Making sense of the crucifixion (11.23.25)

Luke 23:33-43

Deep in the heart of Cologne, Germany there is an enormous gothic cathedral. In it, there is a side chapel with a large crucifix carved out of a single oak block that is about six feet tall.  The crucifix is surrounded with an oval of gold with sun rays shimmering outward.  In the center, Jesus hangs on the cross, his head lifeless, eyes closed.  The crucifix is estimated to have been carved around the year 970. I was struck that this tree was carved out of oak—and by who felled those oaks. In the years around 750-800, King Charlemagne, waged a brutal war in the expansion of the Frankish territory into northeast into Saxony.  The city of Cologne sits in the heart of Saxony and history tells us that Charlemagne was terrorizing and cruel in this area--thousands were massacred.  In his war tactics, Charlemagne forced people into baptism by the sword. He outlawed pagan rights, destroyed sacred groves of trees—many of them oak trees. The crucifix in the chapel, called the Gero Cross was carved out of oak and is the oldest surviving image of a dead Jesus on the cross.  As far as historians can tell, It took about 1,000 years of Christianity for Jesus to show up dead on the cross.  

We could talk for hours, (for days) about the first 1,000 years of Christianity and the images of paradise that permeated the early church:  Instead of suffering, these were images of shepherds and green pastures, starry night skies and the garden of Eden. But today, on Christ the King Sunday, we are assigned this bible reading of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus.  

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There is something about this Gero cross that I can’t shake. Christianity emerged and then grew in societies where there was a lot of economic disparity, slavery and war. This happened across the centuries and continents. People who received Christianity in the harshest ways somehow reshaped it into a source of dignity, survival and liberation. On one hand, as the religion spread in Europe, people were baptized by the sword but underneath it, a dying Jesus was hewn for a heartbroken people out of an ancient oak.

In the Americas, Native people were evangelized under the crown of Spain but later the Virgin of Guadalupe appeared to beaten-down indigenous Mexicans with brown skin, speaking their native language and offering tenderness. 

These communities and peoples reinterpreted the faith forced on them.  God broke through the awful stories with this startling presence and connection.

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The whole point of crucifixion was to destroy people, to terrify them to silence the truth and suffocate their ability to tell the story of what happened.  But somewhere along the way, crucifixion began to witness to the worst a community can endure.  The story of the crucifixion said:“this awful thing happened."  The horror was palpable and yet, with fierce mercy, "God was still somehow there.”

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The good news is that God meets us exactly in the places meant to undo us.  Don’t ask me how—God’s grace is found at the end of our rope. God brings us life where none should be possible.  Through Christ, who enters the depths with us, we survive.  God’s presence enters the worst a community or a person can endure, bears it with us, mends what is broken and then ushers us into new life in an astonishing act of grace. Life is found through God’s simple presence. 

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These stories of oaks and stumps and felled trees aren’t just stories from long ago, they also echo today in our own landscape. The weather is changing and I happen to have two oak trees in my tiny yard.   We’ve planted both of them and they are growing but as the days get colder, I see them begin to lose their leaves and prepare for the winter.  My trees are young and thin, many of the branches are thinner than my wrist. In thinking about that Gero cross carved of oak in old saxony, I know that Oak trees can live to be over 1,000 years old some say even 2,000 years old.  That crucifix that was carved may have been from a tree that was quite old.  It may have come from a grove that Charlemange destroyed.  Honestly, I’m still trying to figure out what I think of this: that from a felled tree came the image of a Christ who refuses to be cut down with us.

As I look at the trees in my yard I watch them shiver and transition into a colder season. In these gloomy months where the sun is dim, the branches will stop reaching. They will simply endure and wait in the winter silence. I know that all of us have lived through chilly seasons:  seasons where our emotional reserves are thin, days where the leaves fall, bark thickens, and the months of winter tic slowly by.  Some of us have tension at home or work, or we’ve received pain of crushing news. Some of us have loved ones who struggling. and some of us are simply depleted.  God doesn’t wait for the perfect conditions to show up.  God doesn’t wait for us to do our part and exert the right amount of effort. God doesn’t scan the landscape for the perfect grove of flourishing trees and decide that is the most comfortable place to be revealed.  

God arrives in the felled woods, Babe in a manger, among the stumps and jagged edges, the rings of our own histories.  In today’s reading Jeremiah speaks of a righteous branch. Isaiah also mentions a  “shoot that comes out of the stump of Jesse.”  God shows up among the toppled trees. Don’t ask me how, but God brings life from what looks like dead wood.  “Today,” Jesus says to the man on the cross next to him, “you will be with me in paradise.”  God brings relief, connection and life out of the most desolate places.  Always has.

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The story of the cross is many things.  Interestingly, the church never made some grand, over aching dogmatic declaration about what the cross means. Over the centuries, no one ever called an ecumenical council to explain the cross for us. It means a lot of things, but today, I see that it is a witness to God’s enduring presence even in the mist of the total worst a person or a people can go through.  

We’re on the cusp of Advent where we come back to this truth that God is with us. Sometimes, we need to hear the story. We need to hear the witness of where people are crucified in our world; and sometimes we need to tell it out of our own lived experiences.

As we step into Advent, (this season that is so very honest about the darkness that is around us) What are the candles that you light in the shadows--small beacons of connection that the world needs?  How do you tell the story of God with us even in the worst of times?

Maybe it’s a way you’ve shown up for someone or something.  Some of you families are managing the free little pantry—and believe me, it’s getting a lot of traction these days!  with people leaving things and taking what they need.  Each visit is a spark of life. Sometimes, the stories of God showing up are more personal: It’s the story you share about the loneliness you don’t talk about, the fear creeping under the surface that worries if everything will be okay, the anxiety around money or the future, the pressure to preform. “Today,” Jesus says to the man on the cross next to him, “you will be with me in paradise.”

Paradise doesn’t mean life without struggle, or a life free from problems where we don’t have to wrestle with injustice, suffering and evil.  One theologian writes, “Histories of harm are all around us. Forces of evil operate within and among us. And yet, bushes are on fire all around us. The risen Christ is with us on the road. The spirit rises on the wind. Rivers of paradise circle the earth… We don’t have to retrieve paradise or construct it, we have to perceive it and bring our lives and cultures into accord with it.”

“Today you will be with me in paradise” is connection with one another, it’s feeling seen, advocating for change, it’s belonging, its justice. It is that mysterious Communion of Saints that  surrounds us and God’s light present among us. 

So as Advent dawns, bring your places of weight—your weariness, your longing, your worries, your winters. God meets you there.  God holds it with you and speaks into the places meant to undo you.  God refuses to abandon you. And then open out, lift your eyes, take the anchors off your lungs because Christ is waiting for us in those crucified places in our world: Where people are cut down, pushed aside and suffering. God finds us where we are breaking, we find God where the world is breaking. And as we find each other, God connects us, mends us, enlivens us and today, even for a moment, we are with God in paradise. 

A message for Confirmands about the startling power of the church (11.16.25)

 Luke 19:1-10

Last weekend, I was downtown for a protest. The crowd was vast and in my persistent attempt to hook up with the group we were trying to meet, I climbed a light post in the middle of the sea of people to have a look around. Up on the concrete base, I was about four feet above everyone else, and finally from this vantage point, I gained perspective.  All around me people called out asking what I could see from up there and I told them that the crowd was on the move. 

When Zacchaeus climbed up that tree in our bible story today, he was also trying to see everything from a different vantage point. Something had gotten ahold of Zacchaeus, made an impact on him and motivated him to climb up to get a better look. 

