The Tenth Leper

When asked to describe the nature of true worship, Martin Luther responded succinctly: “the tenth leper turning back.”

Since celebrating the Feast of Pentecost eighteen weeks ago, we have been “on the way” in Luke’s Gospel with Jesus and his followers, making our way to Jerusalem. Luke has organized these encounters that Jesus and the disciples have “on the way” to reveal something about the Kingdom of God that Jesus came to proclaim and establish. Today, Luke reminds us that we are still “on the way” to Jerusalem but then adds that now Jesus “is going through that region between Samaria and Galilee.” We should pay attention to that.

That is, in other words, through the West Bank of the Jordan River. The more things change, unfortunately, the more they stay the same. Most Jews traveling from the north to the south would ahve crossed the Jordan and travelled along the east bank of the river - to avoid this territory. But Jesus goes there. 

Only Luke gives us that other famous Samaritan story, the one about the so-called “Good Samaritan.” For any self-respecting first-century Jew, of course, that phrase (Good Samaritan) would have been considered an oxymoron. Everybody knew that Samaritans represented that which was never good: that which was to be feared as unholy and polluted. Jesus has crossed the tracks and is in the part of town where when you hit a red light you don’t stop. (That’s a line from a Springsteen song, Johnny 99!)

He’s traveling through that region between Samaria and Galilee when they come to a village.

Now in case anyone reading Luke’s Gospel has missed the point, we get hit over the head a second time by a 2x4 when Jesus encounters a group of lepers there. Not only is he in a place considered unclean, but now there are lepers everywhere. People with leprosy were considered to be ritually unclean and not allowed to come into contact with “normal people.” Hence the leper colonies where they lived away from the community. They keep their distance because coming into contact with someone who had this ailment would make you ritually unclean. In fact, as you approached a leper, they were required to shout out: “unclean, unclean” as a kind of warning, just to be sure that you don’t walk up to them accidentally to ask for directions.

Imagine such a life: suffering not only from a terrible disease but being socially ostracized as well. And then notice that while they do approach Jesus, Luke makes it clear that they “kept their distance from him.”

Keeping their distance, they shout out to Jesus for mercy. And then Jesus sends them along to the priests, because the Torah says that before they can re-enter the community the priest must pronounce them ritually clean. As they turn to leave they find their skin disease is healed. But they still need that “ok” from the Temple authorities before they can re-enter society. They know that, and everyone with Jesus knows that; and besides Jesus has just told them to do that. So off they go.

But one of them turned back. Now it may be fair enough as you hear this to say, “Hey, cut the nine some slack because they are just doing what Jesus said to do.” But that really isn’t the point of the story. The point here is something that every parent I know tries to teach their children from a very young age. And even when you don’t know much about Middle Eastern geography or the ritual laws about leprosy, this part of the story easily translates from first-century culture to our own day: it doesn’t cost you anything to say “thank you.” They can get on their way soon enough. But their lives have just been radically changed. This is huge!

And yet they have tunnel vision: must get to priests! Only one of them takes the time to turn back and say, “thank you!” And that is what Luther meant when he said that true worship is to be like this one. Or as Meister Eckhart put it: “if the only prayer you ever say is ‘thank you’ it would be enough.”

We all know this. But it takes practice. We are surrounded by miracles and you would have to be blind to live in New England in October and not notice. We are part of a faith community that nurtures and sustains our faith. We experience, even on the most difficult of days, blessing upon blessing. And so we gather here each weekend to share the Eucharist which means (literally) “thank you God.” We recite the ancient words that are rooted in the Passover story from Exodus, to thank God for bringing us out of the bondage of slavery and to the Promised Land. We gather to thank God for this good earth and the gifts of bread and wine. As I'll say on behalf of all of us in a few minutes:

It is right and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere, to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.         

We come here to say our prayers in order to become more like the one who turned back, because it takes us to the very heart of the gospel. Ten were healed of their leprosy: their skin got better and they were all presumably pronounced ritually clean and allowed to re-enter society. But only one of them got well. He isn’t just “not sick” anymore; he’s been made whole. He’s alive.

Can I say it this way; “he’s saved?” That word makes Episcopalians squirm a little bit and I get why: it’s a little like the word “evangelism” or “stewardship.” Often when someone asks us whether or not we are “saved,” we may be tempted to run the other way. But that is in fact the Greek word used here: the root sozo literally means “to be saved” or “to be made well.” In the old King James Version it says, “Your faith has made you whole," which of course is what salvation is really all about.

Being saved isn’t about something that happens to us after we die. The abundant life that Christ promises begins here and now and this story before us today suggests that we take hold of that new life—we are made whole—when we cultivate gratitude in our lives. 

This story happens every day. It happens in the waiting rooms of ICU at our local hospitals; it happens around our dinner tables or picking apples on an autumn day. Miracles abound. That doesn’t mean life isn’t sometimes hard, although it’s hard to imagine a life any more difficult than being a leper in a small Samaritan village. But too often we’re too busy moving on to the next thing; the miracles are all around us but we must get to work, must get to class, must get to the doctor, must get supper ready, must even sometimes get to church. Focused on the next thing, it’s too easy for us to forget to stop and miss the present thing, and then say: “thank you, God.”

So I think Luther had it just right: true worship is the one who returned. Discipleship is about cultivating gratitude, until we learn to become givers ourselves.  

Let me then close with the words of one of my favorite writers, Anne Lamotte. She says that she has two favorite prayers that she tries to pray every day: one in the morning and one at night. When she gets out of bed, she simply prays: “Help me. Help me. Help me.” And at the end of the day, before her head hits the pillow: “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” Early on in my tenure here I spoke about her book with one other prayer: Help. Thanks. Wow.

Those are really good prayers. And they will take you a long way down the path of being made whole, if that is what you seek. They will take you a long way toward embracing the saving love that is in fact already ours in Jesus Christ.

Consider this truth, ponder it in your heart, as you reflect on your support of this congregation in 2026. This congregation is not God – but we are engaged in God’s work – and we need your time, your talents, and your treasurer to do what God has called us to do. Don’t give begrudgingly. Don’t give stingily. Give generously, with a grateful heart. Perhaps you will consider trying this – take a blank piece of paper and a pen and carve out just five minutes to write a gratitude list – to list all of the people, places, things, experiences for which you are grateful. From that place, consider what it means to share what you have for the sake of God and neighbor – not out of duty, or a tax, or so the treasurer can pay the bills, but because it is good for your soul. 

