriptural societies, we can create a square hole/round peg phenomenon. He likened it to a novel written in our own time that uses a phrase like “out in left field” requires complex understanding of baseball and its importance in American culture,. Without understanding about baseball being important to our society, understanding that it’s played on a field, understanding that Babe Ruth consistently hit in the right field and tickets for that part of Yankee Stadium sold first, leaving left field tickets undesirable, without that understanding, a person reading a novel containing the phrase “out in left field” in a culture without baseball is going to be heartily confused.
And that’s what many of us are facing when we hear about sheep. We probably think of them as fluffy docile little clouds with legs, baaing through their simple little lives. Apparently, however, sheep smell. Apparently, they can be nasty and tempermental, obstinate and difficult.
Today, from the Gospel of St John, we hear an interesting record of the interaction between Christ and the disciples using sheep as a metaphor. At first in the Gospel, Christ introduces the concept of a shepherd, alluding to himself as the shepherd, though not explicitly stating it. He introduces a shepherd who uses the gate to enter the sheepfold, rather than climbing in over the fence. So far, it sounds pretty good. He then mentions that this shepherd is a shepherd who’s known by the gatekeeper, and known to the sheep inside the pen. Sounds like everything is in order. The sheep know this shepherd, and the shepherd know these sheep. The sheep follow this shepherd and do not run away from him. Even though we urban dwelling-20th century folk have a rudimentary understanding of animal husbandry, all of this sounds like it’s on the up and up and pretty easy to follow. Jesus is a shepherd, he knows the sheep and the sheep know him. Got it.
But the disciples don’t get it. Something went over their heads, or they weren’t paying attention, or they were distracted , or they were texting and driving or something.
So, Christ tries a different angle. Strangely, he goes from the pretty straightforward shepherd metaphor to something out in left field. He calls himself a gate, which doesn’t seem like it’s going to be helpful, but let’s stick with it and see where he takes it. Christ then states that he’s not a thief…a bit weird. So far, Christ is a gate, but not a thief, in case the disciples who were easy confused by the shepherd-sheep relationship might have thought that Christ was comparing himself next to a thief gate, but he clears that up. Next, he says that the sheep listen to him. So, he’s a non-thieving gate that the sheep can hear. But it’s clear that the disciples must still be lost, because Christ scraps all of it and concludes eloquently by declaring: I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
So, for us, this is like reading that somebody’s out in left field, and having no baseball reference point.
We are likely all far from sheep experts, and pretty clueless about the role of sheep and shepherds in first-century Palestine. It helps to understand the practice in Christ’s time: sheep were communally penned outside the village, and a young child was assigned to gather all of the sheep each morning to take them from the pen out to a pasture to graze. Because the collected flock represented a significant amount of wealth for the village, it was guarded and fenced and gated. Each morning, the young boy would approach and enter the gate; this boy was known to the watchmen, and the boy usually employed a whistle or call that the sheep would recognize and follow. Since this was all done in the dark, an hour or so before the dawn, the importance of knowing someone through dim light as he approached the gate, the importance of knowing his sounds and his whistle were paramount. Intimacy was required, as the senses of those participating were limited. Someone who jumped the fence, someone who used the wrong call, someone unknown to the gatekeeper was not the shepherd, but was a thief.
Shepherd boys in Christ’s time were much like our own paperboys: get up early while everyone is sleeping, fulfill a relatively thankless responsibility for the community, collect a pittance, but be trusted to do your job and to do it well and to do it every day, no matter the weather or how you felt or whether you wanted to.
But we should also explore his sheep and shepherd metaphor a bit more, to see some of the strengths and weaknesses of understanding Christ as a shepherd and consequently, us as his sheep.
