Joseph and His Brothers: Part 2

I am, again, at Emmanuel Church in Manchester-by-the Sea. This is the second sermon in a two-part series; the first of which can be found here. Today's reading can be found here.

If you were here last Sunday, you might recall that I mentioned that there are two different Old Testament tracks available to us during these summer months. Here at Emmanuel you’ve been on Track 2 while Track 1 has been rolling along with Genesis since Trinity Sunday. Luther was gracious to let us jump over during my two weeks which means I preached part one of a preaching series and today, on my last Sunday with you, we will tackle part two.

 

If you were not able to be here last Sunday, here is the executive summary of that sermon: Jacob and Sons were a hot mess. 

 

The sordid saga of Joseph and his brothers began back in the 37^th chapter of Genesis. There we saw Joseph as a seventeen-year old spoiled brat whose most favorite thing in the world was to report back to daddy whenever his shepherd brothers messed up! So Joseph’s brothers are not very fond of him. In fact the Bible uses a word that most of us who are parents forbid our kids to use. It says his brothers “hated” him. In fact, that they hated him enough to want to kill him. This is sibling rivalry on steroids. In the end, they settle for throwing him into a pit and then selling him off as a slave to some foreign traders. This is bad stuff.

 

And that is where we left Joseph last weekend: sold to those Midianite traders for twenty pieces of silver. (Genesis 37:28). The brothers return home and tell their father that a wild animal has killed their brother. As evidence of Joseph’s death, in a world before DNA testing, they present Jacob with that “amazing technicolor Dreamcoat” smeared in animal blood. Jacob is a mess, as any parent who loses a child naturally would be. Except that in this case, it is all an elaborate and horrible lie. Joseph is not really dead.

 

What happened between last week and this week, in the eight chapters that the lectionary skips over? The narrator takes us to Egypt, where Joseph has been sold to a man named Potiphar, a captain in Pharaoh’s guard. The two get along quite well. The narrator tells us that Joseph was “handsome and good-looking.” (Genesis 39:6b) To be honest I am not certain what the difference is between “handsome” and “good looking”—it sounds a little redundant to me. But maybe that’s the point. Joseph is very easy on the eyes.

 

Joseph ends up in an Egyptian prison for a crime he did not commit. He’s set up by Potiphar’s wife. But remember, Joseph is not only a dreamer but a dream interpreter. The way he gets out of jail free is to interpret a very strange dream of Pharaoh’s about seven fat cows and seven skinny cows and another one about and seven full ears of corn and then seven skinny ears. No one seems to be able to understand what it all means, except for Joseph. It comes easily to him, but to be honest, this particular dream is more about sound economic policy than an advanced seminar in Karl Jung. The dream means that there will be seven years of good crops followed by seven years of an economic downturn. So if Egypt is smart they will save up during the good years in order to be prepared for the lean ones. Joseph is promoted to become Secretary of Agriculture under Pharaoh to oversee that process and that is what they do.

 

In the meantime, Jacob and sons move on with their lives as best they can. But they have now hit upon tough times back in Canaan because it’s the seven lean years and no one told them to save up during the seven fat years. So Jacob sends his sons to Egypt looking to see if there is an economic stimulus package in the works coming out of Cairo. And that brings us to where we are today. 

 

Joseph recognizes his brothers immediately. But remember that when they last saw him he was just a kid. Now he is a successful and powerful political appointee in the Egyptian cabinet, and they simply do not recognize the man before them as their brother. If he has harbored bitter resentments toward them for all these years, now is his chance to get his pound of flesh. Now is his opportunity to have them thrown into a dark pit and left for dead and see how they like it. Revenge! So sweet!

 

But Joseph doesn’t do that. Instead he weeps so loudly that Pharaoh’s whole household hears him. And then he embraces his brothers.

 

Forgiveness. Can you imagine?

 

The late Walter Brueggemann said that this story is about the challenge to live our lives “between the hint of the dream, and the doxology of disclosure.” That’s good Old Testament theology but let’s break it down into plain English. We get these hints and guesses of God’s dream for this world, and we hope for the Kingdom of God to break in on earth as it is in heaven so we can one day sing praise God from whom all blessings flow! We pray for that Kingdom to come every time we gather for worship. Yet we live our lives between those two realities: between the already and the not yet, between the hint of the dream and the doxology of disclosure.

 

When someone suffers a trauma, as Joseph did, it’s easy to understand how that person’s nightmares will win out, and that person will be left embittered and blaming the world. Or blaming themselves. It’s easy to get stuck in a loop and feel there is no future. But if one is able to live “between the hint of the dream, and the doxology of disclosure,” one is already seeing that the story doesn’t end in that pit. The process of claiming new life, for Joseph, began long before that day his brothers appeared before him. As Andy Dufrasne puts it in The Shawshank Redemption, “you can get busy living or get busy dying.”  

 

Joseph has gotten busy living. And because of that, he has let go of the need to seek revenge on his brothers or for that matter to let them live rent free in his head. Instead, he wants to hug them. He wants to find out how his father is doing. He wants to get busy living.

 

So this Joseph story is an Easter story. It is about redemption and healing and new life and just as importantly it is about trusting that God is with us in the pit or a prison cell and in the depths of our deepest fears and pain, and even unto death on a cross on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

 

We, too, live between the hint of the dream and the doxology of disclosure. As St. Paul did, when he was sitting in a prison cell nearly two thousand years ago, yet hardly able to contain himself, writing to the Church in Philippi:

 

I thank God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now…I want you to know, beloved, that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel. (Philippians 1:3,4,12)

 

From prison, Paul writes that! He faced that same choice that Joseph faced: to get busy living or to get busy dying. He chose life. He chose to see God at work in his life even on the hardest of days and to find purpose and meaning in his imprisonment. He chose to live between the hint of the dream and toward the doxology of disclosure.

 

You and I are invited to follow these good examples. It’s hard, for sure. But praising God always leads to love of neighbor. Even those who have so terribly hurt us. I think of Don Henley’s words from “The Heart of the Matter.” I won’t sing them for you – it’s too early in the day for that. But perhaps you know them and you can sing them on your way home:

 

I’ve been tryin’ to get down to the heart of the matter, but my will gets weak and my thoughts seem to scatter. But I think it’s about forgiveness. Forgiveness.

