it’s dawning

Today I found a small journal with a few entries from 2016. This image is from a clergy pre-Lenten retreat in February 2016. I remember jotting and doodling as part of my prayer, but had forgotten about this. I’m thinking it must have been the seeds of a new poem or reflection. I decided to post it today, some nine years later because it seems complete, in that way we can appreciate when we are mindful that relationship with God is always awakening something deep within us. Even the rawness and messiness of this image reminds me of the journey deeper in God’s heart.

By faith, in hope

This is my sermon from Easter Sunday, April 20, 2025. The lessons for the day were Isaiah 49:1-13, Psalm 18:2-11, 16-19. The translation was Wilda Gafney’s from A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church: Year C.

“Now faith is the essence of things hoped for, the conviction of that which is not seen. By faith, indeed, were our ancestors approved.”

That idea: that we can be faithful enough in our understanding of who God is and how God is in the world, that we can trust and hope and believe that good things will happen in the midst of all else, the things that we haven’t yet seen, that they can be the promises fulfilled, is a message for the ages, obviously. And, over the arch of the world in the past several years, it is a message we craze perhaps more desperately than we even have before.

On this Easter day, when we are reminded, when we celebrate the fact that the unheard of, the completely-unexpected-because-it-had-never-been-done-before thing happened, where the man whom many recognized as the Messiah of God, the one who came to fulfill the promises of God’s love for God’s people, was raised from the dead. Wow! Talk about affirming your faith in him if you were on the ground with him.

Now think about all the people who had been. They were the apostles, who traveled the countryside with him during the three or so years of his earthly ministry. They followed this man who was soon to be executed because he was basically saying, “The leaders have got it wrong. We need to live differently.” Their faith in who Jesus was and is and will always be inspired them to walk with him, to learn to live a new way, to learn to live God’s way: learning to honor the dignity and worth of all God’s people, learning to love your neighbor as yourself because God loves love. These were the lessons that Jesus taught. It took a great deal of faith to be up close and personal with Jesus in those times.

We see that in some of the past week, Holy Week, in which we see Judas betray him with a kiss. Judas, who was in the inner circle (if Jesus had such a thing), who at the last minute when it counted more than it had at any other time, betrays him with a kiss. He did this in a pretty cowardly way by walking up to him as if in friendship to give him a kiss, which most people would have seen as a good thing before learning it was a betrayal.

There’s Peter, who became the rock of the Church, St. Peter, betrays Jesus three times in one day, after Jesus lets him know that he knows he’s going to slip and not be able to stand up for Jesus. Even after Jesus gives him this warning, which Peter could’ve taken as hint to stay a little more focused, a little more mindful, Peter betrays him three times. And, yet, Jesus’ love for Peter never changed and Peter’s love for Jesus grew exponentially and became an inspiration for the world.

We have Mary Magdalene and one of the other Marys in todays Gospel. They, too, have traveled with Jesus, even though their parts in the story of Jesus’ life isn’t as well documented as Judas’ and Peter’s, probably because they were women. Their faithful enough to Jesus that they show up at his tomb. I’m not sure what they were expecting to see. Maybe that hoped that when Jesus said he would rise in three days after his death, he meant it literally. My guess is they also just went to be near the person they loved so much and whom they knew loved them even more. They walked in faith.

Walking in faith is not something that can only be 2025 years ago. Walking in faith is the call we are given from God. I don’t think it matters if we are Christian or Jew or Muslim or atheist or agnostic or any other thing because walking in faith is a response to God’s invitation to love. This is an invitation to a love that we cannot begin to comprehend no matter how hard we try. It is the kind of love that says, “Sure! I’ll be born in the form of a vulnerable child in one of the harshest places in the world in one of the most challenging times in its history. That makes sense to me because I love you enough to give you a chance to know me differently.”

It’s the love of a God who says, “I will live with you. I will try to teach you. I will love you in the ways that you and all people deserve to be loved. And I will take that a step further: I will love you in the day and forever after the day that you execute me.”

That’s the love we’re celebrating today. It’s not a love that any one of us can wrap our heads around, which is why it’s a love we have to accept on faith and respond to by living faithfully. When we can accept that invitation, and when we can respond in that way, we get to experience glimpses of that love, over and over and over again. It’s what we celebrate every Sunday when we come to the Table. We celebrate the love that was born for us, the love that was willing to die for us, the love that promised to never leave us and has fulfilled that promise, even when we have let go of that faith, even when we’ve been unsure it exists, even when we’ve wondered how such horrible things can happen to people across time and across the world, even when we wonder, “How can I be good enough.”

Easter is the Resurrection of the Incarnate God, the man who was born to show us in real time, up close and personal, what it means to be loved by the God who breathed life into us, the God who has never let us go, the God who will never ever let us go.

That love is the source of all hope, and we need hope. We need hope that tomorrow the news will not be filled mostly with the horrors that some of us inflict upon others of us. We need hope that we will learn to take care of our planet in ways that do not destroy it. That we will live our lives in ways that whenever we meet anybody, wherever we meet anybody, under whatever circumstances we meet anybody, that we will recognize the image of God within them and we will learn to relate to them in God’s love to God’s love, as God’s beloved to God’s beloved.