Seek the Welfare of the City

I'm a lectionary preacher. I have colleagues who are gifted at finding threads and themes in the readings for the day - which is especially intentional on the part of those who have put the lectionary together and especially with the Track 2 Gospel-related readings from the Old Testament. But in truth, I'm a one text at a time kind of preacher. I just need time to unpack the one. 

This Sunday as we begin to work on our fall stewardship campaign at St. Michael's, I am going to preach on the Gospel for the day: on the tenth leper, the one who came back to say thank you. The stewardship sermon literally writes itself, and I'll plan to post it here after preaching it. 

But for those who use Track 1 for the Old Testament readings (as we do at St. Michael's) this means skipping over the extraordinary reading from Jeremiah 29. So this is not a second sermon, it's literally just some ruminations on that text which I think is important for our time. It's the seeds of a sermon I might have preached and maybe will in three years. 

The lectionary readings for the day can be found here. The Jeremiah text can be found below. 

_______________

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining
elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar
had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from
Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce.
Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage,
that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of
the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will
find your welfare.

________________

Remember that Jeremiah had a long extended ministry. Initially, his job was to speak the truth into a time when truth was in short supply. The exile was coming, and the temple would be destroyed and it was basically too late to change. 

That all happens just as Jeremiah "predicted." But remember that the prophets are not fortune-tellers. They are social critics who know that public policy matters and especially how a nation cares for the poor. The circumstances that led to the Babylonian Exile are geo-political; but the theological reasons that Jeremiah and others give is that Israel has been disobedient. 

So it all happens. Now the exiles are in Babylon. Time goes on. It's hard to live in exile. Beyond homesickness and despair and not knowing the language and missing the food from home, it can just be plain exhausting. And there is no end in sight. What lies ahead is a marathon, not a sprint. 

So the message that is sent by God through Jeremiah to the exiles is a hard word, maybe harder than the initial message that Exile was coming. It is that the Exile won't end anytime soon. It'll be decades. 

People cannot long live in perpetual crisis mode. So the word of the Lord here is to hunker down. Build and plant - we heard those words from Jeremiah at the very beginning. After plucking up and pulling down and destroying and overthrowing (deconstructing the old order) Jeremiah's ministry will be about building and planting. But everyone assumed that would be "back home" and eventually (it will be decades) that will happen. But in the meantime, Jeremiah tells the exiles to build houses and live in them and to plant gardens and eat the produce. IN BABYLON! He does further: survive. Marry and have kids and pray for the welfare of the city where you find yourselves. Extraordinary!

The reasons I'm bummed about not preaching a full sermon on this is that I think this is very much a "word of the Lord" for us. We are surrounded these days by so-called "Christian" nationalists who want the United States of America to become a fundamentalist theocracy. I will never (ever) sign on to that work. I choose resistance and the gospel of Jesus Christ who calls on us to be reconcilers and peacemakers. 

The United States is not the Promised Land. Certainly not today but probably never. This weekend we remember the Indigenous Peoples who lived here before Columbus - the real story is not pretty. The rhetoric about becoming a city on the hill dismissed the fact that people were living here and this country was not "discovered" it was "invaded." But that's another sermon...

The point is that the United States is Babylon. It's empire. Everything is organized to keep power. And followers of Jesus rightly should resist and remember who we are. 

And yet...

It feels like we have lost our way, but finding our way back home is going to be a long journey. Maybe decades. So much has already been lost. It's easy to despair. 

A friend of mine recently told me that he is pessimistic in the short-run and hopeful in the long-run. I think that's a wise place to be and I think it describes where I am as well. In the long-run all shall be well. In the short-run, it may get worse before it gets better. We need to not only resist but survive to "fight" another day. 

If this is right then Jeremiah 29 might be helpful advice to us, living in perilous times. It may feel counter-intuitive at first, but once we realize we need to take the long view it begins to make perfect sense. Constant reactivity will burn us all out and make us crazy. We need to be clear about whom we serve but at the same time we can and should create lives here and now. We need to build and plant and seek the welfare of the city where we find ourselves. There really is, in reality, no alternative. 

Humility and Curiosity

According to Wikipedia, the Johari Window is a technique designed to help people better understand their relationship with themselves and others. It was created by psychologists Joseph Luft (1916–2014) and Harrington Ingham (1916–1995) in 1955, and is used primarily in self-help groups and corporate settings as a heuristic exercise. Luft and Ingham named their model "Johari" using a combination of their first names.

I first encountered it as a mentor of the Education for Ministry (EfM) program decades ago. It has stayed with me as a very helpful tool, but I admit I don't see it very often and have no idea if it's something still used or not. It's relatively simple to understand and straightforward, I think - the image makes it pretty clear. In the upper left box are things we know about ourselves that others also know about us. In the upper right box are things everybody else knows about us, but that we are blind to ourselves. In the lower left box are those things which we know about ourselves but keep hidden from others. And in the lower right hand box is the unknown. We are a mystery even to ourselves. Theologically, we might say "God knows" if we are so inclined. But in my experience this is a challenging one because if we don't know something and others don't see it either, how do we discover it so that we might be changed for the better? 

I'll leave that question for now, but hold this thought about Johari's Window...

I've been ordained for more than thirty-seven years, and have done hundreds of funerals over the course of that time. I still find it fascinating to sit and talk with family members about the deceased and even more fascinating when the circle expands and friends are included, or share a reflection at the funeral. Even the most integrated person has different relationships with different people. There are jokes we share with some and not others; ideas we share with some and not others - for a whole bunch of reasons. So an oldest child tells me that mom, who has just passed, was a strict disciplinarian. And then the youngest child, maybe number five or six, says that mom was a pushover - and let her get away with everything. 

You get the point, I trust. The goal for me is not to solve the mystery and figure out who is right. Rather, every time I have this experience I ponder anew what a great mystery we all are. There is only so much those in relationship can share - only so much that is known to them. Much is hidden and all is filtered through the particular nature of that relationship, and time, and place. 

I have been thinking a lot lately and trying to pray with the ways that "so-called liberals" and "so-called conservatives" knew Charlie Kirk. I put myself in the former group but have to admit I did not have the animosity toward him before his murder that some did, mostly because he wasn't really on my radar. For whatever reason, I knew very little about him. But what I knew (and what I have learned) made me believe that those on the other side who would make a hero of him in death - even a martyr - have been ill informed. 