 

And of course I think of Eliza Hamilton, when it’s quiet uptown and she has been so hurt by Alexander’s infidelity and by the death of their son, Philip. And yet, she also chooses to live between the hint of the dream and the doxology of disclosure. As a faithful Christian woman, an Episcopalian in fact, she knows how to unlock the future. Forgiveness. Can you imagine?

 

By God’s grace, it happens in our lives from time to time, in small and sometimes in large ways. And when it does, it unleashes the power of God and it opens up grace upon grace and new possibilities. We need these old Bible stories, I think, because in our very real twenty-first century lives we, too, live “between the hint of the dream and the doxology of disclosure.”

 

So here is the thing I want to say to you today, friends: trusting that hint of the dream is what makes the doxology of disclosure possible. Acting on the hints and guesses that lead us to risk healing and reconciliation opens up, again and again invitations for us to see the living God at work in our lives. This is the work the Church is called to in this time and place: to not lose heart, to be agents of healing and reconciliation in a polarized world.

Before I leave you, Emmanuel, a book recommendation. A challenging one by one of my favorite theologians, Miroslav Volf, a Croatian born theologian who directs the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Last I heard, Volf was worshiping in the Episcopal Church in Guilford, Connecticut. In his book, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation, Volf slows down the drama of an embrace as the key to reconciliation. The drama needs to be mirrored by the other. Simply put you cannot force someone to hug you. That’s not an embrace. You open, and you wait. They need to open, and wait, before an embrace can happen. We can practice this but it’s hard. Embrace is a dance, and reconciliation that leads to healing requires a partner.

 

What is happening in today’s Old Testament reading is a miracle and by God’s grace it happens for us every once in a while: old hurts are put aside and the future becomes possible. Forgiveness. Can you imagine?

May this Joseph story empower and equip us to be more hopeful and more courageous agents of healing and reconciliation, for the living of these days. Keep practicing doxology, so that from the hint of the dream we can open our own arms and lean into it, by God’s grace. 

Praise God. Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise God, all creatures here below. Praise God the Creator, the Redeemer, and the Sustainer. Amen. 

Joseph and His Brothers: Part 1

On Sunday, August 9 and Sunday, August 16 I am serving at Emmanuel Church in Manchester-by-the-Sea, a summer chapel. I decided to preach the Joseph story in two parts, this Sunday being the first of those. The reading can be found here.

Good morning, Emmanuel! I am with you this weekend and next and so I thought I might do a mini-preaching series on the Genesis readings that come up today and then again next weekend. 

Congregations and their preachers have options during the summer months for the Old Testament readings, Track 1 or Track 2. Although you have been on Track 2 here, your very kind priest, Luther, was gracious enough to accommodate my request to switch over to Track 1 and the readings from Genesis for these two Sundays that I’m with you. So let's go...

Jacob settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan. This is the story of the family of Jacob.

Jacob is one of the few people in the Bible who gets almost as much attention as his grandfather, Abraham. Abraham may well be the “father of faith.” But he really enters the Biblical stage as an adult. Only Moses and Jesus come to my mind as getting more attention than Jacob does from birth to death. That is fitting, for in the reading immediately before today’s, Jacob wrestles with the angel of God and is given a new name: Israel. He is the archetype of this people God has claimed as “chosen.”

Contrast the amount of time the narrator spends on Jacob with Abraham’s son/Jacob’s father, Isaac. We see Isaac at birth and then climbing Mount Moriah with his father and then near death and then mistakenly giving the blessing to Jacob who tricks him into it, rather than to Esau. That’s about it.

After reconciling with his brother Esau, we are told that Jacob settled down to live in the land where his father had lived as an alien. With all his kids, it is now looking like the promise made by God to his grandfather is secure: the land is given and descendants (while not yet as many as the stars) are quite numerous. It’s a complicated blended family with thirteen kids: twelve sons and one daughter by four different mothers. Joseph, his youngest, is now seventeen and is his favorite – not only because he’s the baby in the family but also because Joseph’s mother is the one Jacob truly loves.

Now I don’t want to be overly anachronistic here. But think about a big family with lots of kids and the youngest one turns seventeen. The empty nest that follows can be both a liberating and a frightening experience. There is a real generational shift as that “baby” begins to grow up. I don’t want to overemphasize that, but I think it’s the kind of detail it can be fun to ponder a bit. Most families I know experience some amount of tension—of conflict, and even of crisis—through such transitional periods. As older siblings start to marry and have kids of their own and then the last of the kids goes off to college or a job, sometimes people end up in therapy, trying to figure it all out and how they ended up where they are, and so forth. And in this family it is quite clear that dad played favorites.

I’m an oldest child, so I know that I am the favorite. Number one! Just don’t tell my three younger siblings…

But seriously, families struggle with these issues, don’t they, and maybe big families struggle even more so. Is there enough love to go around? I love the old story about Erma Bombeck who wrote letters to each of her three kids explaining why each one was her “favorite” and I think that’s something to aspire as a parent or grandparent: you love each one as a favorite. But sometimes it’s more complicated than that, and the conflicts, the sibling rivalry, the betrayal, the anger, the hurt all result from people not feeling loved enough.

In the case of this family, it seems all are agreed that Joseph is Jacob’s favorite son. Remember that amazing technicolor dream coat? Maybe it is because Jacob so loved Rachel and because this boy was given “in his old age.” Maybe it’s because he was the spitting image of his mother. Maybe because the other kids were just brats or boring. Maybe Jacob just had more resources in life as the kids grew up: he could afford expensive tailoring for Joseph that he couldn’t when the other ones were growing up. We can’t know for sure but as in our own families, perception can become reality. The stories we tell about where we have been shape the people we are becoming.

In the midst of it all, though, God is at work. That is the theological point of the entire Joseph narrative. I don’t want to give away too much of next week’s punchline, but Joseph ends up in Egypt for a reason according to the narrative. These brothers succumb to their worst angels by selling Joseph into slavery but God brings good from that. God is ever bringing good from ill, as one of the church’s great hymns puts it. So in the short term, this all looks really bad. But the text as part of the larger narrative wants us to see—as the listening community—that God is underneath it all, working for good.

Joseph can see that after the famine, after he is promoted to become Secretary of Agriculture in Pharaoh’s cabinet, after his brothers and he are reconciled. Hold that thought until next Sunday.