Easter is the celebration of God’s love, the love that defies all expectation, the love that hopes to save us from ourselves, the love that even death cannot conquer. I pray that we celebrate this day in the big and fun and glorious ways that we do. I pray, too, that each and every day, each and every moment of our lives.

time

Has happens sometimes, though probably not as often as it should, I have been finding myself in a place of deep and broad reflection these past few months. Some of that reflection has made its way to my preaching and in messages to the parish. This is from the message I wrote for our parish newsletter on April 16, 2025.

This is not a new, groundbreaking, or original thought, though it is one that bears mentioning in this time when so much is happening in the world that it can make it difficult to figure out how to live one’s faith with integrity and authenticity. It’s a timely reminder as we journey through Holy Week.

Our understanding of time is not the same as God’s. We perceive of time in a linear fashion. We have this moment and then the next after that and the next…The moments in the past are over and we cannot go back and change anything. The best we can do is to be in the present moment and do our best from there, which is not always easy or comfortable, especially if we feel any regret or guilt or sadness about what has passed.

God’s time is not linear. God’s time is the fullness of all that was and is and is to be. And as much promise as that holds for those who believe we will one day experience the fulfillment of God’s dream for the world, that there will be a day when love prevails and there is no more suffering or brokenness, we are reminded each and every day that the day is not yet here. We may even wonder if we are moving in the wrong direction and if that day will ever come. It can all feel too much, too heavy a burden to carry day after day.

Tomorrow is Maundy Thursday, the beginning of the Triduum, the days from the evening of Maundy Thursday through the evening of Easter Sunday. Though we experience these as three 24-hour days, liturgically they are one day. I find this quite comforting this year because it reminds me that in God’s understanding of time the betrayal and the suffering and all the worst that human beings can and do to each other do not even interrupt God’s deep desire to save us from ourselves, to heal our brokenness and redeem our sinfulness. And that gives me hope for all the moments yet to be.

Lost or loved?

This reflection is based on a homily I preached at Heath Village on April 1st. The lectionary included the parable of what is often called “The Prodigal Son.” You can read the parable here.

The parable in the Gospel we just heard is pretty well known, so much so that even people who may not have read it themselves or heard it read or preached about in church, know and use the phrase “prodigal son.” That’s because it is often referred to as “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” or “The Prodigal Son and his Brother.” That’s how I learned it as a child in both the Roman Catholic and the Episcopal Churches, though it was only as I got older and, I hope wiser, that I realized that referring to it in that way colored how I heard and understood the story. Reading about the “prodigal ” son, I expected to encounter a “bad” son, though I’m not sure that I ever truly parsed what “bad” meant, other than someone who had not behaved well. Those expectations were affirmed when I read that he “squandered his wealth in dissolute living, ” as it says in the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible.

With those expectations, the younger son was someone who somehow took advantage of his father’s generosity and then deserted the family, abandoning his responsibilities, to live the high life. When his fortunes took a turn for the worse and he had no other options, he sheepishly returned to his family, not asking to be treated in the way he thought a member of the family would be treated, but “only” as good as the laborers they employed. Was it any wonder that his older brother, the presumptive heir to the family’s wealth (whatever they may have been) and the one who lived by the rules, doing what was expected of him, was bitter and resentful when his father opened his arms to welcome his feckless little brother home?

I remember the first time I heard it referred to as “The Lost Son Returns,” even though I couldn’t tell you exactly when or where that was. If I had to guess, I would say it was in an adult Bible study or from an article in Christian Century or a similar publication. The point is that I entered into the story differently when I expected to hear about a lost son returning to his family than I did when I expected to hear about a son who was “prodigal,” i.e. someone who was reckless or who spent lavishly and extravagently, with the implication of carelessness or lack of judgment.

Hearing the younger brother characterized as “lost” changed my expectations and shifted my perception. I remember feeling empathy and compassion for the younger brother. Who hasn’t exercised bad judgment or felt lost in one way or another. How much strength did it take to acknowledge the consequences of those bad decisions and realize that the only option was to go back and ask for some grace? And what’s with the older brother that he can’t even consider that he might need similar grace some day or, even worse, that he can’t remember the time in was in a similar situation, even if the circumstances were much different? Wasn’t he even a little bit relieved that he no longer had to shoulder the full responsibility for helping his father? Or was it all about his sense of entitlement to his father’s estate?

Now imagine hearing this story referred to in this way: “The Parable of God’s Unconditional Love.” I literally lost my breath for a moment when I read this story the other day and heard myself say out loud, “It’s about God’s unconditional love.” What a liberating experience to shift from trying to figure who’s the good son and who’s the bad son, and to wonder if the father really was duped by the younger son and was oblivious to the impact on the older son. How freeing to not have to take sides, to find a winner and a loser, or to see only black and white when there are so many colors in between?

Doesn’t it change so much to expect to hear a story of God’s unconditional love? To accept the truth that God loves us so deeply that God will stop at nothing to show us how much, as God did in the Incarnation, the Resurrection, and all the years of Jesus’ life in between? To know that no matter how reckless we are, how bad our judgment, how far we stray, how bitter and resentful we might be, if we turn to find God, God will be there. And to know that God won’t be waiting in the distance to see if we’re really serious and will put in the effort to get to where we need to be, but will come to meet us where we are? To accept that God loves us so unconditionally, that all we have to do is turn to God and God will come running with open arms so that we know who and whose we are?

What a relief and a blessing to read this parable in this season of deep reflection and repentance, and to hear God’s voice saying, “I love you, just as you are, so turn and come home to me.”