Zacchaeus was, the story tells us, a ruler/chief tax collector.  We’ve been conditioned enough by scripture to be suspicious of both rulers and tax collectors so as soon as the story starts, we already don’t have the best feeling about this guy.  As we hear in the bible story Zacchaeus has tricked people: He has been selfish and careless and people don’t like him. But for some reason, he’s taken a step away from his work as a tax-collector and towards Jesus.  Why?  Why is this corrupt man determined to see Jesus?  Did he look in the mirror that morning and not like who he saw? Was he tired of being excluded, disillusioned with his choices, guilty about the lifestyle he was living? 

We’re not exactly sure why he is so determined to see Jesus, but something deep and desperate is going on inside of Zacchaeus and it’s so strong that he casts dignity to the winds and climbs the tree.

I’m sure Zacchaeus had heard stories about Jesus: The mysterious Rabbi who healed all of these people, he had fed the 5,000 people with two loaves of bread and five fish. Maybe it was the stories that had shifted something in him. Maybe it was his teachings or even his simple presence that had caused him to look differently at his own life.

People shift, like Zacchaeus did. So do cultures. When Zacchaeus climbed a tree his perspective changed.  And perspective can change through so many ways. 

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Have any of you been to New York City? Omar and I lived there when I went to divinity school.  In the heart of the financial district, in a park off Broadway Avenue, there is a bronze sculpture called Charging Bull. Perhaps you’ve seen it. The bull is muscular with big brass horns. It looks like it has just seen something and it is pivoting and about to charge. Italian sculptor, Arturo Di Modica unloaded it in the dead of night in December of 1989 and left it near a Christmas tree in front of the new York Stock Exchange. 

The sculpture, Di Modica said represented prosperity and strength and was a gift to “bolster the spirits” of investors after the 1987 market crash.  (A very heavy gift. The thing weighs over 7,000 pounds and is 11 feet tall.) 

Twenty-eight years after the bull was installed, in 2017, another statue received a permit to be placed in Bowling Green park. It was a four-foot-tall sculpture of a little girl with her hands on her hips, her chin lifted, and her ponytail blowing in the wind.  In the way she was positioned, defiantly facing the bull about 10 feet away, it looked like the bull was charging her. Next to the bull’s three tons, she was tiny, a mere weighed 250 lbs. Artist, Kristen Visibal, named her Fearless Girl. There was a lot of buzz over Fearless Girl. You see, she changed how people saw the bull and Di Modicha was not okay with this.   Shortly after she was installed as a statue, They held a press conference which turned emotional and he said the Fearless Girl was “attacking” Charging Bull.   “She changed the meaning of the piece,” he said and “turned his proud bull into a villain.” He threatened to sue.

Visbal, the artist of the Girl, said that the Bull was “beautiful” and “a stunning piece of art,” but that “the world changes.” She held firm.

There was a lot of controversy around this: how much control can artists exercise over how their art is interpreted? Who is more powerful here?, The bull or the girl? but at the crux was a reality that art or whatever we call “good” art interprets the world around it.  

Hang two pieces of art next to each other and they’ll speak to each other.  Beyond that, art interprets the places where it shows up.  Play a certain song outside an immigration detention facility and it will speak. Paint a mural in a certain neighborhood and it will speak.  Art also gives us a lens on our own lives. My mom and I attended a concert by a famous pianist when she was sick with cancer and we wept through the entire thing—don’t ask me why, no one else did, but something about the music cracked us.   

Art or music or poetry stands in the world with this decentered power.  It makes us see things differently. The fearless girls powerfully shifts our perception and she seems to do it with her mere presence. Somehow, Jesus does this too.

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Pastor Scott Black Johnson has made an argument that churches are God’s art. Now, Some of us will say that a sunset is God’s art, or a baby’s laugh is God’s art. Yes, fine I agree.  But I’m talking about a different kind of art:  Black says, “You know the story: Christ came and taught and healed. He suffered and died and rose. He called the disciples, gave them the gospel, and charged them to love each other and go around preaching, casting out demons, and living the good news.  Jesus challenged this motley crew to become the church—to be God’s art.” God’s art that sits there at the side of power, and causes us to see our neighborhood, our workplace and our lives differently.

Now, I will be the first to say that the church is imperfect.  If you’ve spent any time in the church, you’ll know that people will disappoint you and frustrate you. This project called community can be really hard. Beyond that, if you’ve spent any time reading headlines about the church, you’ll know that the church has made and makes a lot of mistakes.  

And yet, the church sits to the side, just as Jesus stood to the side of the dominant Roman culture and leads the people to see the world around them differently. 

The Church’s very presence and commitment to neighborliness can even cause the wider world passing by to pause, catch it’s breath and see things differently. This decentered power of Jesus sure made Zacchaeus see his world in a new way. 

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You confirmands are stepping into a life of faith where you are going to ask questions about Why God? And then Why church?  

I don’t think I need to tell you that there are a lot of challenges in our world today. We’ve talked about them. You think about them.  You think about fairness and how you can take care of people.  You think about our environment and the problems with violence in our world.  You are big hearted, sensitive and deeply kind people and I love you all.  

Many years ago before many of us were born, the church provided a more obvious moral compass in our society. When economic philosophies were being written generations ago and then later during the civil rights movement, the magnetism of religious ethics held the moral line and helped keep a check on power and greed. That has changed. I am a clergy person and I don’t think I have to tell you that I don’t have near the authority in our society that the pastor who stood here 50-60 years ago did.  And yet, the church still wields power. The change is that now it is decentered, it is a power of presence, of authority that shifts the game from the sidelines. It may be different but it still pulls people back to moral alignment. That is profoundly important. And you are a part of this. 

Jesus was a humble man  who stood alongside of a big cultural machine of the Roman empire.  He was miniature compared to the 3-ton bull. And yet, somehow his very humble presence was shockingly transformative.  It transformed individuals like Zacchaeus who felt his influence like a force field. It transformed the wider culture, and it transforms us now.  

It is a presence that doesn’t seek the reins of power. It doesn’t charge in like a bull. It stands to the side and offers moral critique and love and grounding. It recalibrates our vision with a gravity that pulls us back to mercy, grace, compassion and justice. 

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I think Zacchaeus wanted something better in his life.  He wasn’t connected to his community, he was cheating people at work, nobody liked him. When he climbed the tree to see Jesus more clearly, he didn’t expect that Jesus would also see him and it changed him.

We don’t have Jesus’ physical person the way Zacchaeus did, but we do have the body of Christ here in the church. This is what happens when we draw near to this strange and beautiful thing called church. It changes us.

When the Fearless Girl stood beside Charging Bull, the whole story shifted. When a rag-tag early church filled with the holy spirit stood beside that ancient empire, history turned. And when you, yes you, confirmands, step into this church to stand next to the world, our perspective shifts, our hearts open, we see differently and, for a moment, the kingdom breaks in.

A message for All Saints about grief, mast years, and the grace of each other (11.2.25)

Luke 6:20-31

Several weeks ago, I attended a family reunion in Nebraska. We met on the farm where my aunt lives.  This farm, though hundreds of miles away, is the place I have had the longest-standing relationship with over the course of my life.  My Nana grew up at this farm, and then fell in love there with my Papa, a hired farm hand.  My grandparents raised their family on this farm. 

The farmhouse still has the same smell on the third floor where we slept—and the same wind that waved through the prairie grasses in my grandparent’s days still whistles through the trees.  When I walk the old roads, the same gravel still crunches under my feet and it feels a little like time collapses. It’s like our generations are all layered there on top of each other.

Most of us at the reunion were from my generation with a handful of our kids running around.  The couple of gray haired members present were the ones who had tucked me in at night years ago. 