This point still has significance for our lives, especially when God’s ways seem hidden from us, when we feel like we are in the pit, and perhaps even that someone who is supposed to love us has hurt and betrayed us and put us in that pit. Here (as with great-grandpa Abraham) Joseph is called upon to put his trust in God. What is different is that Joseph doesn’t seem to have direct access to God that Abraham had. God tells Abram to “go” and Abram listens. But with Joseph, God speaks to him through his subconscious life, through dreams. The dreams are never direct revelations. They need to be interpreted.

Recall that it was one of these dreams that got Joseph into trouble with his brothers in the first place: he told them a dream that suggested he was the most special one. But it will also be his dreams that get Joseph out of trouble when he lands in an Egyptian jail cell. Isn’t it that way with us as well: our gifts can bring both blessings and challenges along the way.

I suspect that most of us experience God more as Joseph did than as Abraham did: we get hints and guesses, dreams, images, stories. We need to keep walking by faith even when it feels like we’ve been abandoned and we learn to trust that God is with us even when it is not altogether obvious to us or to those around us.

The second insight I want to share about this text is for us to notice and even embrace the fact that this family is, to say the least, far from perfect. That should give us hope. It should help us to see that dysfunction isn’t a disqualification for the people of God: maybe it is even a pre-requisite.

Some of you may know from what Luther has shared that I served in a diocesan ministry for almost a dozen years, as Canon to the Ordinary in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts, which is all of the parishes west of 495 in this Commonwealth save for Southborough. It put me on the road a lot, but before that I’d served as the rector of St. Francis in Holden for fifteen years. While there I did some adjunct teaching of a required undergraduate course at Assumption College in Worcester. We spent a fair amount of time on Genesis which for most of these young Roman Catholic kids was eye-opening. They’d been taught about the pastel-colored figures in Bible-land but what we explored were these human beings who were kind of mess, like us. The same truth carries over to the New Testament. God doesn’t look for perfect people to call; God uses imperfect people to do the work that God has given us to do.

We’ll come back to it next week but think for a moment of how scary it must have been for Joseph to be in that pit and then sold into slavery. I wonder if at least some of his brothers felt guilty or ashamed of what they’d done. It feels like the end of the story: a terribly abusive one. But stay tuned because there is more to come, not only for this family but for God’s people.

We might also notice that in spite of political rhetoric in American Christianity to the contrary, the Bible isn’t primarily about families, but about God forming a covenant community of wounded people who come from families. Sometimes we talk about the Church as a family. I heard that a lot from vestries and search committees when I served as Canon to the Ordinary. I used to push that metaphor a bit and ask people to unpack that, because it is tempting to romanticize and sentimentalize that notion, forgetting the sibling rivalries and petty jealousies and old wounds are a part of every family. Sometimes one of the wardens in a congregation would say to me, “we’re just like a family here at St. Swithin’s” and I’d say, “oh boy, you’re a real mess, eh?” Sometimes they laughed and sometimes they looked like I’d kicked them in the gut!

Jesus says: whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my family. He says the first loyalty is to love God and the second is to love neighbor. What we see coming out of Genesis is an exploration of what that community is called to be: first Israel and then the Church. Both living branches of God’s holy people, warts and all, from the same Source.

That is the story that emerges from Genesis as I read it: in Exodus we get the Torah which shapes Israel, and in the New Testament Jesus comes not to negate but to fulfill that covenant. In Genesis we get this cast of real characters, including Jacob and Sons – including Joseph, the little brother whose story we will continue to unpack next Sunday. Stay tuned. It doesn’t end with betrayal and slavery because God isn’t finished yet – not with Joseph, or with any of us. Stay tuned...

Breathing Together: A Conspiracy for Goodness

At the Cuttyhunk Union Church, I have the rare opportunity to deviate from the lectionary and preach on texts I otherwise wouldn't get to. This text DOES actually come up later this summer, on August 23, at least for those who use Track 1 for the Old Testament readings. It can be found here, Exodus 1:8-2:10. Below is a manuscript for the sermon I preached last night at the Evening ecumenical service. 

The Exodus story is one of the most powerful narratives in the whole Bible, both testaments! It’s the kind of script that can be easily adapted to film as well as to liturgy. How cool would it be to get someone like Charlton Heston to play Moses?

From the Exodus story comes the celebration of Passover, the central liturgical experience for our Jewish cousins. I hope many of you have had the chance to sit at the Seder table at some point with Jewish friends, where the story is remembered, and if not yet then perhaps find a way to do that sometime.

For Christians, Holy Week is set in the context of first-century Passover celebrations in Jerusalem. Jesus and his followers are pilgrims to the holy city, a story we remember every year in Holy Week, starting on Palm Sunday, and then continuing through the three holy days. On the night before he died for us, Jesus took the bread and shared the cup to breathe new life into this old tradition of the matzoh and God’s saving acts of liberation.

It’s a political story. It may not get taught that way in Sunday School curriculum but that doesn’t change the fact that this is a story about unjust power and how one resists power that corrupts. You can’t sit and break the matzoh and hear about Moses telling old Pharaoh to “let my people go” and miss that. In some parts of the Church we’ve been mixed up, though. I agree with those who say that partisan politics is not appropriate from the pulpit and I agree with those who say that God is not a Democrat or a Republican. I agree with the founders commitment to separate church and state. But that does not mean that religious faith is apolitical; it just means that religious speech is protected speech.

From the beginning to the very end of the Bible when the Lamb seated on the throne creates the new Jerusalem where there are no more tears and God’s will is done on earth as in heaven, there are political implications of choosing to follow God rather than human beings who overextend their claims on authority.

OK. Enough about Moses, who gets all the good PR. Tonight I want to back up a little bit to the reading we heard tonight, from the first two chapters of the Book of Exodus. There we meet six of seven courageous women, all of whom model wisdom, resilience, and faith as a direct challenge to Pharaoh’s tyranny. Moses deserves credit for leading the Hebrew people out of bondage and toward the Promised Land but let’s be clear: without these seven women there is no Moses.

They are, first, Shiprah and Puah, the two midwives who defy Pharaoh and save the lives of Jewish baby boys. They are Moses’ mother and his sister, who build a little ark to keep Moses safe and allow him to be rescued. Pharaoh’s own daughter and her maidservant directly resist Pharaoh’s edict and save Moses and then raise him as their own. When she happens to find Moses’ own mother and asks her to be the nursemaid, it’s pretty clear she knows exactly who this woman is and what she’s asking of her: to nurse her own child in the midst of Pharaoh’s own household. So that’s six, all of whom appear in tonight’s reading. Finally, there is Zipoorah, Moses’ wife, whom we have not yet met.