But what if, even if there is truth in that. we literally heard and saw and felt different things based on our own self-understanding?  What we think we know is very limited - for all of us.

I was and continue to be fascinated by this post from a journalist I have a lot of respect for, Van Jones. If you've not seen it, please watch it. 

Are you still with me? This may or may not be a helpful post because I'm still working through all of this but what I find so compelling about Van Jones' reflections are that (a) he's not a friend and in fact (b) he strongly disagreed with Charlie Kirk on almost everything and (c) he shares a heartfelt story that affirms the claims about Charlie Kirk wanting to engage respectfully across difference and (d) he says that maybe this will help someone - maybe on the right or maybe on the left. 

It is a reminder to me that no one knew Charlie Kirk. Not even Charlie Kirk. Not even his wife. Not the person who murdered him. Not the people who showed up at the funeral/rally this weekend. Not Van Jones...

What Johari's Window ultimately taught me a long time ago is to be humble about what I know even of myself, let alone others. So much is hidden. Our lives are complex. Only God knows. 

The internet, however, and our current climate, are fast and furious. Some of my conservative friends were posting almost immediately about how liberals would not mourn the death of Charlie Kirk and yet without irony that when an elected official in Minnesota and her husband were murdered in their home, they didn't mourn or demand that flags be flown at half-staff. 

I'm weary of the posts - even the ones I agree with - that have come from this day. I've read that some people celebrated his death but no one I know did and liberals for whom I have great respect all condemned the violence and offered condolences for his family. Bernie Sanders was incredible. It's almost as if in some circles that was not enough, however. I don't know how, or if, we will sort through it. I don't know how, or if, we can tone down the rhetoric. 

But for me there is an underlying epistemological question of what we know and how we know it. Many of us, on the left and on the right, claim to "know" far more than we do. Other than Van Jones, most of the commentary I read comes from people who never met the man. We know far less about the clearly disturbed young man who killed him. But as best I can tell after a little time has passed, the simplistic polarizing narratives that were initially put out there have little truth to them. Life is more complex.

In addition to cultivating humility, I am praying that we can also learn yet another lesson from Ted Lasso: to be more curious. To practice staying open. In all those funerals I've presided over, through almost four decades of ministry, I have never once felt that I had to come up with the definitive eulogy about the deceased. I feel that same way about preaching Jesus. How to stay open, to listen, to learn, to be unafraid of complexity?  There is a reason we get four (canonical) gospels rather than one, and five if you count Paul's Letters taken together as a kind of fifth gospel. In truth as much as we learn about Jesus, we learn from the New Testament that we are hearing how Paul, and Matthew, and Mark and Luke and John felt about Jesus. 

It does seem to me that if we can cultivate these practices of humility and curiosity we will, in God's own time, find a way forward. And we may even learn, or remember how to  engage one another across differences as we seek to bind up the wounds of this nation. 

Rise Up!

The Revised Common Lectionary is an ecumenical plan for reading the Bible in church, over a three-year cycle. What that means is that the readings we just heard read are also being read not only across the country in Episcopal congregations today but also among Roman Catholics and Lutherans and United Methodists and liturgical Congregationalists. There are some slight variations along the way but what this means is that the preacher doesn’t pick the readings: the preacher’s work is to engage with what comes up that week.

I said a three-year cycle. Why am I telling you this? Because twenty-four years ago today, when people showed up in Church, these were the very same readings that they heard read. I was serving at that time as the rector of St. Francis Church in Holden, Massachusetts. The church was full that morning, because of what had happened earlier that week, on September 11, 2001.

The lector got up to read that first reading from Jeremiah, the same words we just heard a few minutes ago:

For my people are foolish,
they do not know me;

they are stupid children,
they have no understanding.

They are skilled in doing evil,
but do not know how to do good."

I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;
and to the heavens, and they had no light.

I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,
and all the hills moved to and fro.

I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,
and all the birds of the air had fled.

I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,
and all its cities were laid in ruins
before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

 

You could have heard a pin drop.  Honestly, it seemed a little “too soon.” And as a preacher, I knew all those visitors were coming to church to hear a word of comfort, a word of hope. I needed the same thing myself. And yet this was what we got.

 

It occurred to me, however, that just one week earlier and certainly most of the September Sundays prior to that day, the words of Jeremiah would have felt like something, well, kind of Old Testament-y. Not relatable. Easier to skip over and move on to the Gospel.

 

And yet, what dawned on me that day is that we were in a place where Jeremiah’s words were precisely descriptive of what we were experiencing as a nation. A city in ruins. We knew what that looked like. Bruce Springsteen wrote a lament with that very refrain, not about lower Manhattan but about economic challenges in his beloved New Jersey, with the boarded-up windows, the empty streets, the churches where the congregation’s all gone, and my brother down on his knees. My city of ruins.

 

We needed to grieve in that time after 9/11, and I think we still need to grieve because, honestly, as positive-thinking North Americans we aren’t so great at it. Whether we go through a personal trauma and the loss of someone we love before they have gotten to live their life, or whether we experience a community trauma, or betrayed trust, or whether we experience a national trauma or just the loss of what we knew, what we believed, what we put our trust in, we need to grieve. And grief takes time. And intentionality.

 

Elizabeth Kubler Ross taught us that grief is not linear but it does have stages, including denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. We tend to want to move through those stages as quickly as possible. We say we want to “get back” to normal. But grief takes time and there is no going back – only forward.

 

When I was a young associate priest in Westport, Connecticut one of my parishioners was a sportswriter some of you may remember, named Frank Deford. Frank and his wife, Carol, lost a daughter, before my arrival, to cystic fibrosis and part of Frank’s grief work was to write a book entitled Alex: the Life of a Child. After her death they adopted a daughter from the Philippines, Scarlett, and Scarlett was in my confirmation class. So that was how I got to know the Deford family pretty well.

 

When the time came for me to leave Westport, having been called to serve as rector at St. Francis, I asked Frank a question. I asked him if he had any advice for me when the day came when I would have to officiate at the burial of a child. What should I know about his cand Carol’s experience?