In some senses, those of us gathered that October weekend, were different.  Some of us live close to that little praire town, others now live in rural Florida, and still other in urban Chicago.  And yet, the sense of connection that we share with each other--and with the place—is strong.  Also thick in the air was that grief that comes with aging, illness, the pain of missing those who weren’t there, and just knowing that loss is a pattern in life.

I arrived at the farm to see that the top had blown off the old maple tree in a storm months earlier.  As we walked around the grounds my cousin and I noticed how many trees had come down.  The old mulberry grove was gone. My aunt and uncle had planted new trees but many of them were still young and thin. Way down in the low corner lot a half a mile up the road was the black walnut grove my grandpa had planted many years ago.  He had once brought the walnuts back to the farm after visiting our family in Illinois and planted them to see what would take root. Some of the walnut trees had died—there had been a lot of drought in the last decade, and yet, as we walked through the grove, the ground was carpeted with round green nuts.

Our world is not an easy one—there are wars and deportations, catastrophic storms and poverty. There’re loneliness and wounded relationships. Bigotry and illness. Anna Blaedel wrote "it is a great gift in this life to survive to old age...It is also so hard, so brave, so tender: confronting death’s inevitability.” 

One afternoon, I walked down the hill from the farm house towards the pole barn and saw the elders sitting together in the big open doorway enjoying last lingering bit of dusky light.  I had brought a couple of walnuts back with me from my walk to show the kids. The walnut grove, I later learned may have had what is called a mast year.  Every few years, nut trees have a mast year where they produce an exceptional amount of nuts.  In such a year, the ground may be covered with walnuts and it’s a welcome treat for all the squirrels and chipmunks who store away the tasty nuts or plant them.  A mast year requires an extra push of energy from the tree.  It’s a lot of work to grow all those extra nuts!  

Anna Bladel reflected on trees and wrote: “It’s an intense labor [of the trees], growing possibilities, sowing seeds, imagining what is not yet but could be.  During mast years," she explained, "trees practice their laborious commitment to a future they may or may not live to see.”  Nut trees don’t lavishly bloom like this every year.  Some years, they rest. But, in a mast year, they give everything they have—it’s this act of reckless hope. 

It’s truly a mystery how trees are able to do this together in symphony. Scientists have said that they think trees communicate through their roots, through the soil and through fungi. Apparently, they are able to sense the same cues in the environment, think as one, and respond together. Just like an orchestra tunes to a first violin, the trees seem to hear the same notes and tune their beings into sync. And, in a mast year, they decide that this is the year, this is the moment to give it everything they've got!

In a perfect world, isn’t this what the Communion of Saints does, too? Sometimes we get it right. We listen for and share each other’s needs. We sense our community’s needs, we bear together, and we give when it matters most. 

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None of us knows how much time we have left.  Some of us are all too sharply aware of how fragile life is.  Our choir director, Derek, was recently telling me that his grandpa turns 100 next week. Each day is a gift. And, we do think about what kind of legacy we want to leave and what kind of future we want to plant.  Last week, Miriah spoke in church and reminded us that we have done so much as a congregation that we never could have done alone.  The Communion of Saints entrusted this building to us. The ancients entrusted this deep rooted faith to us that leads us to sense and listen for those who are hungry, those who those who weep, those who mourn.  The harvest we’ve shared and the new seeds we’ve planted as a church have been many. 

Over this last year, we’ve helped five migrant families achieve independent living.  We’ve buried the saints who have gone before us. We’ve baptized those who are growing up in our midst. We’ve raised more money for the crazy boiler than anyone else ever thought was possible. We’ve shown up for each other, sometimes just as a quiet presence down the pew. We’ve shown up for our neighborhood as a persistent steward of hope. We’ve held one another through grief and change. 

A grove is like a mini forest and is full of trees that have fallen and those just beginning to take root. It’s like a church: some of us in this grove here, are deeply rooted, others newly planted. Together, we weather storms and bear fruit, all in our seasons.  They say that trees in a forest are mysteriously connected through the roots that run through the soil.   This Communion of Saints also extends to what we can only sense: we are connected through time and space mysteriously to those who have come before us and to those who will come to be. 

We are a Communion of Saints.  Like pride of lions, an army of ants, a murmuration of starlings that soars in the air, we are a Communion of Saints: A mysterious Communion that stretches across time and space to connect and unite us. In the Communion, the stories of our ancestors, the faith of the ancients and the hope for the future crystalize with purpose around us. 

In just a bit, we’ll welcome our new members to the front of the sanctuary and welcome them into the life of the church. We join, we participate, we share in these struggles and joys of life here in the church because we know that we cannot save ourselves. Try as we might, we need each other. If this current moment we’re living through in society has shown us anything it is that we cannot save ourselves and need to lean on the Holy One: on God present in our midst; on Christ made alive among us.  

New members, we are so thankful to welcome you! Long-time members, we are so blessed by your presence in our midst!  May we, as a congregation--as a Communion--make this year that we are living through a kind of mast year: A year overflowing with love and grace for each other and those around us.  

May we give generously, and forgive heartily, may we hope extravagantly and commit tenaciously to this mysterious project of the church. Like my grandparent’s walnut grove, we may not see the full harvest of what we plant—but still we plant, still, we hope, we insist, we love.   For grace unfolds slowly over time, God works on us gradually through the seasons, hope takes root and takes ahold of us and bears fruit in astonishing, untamed grace. 

A terrible parable, a complicated time (9.21.25)

Luke 16:1-13

In our Lutheran tradition, pastors are well prepared: I have solid professional training and a few hundred sermons under my belt.  I think you all come here hoping I have insight into our sacred scriptures and I am going to tell you today that I do not understand what this bible passage means.  Every scholar I read this week had different ideas. In the text chain with 10 other pastor friends, 9 of them admitted they were avoiding the story altogether this morning.

I do not like the protagonist in this story and I’m bothered that Jesus created him.  I know parables are supposed to be provocative. For example, certain bible characters like The Good Samaritan irked ancient people and are supposed to offend me, but the phrase “Good Samaritan” makes me feel warm and fuzzy, not offended. The main character in today’s parable offends me.

In this short story that Jesus tells, or parable, there is a fabulously wealthy man who employs a steward (let’s call him a CFO) to manage his business.  Things sour, rumors are flying and the CFO is accused of mismanaging the money.  The boss-owner of the company demands he hands over the business records and the CFO starts strategizing about what he’s going to do. (Any time a character in the gospel starts talking to themselves like this --hmm, should I build a bigger barn for my grain?—it’s fairly safe to start questioning their motives.)

After deliberating, our CFO decides to win over all the people that his now former-boss does business with by renegotiating their contracts and reducing their debts. (A little shady, no?)  He goes ahead with his plan and apparently everyone benefits.  Oddly, even the old boss is happy with him. Don’t ask me why-- maybe the boss was pleased with his own new reputation as a benevolent businessman who generously reduced debts. Maybe he was entertained by the CFO’s hustle and watching the system reward this cleverness. 

Was the CFO shrewd?  Was he wise? Dishonest? A Robin Hood sort of figure? Hard to say. 

What is not hard to say is that, as Justo Gonzalez puts it, you’re never going to see a stained glass window in any church of “the dishonest steward” looking slyly at the people around him with a quote of Jesus underneath that says “make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth.”  No one’s gonna to choose that one as their confirmation verse to read in front of the congregation!

What is going on here? 

What bothers me most is that Jesus doesn’t let me flatten this guy into a simple villain and it would really help me out if he did.  This protagonist is complicated.  