These seven women promote life and prepare the way for Israel’s exodus from Egypt. Without them there is no Moses to stand before a burning bush, no Moses to lead the Hebrew people across the Red Sea and toward the Promised Land. In their quiet work, these six women before us tonight resist and disrupt Pharaoh’s anti-creational, death-dealing abuses of power.

For tonight, I want to focus primarily on the first two of these seven women, these two midwives: Shiprah and Puah.

Notice again the subtext and pay close attention to the verbs. The law that Pharaoh has decreed is clear: kill the boys. All the Hebrew boys. The girls may live. Kill them before they have a chance to become little freedom fighters.

But the two midwives disobey the law. It turns out that even law-abiding citizens answer to a higher power, and if a law is unjust there is no requirement to obey it. This is why Jews and Christians have conspired together throughout history to challenge unjust laws. That doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences. That doesn’t mean the “powers that be” won’t go bonkers when one dares to challenge their authority. The women are summoned to report to the Pharaoh and they lie – presumably under oath. Those Hebrew women, they say, are just amazing! They give birth before we even get there!

The word conspiracy comes from two Latin words that literally mean “to breathe together.” The word has taken on a more negative meaning – we speak of conspiracy theories and of conspiring to commit a crime together.

But I want to call us back to that older, more literal meaning tonight. To breathe, together. We breathe in the Holy Spirit, the breath of God. Like the disciples in that upper room after Jesus is raised from the dead, he comes and breathes on them and they are changed. They are changed for good, to be more courageous, more wise, more faithful to what Easter is all about.

When we come here on a Sunday night, and we sing these hymns and we say our prayers, we are forming a conspiracy together for goodness in this world – a conspiracy to be a light that shines in the darkness, to be the salt of the earth, to be leaven that makes the whole loaf rise.

This conspiracy is not partisan. It’s not a Democratic or Republican thing. But it most definitely has political implications. It is about getting clear about who we belong to, namely the living God. All others who wish to claim our allegiance are pretenders to the throne.

Most of us want to be good citizens, at least I do. And on many days we can do that and still be faithful to God. But there come certain moments in our lives, and sometimes even moments in human history, when we are called to breathe in together to join a conspiracy of goodness and to obey God’s Word over human authorities.

In the midst of World War II, France was partly occupied and partly “free.” The French government, headquartered at Vichy, collaborated with the Nazis, mistakenly believing that one could cooperate with evil in order to live another day. But there was a small farming village called Le Chambon-sur-Lignon that made history by harboring some 5,000 refugees, most of them Jews, many of them children.

A good deal of sacrifice was involved. The village basically doubled its size as Jewish families found a safe haven. Families took in children and their parents, making them feel as though they were fellow “Chambonnais” going to school, working on the farms, sharing meals, and so forth. There was great risk involved. The village became a center for the forgery of documents. Illegal documents, according to the Nazis and the Vichy government.

Almost all of the Chambonnais were Huguenot Christians. France had persecuted Protestants heavily, especially during the eighteenth century. Those who did not flee, and those who were not put to death for their faith, survived in particular pockets of the country. Le Chambon was one such place. They kept the memories alive by meeting in worship, hearing the Bible preached by their pastors, and singing the psalms as well as folk songs that recounted their story. They felt a special affinity for the Old Testament and for the Jews. It was part of their theology. There is no doubt that they learned about Shiprah and Puah and those other five women along the way.

So during the Second World War, Le Chambon became the safest place in Europe for refugees from the Nazi horrors. Take that in for just a moment. Breathe in that truth. Breathe in that a little church in a little town did great things.

And here is something interesting, at least to me: the Chambonnais did not feel they were heroes. One of those born in Le Chambon, Pierre Sauvage, moved with his family to America, where he became a filmmaker. Out of curiosity about his origins, he did a documentary on Le Chambon called Weapons of the Spirit. When he returned to his birthplace with a film crew, he interviewed the somewhat reluctant villagers. Over and over he found that they did not think of themselves as courageous champions who had defied the Nazis. Instead, they quietly did what very few others could do, saving thousands of people from their oppressors.

Why? How? “It’s simple,” they explained, “love God and love your neighbor; that’s what Christians do.” That is all that we did, they explained. No big deal!

They conspired for the good, because that is what Christians do. They simply took the two great commandments seriously. Like Shiprah and Puah and those other five women had done all of those many centuries earlier.

These are witnesses to us, my friends. They inspire us to conspire against evil in our own time. They remind us what it means to be faithful in dangerous times. It can be scary, but it can also bring us clarity about who we are called to be, with God’s help. I worry that sometimes what keeps us from acting is that we think only of the big things. We raise up Moses at the Burning Bush and send him up on the Mountain to get the Ten Commandments. But never underestimate what seven women can do to change the world. Never underestimate what a little Protestant Church in a small village can do. Never forget that without Mrs. Parks and many like her in Montgomery, boycotting the buses and walking to work every day for 381 days, Dr. King’s “dream” is just good rhetoric.

To be the Church, we do sometimes need to take sides. Being non-partisan does not mean staying neutral. The meaning of our Baptism is to stand for justice over and against injustice, for dignity of every person over degradation. For love over hate, and for truth in a world of lies. We have to remember who we are and whose we are and live like that matters. It’s not easy, and we won’t all do it the same way. We won’t all agree every day on what is required of us but if it looks like being kind, and showing mercy, and loving our neighbor we can be reasonably sure we are on the right path. We come to a congregation like this one to remember our core beliefs so that in small and large ways we can practice those beliefs one day at a time on this Island and when we return home.

William Stringfellow was an Episcopal layperson who got all this. He wrote powerfully in the 1970s. I commend his writings to you, and close with his words, dear friends and then a brief time for silent reflection before we sing "Breathe on me, Breath of God."

The biblical lifestyle is always a witness of resistance to the status quo in politics, economics, and all society. It is a witness of resurrection from death. Paradoxically, those who embark on the biblical witness constantly risk death - through execution, exile, imprisonment, persecution, defamation, or harassment - at the behest of the rulers of this age. Yet those who do not resist the rulers of the present darkness are consigned to a moral death, the death of their humanness. That, of all the ways of dying, is the most ignominious.

