What brings you joy? Is there a hobby you like to do, maybe baking or cooking or eating? Perhaps watching movies or TV shows, listening to music or making music? What brings you joy? Time with family and friends? Getting presents? Giving presents? Decorating the house for the holidays? What brings you joy?

For many of us, joy is important. We like it, of course, but joy is seen as a bonus. It is dessert after dinner. It is secondary to the weightier matters of life that are pressing down upon us. Joy is a welcome distraction from the challenges we face in life, and sometimes we feel guilty for indulging in joy when there are more important things for us to deal with.

But Scripture, as we hear today, has a different understanding of joy. We hear Paul talk of joy in the Epistle we just heard. He talks about offering gratitude to God in his prayers every day with joy. This comes at a time when Paul has been imprisoned, he has a lot of weighty matters pressing down on him, and yet he makes time every day to engage in a practice of joy.

In the reading we heard from Baruch, it talks about God leading with joy. What does it look like to lead with joy? What would it look like if the political leaders of this world lead with joy? I think we might have a slightly different world if they did that.

God has a different understanding of joy than as a secondary bonus or a distraction. For God, joy is central. Joy is what God made us to do. God takes great pleasure when we are enjoying this great creation that God made. God made us out of joy for joy. God leads with joy. Joy is not a distraction from the weightier matters of our lives, joy is the weighty matter of life. How do we find joy, and how do we help others find joy in this life? Joy is central to who we are and what God wants for us.

In the Gospel reading today we hear of John the Baptist. Luke says John the Baptist was sent to prepare the way of the Lord. In the Gospel there is a quote from Isaiah that says John will be the one to prepare the way. We also heard of John in the Canticle, The Song of Zechariah. Zechariah is John the Baptist’s dad, and after John was born, Zechariah sang this song. He said, you, my child, meaning John, will be called the Prophet of the Most High for you will go before the Lord to prepare His way.

I think John is a person who concerned himself with the weightier matters, and perhaps he doesn’t always come across as the most joyful of prophets or saints. But I do think that Scripture is leading us to prepare for joy, and to prepare in joy. I don’t think of joy when I think of John, and yet it does say that the whole point of John’s preparation is to shine light and to bring peace. Doesn’t joy shine light and bring peace?

During this Season of Advent, we are called upon to prepare for the way of the Lord like John the Baptist. Prepare our hearts and minds to welcome Christ at Christmas, and prepare our hearts and minds to welcome Christ in our lives each and every day. These readings are reminding us that we can do that with joy. It is not just a secondary auxiliary matter, but the central one.

So, my friends, during this Advent season I encourage you to prepare in and with and for joy. Take some time this week to think about what it is that brings you joy, and how it is that you bring joy to others. In this world that is so desperately in need of light and love, what would it look like if we started leading with joy with all those with whom we meet, and we brought joy to them? Take this time to focus on joy, not as something as a bonus that you get after all the chores are done, but as central to the question itself.

AMEN.

Happy Advent! Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the first Sunday in the new church year. The word advent means coming. During the season of Advent we prepare for the coming of The One. Who is The One? Is it Santa Claus? No. That’s a different kind of advent. Santa Claus is coming to town, but that is not the advent we are talking about. The One we are preparing for is Jesus, the Christ.

There are actually three advents that we prepare for during this season of Advent. The first Advent is the one where we put most of our energy, the Advent of Christ coming over two thousand years ago, born as a baby and placed in a manger in Bethlehem. This is, of course, the celebration of Christmas. It is important to do that preparation. It is meet and right to do that work. But it is going to get a lot of our energy, so we are not going to talk about this advent right now.

The second Advent is the Second Coming, the advent of Christ coming at the end of time, the eschatological Advent. It is the time when Christ will come again, and it is the main theme of today. We see it in our Collect, where it says “in the last day”, and we see it in our readings in Jeremiah that says “The days are surely coming”, and the Thessalonian reading that says “the coming of our Lord Jesus”, and Jesus saying “the Son of Man coming in a cloud.” This is all code language for the Second Coming, the Second Advent, the Apocalyptic Advent. It is not a major theme in Scripture, although some Christians like to sound like it is. But it is there. We are preparing for that end in this season of Advent, although it is a hard thing to wrap our minds around. It is important to spend some time during Advent preparing for that end, a “Lo, he comes with clouds descending” kind of moment. Jesus does talk about it. We heard it in today’s Gospel, and we heard it two weeks ago when he was talking about it as well.

The third Advent we prepare for is Christ coming into our lives today. The first Advent looks to the past, the second looks to the future, and the third Advent looks to this moment, this present moment that we find ourselves in. Christ is not just born in a manger two thousand years ago, Christ is born into our heart each and every day. That is an important Advent for us to spend some time focusing on during this season.

Today’s readings are pointing us to the second Advent, but I think this Gospel reading is a bit of a tricky one. I actually think Jesus is pointing us to the third Advent in this Gospel reading. There is a line that strikes me every time I hear this Gospel reading in which Jesus says all of this will take place before this generation has passed. Which means if we are going to take Scripture seriously, if we are going to take Jesus seriously, all of this stuff he is talking about—Christ coming back to the people—took place before they died. So if that is the case perhaps it is not just the end time Advent that Jesus is talking about. Maybe he is talking about the advent of Jesus coming to us now, to that generation, and to every generation.