 

I’ll never forget what he told me. He said people assume that you are grieving the same way, that it can bring you closer as a couple because you both loved that child so much. But he said that their experience was the opposite from that and he felt more common: that they grieved very differently and they were in different places at different times and that put stresses on their marriage. They survived. But he told me to always remember how hard it is, not only to experience that loss but to try to stay in synch through the grieving process. Or because you won’t be in synch, to be sure you are communicating with each other when one is still dealing with anger and the other might be closer to acceptance. My pastoral experience has born it out that this was very good advice.

 

On that September Sunday in 2001 when the pews were filled in Holden, I felt inadequate to the task because all I could do was point toward grief, and hope felt far down the road. There were no easy answers to offer. A national tragedy like that one or the COVID epidemic simply affect people differently – and grief takes time. I felt some of that coming back to the surface again this week after the murder of Charlie Kirk, which stunned the nation. In spite of some placing all the blame on liberals, I read Barack Obama’s and Joe Biden’s and Gavin Newsom’s and Bernie Sanders’ heartfelt condolences. I have seen us all grieving – liberals and conservatives. Yet we are grieving differently and we saw the deceased differently and ironically we seem even more divided as a country than we were last Sunday. This breaks my heart. When will we learn that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind?

 

But here is the good news, if you are ready for some good news. We trust in the power of the resurrection and the good news of Easter and we know that death never ever gets the last word. Never. We trust and we know that the prophet Jeremiah was not in denial: he spoke from the heart about the pain of the Babylonian exile. But he also knew that beyond all the deconstruction there would eventually be seeds to be planted and building to be done. Eventually telling the truth about the loss would lead to hope again, and the possibility for new life. Not a return to “things as normal” but a new normal, a new reality.

 

In that same song I quoted, Springsteen sings a powerful refrain to make this same point: come on rise, up. Rise up. Rise up

 

What does this have to do with us? Jeremiah lived at a time of incredible social upheaval, but it was 2600 years ago. There are people in this room who were not even born yet on 9-11-2001, so it feels like something from a history book for them even while others of us remember exactly where we were on that September morning.

 

But we are here right now, today. We are living in perilous times, I think. But even if you don’t agree with that, you know that at any given moment we are not all in a great place. We grieve old losses and new ones, unresolved hurts and wounds that pierce deeply. We grieve the church that once was, and that can kick up denial and anger and bargaining and depression before we get to acceptance. Some here are in a great place in life. Others are worried about their job, or their marriage, or their kids, or their grandchildren – growing up in an unsteady and confusing world. Political violence is on the rise.

 

And still we sing, in our own way: rise up. Rise up. Rise up. 

Still we sing, there’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea. 

Still we sing,

Praise my soul the king of heaven, to his feet thy tribute bring; ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven, evermore his praises sing:

alleluia, alleluia, praise the everlasting King.

 

The Church exists, it seems to me, to help us to grieve, to tell the truth, and then to put our whole trust in God’s love and mercy, knowing in our bones that God is not finished with us yet. And so we live toward hope; not passively but actively. We rise up.  We rise up. We stand together. We weep with those who weep but we remind one another that joy cometh in the morning.

 

I think one of the prayers I pray a lot lately is for patience to allow people to be where they are. Because none of us can be where we are not. We need, I think, to hold space for each other, and for pain and grief and loss and confusion. Even as we continue to make our song: alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Even as we continue to rise up.

 

Life Itself Is Grace

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it, because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” (Frederick Buechner)

I have informed the Church Pension Group of my intent to retire on December 31, 2025. It’s been quite the journey!

I first began to discern a call to ordained ministry during my junior year abroad, in St. Andrew’s, Scotland. I am grateful that the young woman I met on the first day of international students orientation that fall of 1983, Hathy MacMahon, was there throughout that process and for these past forty years. I know many clergy who had “first careers” and the partner who married a lawyer or teacher or accountant has to “adjust” to being married to a priest. Hathy has been there the whole time, as my ordained life has unfolded in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and now Rhode Island.

My dad died suddenly and unexpected on April 30, 1982 – as I was just at the end of my freshman year at Georgetown. I had gone there with the plan to become a lawyer, and I was drawn to Washington, DC because I was interested in politics. But at the time of my dad’s death I was in a required theology class called “Problem of God.” The following year I took another required class, “Introduction to the Bible.” Katharine Bates was an excellent Sunday School teacher at the Hawley United Methodist Church and she gave me a solid foundation – but Jouette Bassler made the Bible come to life for me, and raised questions that did not have simple answers. By the time I headed off to St. Andrew’s I was wondering if I might be called to become what at the time I called “a Protestant Jesuit.”

When I came back the Board of Ordained Ministry of the Wyoming Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church seemed amused at this seemingly oxymoronic call. But they let me slide, and a few months after graduating from Georgetown I found myself at Drew Theological School, on the path toward ordination in the United Methodist Church. Hathy and I got married (at St. Anne’s Episcopal Church in Lincoln, Massachusetts) at the end of my first year at Drew, and she left a job at Dana Farber to join me in Madison, New Jersey for my middler and senior years.

It was mostly because of her that we ended up at a Thursday morning Eucharist at Grace Church in Madison, where the new rector (a guy named Bob Ihloff, who would later be elected Bishop of Maryland) asked if I’d be his seminarian during my senior year. When I told him “you know I’m a Methodist, right?” he basically said, “who cares? Grace is next to a Methodist Seminary!”

I was far enough along in the process with the Methodists and not yet ready to make a denominational change. So on a hot summer night in June 1988, I was ordained at Elm Park United Methodist Church in Scranton, PA. Hathy had a good job in New Jersey and we were house sitting for a professor who had gone for a stint out to the west coast, so I enrolled at Princeton Seminary in a ThM program in Church History. I also accepted a call to serve part-time as the pastor of the Hampton United Methodist Church in Hunterdon County, New Jersey. One year later I received a call to become the Protestant Campus Minister at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain, Connecticut. We packed up and moved and I felt on my way to becoming a “Protestant Jesuit.”

Over the years I’ve preached at maybe a dozen or more ordinations. I usually make the bishop who is officiating squirm when I say that I believe that the notion that priests are “essentially changed” when a bishop puts her hands on a priest’s head is a stretch for me. Rather, I believe ordination is existential – or to say it another way, we become the priest/pastor we are meant to become over time, shaped by (for better or worse) the people among whom we serve. At CCSU, I worked closely with a Roman Catholic colleague and also a Reconstuctionist rabbi; I learned that ministry is not done in silos but is always at it’s best ecumenical and even interfaith. I learned from faculty that you can be “wicked smart” in Economics and still have a Sunday School education in theology – and that part of the work of a Campus Minister is to help people grow in their faith, which is sometimes hard to do in a parochial setting. I learned that “kids” may not attend much “church” but that doesn’t mean they aren’t asking big life questions about purpose and meaning. I am proud that four of my students ended up ordained and my four years there changed me for good. (Who can say if I was changed for the better?”)