 

Planting Tomatoes: A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Today is the seventh Sunday after Pentecost and my last Sunday covering a clergy renewal leave (sabbatical) at St. John's, Northampton. The readings for this day can be found here.

I want to share with you today a new song by Lucy Dacus. I am going to spare you all because it’s my last Sunday with you by not singing it. Rather, I’m going to read it to you as a poem, and poems are almost always a kind of prayer. I think this is a kind of prayer. It’s called  "Planting Tomatoes.” (You can also listen to the song here.)

Planting tomatoes in the empty lot
Someone practicing saxophone down the block
And they are not good yet
They are not good yet

Picking flowers off the shoulder of the road
18-wheelers rushing by a little too close
Life is just a series of close calls
One day one will come to end them all

But before then, I've got some ideas
But before then, I've got some ideas

Coming together in a circle of hands
Gently pressing palms when the prayer ends
We all say amen
Say amen

Subtle pixelation of the world through the screened-in porch
I could sit here for hours
You've gotta live the life you're fighting for
You've gotta live a life you would die for

But before then, I've got some ideas
But before then, I've got some ideas

Hearing my friends laughing in the distance
I can't help but laugh along without knowing what the joke is
Can't help thinking that I am gonna miss this
Living in the moment, I can feel the moment passing

Now I'm older than you'll ever be
On a day you will never see
There is so much that I have not lost
Someday I know I will pay the cost

But before then, I've got some ideas
But before then, I've got some ideas
But before then, I've got some ideas
But before then, I've got some ideas

I could probably sit down right now and give you all a few moments to figure out why I’ve started there and if in so doing whether or not it’s helpful to you, if there is good news there for you. But let me linger among you a few moments longer and tell you how I connect this song by Lucy Dacus to today’s Gospel Reading. I know that my colleague, Rev. Anna, would likely be able to do this much better than I can, since she is the published gardener and I know she will be glad to rejoin you in a few weeks. But for today you’ve still got me, who is better with making a caprese salad than in planting and growing tomatoes!

In the thirteenth chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is talking about sowing seeds. He speaks often about seeds in his ministry. Mustard seeds that can grow into something much bigger. Tending to the vineyard so that good grapes can grow and yield good wine. He speaks of grains of wheat and of the harvest. Today he is speaking in parables which is his schtick. He’s saying that the soil where seeds are planted matters.

I try to stay focused on what is right with the Episcopal Church most of all and build on that. I’m committed to appreciative inquiry when it comes to personal spiritual growth and to congregational development. And then to also pay attention to what’s wrong and how we navigate that, manage that, change that. I try to look honestly at our little branch of the Jesus’ Movement and not to be too quick to judge other branches. Some days that’s harder than others. But I’m going to break that norm briefly, this morning at least a little bit.

We swim in the waters of American evangelicalism in this country and although that isn’t all bad, it impacts on us a lot. American Christians, even progressive ones, tend to know the Left Behind series about the end times better than we know the Book of Revelation. That’s a problem.

American evangelicalism has been around a while. Think Jonathan Edwards – ever heard of him? And the Second Great Awakening and sinners in the hands of an angry God. Think Billy Graham and “just as I am without one plea, I come…”

I’ve managed to be with you for three months and only at the very end mention Jonathan Edwards. In one place he said that “You contribute nothing to your salvation except the sin that made it necessary.” That’s pretty classic American evangelicalism. We are sinners, saved by grace alone. It’s not wrong – it might even be right. But it’s not the only way to tell the story of our faith.

Yet it’s in the water. And some branches of that part of the Jesus Movement have been overtaken by a more insidious problem: Christian nationalism. American evangelicals have been more susceptible to this, I think. But that’s a much longer sermon. I do think, though, that our vocation as Episcopalians becomes clearer as we learn to speak about our experience with Jesus of Nazareth, the one we claim to be the Christ.

What I want to notice with you today, though, is that the parable before us today is not about a one-time event. Seeds die and the moment they do, they begin a process of transformation over time. You don’t learn to play the saxophone overnight, nor get vine-ripe tomatoes overnight either, sings Lucy Dacus. And Jesus of Nazareth says that lots can go wrong when you plant seeds. But sometimes the stars align and there is the right mix of sun and rain and good earth and things grow and produce fruit.

And he says that we are like that. I don’t think this is pushing it too far: I think Jesus might even say that he doesn’t care so much about a day in one’s life when they may have accepted him as Lord and Savior as he cares about those who choose to take up their mats and walk, those who take up their crosses to follow him. The planting of the seed, including the seed of the gospel, matters but only as a beginning.

When we speak about a great cloud of witnesses, about the communion of saints, we are saying something very similar. If you want to know what it means to be a follower of Jesus then find someone who’s been doing it for decades, in whom the growth has been happening, someone who embodies the good news of Jesus because they have been intentional about it over time. And then ask yourself: what do I need to do to get to that place in my own life?

The Christian life is about practices over time that change us for good. Last weekend it was my honor to baptize Daphne here, among all of you. It’s the best thing I get to do as a priest and it never gets old, even after 38 years of ordained ministry. But that’s the beginning of a lifelong journey as Daphne and all of our young people, our children and our children’s children, try to navigate this  unsteady and confusing world. Including our young pilgrims headed off to bonnie Scotland this coming week.

I spent my junior year of college at the University of St. Andrew’s, situated on the North Sea, north of Edinburgh. There, I met my future wife, another American studying abroad. I also fell in love with the Scottish people so I was not at all surprised by the joy and love they brought to Boston during the World Cup. I pray that our young pilgrims will be changed for good there. I pray it will be a key moment in their journeys that began in their mother’s wombs, and that continued when a priest dabbed some water on their heads and sealed and marked them as Christ’s own forever with holy oil. They have been claimed and these folks now headed to Scotland are living into that calling, that claim on their lives. They are growing in the faith, into the full stature of Christ. Thanks be to God!

We Episcopalians know that Christian formation is a life-long process. We know God isn’t finished with any of us yet.

God is not finished with you, yet, St. John’s. We take the long view, and we do not lose heart. Seeds get planted but along the way the growth that we observe in ourselves and in others needs to be watered and fertilized and tended to if you want to get to full and abundant life in Christ. There are ups and downs along the way but by God’s grace there is an orientation to love. And love brings us close to the God who is love. That love that is God, and from God, sustains us for the journey. May it be so for you now and always.

Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty. Let anyone with ears listen!