First a weakness to the metaphor. Like the paper boy, the shepherd did not do his job for fun. A shepherd did not shepherd out of a love of sheep and a desire to understand the fascinating species better. People kept sheep in order to shear them for their wool and also to slaughter them for food. The sheep/shepherd relationship was transactional for the shepherd: make sacrifices by getting up each morning, but share in the investment during shearing season. The shepherd got something out of the sheep. At times, we may think of our relationship to Christ as our shepherd this way, as transactional. If I do good things, good things will happen to me. If I do bad things…well, best not to think about that. We think of church like a bonus program on our credit card, where we save up points to redeem when we want to get out of a speeding ticket or when we want a parking spot at Wegmans close to the door when it’s raining. Remember, God, I went to church last week? I even held the door open for that person I never talk to? So…help me out here and get me a spot. Or when we hear Christ talk about storing up treasure in heaven, we think that all of the time we spend in church or helping others or not breaking commandments is like a spiritual 401K that we deposit into, hoping there will be enough to see us through eternity once we enter into the final retirement.
But that’s not what Christ is pointing us to in this shepherd metaphor. It becomes clear that a transactional understanding of the sheep/shepherd relationship, and by extension, our relationship to Christ cannot be based on give and take. Both relationships involve a shepherd who is far stronger who gives of himself to protect and to defend, of a shepherd who shockingly knows the sheep individually, calls to them to reassure them that all is well and that he can be trusted. A shepherd who disproportionately gives of himself, who sacrifices beyond the merit and understanding of his flock, and who also guides, directs, helps, and encourages. A shepherd who goes looking for strays, even to his own peril. A shepherd who seeks out the lost and wandering. A shepherd who does not give up. This is not a relationship built on a return on investment, but on affection, trust, and love.
In the epistle we also heard today, the First Epistle of St Peter, we heard that we were going astray like sheep. We were: you and me, sheep away from where we were supposed to be, ovine AWOL. We had left the shepherd and decided to forge our own path, wander off after that yummy looking flower (probably poisonous) or see where that pretty butterfly was off to (likely over a cliff), or what that strange gray streak in the wood could have been (clearly a wolf). We were going astray like sheep.
I know it’s no longer Lent and that I clearly have no business talking about sin in a sermon, but that’s what we mean here. We use the euphemism “going astray like sheep” but we’re talking about leaving Christ behind, Christ who woke us up and led us out of the gate to a verdant pasture. But we went astray, we followed something else, we turned elsewhere instead of following. We sinned.
Christ comes back to us, finds us where we’ve wandered off, and brings us back to the fold. In many churches there are touching Victorian stained glass windows of Christ carrying an abashed lamb on his shoulders back to the flock, or stretching out a hand to rescue a sheep caught in brambles. How touching! How moving! But those windows are euphemisms, too. We need to see ourselves as those sheep fallen into brambles because of our carelessness; we need to see ourselves exhausted and scared and carried back home on Christ’s loving shoulders. But as moving as the imagery of Christ the Good Shepherd might be, it is powerless unless we admit that there are things about ourselves that have gone astray, things about ourselves that need shepherding. Sometimes we do not see that we are lost, and only when God’s grace returns us to the pasture do we recognize how far gone we were. But at other times we know we’ve strayed, but stubbornly refuse to accept that we put ourselves in this situation, we refuse to accept that we might need help, that we might not be strong enough to pick ourselves up this time. We ignore the blinking light on our spiritual dashboard, and assume that it will all work itself out, and that the engine will get along just fine..
But remember, the good shepherd knows his sheep, and the sheep know his voice. God is closer to your need than you are to acknowledging it. As Good Shepherd, Christ is always seeking to shepherd you through rough spots, through arid lands, through floods, through darkness. Christ is always whistling to you, waiting for you to hear his voice and follow. Christ is always seeking, always inviting, always encouraging. In the epistle to the Hebrews, the author urges you that if today you hear God’s voice, harden not your heart. If, in your darkness, your pain, your grief, or even your success and joy, you hear the voice of the Good Shepherd bidding you to follow him, then obey him and go. Go and know that he will never leave you, no matter how lost you are, no matter how much in you needs to be shepherded.
In Eucharistic Prayer B in our Book of Common Prayer is the beautiful prayer to the Father: In the fullness of time, put all things into subjection under your Christ. There are things about each of us that need to be placed into subjection under the Christ, there are things about us that need to be shepherded. This Eastertide is a time of renewal, of accepting that we have died with Christ, and that we are risen to a new life with Him. We remember in Eastertide that Christ came that we might have life, and have it abundantly. So, whether we are in times in our lives that we are dying with Him or if we are in times when we are Rising in Him, he remains always our Good Shepherd, the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Amen.