Hathy, the lay Episcopalian, and I, the United Methodist campus minister, went looking for a church home. We went “church shopping” in New Britain and landed at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, where the rector was a guy named Malcolm (“Father Mac”) McDowell. He also happened to be president of my campus ministry board. Over the course of the next couple of years the seeds that had been planted at Grace Church in Madison began to take root and grow, and I spoke with Mac and then Bishop Arthur Walmsley about what it would take for me to become an Episcopal priest. A new way to imagine being a “Protestant Jesuit” in a denomination that saw itself as a “middle way” between Catholic and Protestant. Honestly, Bishop Walmsley made it pretty easy for me – easier than it often is for folks to make denominational changes. He just had one request/demand: that when ordained, I accept a call in a parish so that I could live more fully into this new chapter.

I never felt I was “renouncing” my first orders. In fact, I felt I was being true to the Wesley boys, John and Charles, by returning to their spiritual home. I still feel that way. I was feeling called to a more liturgical and sacramental denomination but John Westley’s commitment to the poor and social justice and even his “strangely warmed heart” continue to resonate with me, and I remain grateful for all that the United Methodist Church did to set me on my path. Even so, when I arrived at Christ and Holy Trinity Church in Westport, Connecticut as transitional deacon and then soon after a “baby priest” I felt I’d come home.

I was loved into becoming an Episcopal priest at Christ and Holy Trinity and mentored by the rector, John Branson, and a colleague who would become a lifelong friend, Pete Powell. Pete was never subtle. I told him one morning I needed to get “robed” and he responded, “Methodists robe. Episcopalians vest.” When I preached a great sermon he cheered me on, but just as often he would say, “why did you stop short of where that was headed? What if you had done this?” I was thinner skinned then than I am today but even at the time I was grateful for something few clergy ever get: honest, critical feedback.

But more than Arthur or John or Pete, it was the laity at Christ and Holy Trinity that helped me to discover my vocation. I fell in love with being a parish priest because of them. So when John went on sabbatical about four years in, and I got to move from the second chair to the first chair for a few months, I knew that I was called to parish ministry. I began to look for my next call and landed at St. Francis Church in Holden, Massachusetts on February 1, 1998. I stayed for just over fifteen years.

Again, God’s people there changed me for good. (Who can say if I was changed for the better?) In addition to my work as their rector, I got to chair the Commission on Ministry for my diocese. I got to do a DMin degree at Columbia Theological Seminary which led to a part-time adjunct gig teaching the Bible at Assumption College. (Protestant Jesuit?) Fifteen years, in my view, is just about the right tenure to serve a congregation. I don’t think the real stuff starts to happen until at least eight or nine years in. Those last six years or so were transformative. Baptisms, funerals, weddings – but mostly the day in and day out of walking the journey with people trying to follow Jesus was grace upon grace for me. I was happy there.

When the Standing Committee asked if I’d chair the Bishop Search Committee for our diocese in 2012, I immediately said yes. I had never felt called to that ministry myself, but I knew it mattered. I wanted to be helpful to my diocese. At the end of it all, Doug Fisher was elected to serve as bishop and soon after he asked me to serve as his Canon to the Ordinary.

We were not looking to leave Holden. But it felt like a call, and I said yes. We moved out of the rectory and shed some tears. I would stay on with Doug for the next eleven and a half years.

Diocesan work is very different from parochial ministry or campus ministry. I believe I did my job well and there was a lot of it that was rewarding. I was once more leading from the second chair, which only works when you like and respect the first chair! I felt like an imposter the first year or two and honestly was grieving the loss of a gig that I had felt fulfilled in. But in time I came to see that this work, while hard, was meaningful and stretching me in good ways. Again I felt changed for good. I got to connect with the breadth and depth of my denomination in ways that never would have happened from Holden. I came to love the work.

And, more than a decade of diocesan work can take a toll as well. I sometimes wonder if the Lutherans have the right idea by electing bishops to terms – which presumably might mean their “canons” also serve for nine or ten years. My boss (who is still my bishop) likes to say that in a parish you get to “pop the champagne” when things go well; but in a diocese that rarely happens. There is always the next thing. It’s harder to measure systemic change; I’m sure it happens but a diocese is far more complex than a parish. The pandemic began to awaken in me a call to return to parish ministry.

During my tenure as Canon to the Ordinary, a lot of my time was spent on clergy transitions. In our denomination (unlike my previous one, where the Bishop and Cabinet appoint clergy to their congregations) it is a call system. I worked closely with vestries and search committees and clergy looking to find a new call. I loved that part of the work. I also spent time with interims and I had developed some very strong opinions about what that work ought to be about and how often the opportunities were missed. I had an argument once with an interim at one of our larger congregations who was literally “breaking things”  that had been working. She told me, “if they don’t hate me when I leave, I haven’t done my job.”

I thought that was the most ridiculous thing I’d ever heard. I saw interim ministry as more intense with it’s “time certainty” than an open-ended call, and I saw it as very specific about getting some things done to prepare for the future. But I also saw continuity with all parish work which is always (always) about loving God’s people. And so I began to wonder (and my heart felt strangely warmed when I did) about finishing my ordained life as an interim priest in a congregation that needed to do some work and was ready to do that work.

In October 2024 I accepted a call to serve as the Interim Rector at St. Michael’s Church in Bristol, Rhode Island. When I retire I will have served there for fifteen months – a good amount of time for an interim. Whatever I will have accomplished, I don’t think they will hate me for it.

It strikes me that my first ministry at Hampton United Methodist Church and now this one at St. Michael’s were the shortest tenures I’ve had in a “career” that had four, five, fifteen and almost twelve year tenures in between. I believe in longer-term ministries, full stop. Ministry takes time. But I’m grateful for the intensity of these two book-end calls at the beginning and end of this nearly forty years of my active ministry. Although in two different denominations, each of them remind me that lots can still happen in a short span of time, especially when you are "all in." Ministry always happens just one day at a time, whether it last for fifteen years or fifteen months. I'm grateful for it all, and I look forward to having fun this fall at St. Michael’s all the way to Christmas.