 

250

On March 17, 1976, I turned thirteen years old. In November of that same year, a peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter from Georgia was elected to serve as this nation's 39th president, narrowly defeating Gerald Ford. 

In July of that same year, this nation celebrated our bicentennial. I was young, but I do remember it. I felt proud to be an American and hopeful about the future, even though these were far from glory days for our nation. We had come through the Vietnam War and Watergate. The world was experiencing the first Ebola outbreak in Africa. Inflation had finally dropped from double-digits to 5.76% but there had been gas lines in 1973 and more to come in 1979, triggered by events in the Middle East, especially the Iranian Revolution. 

Fifty years later, I am no longer a kid with my whole life ahead of me. It's tempting for 63-year-old men to be nostalgic about the past and hopeless about the future but I find myself struck more by the old adage that the more things change the more they stay the same. We face political and global challenges today not all that different from what we were facing fifty years ago. I do think that things are worse right now, but it’s a difference of degree, not kind. The human condition and the lust for power and control have not changed. 

I am still a patriot and I still love this country. But I am more aware of the toxic nature of nationalism which is not the same thing as love of country. I believe that nationalism is a distorted love, the tendency that leads to saying things like “my country, right or wrong” or “love it or leave it.” Nationalism insists that "God loves us the most" and is “on our side.” There is a great hymn of the Church that expresses the difference well for me:  

My country's skies are bluer than the ocean,
And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine.
But other lands have sunlight too and clover,
And skies are everywhere as blue as mine.
Oh hear my song, oh God of all the nations,
A song of peace for their land and for mine.

I am certain I was singing that hymn in the Hawley United Methodist Church as a teenager. I am very fortunate to have been raised with a faith that could never be confused with Christian Nationalism: my Sunday School teachers taught me that Jesus loved the little children of the world. All the little children of the world, from every tribe and language and people and nation. On that score, at least, I count my blessings that I didn’t have to unlearn a narrow form of Christian nationalism as my life has unfolded.

One thing is certain: our country is in trouble. Maybe it’s always been on the edge of trouble. I know as a fan of Hamilton and behind that great show the book and the work of historians that 1776 was no picnic. And I was old enough in 1976 to know that we faced many challenges, as we do today in 2026.

Perhaps there are no easy times to be alive. With due respect to "The Boss" there are no “glory days” to go back to; rather, these are better days, as Bruce sings in another perhaps less familiar song. Or, at least these are the days we get to be good. This American experiment has always been a tenuous thing.

But I also believe that times like these can bring out the best in people, not only the worst.

I saw a meme recently that has stayed with me. Memes of course do not convey complex truths very well and real life is not a meme. But this one said that the World Cup reminds us that for the most part, most people across the globe prefer to get along and bring their passions to a soccer field, not to a killing field. People are by and large good; it’s the powers and principalities (and nationalism and human sin) that pit us against one other and insist that wealth and power are limited commodities and we need to take what we can. I was especially inspired of late by the Tartan Army bringing joy to Massachusetts and inspiring us all.

So I will celebrate 250, but in a subdued way. I am praying for peace and reconciliation which is holy work, Gospel work. I am praying that I can continue to be an instrument of God’s peace in a warring world, and contribute to the healing that is needed at this time to bind up the nation’s wounds. I give thanks for what has been but more importantly, I want to work toward what might yet be. God bless America. God bless the world.

America! America!
God mend thine every flaw
Confirm thy soul in self-control
Thy liberty in law!

 

I Bind Unto Myself This Day

I preached this Trinity Sunday sermon at St. John's in Northampton, where I am covering the rector's sabbatical. 

Last Sunday, we celebrated the Feast of Pentecost and the coming of God’s Holy Spirit like wind and fire. That celebration gives us hope, because Jesus has promised the Spirit comes to lead us into all truth, sometimes as Comforter and sometimes as Prodder.

This raises a great big theological question, however: if we know the God of Israel, who created the heavens and the earth, to be the Abba of Jesus; and if we see God revealed through the life, death, and resurrection of the Incarnate Word, Jesus; and if we know God as wind and fire sent by Abba (and maybe the Son too) then: how are these three ways of being God related to each other? 

To say it more succinctly: do we worship one God or three? How much should we emphasize the unity? How much should we emphasize the diversity and uniqueness of each of the three persons? And that, Charlie Brown, is what Trinity Sunday is all about!

There is no fully developed doctrine of the Trinity in the New Testament. There are only hints and guesses in that direction. Answering the questions I have raised took the Church several hundred years or so to answer and even then it was not quite "settled." (Go ask a Unitarian!) That is, I think, a good reminder that good questions often don’t have immediately accessible answers! 

This also means our readings for this day can only point us in the right direction. To impose the doctrine of the Trinity onto any of them would be anachronistic. Since my own preaching almost always focuses on a single text (rather than a theme or thread) this has been a challenge for me for almost four decades now. In fact, as a parish priest I almost always tried to give Trinity Sunday to my associates. The primary reason is not that I don't believe in the Trinity. I do. With all my heart, I bind unto myself, this day and every day, the strong name of the Trinity. 

Yet this is a day like no other precisely because it doesn't have a Biblical text. Think about Christmas Eve: "In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered..."  You can work with that! Or at Easter, "on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb..." But there is no definitive Trinity Sunday text, at least not in the Bible. The reason for this is simple: the latest of the New Testament documents are late first century and the Trinity is a fourth century doctrine.

So if we mean to reflect on the Trinity, then we need to move outside of the Bible to another time and place and to a different kind of “text.” That text is the Nicene Creed. The time in which that text emerged is 325, almost three centuries after the death and resurrection of Jesus. The place is Nicaea, in modern-day Turkey, where a whole bunch of bishops gathered together at an Ecumenical Council to try to figure all of this out. They came together because Constantine told them to come together to answer the very questions that I have put forward. Is God one? Is God three?  After a great deal of spirited discussion, they responded, "yes.”

That conversation continued even longer to the Athanasian Creed which you can find on page 854 of the Book of Common Prayer but I’ll spare you that one today and focus on Nicaea. I’m a little intimidated today by the presence of our junior warden, Dr. Tamsin Jones Farmer, who did an excellent study on the Creed pretty recently at our adult forums. If I fall into any heresies today, I trust Tamsin will set the record straight.