Good Friday

This year on Good Friday, I had the privilege of preaching at the Communion from the Reserved Sacrament and Veneration of the Cross at St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo NY. I also chanted the Solemn Collects antiphonally with the bishop, but I thankfully didn't record that!

I preached on the propers for the day:
Isaiah 52:13-53:12
Hebrews 10:16-25
John 18:1-19:42


All we like sheep have gone astray
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In his Gospel, St John offered a testimony to others of his experiences and thoughts about the mystery of God in Christ becoming man and taking flesh through Jesus of Nazareth. St John wrote his Gospel as a memory of Jesus’ life, of his ministry, and as we heard this evening, of his ignominious death. You may remember, however, that St. John does not begin this record of the story of Jesus of Nazareth with a birth, but begins it with the story of Christ before the Creation, of a Christ who is uncreated:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
The Passion St John records of Christ’s betrayal, scourging, trial, condemnation, crucifixion, death and burial began as the record of the God who became man, of the Word who was with God and through whom all things came into being. The Passion is the record of the murder of God, of our Lord who is uncreated and yet allowed himself to be subject to death. Of our Lord who is all love, but allowed himself to be subjected to hate. Of our Lord who is all mercy who allowed himself to be placed in the hands of persecutors.
After the death sentence had been pronounced, and wickedness given rein to destroy the God of Creation by hanging him on a cross, Christ was taken to a hill outside of the Holy City, to a hill called Golgotha., to the Place of the Skull. Tradition has given us the teaching that Golgotha was not just the Place of any skull, but of a particular skull. The Fathers of the early Church taught that buried in the dust of Golgotha was the skull of Adam, the skull of the first person, and that the bones of Adam were planted as a seed of Eden, of the inheritance given to us and to our ancestors out of love by the God of creation. For the God to be offered on the dusty hill was the God of all time, and his death would forever change all times, those that went before and those that followed.
In the late second century, St Melito, the bishop of Sardis, preached in the catacombs of his city to the faithful gathered to celebrate the mysteries of Christ’s death, much as we still do today. In that sermon, when speaking of the crucified Christ, St Melito proclaimed:
In Abel He was slain, in Isaac bound, in Jacob exiled, in Joseph sold, in Moses exposed to die. He was sacrificed in the Passover lamb, persecuted in David, dishonored in the prophets.
On a Friday, on the sixth day of the week, Christ stretched out his hands on the cross, on the new Tree of Life. In Eden, on a Friday, on the sixth day of the week, God had breathed life into Adam, and looked upon his creation, and saw that his Creation was good. Those whom God had created on the sixth day in Eden, men and women made in his own image would, on the sixth day in Jerusalem, nail their Creator to an instrument of painful death, and leave Him to hang in agony until dead. Christ came as a bridegroom, offering to be bound to humankind as in marriage. Instead of a ring of precious metal, on His hand, we placed iron nails into Him. His own mother, who had swaddled Him as an infant, watched as His dead body was wrapped in linen for burial, planted, like Adam, as a seed of Eden.
God created mankind in his likeness, and pronounced us good.
Good, but so far from perfect. From mankind have come acts of incomprehensible charity, of devotion, of piety and service. The scriptures recount the meekness of Job, the faith of Ruth, the trust of Mary, the love of John. God created us in his own image, and pronounced us good. Good, but so far from perfect.
For also from mankind have come acts of cruelty akin to the acts of the most depraved of hell: murder, envy, disdain and disregard for the downtrodden, contempt for love and life, murder of the very God made man. In the first Eden, God made us in his own image, pronounced us good, but not perfect.
Each of us carries within us the divine light of God, of the Creator who inspired Adam, who loved us and called us into life. We also bear the burden of our ability to ignore the love of God given to us. As Christ inhabits glory outside of time, as St. John recorded in the beginning of His Gospel, so too does Christ’s Passion and Crucifixion transcend time. Our choices freely made to turn away from the love of God, to seek a path of our own selfish choosing, to move toward sin rather than toward the good, all of this imperfection is the same imperfection that led imperfect men to condemn Christ, to flog him, to crucify him. Their actions in Jerusalem and our actions are the same. Their sin in killing the giver of life is the same sin each of us bears.
We might say: it was not my hand that placed the nail, not my voice that cried out for his death, not my whisper that denied him, not my kiss that betrayed him. The Polish poet Stanislaw Lec wrote: No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible. Each action in the Passion that brought about the death of Christ was a small action, a single word, a single kiss, a single silence, a single sin. But combined, it led to a gasping God dying on a tree, condemned and forsaken by those to whom he came in love. My sin and your sin are not small, are not harmless, but are the very thorns that press down on Christ’s brow. My sin and your sin are very real things, very real pains, very real spears in Christ’s side. The sin of looking the other way when we are asked for help on the street is the same looking away when Pilate washed his hands. The sin of seeking comfort and peace and stability while others suffer and are destroyed by life’s inequalities is the same sin of the high priests. Ignoring the commandment to love one another as Christ loves us when a friend is grieving or a neighbor needs help is the same sin as Peter’s denial. I am not innocent of Christ’s death, you are not innocent of Christ’s death, for my sin and your sin stand before us, staring at us, as we look upon him whom we have pierced. The sin of the Romans, the sin of the Sanhedrin, the sin of Peter and Judas, my sin, your sin: they are all sin and they all lead to Golgotha, to Christ hanging dead on a tree in the garden.
We must acknowledge that we have sinned, and accept that we perpetuate the Passion by choosing selfishness and ignoring the call of God to love. Good Friday is not a story that happened 2,000 years ago, a story that has nothing to do with us, nothing to do with our lives. We must acknowledge our sin and beg Christ, even though we are the ones who placed him on the Cross, to remember us when he comes into his kingdom. Then, tomorrow, as Christ lays silent and still in the tomb, we can sit with Mary his mother, and weep that the Lord of life is taken from us, though we were complicit in it. When we accept that our own actions led to darkness falling upon the land, then we can move through the Passion into the embrace of Christ. Christ, on Golgotha, offers redemption to the world. But we cannot accept that offer and move toward redemption if we have not yet accepted that we need redemption, that we need Christ and his love to bring us from our dark self-love to a love of others that frees us, that acknowledges that we were made in God’s image in Eden, and that he proclaimed us good.
In the Prologue to his Gospel, St John also writes:

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it

When we acknowledge that there are parts of ourselves that remain in darkness, then the Light can shine in us. When we call out our sins, when we name them, own them, and place our names next to the names of Pilate, of Judas, of Caiphas, of Peter, when we repent of our sins, beg foregiveness and mercy for our part in the Passion, pray for the grace of amendment of life then Christ the light shines in our darkness. All we like sheep have gone astray. The righteous one shall make many righteous.
Amen.

Last Sunday in Epiphany: Transfiguration

On the last Sunday in Epiphany, the last Sunday before Lent, I preached this sermon at St. Paul's Cathedral, Buffalo, NY, based on the Gospel appointed:

Matthew 17:1-9

In ninth grade biology, I learned how to fill out Punnett Squares, to determine the likelihood of offspring having certain genotypes from their parents. Many of you may remember these ingenious little charts, maps of all the possible combinations that genes can be expressed in the children of two parents. We spent a lot of time concentrating on multiple generations of green peas; if I were to go on and become a green pea researcher, those hours with Punnett squares would have been invaluable, as I would strive to make fascinating green pea offspring that those little four squares could predict. But back then, I wasn’t much of a vegetable savant, and so I was much more interested in what Punnett squares could tell me about a more engrossing topic: myself.
If I were to design Punnett squares from my parent’s characteristics, and see what the potential children would inherit, I would occupy entirely different squares from my older sisters. They are blond, while I struggled with wavy auburn hair that turned silver when I was 16 (thanks, mom!) and my green eyes look nothing like their sky blue ones. They tan; I turn different alarming shades of pink. They made it through adolescence gracefully, going through their teens and becoming adults in a way that made it all look so easy. I didn’t hit 100 pounds until ninth grade. My eyebrows and ears grew first, and then I grew an entire foot in a year. My adolescence was awkward, weird, and made me feel like a stranger in my own skin; I wanted to be different than I was, I wanted to look different than I did, I was inpatient with my imperfections and weaknesses; I wanted to be one of those shiny, happy people all around me.
If I could have selected my own Punnett squares, I would have made some dramatically different trait choices. My adolescence had me wishing I could change around some aspects of my face, of the way I looked, as easily as it seemed I could for green peas. Teen years are difficult enough, as it was difficult for any of us who wrestled with transitioning between two worlds: leaving behind a carefree childhood, and entering an anxious adult world with mysterious responsibilities and intimidating energy. And for some of us, not only do we have this psychological conflict of transitioning through our teen years, but we also to change the way we looked, to change the way we were changing: we want to control my transition.
On Mt Tabor, Peter, James and John witnessed the Lord Christ’s Transfiguration, his changing of appearance. We name this event the Transfiguration, because we single out this miracle of the rapid change in Christ’s appearance, and we name it from the Latin phrase transfigurare, to change shape, to change the way one looks. What Christ accomplished in a blink of an eye before the startled Apostles took me years. The inbetweeness and awkwardness I felt in high school was entirely absent when Christ changed Himself on Tabor’s slopes. That miracle of the Transfiguration, the miracle of Christ exposing His divine nature to the Apostles in a gleaming rapid change of his face, showed to those who witnessed that the power of God is always present with them, that the grace of God infuses all of His Creation, and that the Christ, as both our human brother and our divine Lord, rests always with us, walks always next to us, as both God and man.
But I really wish I could have just changed the way I looked as quickly as Christ did! How great it would have been to just be different, to be who I thought I should be. But I would have lost what I learned if I had missed out on those weird, awkward transitioning years. I learned to become more comfortable with in-betweeness, with incompleteness, with moving toward something new. I learned a bit about being more open to differences, to conflicting pulls and ideas; being an awkward teenager taught me to be less polarizing, and less polarized. And even Christ, in his changing on Tabor, was accompanied by two very different persons, representing two very different forces. Moses, giver of the Law, showing that rules, structure, lists are a divine gift. And Elijah, a shaker upper, a force for change and challenge and prophecy, witness to a God who speaks not though commandments, but through a small still whisper. Christ, alongside men who heard God through Law and through silent whispers: In betweeness, conflicting pulls and ideas.