Some folks read this story and say that the CFO is forgiving his cut, his commission of people’s debt in order to make friends. Huh. That’s noble enough.  Jewish law would have asked him to forgive charges in the contracts so it’s possible he just had a sort of religious awakening.  But Jesus’ use of the word “quickly” still makes it all seem a little underhanded. 

Some folks say that the CFO knew he was getting sacked so he decided to make friends—after all “friends and community are more important than money,” right?  Yes. This is also true. I tip my hat to this option.  When asked the question: “what do we love more: people or money?” we know the right answer.  This guy’s economic capital is about to be sapped but his social capital is going to stay in tact.  (Although, let’s be honest, would you welcome someone to be your new bestie when you knew they had deliberately cooked the books in order to save their own hide?)

Some say our protagonist was a sort of Robin Hood.  Sure, I like this interpretation! That the peasants had a right to the land! That they had been disinherited.  Our CFO was then, as the story goes, being faithful to the people and sticking it to the owner!  

This is noble and we also, in today’s age, wrestle with problems like this: how do we love our neighbors when we’re all caught in these unfair systems? Reading the story like this makes me wonder what caused the CFO’s change of heart or noble turn. 

I don’t know…This guy engages in dishonest business practices and somehow everyone benefits. And then, Jesus salutes him.  Should we celebrate his cleverness, laugh at his ingenuity, or feel guilty that we find his cheating entertaining?

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As a child, my family visited Puerto Vallerta on vacation one year. I had fun, we swam on the beach, snorkeled, ate enchiladas, spoke Spanglish with local folks and visited a market where I bought a woven Mexican blanket.  Years later in my 20s, I led a mission trip to Juarez, Mexico where I built a small house in a pretty poor barrio with a group of teenagers.  Also fun.  I had known a several Mexican immigrants here in the US, most of them from rural or border towns.  And yet, when I moved to Mexico City as a 30 year old, I was blown away by the gorgeous sky scrapers, the art scene, the foodie culture the brilliant and witty new friends I made and eventually, the state of the art NICU that kept my baby alive the first couple weeks of her life.  

Before moving to the capital, I had a single story of Mexico: it was a story of poverty, of border towns and Tex-Mex and sombreros.  it was a story where there wasn’t much possibility of Mexicans being the same as me, a story where there was a lot of space for pity but little space to imagine connecting as friends.  

Nigerian writer, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie once said that “a single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.” For many years, I had a single story of Mexico, and it was real in its way, but it wasn’t the whole story.  when I complicated the story by moving to Mexico City 15 years ago, my perspective and imagination opened.  

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Just as I once had this single story of Mexico, I want a single story of this dishonest scoundrel in our parable today: I want a story of a crook! 

I’m not bad at creating flat, two dimensional stereotypes out of people: do you drive a big truck or ride your bike everywhere? Whole Foods or Walmart? NPR or Joe Rogan? I’m not great—or truthfully just not really interested in complicating the story line.  

In the case of our parable, Jesus complicates this guy. He praises him and suddenly I have to admit I don’t understand and I have to pick up my bible, turn it sidewise and go back and think more deeply about him and wrestle with him. The parable refuses to let me have a single story of this guy.  And maybe there’s something in that frustrating reality—people are more complicated than the categories I prefer.

Walt Whitman famously said “Do I contradict myself? Very well then. I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.” People contain multitudes.

So maybe this short little story—or parable—of Jesus’ is less about coping with this CFO’s tricks and more about remembering two truths: people are complicated, and money is powerful.  Jesus says as much at the end: “you cannot serve God and wealth.” He doesn’t say here that money is evil. He says here that it is powerful. So powerful it can serve God… or become a god.  

Two things are true here: that money—which is oh so powerful—can be used for human flourishing when it’s placed in God’s hands instead of used for private gain. It’s also true that Complicated people—like us—are loved by God.  There’s a lot to wrestle with here. Neither of these truths is simple, but then again, neither is Jesus.

The courage to return: finding integrity in a complicated word (Sept 14, 2025)

Luke 15:1-10 

Omar had a childhood friend in town last Tuesday from Tegucigalpa and we got to talking about the upcoming elections in Honduras.  Like in so many places, things have been politically tense back in the homeland.  We finally brought the conversation around to our need to grapple with walking the talk—how do we actually live out the values that we say are important to us? 

This conversation has stuck with me all week and, as it turns out, our assigned bible passages from the lectionary give us three powerful stories of folks being called back to their highest values.  But first I need to explain a core of why I care a lot about this: 

Something that can be challenging for me as a parent is apologizing to my kids. I don’t mean the kind of “oops, I stepped on your foot” kind of apology, I mean the “that didn’t go well” or “I lost it” kind of apology. Often, when I’m impatient my reaction is compounded by a lot of things: maybe, I’ve got a lot on my mind, or I’m also trying to make dinner, or feeling frustrated I didn’t have time for a jog that day. Maybe the child-sized problem seems absurdly trivial to me at the moment. 

I use all of this to try to rationalize why I lost it and why it doesn’t matter if I admit I messed up, especially to a child.

The problem is—of all the humans I adore in this world, these two little people are my number ones and I want them to have my best.  The other problem is, they also see me stand up in front of you and talk about Jesus.  One time during dinner, I made an uncharitable remark about someone.  This is a true story and I honestly don’t remember anymore the thing I said, what I do remember is my child looking at me with big eyes and saying the words, “mama. Jesus says we’re supposed to love our enemies.” 

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Have you ever had a moment where you realize that you believe yourself to be one thing and then, your actions just don’t add up? Or there’s a gap between who you say you are and how you act? A gap in integrity? Our bible stories today list off three situations where there is a gap between who the person is and who they could be.

1.

Psalm 51 is a famous song of King David’s. King David has been confronted by Nathaniel—the prophet of the Lord—about a particularly bad and shameful situation in his life: He had an affair with his friend’s wife--a friend who also happens to work for him. Then he kills his friend to try to cover the scandal up. The prophet Nathaniel tells David this clever story to help him see that his actions do not match his values. David receives it and repents.  In his psalm we just read, he says: “I know my sin, I’ve done what’s evil in your sight…create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.” 

David, the great king of Israel is exposed: Turns out ,that living with integrity requires confession.

2.

In today's gospel story from Luke 15, a whole interesting slice of people has come to hear Jesus’ teachings: he’s got tax collectors and sinners along side of religious leaders (like me). Think church goers (like you): You know, upright, moral people who are in many ways good. Problem is the religious folks are “grumbling” and talking smack about how Jesus is hanging out with people at the bottom of the moral barrel. Like tax collectors.  

In response Jesus tells a trilogy of stories about things that have been lost: A shepherd has lost his sheep, a woman has lost her coin, a father has lost his prodigal son. We don’t hear the story of the prodigal son in today’s reading but it’s part of Jesus' three-part series.  And if you recall, in that prodigal son story, the older, upstanding brother is furious and grumbling that his wildly irresponsible, immoral brother got a party thrown for him.  (Just like those grumbling religious folks).

Jesus says, in essence, to those upstanding religious leaders who are quite sure they’re in the right: “you talk a good talk about love and neighborliness but it’s not matching your actions. When you’re judging and whispering and grumbling in the corner over there you’re not walking the walk. You need to live with integrity. 

Turns out, even those among us who seem the most upright, mess it up and need repentance too.

If David’s story is about personal failure, Jesus’ parables are about communal failure. And then comes the boldest example of all from the book of Exodus 32;

3. 

The ancient Israelites, have made a golden calf and God is furious.  So furious, in fact, that God is ready to destroy the people, start over and build a new nation with Moses.  But just as God is about to blow his stack, Moses implores him: “Hang on a second! you made a promise, Lord!! A covenant! You promised Abraham, Isaac and Israel that you would multiply their descendants and make them a great nation!  Your actions are not matching what you said!!”