People keep asking me what I will do next. I think it’s the wrong question. I will still be Rich Simpson. I will be a son (my mother will soon turn 80) and a brother and a husband and a father and a father-in-law and a grandfather and a friend and neighbor. I’ll keep cooking. I will BE myself. As a CREDO faculty member, before I was a conference leader I did the vocational work and I always told people that they were more than priests – they were beloved of God, baptized followers of Jesus – and that whatever work they might be doing at any time that was true.

Even so, I get what people are asking. In terms of what I’ll do, I will (God willing) continue to serve as CREDO faculty. I've begun to do some coaching and a little bit of spiritual direction and that feels right. I’ll take January-March as a kind of sabbatical time although I hope (God willing) that I’ll get back to the Holy Land in February to co-lead a pilgrimage, having recently made the very difficult decision to postpone a pilgrimage we’d planned for this October. I’ve agreed to cover a sabbatical from April – June at St. John’s in Northampton. After that, who knows? Only God. But what I will do is say “yes” to those things that bring me joy, things that are life-giving. Most of my ministry has been but there has also been a fair amount of emotional labor that I’ve not unpacked above!

Walter Brueggemann published over 100 books over his long career. (May he rest in peace, and rise in glory.) I own many of them and have read all of the ones I own. I was a bit of a fanboy of his when he used to show up at the Trinity Institute, or the Festival of Homiletics. But when I did my DMin at Columbia Theological Seminary I got to sit in his office and discuss ministry and I got to sit in his class to deepen my appreciation for the psalms and the prophets, especially Jeremiah. He was an extraordinary teacher and human being.

Through all of that, I think I could summarize Walter's life’s work (and I hope by extension in some small way, mine) as being committed to cultivating imagination, by which he meant that the Church is called to offer an alternative reality to the consumer-militaristic culture of modern America. We (ordained and lay) help people to imagine that it could be otherwise by critiquing the dominant culture and also energizing people toward God’s will for justice and compassion. I hope that my life work has been about doing just this, and that this work will continue even when I am receiving a check from the Church Pension Group each month. I am grateful for it all – beyond measure. And ready to embrace the next chapter, always with God’s help.

The Fifth Mark of Mission: TEND

I’ve been preaching a series of sermons this summer on The Five Marks of Mission. Today we get to number five, the last in this series. But let me review and back up and offer a rationale for this series and then we will talk about creation care.

I see a difference between being a called rector and an interim. Much of the work is the same, of course. Over the past eleven months we’ve had baptisms and weddings and funerals. We’ve had tartans kirked and we’ve celebrate both of the two great Christian festivals together, Easter and Christmas.

But the primary work of an intentional interim, which I am trying to be for you, is to focus on healing past wounds so that the parish can begin to move together again as one body. Toward that end, we need to remember who we are and return to purpose, so that when a more settled rector arrives she or he can focus on some longer-term goals.

Back in January when we remembered Dr. King, I shared his sermon on “Guidelines for a Constructive Church.” The reason for this summer series was to build on that, but in truth all of my preaching here at St. Michael’s has been towards this end: to return to the basics, to remember who we are and to reflect on where God is calling St. Michael’s next. You are not a blank slate upon which a new rector will make his or her mark. You are already moving forward and the next rector will join you in work we’ve begun, and with God’s help you will be changed for good over time.

You’re far more likely to find the right priest for you in this time if you have some clarity about the work that lies ahead.

So the Five Marks of Mission are not a sacred text. But they represent some core values and that’s why I’ve taken the time to unpack these this summer. I hope it’s been helpful. To review, those marks are as follows:

1.    To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom.

2.    To teach, baptize and nurture new believers.

3.    To respond to human need by loving service.

4.    To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation.

5.    To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

So today I have a very simple task, maybe the easiest of these five to preach on: to convince you that as Christians we care about this “fragile earth, our island home” and we know that we are called to be faithful stewards of it.

There is a strain in the Christian tradition that misses this point and we need to name that. Decades ago, some of you may remember a Secretary of the Interior named Jim Watt. He was an evangelical Christian who was quoted as saying that God gave us the earth to use and after the last tree is felled, Christ would return.

I think he was wrong in the same way that people try to force Christ’s return by manipulating foreign policy in the Middle East are wrong. I prefer the theology of dear old St. Francis, who was reportedly asked one day while hoeing a row of peas in his garden, “Francis, if you learned that Christ would return this afternoon, what would you be doing?” Francis didn’t miss a beat: I’d like to finish hoeing this row of peas!

So it is true that in the Revelation of John, God makes a new heaven and a new earth. But God gets to be God and it’s the worst kind of arrogance to think we can force God’s hand. Let’s all be like Francis and do the work God has given us to do until our last breath. That includes being faithful stewards of all that God has entrusted to us in the meantime.

From the beginning, literally, in the Book of Genesis, in the Garden of Eden, humans are given the responsibility to tend the garden. I know some of you are gardeners yourselves as my spouse and my mother are. I see how labor intensive it is. God gives us this good earth and sun and rain and seasons but God also invites human laborers throughout the Bible to share in the work of tending the garden.

We see an important image from the prophets that Jesus uses in his parables as well: the image of the vineyard.

Let me sing for my beloved
my love-song concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
on a very fertile hill.
He dug it and cleared it of stones,
and planted it with choice vines;
he built a watchtower in the midst of it,
and hewed out a wine vat in it;
he expected it to yield grapes,
but it yielded wild grapes.

Now the reading goes beyond this and in truth I could have done a part two of the fourth mark of mission on this reading, because what Isaiah is saying is that human beings have missed the mark on doing justice and there are consequences for that. But I want to just focus on the vineyard itself.

Have you ever stood in a vineyard? I have. A close friend got married in Tuscany years ago and we all stayed at a vineyard there which was exquisite. Years later I did wedding at the vineyard in Truro, Mass. Hathy and I have also done a few trips to Napa and Sonoma Valleys.

I love vineyards because, well, honestly I love good wine. I love the end product. But you don’t get there without a lot of things happening and the key difference is between good grapes and not-so-good grapes. You can’t get a stellar wine from bad grapes! So it takes work, and skill, and practice, and love. It takes human and divine cooperation.