Our Christian life is more like adolescence than it is like anything else. We frequently call the Christian life a journey, and it seems to ring true that we travel along in our life of grace, rather than arriving at it. A journey not yet completed, a walking of a path with opposing ideas, with law and with whispers, sometimes with awkwardness, with struggles, with feeling uncomfortable in your own skin, and sometimes with confidence. Our Christian life as journey can help us to reflect that we are all incomplete, all on a path to greater wholeness and to further change. We walk this path of life together, all gangly teenagers, trying to see how we fit in individually, and together.
There will always be things with which we struggle to overcome and change as we travel on as Christians; we’d like to be more humble, more caring, less irritable. But we need to own those faults, offering them up as characteristics that help shape us as who we are; our journey will help smooth out those rough spots, but they won’t disappear, they’ll be changed into a different and more complete wholeness. Christ’s wounds did not vanish from his Resurrected Body, but were changed into banners of sacrifice and love. So, too, will our journey in this life and its change into the next life, alter our faults and failings into Resurrected wounds, banners of struggle. Instead of looking at our spiritual Punnett squares, and wishing we could exchange some of our souls' less than perfect DNA for something a bit more glorious, we need to learn to be more comfortable and less judgmental about our own shortcomings, trusting in Christ to change them from weakness into strength.
Eventually, the rest of my face caught up with my eyebrows. Eventually, in life and through death, God perfects each of us, each solitary one of us, walking a pilgrim road; but we do not walk on that pilgrimage alone; we are surrounded by our brothers and sisters, by those who have gone before us, accompanied by Moses, by Elijah. We do this journey, we walk this path as a people, loved by a Transfigured Christ who strengthens us on our Christian journey to perfection.
This week, on Wednesday, you will be invited to begin a Holy Lent. We are leaving the Epiphany season, begun with a mysterious Child in a manger, featuring foreign kings with startling gifts to crown the Child as King, to worship Him as God, to anoint Him for His saving death. We heard proclaimed Christ’s love turn water into wine, we heard proclaimed that Mary’s heart would be pierced by a sword. We heard proclaimed bright gleaming divinity on Tabor, and now, in Lent, we enter a time of reflection, of preparation, of further journeying. Of preparation for the great sacrifice on Calvary, to which we will attend as witnesses that Christ has died, Christ is Risen, Christ will come again.
Lent reminds us that sacrifice and joy are never disconnected. Christmas must be followed by Good Friday, and then by Easter. Our Christian life also will include wonder, and sorrow, joy and loss. Lent should help us learn to reflect upon and learn to more tenderly embrace that conflict, that uncertainty, that inbetweeness. We are still spiritual adolescents, pilgrims along a path together that will bring us to completeness through the grace of Christ, grace given at Bethlehem, at Cana, on Tabor’s heights, through Calvary’s pain, and Easter’s trumpet. Our journey shows that we are the same person, even though our outward appearance will change, even though we are transfigured, we remain the same kid in high school who struggles to figure out his place in the world. And, in Lent, we must not be so penitent that our memories of Christmas fade. The entirety of the Christ story as one story should remain with us all year round. And our own stories are each one story, for we never stop being the person we were as children, as teens, as young adults: we simply add on new experiences. The same is true in Christ’s life, for He is our human brother. The baby’s voice that cried out from the manger for His mother was the same voice that cried out to His mother on the hard wood of the cross.
Though we’d like to change our lives around, arrange them to be more consistent, so that our lives would be less confusing, all joy, all neatness and clear lines, we must learn from the Transfiguration and from Lent that each of us is an amalgam of conflicting ideas, desires, strengths and weaknesses that Christ is always blessing, always lifting up, always working toward perfection. One day, as we pass through this life into the perfect life prepared by our loving God, we will see that our mismatched experiences, struggles, and awkwardness are transfigured into radiant glory, and are given as our offering, as our sacrifice to the Christ who sacrificed all for love of us.