Moses calls God back to this best version of Gods' self--this is bold!  He calls God to act with integrity. And, startlingly, God hears Moses, receives it, and corrects course!  

********************************

In our modern culture, admitting we’ve made a mistake and acknowledging our error is hard.  When people admit a wrong, we don’t tend to throw them a party like the father did for his lost, prodigal son.  Instead we double down. We shame, we cancel, we dismiss or exclude folks. We kick it back at them. 

No wonder repentance feels so hard.  Admitting you messed up is like admitting you’re weak.  Or incompetent.  Or uncertain. Or even that you have some kind of deep character flaw. Admitting that we are lost to ourselves and that our actions might not line up with our values is hard and humbling--even embarrassing.  And then the effort required to mend the error can be demanding.

But is repentance always about feeling bad? 

The point of all this is not to feel shame or to go hide under a rock. The point is to be found and restored. The point is to get to wholeness and integrity. 

True repentance leads to a place where the values we cherish actually line up with our behavior. And I think God wants this for us.  Jesus wanted it for everyone who was listening to his teaching that day, including both the corrupt and hated tax-collectors and the noble and righteous religious folks grumbling and whispering in the corners.  And he wants it for us.

I think God wants this so determinedly for us that he will search, as the shepherd, under every rock and in every valley until he finds the sheep, lays it on his shoulders and rejoices and rushes home to tell the village.  

I think God wants this so fiercely that she will sweep the house top to bottom, looking between the floorboards and in every crevice until she finds the precious coin she’s lost and then calls the whole neighborhood over rejoicing. 

I think God wants this so passionately that he will rush to embrace the lost son who returns and throw a huge bash to celebrate.  It’s not the error that celebrated, it’s the courage to return from the error that is. 

Nathan calls David back. Jesus calls the religious leaders back. Moses calls God back. 

In each story, repentance isn’t just about guilt. It’s about courageously returning to the values we hold most dear – and restoring integrity. 

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As a final point:  we as a community have a roll in this too.  Yes, we need to humbly self-reflect. We have also got to get better at creating space for people to courageously admit wrongdoing and then, instead of doubling down on them or writing them off, celebrate them or thank them for the courage to admit the wrong. 

I realize it can be complicated. I realize wounds can run very deep. I know this process isn’t always simple. And, I also realize that it’s a whole lot easier to exercise patterns of resentment, rancor, judgement and stubbornness, instead of patters of listening and grace or repentance and humility.

All over scripture, we see patterns of someone making a mistakes, humbly addressing it, confessing, repenting, and then, the restoration of the person, scars and all.  

How else can we fix communities if it’s not through this pattern?  How else do we we fix broken relationships, if not listening, dialogue, understanding, pulling ourselves back to our best selves and pulling each other back.  

Our faith calls us to live with integrity. We’re called to examine our behavior, courageously admit when we’re not lining up, living according to our values, and step back into the circle.

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I’m working on apologizing to my kids when I make a mistake. (God’s working on a few other things in me too.) You’re working on your own places of alignment.  

Sometimes it’s the sin of things we have done that need attention and sometimes the things we have left undone. It’s all a work in progress—but, aren’t we all works in progress? 

Thanks be to God that through it all--as we’re lost and found and restored--we are so very beloved to God. 

What to do in a time of uncertainty? (6.15.25)

John 16:12-15

A week ago, I had a conversation with one of the dads in the congregation. I followed up to make sure I could share. The conversation went something like this: “My kids asked me,” he said, “if both the Cubs and White Sox believe in God and they’re playing each other, who does God root for?”

“What’d you tell them? I asked, “the janitors?”

“The janitors!” he said, “and the ticket takers and the staff that have to put up with all the crazy people.  Then,” he went on “they asked me who Jesus would root for in the NBA finals.”

“And—?"

He shook his head and laughed. “In our house,” I offered, “the kids don’t ask who he would root for in the NBA finals, they just know.”  

“Man,” he said, “these are the easy questions: the ones about God and baseball. It’s the other ones that undo me.  I didn’t ask my dad the tough stuff until much later in my teens, but I feel like our kids are well ahead of that these days: national politics, geo-politics, Gaza and the hostages, bullies, Epstein and P. Diddy, vaccination boards, protests. All the questions. And, they want to know what I think.”

What do you tell them?” I asked him and he exhaled.  

“I tell them what I can--I try to tell them about right and wrong, and good and evil. I can’t say everything.  I don’t know—I’m trying to figure it all out myself.

*************

I’ve been thinking about what to do with this four verse gospel this last week and I thought of this conversation with this dad.  As I thought about it, something stuck out: In this story, Jesus comes to a point where it seems he doesn’t quite know what to say to his disciples gathered in the upper room that Passover night. Or at the very least, he stops himself. He holds back.

Up until this point, they’ve been eating together and he’s trying to explain everything, elaborating and talking and showing them by washing feet. Were they asking question of him? Maybe.  I think of him trying to answer when finally, he lands (or stumbles) at: “I still—I still have so many things to say to you--but you cannot bear them now,” and he pauses.

Apparently, we cannot bear them either because the stock image our software offered as a bulletin cover for us this weekend only says the part “I still have so many things to say to you…” They left off the part where Jesus said “--but you can’t bear it.” Apparently, they thought we couldn’t bear it either.  I guess, we have enough uncertainty in the world right now. Why leave us hanging with these obtuse references to all the things Jesus didn’t say to us? 

********

Uncertainty is unpleasant.  We prefer decisiveness. Plans.  Clarity. Knowledge. Facts.  Our brains are wired for predictability and patterns. It’s probably some safety thing.  All the advertising that comes at us capitalizes on our need for certainty: “if we buy this thing or make this choice, we will surely be:  secure, handsome, safe, successful, or ______fill-in-the-blank.”

Uncertainty doesn’t sell well. Everyone wants their doctor to say, “you’ve got a 91% chance of a good outcome on this path instead of, “Hmm. we’ve looked at your diagnosis and situation and, well, we’re not really sure what to do with your case, but we’ll give it our best shot.”

The fact is, life has a lot of uncertainty. We never know what will happen. Your kid transitions into a new life phase—9th grade or college, or maybe kindergarten—will they be okay? Or: you can’t get a handle on what’s going on with the market and your job is in limbo, or your IRA is in limbo...  How is this going to shake out? Or: maybe your life isn’t rolling out quite like you hoped, and there are really a lot of unknowns.  And it’s hard.  

Life is uncertain. No one knew that evening in the upper room with Jesus how the disciples would respond to everything he was telling them. There were a lot of unknowns. You never quite know what people are going to do when faced with uncertainty.

One of the last times things got really uncertain for the disciples when they were all out in the boat and there was that storm on the water. Everyone lost their minds and started freaking out and blaming Jesus who finally had the wherewithal to wake up and calm the storm, thank heavens!   We’re not always our best selves in moments of uncertainty.  

Sometimes, when we’re not sure of what’s coming down the pike and things are unsteady we blame people:

This wouldn’t be happening if so-and-so just stayed in their lane or followed through on their commitments or did what they’re supposed to!! And now we’re lost and confused and messed up because of this person or that group of people in society that we blame for everything—(like perhaps, a religious minority, a powerless workforce picking food in CA…)

In the book of Genesis, when Adam and Eve mess up and eat the apple, they both freeze when the Lord finds out:  How’s He going to react!? 

And when God asks, “What happened?,” Adam can’t stand it and immediately points the finger: 

“Eve made me do it!”

And then, Eve points the finger: “the snake made me do it!”