Those early centuries in the Church’s history are sometimes called (by the Orthodox in particular) the time of the “undivided Church.” The context in which the Creed emerged was a time when there were not yet different denominations. But just because there were not denominations in the fourth century doesn’t mean there weren’t different schools of thought. Think about how hard it is today for Christians in East Africa and in Central America and in Western Massachusetts to communicate with one another. Or even how challenging it can be for Quakers and Episcopalians to find common ground. The barriers are about more than language: they are cultural. 

In our day, the great divisions in the Church tend to run along a north-south axis. Those same challenges of communicating across linguistic and cultural barriers existed in the fourth century, but the primary divide then was between east and west. The Western Church was shaped by Latin and culturally centered in Rome. The Eastern Church was shaped by Greek language and culturally centered in Constantinople. Trying to figure out how to say that God is one and that God is three and trying to find the way to say that while moving from Greek to Latin and Latin to Greek proved to be quite the challenge for those bishops.

Seventeen hundred years after Nicaea (and particularly in the west) it is tempting to turn Trinity Sunday into a kind of math problem. It doesn’t matter whether we were raised as Protestants or Catholics, we are all shaped by western culture, including the Enlightenment. But if we can listen across the centuries to the more mystical nature of Eastern Christianity, I think that we stand a better chance of seeing something new and transformative in the Creed itself that might help us to hear and to proclaim something like "good news" on this holy day.

To do that, I want to go back to a single word that was part of those conversations in Nicaea, a word that comes to us from the east. It was at the heart of the Trinitarian thought of three eastern theologians in particular who came to be known as the Cappadocian Fathers: Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great, and Gregory of Nazianzus. It was the latter Gregory who first used the word perichoresis (from the Greek peri-, around and -chorein, to contain.) Perichoresis refers to the mutual indwelling within the threefold nature of the Trinity. 

Say what? As I said, the New Testament doesn’t have a full-blown Trinitarian theology. But the meaning of that word does grow out of a close reading of the fourth gospel, the most mystical of the gospels. John says that the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father." (John 10:38) Through the Holy Spirit, you and I dwell in Christ in the same way. We participate, in other words, in the divine life. This can sound almost heretical to western Protestant ears, but it's at the heart of those earliest Greek theologians. And even when we say it differently, its clearly rooted in St. Paul's writings as well as the fourth gospel: we are the Body of Christ, members of the risen Lord who dwells in us and we in him. 

This word, perichoresis, means to convey intimacy and relationship: a “cleaving together.” The Orthodox tended to develop and stress the love and communion that the three persons have for each other.  

Fifteen years or so ago, I had the chance to see Archbishop Desmond Tutu at St. John’s High School in Shrewsbury, in the flesh. (It was actually our second meeting as I'd once "bumped into him" walking along the Charles River when I was staying at the monastery and he was at Episcopal Divinity School.) In any case, he spoke about the African idea of ubunto which means (in contrast to Descartes) “I am, because we are.” Many of you have heard or read about this idea, as I had also. But hearing the Archbishop himself talking about it one evening in Shrewsbury made it real in a different way. And true.

Moving beyond my name-dropping, I invite you to hold these two words: ubunto and perichoresis, as we ponder the mystery of the Trinity. Both take us out of our western heads and into our mystical hearts. We discover who we are not by our separateness but in relationship.  When you begin to ponder the meaning of the Trinity in these ways, it changes the questions and invites us to take another look. It's no longer a math problem. It's a mystic sweet communion.

It’s not like we don’t have any notion at all of this in the west. The Christian idea of marriage, for example, is that two become one. As a math problem, two can only become one if you make less of each partner. But if you begin to understand marriage more mystically, as something like perichoresis or ubunto, then it is possible to imagine each person becoming more fully themselves in marriage. Two become one as each dwells in the other, and in the process each discovers who they truly are meant to become. It’s not addition and it’s not subtraction. It’s multiplication.

If you apply this wisdom to the question of how God can be three, and yet one, then adding words like perichoresis or ubunto to our vocabularies helps the conversation along. Jesus says that he came into the world that we might be one: as he and the Father are one.” (See John 17:21) Father, Son, and Spirit permeate each other. It is not their separateness, but their perfect unity, that draws us into their love and calls us to share in the divine life through that love. It's good to remember, then, that the first word of the creed is we. It is we who believe. It is we who are loved: not sentimentally but fully, and mystically. We are because God is. We are, because God, the holy and undivided Trinity, first loved us. “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” So said St Catherine of Siena.  

I love the Book of Common Prayer, but the collect for today is not the BCP's finest moment. It seems overly steeped in our western confusion about the Trinity, especially as it tries to be sure that we stay focused on “the confession of a true faith.” In my humble opinion today’s collect is overly focused on the document that came out of Nicaea more than on the conversation that got us there. It is a clunky prayer.

I offer you then this simple Orthodox prayer to the Trinity, not as a replacement, but as a way into the deeper meaning of this day:

The Father is my hope; the Son is my refuge; the Holy Spirit is my protector.
O, all-holy Trinity, glory to thee.

The Trinity isn’t a math problem to be “solved.” It is an invitation to enter more deeply into the mystery and love of God. As we bind ourselves this day to the strong name of the Trinity, to the God who is three in one, and one in three, may we discover and rediscover our true selves, and our shared calling to light the world on fire! The divine spirit dwells in us! 

O, All-holy Trinity, glory to thee!

The Seventh Sunday of Easter

On this Seventh Sunday of Easter, I have preached at St. Philip's Church in Easthampton. Today is graduation day at Smith College and the tradition is for St. Philip's to welcome folks from St. John's to their church on graduation weekend when Northampton is busier than usual. I was grateful for the invitation from the Rev. Michael Bullock to preach. 

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I was ordained in 1988, thirty-eight years ago. I realize that this is not even close to my much (much) older brother, Michael, but still, it’s a long time ago, in a galaxy far away.  

In all that time, however, I’m pretty sure that I have never preached on First Peter. And I’m positive that I have not done so on this day, the Sunday after Ascension Day, when I’ve normally felt obligated to say something about the Ascension. Not once in nearly four decades! But I’m going to do just that today.

Although the author of this epistle presents himself as Peter the Apostle, the ending of the letter includes a statement that implies that it was written from "Babylon", which is likely a reference to Rome. The letter is addressed to the "chosen pilgrims of the diaspora" in Asia Minor suffering religious persecution. All of this leads most scholars to date it later than Simon Peter the Fisherman from Galilee, and closer to the time when the Book of Revelation was written under Emperor Domitian.