The word stewardship tends to get used mostly when we are talking about what we do with our money but it’s also about what we do with our time and our talents. Followers of Jesus are called to be faithful stewards of the gifts entrusted to us. This includes this good earth that God has given us.

It is counter to everything our faith teaches to trash it and then think that will bring about the second coming so that Jesus can fix it. It simply doesn’t work that way. As members of the Episcopal branch of the Jesus’ Movement we care about clean air and water and the earth. More than care – we are responsible for these gifts.

As with so many things, people of good will will continue to debate about the details on how best to do that. We can let science take the lead on that. But to dismiss the care of creation totally is not an option. We need to be very clear as people of faith that this is part of the work of being the church, one of the five marks of mission.

So there you have it friends.

• TELL the story of Jesus.
  
• Invite, welcome and connect new believers to this faith community.
• Respond to human need by loving your neighbor.
• Do justice, and seek peace and reconciliation.
• Care for this fragile earth, our island home. 

When we are doing these things, we are living more and more into our calling to be the Church, always with God’s help.

The Fourth Mark of Mission: TRANSFORM

“When I feed the hungry, they call me a saint. When I ask why they are poor, they call me a communist.”

This quote has been attributed to all kinds of folks but as best I can tell, it in fact originally came from Dom Helder Camara, a Brazilian Archbishop known for his advocacy for social justice. His experience is what can get preachers into good trouble as they make the move from “preaching to meddling.”

When I worked for a bishop, I never got a call from a vestry that was concerned that their priest was telling the congregation to respond to human need in our midst. I have never (not once) served a congregation that doesn’t do good works. Laundry Love. Veterans Lunches. Collecting food at Thanksgiving. Giving out backpacks to kids at the start of school. All of these are worthy things and all are related to the third mark of mission, to see our neighbor and to respond to their needs.

The trouble comes when we ask why. But today is a day for us to ask why as we continue a preaching series on the five marks of mission. To briefly review, they are: 

1. To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom.
2. To teach, baptize and nurture new believers. 
3. To respond to human need by loving service.
4. To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation.
5. To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

Our new Presiding Bishop, Sean Rowe, began a letter to the faithful earlier this summer with these words:

I am writing to you from Geneva, where I am meeting with global partners at the World Council of Churches and the United Nations Refugee Agency. As we have discussed how our institutions might act faithfully and boldly in these turbulent times, I have been reflecting on how we Episcopalians can respond to what is unfolding around us as followers of the Risen Christ whose first allegiance is to the kingdom of God, not to any nation or political party.

For a long time in the history of our denomination we had a close proximity to power and we took full advantage of that. At our worst we were chaplains to the empire. We lost our ability to speak prophetically. The fourth mark of mission calls on us to reclaim that prophetic voice.

So today I’m going to preach on the first chapter of Isaiah. But what I really want to say to you, St. Michael’s, would require a much deeper dive into the prophets. For today, what I want you to notice is that ALL of the prophets (and not only Isaiah) are NOT looking down the road to predict the coming of Jesus. This approach got Christians off track and it’s been a real challenge for us to get back on track. But notice where we begin. It’s where all the prophets begin: situated in a particular socio-political context. It’s not pie-in-the-sky thinking. In this case, the vision comes to Isaiah in the days of some kings whose names almost certainly don’t roll of of your tongues. But you can Google them if you like. (AFTER this sermon!)

The vision of Isaiah son of Amoz, which he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem in the days of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah.

So what is the vision? It’s beautiful really. It goes like this:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;

cease to do evil,
learn to do good;

seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.

I submit to you that this is exactly the right text for the fourth mark of mission. Notice our verbs: to transform unjust structures in our society. To challenge violence. To pursue peace and reconciliation. This, in a nutshell, is what the prophets are about. This, in a nutshell is what this fourth mark of mission is about. But it’s hard work. It’s easier to offer acts of mercy than to do justice.

This is not an Old Testament thing, but it does point to where we overlap with our Jewish cousins. When John the Baptist comes to prepare the way for Jesus, he looks and sounds a lot like an Old Testament prophet. And when Jesus says, “who do people say that I am?” the answers include “you sound like one of the prophets.” In fact when Jesus begins his public ministry he unrolls the scroll of Isaiah and it sounds very much like the reading we heard today. Jesus lived and breathed the Torah and the prophets, even if the Church has too often forgotten this. It’s why this fourth mark of mission is so crucial to us as we seek to follow Jesus in this time and place.

In one sense it has always been hard. But I think it’s gotten more difficult as our American political scene has become so incredibly polarized. Yet especially for this reason, now is the time for us to reclaim our voice and remind ourselves and the world around us that even though not partisan, we are also clear that the gospel isn’t just spiritual. It’s not about what happens when we die. It’s about this world we live in. It’s about caring for the least of these in our very midst. It’s about advocating for the rights of those who have little power. “Widows and orphans” is code language that gets repeated over and over again by the prophets to make this point. It’s about believing what we pray: thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.

I went to college in Washington, DC because I felt called at that point in my life to find my way in the world through government. I worked in Congress one summer during those four years. I thought I’d head to law school after graduation. But my father’s untimely death at the end of my freshman year and those Jesuits got to me and from those experiences I heard a call to ordained ministry. But I’ve never become uninterested in politics.

Even so, and maybe especially for this reason, I try to make my preaching about Jesus, about what it means to be the church, not about my own political point of view. I’m a priest and a preacher to Democrats, Republicans, Independents and those who couldn’t care less. But this is not about me. I’m only confessing what makes it both hard and interesting for me. It’s about Jesus. And Jesus came to the edges of the Roman Empire to speak truth to power. He was executed on a cross, the preferred Roman practice of instituting the death penalty. That suggests that the Romans thought he was “too political.”

Why did they think that? Because in the midst of seeing human need and healing people and sharing table fellowship with people of all kinds. Jesus proclaimed a kingdom. In saying that God was king he was saying that Caesar was a poser. In the Revelation of St. John, which we’ll be studying this fall, we will see Christ as the lamb on the throne, the one to whom every knee shall bend. This is language about power and authority. Political power and authority – not just spiritual power and authority.