The world gets unsteady and just like that, blame starts flying. Classic. Human. Behavior.

Sometimes when things are uncertain, we catastrophize. I love the story from 1 Kings when the prophet Elijah gets a death threat from Queen Jezebel.  He completely loses it, and when he realizes he has no idea what going to happen, he spirals, runs to the desert, lays face down under a broom tree and wails, “it’s all over! This is the end! Take my life Lord!!”  God essentially sends him a plate of cookies and a mug of juice and an angel that will sit there next to him patting his leg as he gets a hold of himself.

You never quite know what people are going to do when faced with uncertainty.

Jesus lived in highly uncertain times:  Across the sea in Rome during Jesus’ time, the emperor Tiberius was erratic and tyrannical. He relied heavily on his corrupt advisor, Sejanus who purged political rivals and used false charges of treason to get rid of senators and other powerful people.  Back in the region where Jesus lived—Judea and Galilee—it was a political and religious pressure cooker with deep social tension and inequality.  Galilee was a poor region.  In it, there were a few wealthy elite who had a whole lot of power while ordinary folks like fishermen, widows, and farmers struggled with debt, taxes and poverty—remember the story about the wee little tax collector, Zacchaeus and the suggestion that the system was rigged to benefit the powerful?

Ancient people’s trust in institutions like even the temple and certainly the Roman government was fraying. They were highly uncertain times. And into that reality, Jesus continually cried out for all--but particularly poor folks--with a message of mercy, grace, compassion, forgiveness, humility and generosity.

************

People have had a history of turning to prophetic voices that speak out from the margins in uncertain times. Generations before Christ, it was Jeremiah who also spoke in a time of national crisis, corruption and collapse in ancient Israel. Whether Jeremiah or Jesus’ time, the issues are the same and they seem to resonate, no?

Theologian Walter Bruggeman put it this way: “the world we have trusted in is vanishing before our eyes and the world that is coming at us feels like a threat to us and we can’t quite see the shape of it.” ⁠

“There is so much I want to say,” Jesus said, “but you cannot bear it.” 

People listen for prophetic voices now, too: pundits, commentators, even public theologians, wise sages that will speak truth, anyone! I get it. We like that certain, assured voice.  Some of those voices that speak with moral clarity have a role. 

While these prophetic voices are powerful, Jesus offered another word of hope and guidance in this moment in our scripture passage today.

But to get there, let me remind you quickly about Thor.  I assisted as a backpacking guide in the Rockies one of the summers when I worked as a camp counselor.  The week I was scheduled to lead a group of highschoolers out on the trail, I was very nervous. My co-leader was a big guy named Thor, who carried what seemed like 50 extra pounds of group gear on his back.  Not only did Thor look the part of mountain-man, he was very smart about trail guiding.  I was nervous and uncertain, our camp director, Dave, pulled me aside and said something like, “Lindsay, Thor is a very experienced guide and you are in excellent hands. Just follow him and do what he says.” Dave was right.

Jesus tells his disciples in this uncertain moment that “the Spirit will guide you into the truth.”  In essence: “The Spirit is wise and good and trustworthy. Just follow her and do what she says. Let her guide you and form you.”

If Jesus is the truth, our pattern, our way that we walk in, then the Spirit—God’s mysterious living presence--will form us, shape us and guide us through the uncertainty around us.

This way of Jesus, that the Spirit mysteriously moves as, is our home base.  When in doubt, we live by her fruits: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (and more). When we live by these guideposts or bass notes, our inner lives are reshaped, even in the most uncertain and trepidatious situations. 

This subtle kind of change that is generated through how we live might not be as loud as a prophetic voice, but it’s just as powerful.  That has been a theme the last few weeks: God does these awesome things, and then we follow with our ordinary human effort.

Maybe it wasn’t the disciples’ capacity to handle all the things that Jesus couldn’t bear to tell them.  Maybe it is that Jesus knows that there is so much more to living this way than the disciples can make sense of at that moment.  There’s so much more to embodying God’s love on earth than they can wrap their arms around. Some things must be lived to be understood. 

Like the dad trying to field impossible questions from his kids—Jesus doesn’t dump all the answers at once. He walks alongside us. He gives us a Holy Spirit: a guide to find our way through.  

The truth that Jesus promises is not a download of certainty. It’s a Way, a presence, a pattern of living. It’s a mysterious Holy Spirit who walks with us. Who reminds us when we’re overwhelmed, that we’re not alone.  

It’s a practice of grace in the face of meanness and judgement; 
generosity instead of selfishness; 
peace in a culture that seems to be addicted to conflict; 
non-violence in a world bent on retribution; 
compassion when turning away towards comfort is easier.

That grace is still the center.  (Well, that grace and the truth that God is still rooting for the janitors.) 

The Spirit doesn’t just cushion us in the uncertain moments, She shapes us in them.  We don’t just survive the uncertainty—we can be formed in it. Even when we hate it and push against it and resent it and want to dominate it, God works on us in that mysterious space and it’s there that we imagine what is possible. It’s there that we become people of hope. It’s there that we muster the courage to step out (to step through) as loving people and as emissaries of transformation.

Arresting beauty and its' wake (4.6.25)

John 12:1-8

My mom’s family is from beautiful farm in northeastern Nebraska.  As a teenager, my mom and her sister, my Aunt Willa, worked the nightshift at a factory in a nearby at a plant that processed eggs. The yokes and whites were dehydrated into powder that could be used in cake mixes.  As a kid, I heard many stories about “the egg-plant.” Workers wore big plastic aprons, stood at an assembly line, and cracked the eggs that came down the belt.  If an egg were rotten, the worker dumped it (and there were many a rotten egg).  This was not exactly a dream summer job for a teenager…

My aunt now lives on the farm where she and my mom grew up and a few years ago she pointed to the top of the south hill and told me, that on their way home after the night shift at the egg-plant, tired as they were, they would park the car at the highest point with a view of the rolling farms hills where they would pause and enjoy the sunrise. Then, they’d head home to sleep. 

In 1910, a labor activist Helen Todd said in a speech, that we need “bread for all, and roses too.”  

On one hand, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  (I, personally, think a lilac bush in bloom smells beautiful. I also find beauty in an inspiring speech, a line of music, a familiar voice, and kids laughing.)  Beauty often seems to stir something in us.  Many times it makes us feel good. But is beauty actually a need? 

Our Lenten series is on different things we need: We need change and rest. We need people to be vulnerable and to advocate for one another.  But beauty…is that really something we need?  Here in the US, beauty is equated with luxury.  Money buys access to museums, concerts and nature—they’re a luxury.  In the city, wealthier neighborhoods have more green space and more trees.  When cash gets tight in school districts, one of the first things to be cut is music or art. They are seen as extras. In that vein, it seems that beauty isn’t a need after all.

While our culture says that beauty is a luxury, our faith heritage disagrees.  Our sacred spaces are beautiful, the acoustics are striking in our sanctuary.  Scripture speaks of beauty: descendants that will outnumber the stars of the Milky Way, hospitality shared with strangers, loaves and fish in the hands of a child, thunder on the mountain, the first light of resurrection morning.   Our reading from Isaiah tells of streams in the desert and a way in the wilderness.  And then, there is the jar of nard in today’s gospel story.  

In the story, Mary pours the ointment all over Jesus’ feet and as the perfume envelopes the room, beauty floods the space. Then, she bends over Jesus feet, and as she wipes them with her long hair, everyone falls quiet watching. That is, except Judas who takes this moment to get up on his high and mighty moral horse.  “Why,” he asks, “was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor?”  Who knows what was behind his question—Judas is not exactly our most noble character in the bible, but at face value, I admit, his question resonates:  Why waste money on this beautiful thing when there are so many people in need? 