I’m not going to linger on this point for too long. Honestly, it’s not a ditch worth dying in. But context matters. What is clear is this: whoever wrote it was living through difficult times. It was never easy to try to make your life in an occupied territory of the Roman Empire, but things got much worse later in the first century, and so it makes some sense as context to hear these words addressed to a later first-century Church.

Notice the language used to describe this context: the writer calls attention to the “fiery ordeal” and to sharing in Christ’s sufferings, and being reviled for the name of Christ. The writer speaks of the anxiety this causes as the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour. The writer reminds these early followers of Jesus that this suffering is not local but global: look around and notice that there is suffering in all the world.

What to do? Despair? Give up? It’s very tempting, isn’t it. But no. Like John of Patmos in the Book of Revelation, the recipients of this letter are encouraged to rejoice, and shout for joy. When reviled, to remember they are blessed. To be humble, to know God cares for them. To keep alert. To resist evil and remain steadfast in the faith. The hearers of this Word are promised that Christ will restore, support, strengthen and establish this community, and that in the end God is in charge.

So do not lose hope! All will be well, and all manner of things will be well, eventually.

It’s a word of encouragement in a very difficult time. It’s a reminder that en-couragement is about cultivating and finding courage. We can choose to dis-courage one another and ourselves when faced with big challenges but that’s not a given. We can choose to en-courage one another, reminding ourselves and one another to be brave. As that great hymn of the Church puts it: grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days.

I know some of you know about the lawyer and activist, Frank William Stringfellow, a layperson who was born on April 28, 1928 in Johnston, Rhode Island, but was raised in Northampton. Stringfellow graduated from Northampton High School in 1945. He died in 1985 but if he was still alive he would be 98 years old, so a local and near contemporary saint among the great cloud of witnesses. If you don’t know about him I encourage you to check out his writings.

Stringfellow left Northampton for Bates College and then Harvard Law School. He’s a person I think we need to listen to, a visionary and critic of the social, military and economic policies of the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. He was a tireless advocate for racial and social justice which he insisted could only be pursued according to a serious understanding of Biblical faith. He wrote lots of amazing commentary on the Book of Revelation. Do you all know about this local saint?

One of his books is called “An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land.” I commend it to you along with this quote from it:

…in the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst Babel, I repeat, speak the truth. Confront the noise and the verbiage and the falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, defend the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.

Some of you know that for almost twelve years I served as Canon to the Ordinary in our diocese, serving on Bishop Doug Fisher’s staff. For almost all of that time, the Rev. Michael Bullock has been here at St. Philip’s. I’m told that he’s going to retire soon. He deserves to do that, and I also know he will be greatly missed. Michael and I have become friends along the way – he has been a support to me and I hope I’ve been a support to him. Before we ever met our sons had, which is pretty cool: my son, Graham, travelled with Cristosal to El Salvador when he was a senior in high school and there met Noah; Graham is now 35 and the father of two boys.

We are living in perilous times and both Michael and I have been around a while. Let’s be honest: it’s never been easy to be a follower of Jesus: not when the Epistle of Peter was written and not when William Stringfellow spoke up during the 1960s and 1970s, and not today. It’s never been easy to be a follower of Jesus but there are seasons in human history where it seems especially hard. And I think we are living through one of those.

But we should also remember that hard times can bring about moral clarity about who and whose we are and what we are called to be about. When all is going well in the world around us, it may be more difficult to be clear about what the good news of Jesus Christ is all about and why it matters. But when the world around us feels like it’s coming unglued, when we see violence and degradation and wars and rumors of wars and anxiety is high, it also becomes clear what it means to be a community that resists evil and strives for justice and peace. It becomes clearer what it means to be a community that respects the dignity of every human being. No exceptions. We don’t defend holy wars because we know there is no such thing and that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

The writer of First Peter, whether our friend Simon Peter or some later disciple, knew and understood the costs of discipleship with great clarity. William Stringfellow knew as he confronted injustice in this nation the costs of discipleship with great clarity.

This is, I think, what we are called to in this time as well. To face our fears directly, to know that these perilous times cannot define us, because we are called to be an Easter people, a people after God’s own heart. We are not called to react to every news story; it seems to me that keeps us off balance and we lose our way pretty quickly. Rather, we are called to keep our eyes on the prize. To focus on Jesus, the Word made flesh. To pray for courage and wisdom for the living of these days, and to build up the Body of Christ.

Although no longer on the Bishop’s staff I pay attention and the reason I’m here today is that I’m covering a sabbatical for the rector of St. John’s, Northampton. There is life and vitality in that congregation as there is life and vitality here at St. Philip’s. God isn’t finished with us yet. For a long time we Episcopalians have adapted a narrative of decline. Actually the post-war period when all those baby boomers were born turns out to have been a moment of growth mostly based on pure demographics. Suburban churches with nice red doors had lots of kids in their Sunday School classrooms in the late 1950s and early 1960s. If you start there then it feels like we’ve been in a 65-year decline. But who said that was the place to start? If you take the longer view you find there are ups and downs along the way. And if you look at what is happening coming out of the pandemic there is growth and signs of new life in many of our congregations. People are scared and hungry and looking for community and purpose. And they are beginning to find what they seek in the Episcopal Church.

This time of growth is about more than demographics; it’s about purpose. Why are we here on a Sunday morning in May 2026? I think more and more of us are here because it feels like the world has gone off the rails and we need a place where hope is cultivated by courageous and kind actions, a place where love forms community that is stronger than hate and fear.

Here at St. Philip’s, Michael has served faithfully. Well done, good and faithful servant. But the work isn’t finished. So I wonder where God is calling this congregation next and how you will build on the good work that has been done here. Know that there are not magical pills or easy answers to what lies ahead. We live in perilous times. And yet by God’s grace we put our trust in the living God, one day at a time.

…in the face of death, live humanly. In the middle of chaos, celebrate the Word. Amidst Babel, I repeat, speak the truth. Confront the noise and the verbiage and the falsehood of death with the truth and potency and efficacy of the Word of God. Know the Word, teach the Word, nurture the Word, preach the Word, defend the Word, incarnate the Word, do the Word, live the Word. And more than that, in the Word of God, expose death and all death’s works and wiles, rebuke lies, cast out demons, exorcise, cleanse the possessed, raise those who are dead in mind and conscience.