You are in the process of calling a new rector and this process has inspired me because you all inspire me. I hope you get someone here who is not afraid to engage with this fourth mark of mission. But let me offer a piece of advice. Clergy tend to take one of two extremes in their preaching and teaching. On the one hand are those for whom this fourth mark of mission is all they want to talk about and they speak as if they have the whole unvarnished truth. They are sometimes in danger of forgetting the other four marks but also of thinking they possess the whole truth on complex issues. On the opposite end are those preachers and teachers who avoid conflict of all kinds including speaking hard truths. So they water the gospel of Jesus Christ down and make it cute and funny and entertaining.

But this world is too dangerous for anything but truth, and too small for anything but love. I’ve been doing this work now for nearly forty years, since 1988 – first as a United Methodist pastor and for the past 33 years as an Episcopal priest. I wish I could tell you that I have the secret formula to finding the sweet spot, but I don’t. What I do know is this: we will not go wrong if we keep following Jesus, if we continue to trust the prophets, and if we are not afraid. I also think a pastor builds community and consensus and does not dictate from on high. As I prepare for retirement I can honestly say it’s the toughest job you will ever love, if called to it. And also that it’s harder today than when I began.

We have to go deeper. As a parish, and as a denomination, we are at a crossroads. If we stay close to the prophets we will all be ok. You will be ok as a parish – Democrats and Republicans and Independents and those who are not so political. That will happen when we are able to remember together, with God’s help, to seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, and plead for the widow. When we are engaged in these things we are on the right path to transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation.

The Third Mark of Mission: Responding to a World in Need with Love

The mission of the Church is the mission of Christ. Full stop. We, the Church, are entrusted with continuing the work that Jesus began. We don’t just worship Jesus – we are called to follow him and to share in the work he began in Galilee two thousand years ago, to bring peace on earth and good will to all. Lord, make us instruments of thy peace…

Ultimately that work is about loving God and loving neighbor. The five marks of that mission are as follows:

1.    To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom.

2.    To teach, baptize and nurture new believers.

3.    To respond to human need by loving service.

4.    To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation

5.    To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.

Today we reflect on the third mark and our shared vocation to respond to human need by loving service. There is a LOT happening in today’s Gospel reading. Among other things, Jesus is teaching us to pray, a prayer familiar to all of us. But that sermon will have to wait for another day. I want to focus in on that “knock at midnight.”

Jesus said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, `Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.' And he answers from within, `Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs.

On September 14, 1958, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached a sermon on this text. He told the gathered community:

It is also midnight in our world today. And we are experiencing a darkness so deep that we can hardly see which way to turn. It’s midnight. 

As he unpacked that, he noted that it was midnight in the social order, with the war in Vietnam. And midnight in so many people’s personal lives, experiencing despair and the dark night of the soul. And midnight in the moral life.

Did I mention, he preached that in 1958. But it seems like it could be ripped from the day’s headlines. It feels like midnight in our world as well. In Gaza and in Ukraine and so many other places. In the hard work it is to manage our own psyches and in a world where it feels like we’ve lost our way morally and ethically. It’s still midnight. Bob Dylan has a song with this refrain: “it’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” Well, it’s there.

But the knock comes at midnight from a world in need is looking for bread. The Church cannot roll over and go back to sleep, pulling the covers over our collective head. We have been called to continue with the work of Jesus. We are called to respond to a world in need by loving service.

I think the hardest part of this work is that the world’s needs seem so great and we seem so small. There is a saying that comes from the Talmud that is worth remembering in this context. It goes like this:

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.

If that is what you take away from this sermon today on the third mark of mission, it will be enough. We can argue whether or not it’s harder to be the Church today than it was when Jesus called those first-century Palestinian Jews to follow him, or whether it was harder to be the Church in 1958 when it felt like midnight in America, or today. But I think the fact of the matter is that it’s never been easy to be a follower of Jesus. And the darker it feels, the more clear it is what we must do – which is not to curse the darkness but to get out of bed at midnight, open the door, and light a candle to do the work we can do. To do justly, now. To love mercy, now. To walk humbly, now. To respond to the needs of this world.

As a nation we have been much better at sending young people to war than we have in welcoming them home and taking care of our Veterans. So the knock at midnight might be to serve a meal to Veterans, which is always about more than the food and about the table, the conversations, the kindness offered. We will always have folks in our midst who cannot afford to clean their clothes, which is what Laundry Love is about. We are collecting backpacks for kids because we respect the dignity of every human being and because Jesus loved the little children of the world – all of them. No exceptions.

We do what we can, and this congregation gets that. I truly am proud of all that you do in the neighborhood for the least among us, which reminds us all that life is precarious. I am grateful to be an interim in a place that is focused on ministry beyond these walls and I pray that will continue, with God’s help. I trust that it will because even when your priest left here fifteen months ago, you didn’t miss a beat in continuing this work. Always with God’s help, of course.

But probably the most important thing I learned in the dozen years I worked for a bishop is that there are things we can do better collectively – which calls us beyond our parochial silos. There are things we can do better as a diocese and as a global church, where we can leverage our influence and our resources.

We need both, in my experience, to live out this third mark of mission. We can’t do nothing locally and say we paid our apportionment to the diocese and they’re on it. But neither can we simply say we will take care of Bristol and Warren and that will be enough. It’s a both/and. Same with us. Not everyone is able to do everything nor should we. The Mission Committee can set priorities and recruit volunteers and we, as a congregation, cannot do it all. But we can do something.

It's tempting when it feels like midnight to curse the darkness. But the faithful let our little lights shine and illumine a path. We get up out of bed to show love to our neighbor. To do justice now, to love mercy now, to walk humbly with God now.

Those small acts ripple out and God can do infinitely more with them than we can ask or imagine. Not only do we do this because we see our neighbor in need but we do it because we honestly believe that when we care for the least of these we are caring for Jesus himself. It’s where we find God in the world, in the faces of all who suffer.

We have got to find a way, I think, through the political polarization of our day that also makes it feel like midnight to remember these five marks of mission and especially this third mark. That is not easy. But we cannot let our fear of the darkness keep us from doing what God calls on us to do. It seems to me that one of the key issues right now is about immigrants and refugees. Most of us can agree on the broad contours, I think, regardless of our political differences. There should be a fair process, a process not tainted by racism, toward legal ways that we invite people to become part of this land of hope and dreams. Because that lady holding that torch in New York Harbor declares to the world that this is a core value for us.

We need to claim that, not only as an American value but as the core of Jewish and Christian theology. Really, it may be hard to do but it’s simple to know what we are to do: Love God. Love neighbor. All of them. No exceptions.