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In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote about simple visit to a beautiful forest. 

in the woods...

Standing on the bare ground,
--my head bathed by the blithe air 
and uplifted into infinite space, 
all mean egotism vanishes…

Egotism. It’s that thing where we talk and think and focus constantly on ourselves.  Egotism, (along with self-absorption and selfishenss) is a social ill that plagues us. There are a lot of reasons for it, but over the years, we’ve exaggerated the individual self. Do I have enough money? Does my body look the right way? Is my life right? We’ve become more narcissistic. (They can measure it.(1)) There’s a heightened sense of superiority, arrogance, and even entitlement. It’s a kind of sinfulness that causes us to curve in on ourselves while others’ concerns or pains or worries fade on the sidelines. There in the woods, Emerson realized, his self-absorption and "mean egoism" fades with the beauty around him.

Have you ever seen something beautiful—a big, wide open blue sky, or perhaps you’ve heard a beautiful speech or an extraordinary piece of music?  And, with this, you’re transported out of your head and your problems and issues fade a little in importance. There was a philosopher named Iris Murdoch who once explained that when you see something beautiful, such as a bird lifting off, it pulls you out of yourself.  Beauty, she said, “unselfs us.” (2)

A lot of our problems in our world might be connected to the sinfulness of too much self. Beauty is a way of, as she put it, non-selfing or getting out of ourselves: A little less “I” and a little more “we.” (It’s wild--neuroscientists have measured how this happens in our brains(3)). 

Part of me doubts that the disciples were as self-obsessed as we are today.  Martha, who was serving dinner that night (God bless her) wasn’t fine-tuning her personal brand of “Servant-Hearted Martha.”  The brothers, Peter and Andrew, were not subtly checking their phones to see how many likes they were getting on those updates about Jesus the raising Lazarus from the dead.  The disciple Peter, who I sometimes imagine as the impulsive resident stress ball of the group, wasn’t over in the corner biting his nails and trying to get a handle on his anxiety.  

While Mary’s gift of the lavish ointment that anointed Jesus was generous and admirable, I’m not sure that her act of moral beauty needed to pull them out of an individualized world-view the way beauty needs to pull us out of ours in this day and age.  

And, beauty can shake us out of our egoism. Beauty, art, nature, music, a sunset at the top of the hill—all of it--can pull us out of ourselves.  So, do we need beauty? Yes. We do.

But why? Let’s take one more turn with this idea because I wonder if beauty does something more in this bible reading and if it can do something more for us today. But I’m going to have to tell you another story first, to show you what I mean:

*******

In 1931, a young man named Charles Black Junior was headed to a dance in Austin, Texas, his hometown. He was 16 years old.  Charles was from an easy side of the city and attended the great school of Austin High.  As he walked down the street with his buddy, he was struck still by the sound of a trumpet player.  (I first heard this story in an interview with Sarah Lewis (4). Lewis is an art historian and professor. She’s Black. Charles, in this story, is White. Later, I searched for Lewis’ written version of the story.)

So Charles hears this musician there on the street. Lewis writes that, “The trumpet player, a jazz musician, performed largely with his eyes closed, sounding out notes, ideas, laments, sonnets that had never before existed…His music sounded like an utter transcendence.” Charles is listening there on the street with his buddy who was a “good ole’ boy” from Austin High. His friend also senses the power of this music and the way it “rumbled the ground underneath him,” as Lewis put it. His friend finally shakes his head, Lewis writes, “as if clearing it and as if prying himself out of a trance.”  The friend mutters a racial epithet and walks away.  Charles, meanwhile, continues listening and becomes certain that he was in the presence of a genius.  Indeed he was: The trumpet player was 30 year old Louis Armstrong. 

In that moment, the music cracks something in Charles’ mind or heart: As Lewis explained it, here you’ve got this teenage White kid who, up until this point, thinks the whole segregated world around him is set up correctly and he sees genius in this Black man on the street.  It is beyond words.  Sarah Lewis calls the music, and this beauty, an “asthetic force.” It completely blew Charles’ mind. It turned him upside down and changed his life trajectory. Some years later, after law school, he went on to work with Thurgood Marshall (the first Black supreme court justice) to write the winning brief in Brown vs. the Board of Education (which led to desegregation of schools.)  And, apparently, every year until he died, he hosted a Louis Armstrong listening night.

I don’t want to get too far away from our bible story, but, I can’t help but wonder if Mary pouring that nard out was as arresting of a moment as this one on the street corner in Austin.  

It turns out that beauty not only gets us out of ourselves, it can blow our minds and change us.  Sarah Lewis said that beauty “slips in the back door of our rational thought and gets us to see the world differently.” Just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, Beauty can zoom us out. We see a bigger world than our small minds. We see systems and connections. Beauty unselfs us.

In her book, The Unseen Truth (5),” Lewis wrote about the way James Baldwin had said that artistic photographs could change people.  People didn’t understand at the time.  But, it proved true: the “asthetic force” of photos changed people.  There were pictures of the civil rights movement, or of the war in Vietnam—often with their jarring, painful beauty--that were transformative. There was that gorgeous photo, “The Blue Green Marble” taken in 1972 of our planet earth hanging there in the darkness of space.  The beauty of that photo astonished, dazzled and shocked us. It blew our minds. It catalyzed movements.  

It is not so much what beauty is, but what it does to us. 

That evening, long ago in ancient Galilee, What did the beauty of the scent of nard, and the moral beauty of Mary’s gift of service, do to the people gathered there? What does it do to us?  

That moment there mattered—Jesus told Judas as much.  Did it crystalize the truth that Jesus’ message and life was bigger than the individual moment? That God’s goodness would liberate people—all people—from bondage? That even in the midst of selfish, horrific, greedy and sinful systems, that love would prevail? Did beauty convict them? Give them courage? As the events of the terrible next week would unfolded starting with Jesus magnificent ride through the waving palms and then, in the terror of his arrest and crucifixion, the scent of that gift of nard would linger on Jesus body and in Mary’s hair. Would the beauty continue to remind them all of God’s goodness, dream and aliveness even when all seemed lost?  Did beauty change them? give them courage? Commitment? Connection? I wonder.

“Give the people bread, but give them roses.”  Seek beauty out, let it soften your spirits and inspire your actions.  Fight for it. Open yourselves to it. Slow down for it. Search for it in the biggest and smallest places: in the sunsets, and the speeches, and the paintings, and the spring season that is coming back to life.  For beauty leads us to see ourselves and the world differently. More than that—it leads us to—live differently.

1. Awe, 2023, Dacher Keltner

2. I read about Iris Murdoch in Naomi Klein's book, Doppleganger, 2023.

3. Awe, 2023, Dacher Keltner

4. Sarah Lewis interviewed by Anna Deavere Smith. March 26, 2014. LIVE from the New York Public Library.

5. The Unseen Truth, 2024, Sarah Lewis, and https://timesensitive.fm/episode/sarah-lewis-on-aesthetic-force-as-a-path-toward-justice/ 

A shelter of grace (2.23.25)

Luke 6:27-38

Deep in Central Mexico in a mountainous state called Tlaxcala, there is a small Roman Catholic Parish called the Sagrada Familia. Sacred Heart.  The church is white stucco and situated right in the middle of an average neighborhood surrounded by white stucco homes with their walled in yards.  Behind the church is a giant paved courtyard. Part of the yard is covered by a corrugated tin roof as a shelter from the sun. (At that high altitude, with those bright blue skies, the sun can be fierce.)  There’s a chicken coop in the corner with rabbits and hens and a small office nearby with mostly things like acetaminophen, aloe vera, and Band-Aids.  There’s humble bunk room next to the kitchen with a few dozen bunks.  Though some nights there are far more people in the shelter than beds. On the bright orange wall of the courtyard, near the small soccer court, there is a painted phrase that reads,

“nada te turbe, 
nada te pase. 
Todo le pasa-- 
Dios no se muda. 
la paciencia todo lo alcanza, 
quiene a dios tiene, 
nada le falta. 
Solo dios basta.”

St. Theresa of Avila wrote these words in the 16th century, and later, the Taize community in Eastern France later made them into a song: 

Nothing can trouble, 
nothing can frighten, 
those who seek God shall never go wanting. 
Nothing can trouble, 
nothing can frighten. 
God alone fills us.

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This short little verse gives some context for how Jesus is speaking in our gospel reading today.  Last week we heard the words that came right before this where Jesus says “blessed are you who are hungry for you will be filled.” “Blessed are you who weep for you will laugh.”  Jesus offered all the folks there listening to him blessings. He wanted them to live lives of contentment, wholeness and even joy.  And in the case of his bedraggled followers, there with him, he taught them how they can hold onto peace and even joy, while the world around them is swirling with judgement, animosity, contempt and violence. 

When someone is cruel to you, oh, how it can feel good to be cruel back. When someone is judgmental, it can feel so good to put them in their place. When someone is hateful, compassion and mercy can be the farthest things from our minds. But Jesus is teaching those listening of a different path. 

This is not the first time Jesus has taught a way of living that goes against the grain.  A few weeks ago, we heard the story where he rooted back into the books of Isaiah and Leviticus to remind us that just when the world is quick to rank some people as worth more than others, we remember that is not true. All people are beloved to God, no one is more important than the other. Full stop.

This week, Jesus lays out another challenge to his followers: “if you love those who love you,” he says “what grace is that?”  It’s almost like he said, “Come on now, it’s easy to love people who love you back! It’s easy to lend money to someone you know will pay you back!”  You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours!  Quid pro quo.

That kind of love and lending is a transaction. It means that what you’re going to do is going dictate how I’m going to act.  Your behavior is going to have an outsized influence on mine: If you’re hateful, I’ll be hateful. If you’re judgmental, I’ll be judgmental. Now, if you’re grateful and humble, lovely! I’ll be kind to you. But if you are my enemy? …I’ll be yours.

The challenge is to love people who we don’t like. To love, even, our enemies.

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The cement courtyard in that church shelter butts right up against the train tracks where a freight train barrels through the Mexican countryside, it’s dozens of cars long. As it approaches at full speed, the ground trembles. It slows a little in this small town of Apizaco where the tracks turn and people hop off to spend a night in this shelter. The people who cling to the top of this train hitching a ride call it la bestia.  They ride that train up from Chiapas and come from many places: Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, Caracas, Managua.  Once, I met a man and his son there who were from Iran.  But one thing holds true: they all need shelter and a safe place to spend the night.  

I’ve never been in need of that kind of physical shelter. My life has been uniquely easy, even profoundly easy in many ways. Yes, I’ve needed shelter from a rainstorm, but I’ve not experienced that kind of desperation where I’ve not been sure where I’ll sleep. 

That said, I have had moments in life where I’ve needed other types of shelter. I think we’ve all have.  Think of the shelter of a parent that nurtures his child, like a hen gathering you under her wings. Or, the the shelter of a friendship that protects you and listens to you when you feel misunderstood or lost or the shelter and relief of companionship when you’re alone. Think of the shelter of someone who helped you when things went off the rails in your lives or the shelter of forgiveness when we’ve made a mistake. 

Sometimes we need spiritual shelter.  Maybe you’ve read headlines that shout that pieces of your identity and who you love are unlovable. Maybe you’ve heard that how you were made was a mistake. Maybe you’ve heard a few too many messages that that the amount of melanin in your skin determines the amount of love and honor you deserve.  Maybe the barrage of hatred makes you feel like you’re not wanted in this country—or your own country--or anywhere; and you find a spiritual shelter in knowing that all of who you is fearfully and wonderfully made, wanted, honored and loved by God. 

We all need a shelter of grace.

But what about a shelter for someone you don’t like? Or that you despise?

When I zoom out, I can see that, our best shelter is the radical, steadfast, healing love, that Jesus speaks of here.  It is a forgiving love. It is a love that acknowledges one another’s humanity. It is a shelter of grace. This kind of shelter is easiest to offer to someone we love or even like.  Offering this kind of gracious shelter to our enemies is very hard.

Shockingly, Jesus says, "God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked." That's a tall order if we’re supposed to emulate that. This kind of love is a little maddening. It might even seem dumb or foolish because the world doesn’t exactly run on grace.  Returning hatred with vengeance or contempt is a lot more common and mainstream.   But as Theresa of Avila wrote, don’t let this hate trouble you, don’t let it frighten you, (don’t respond to it, let it shape your behavior), find your fullness in God.  

A shelter of grace. 

But a shelter of grace for our enemy?  Is that wise? 

There’s a lot of talk of ideological enemies these days or foes.  I’m not suggesting that we simply shrug and roll with an opinion that challenges your convictions.  I am not saying that you shouldn’t feel upset or angry about other’s differences or offer this forgiving shelter to someone who has shown exceptional personal evil to you, (in that case, someone else needs to take that baton instead of you).

Instead, I am saying, that we aren’t to participate in this conventional pattern of contempt and tit-for-tat. We’re to step out of the ring. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, once wrote that we are to be “to be God’s question mark against the conventional wisdom of the age.”  The large scale problems that we face as humanity will not be solved in isolation. We have to find a shelter of forgiveness where we find our fullness in God that pulls us out of this pattern where we slug each other.

Michael Curry, former national bishop of the Episcopal church once said that “trying to make meaningful progress when contempt controls the discussion…is like trying to grow a plant in radioactive soil.” In this shelter, we grow in our relationships and understanding. With hope, we will even grow towards solutions. So, the very act of refusing to return violence with violence or judgement with judgement is a method of resisting a world bent on vengeance, judgement and self-righteousness. 

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Today, we will celebrate the baptism of little M. Baptism is many things: it is freedom and forgiveness in God. It is this physical expression of God’s grace, it is this sacrament where we learn and know that we are so beloved to God and sheltered in God’s keeping.  Baptism is also an on-ramp to a certain kind of lifestyle that is characterized by love, compassion, nonviolence, generosity and forgiveness.  As Christians, we do not anchor ourselves to vengeance, contempt or judgement, but to love. 

(Honestly, anyone who thinks that following Christ is an easy, tame project needs to read these words of Jesus again.)  Jesus commands us to love our enemies, this is not a friendly suggestion of his. This is our obligation as disciples. 

We do this, not so that God blesses us.  God doesn’t work that way. Of course God blesses us, but God blesses us because that’s who God is, not because we did the right thing and got a prize. 

To that end, when Jesus says, at the end of our reading that, “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”  This is the promise: that just when we’ve run dry, that just when the life will be drained out of us, just when we’ve been consumed by contempt God will find us, fill us, shelter us, heal us.

When Jesus had died on the cross, God could have destroyed everyone with vengeance. But God doesn’t respond that way. God responds with love. God responds and resists, and raises Jesus from the dead. And this is the pattern: grace upon grace: a pattern, a movement, a way of God that draws us to shelter, that mends that which has ruptured, that fills those who are emptied, that bring life from places we were convinced were dead. And we’re called to participate.

Little M., we are here to live this call with you, what a time to be baptized! what a gift to all of us to participate today! God bless you on this occasion of your baptism and may God hold you close today and always.