Notice in the reading that Jesus also talks about all kinds of darkness, typical in apocalyptic literature: the earth in distress among the nations, wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes and all kinds of terrible things that happen. I think what Jesus is telling us in this Gospel is that in the darkness of our lives, all the problems that we face, which are legion, Christ comes to us in the midst of it. Christ is that light that shines in the darkness. I know we have a lot of darkness in our lives right now. Personally, many of us are facing all kinds of difficulties: cancers, heart problems, dementia and other medical ailments. People with fraying relationships, people having difficulty at work or struggling in their jobs. We have all kinds of personal challenges. There are also all kinds of challenges as a nation, division and crisis. We have challenges around the world. Wars are raging in so many places. There are wars and rumors of wars, as Jesus puts it. There is so much darkness, and yet that is the very moment that Christ is coming into our lives to shine the light. I know it is a bit cliché, but there is an old expression that says the stars are always brightest when it is the darkest. Christ is always brightest when it is darkest. Christ comes to us in the darkness. Or maybe to put it another way, Christ is always there, but we notice him when it is darkest.

I encourage you during this Advent season to take some time to prepare for all of these Advents. The Advent of Christ who came, Christ who will come, and the Christ who is coming among us now.

When you walked in today you might have noticed a few different things around here. There is a little village set up in the back of the Chapel. Did you notice that Jesus is there? He is there in the village among the people living their lives. That is an image of Christ coming. In the narthex there is a new case full of nativity scenes from around the world. One thing you will notice in all of them is that none of them look like what Jesus actually looked like. Perhaps it is a little too Italian, or a little too Medieval. There are nativity scenes from South America, from Africa, from Asia and Europe, and Jesus did not look like any of that. I have to say that this used to bother me. I wanted to find the perfect 1st century nativity scene, but I think I was missing the point when I was bothered by that. The nativity scenes from around the world, with all kinds of cultural expressions of what Jesus looked like, is the third Advent. We don’t see the first one, we see the third one. Yes, Jesus came at a particular time and place to particular people, but Jesus also came and is coming and is here with us now at this time, in this place, with this people.

So, my friends, focus on the presence of Christ in your life. Prepare for Christmas, wrap your presents, get your houses ready. I know it is hard, but also spend a little time thinking about the future. Prepare your heart as much as you prepare your hearth to welcome Jesus into your life today.

AMEN.

Pontius Pilate was the Roman Procurator of Palestine during the reign of Tiberius. Though he commanded a Roman legion of 4500 soldiers, his was not a plush assignment. Saddled with governing one of the frontier provinces of the Roman Empire he spent most of his time in Caesarea Maritime where the weather was reasonably decent and where he was able to have minimal contact with the stubbornly unruly inhabitants of the region under his control. Only on high holy days did Pilate trouble himself to go into Jerusalem so as to be present should any sort of problem arise. Still, he was the face of the Roman Empire in that part of the world, and as such, he literally had the power of life or death over the people under his control. Yet, for all the trappings that went with his position, it is quite possible that Pontius Pilate would have lived and died utterly forgotten by history had it not been for one fateful day when he crossed paths with a Galilean Jew named Jesus of Nazareth.

 Of the two men who came face to face that day, Pilate gave the appearance of being the more powerful, and indeed, given his position, he did wield great power. However, there’s a difference between wielding power and being powerful. Pilate was a man used to being treated as if he were powerful, so therefore in his own mind, he was. He was used to the people who came before him groveling, begging for mercy. Condemning people to death or setting them free didn’t require any inner or physical strength on his part. If anyone caused trouble, attempted to escape or to fight back, he had soldiers at hand to enforce whatever he decreed. But then this Galilean Jew showed up who didn’t behave at all like the others had. He didn’t beg for mercy, he didn’t try to flee. Indeed, quite the opposite, he seemed unnaturally calm. It had to have been confusing if not downright unnerving for Pilate to have this seemingly powerless peasant stand before him appearing to be not at all afraid of what Pilate might do to him. He didn’t even answer directly when Pilate asked if he was a king, but instead informed Pilate that he came into the world to testify to the truth, and then added for good measure, everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. Pilate reacted to that rather perplexing response by asking Jesus, What is truth?

 Now we don’t know what Pilate’s tone was at that point. Possibly quite frustrated by this upstart peasant passively challenging his power, Pilate may well have been responding rather sarcastically when he asked, What is truth? Or, for just an instant, maybe the part of Pilate that deep down suspected that Jesus was innocent, and therefore knew he really should let this nondescript peasant go, came close enough to the surface to wonder, almost fearfully, what is the truth and how many people know it? Do others suspect as I do, that this man is innocent? Will I be judged forever by how I handle this? Pilate could have let Jesus go, and then used his soldiers as needed to quell any sort of protest that action might have produced. Instead, he took the easy way out. In the name of doing his job of keeping the peace, he went along with what the Jewish authorities wanted and condemned Jesus to death. It’s possible that Pilate knew what was real, what the truth was in that situation, but he chose to pretend that he didn’t.

 What is truth? I’m not sure there’s a more relevant question in the world today. The dictionary, yes, I do still own one, says that truth is the quality of being in accordance with experience, facts, or reality. There was a time when scientists determined what was real, what was true in a given situation with regard to the natural world based on what they could prove with experiments that they evaluated with their senses. With time and the development of ever more sophisticated equipment scientists have learned to interpret all manner of indirect evidence for explaining our world and what happens in it. Beyond this physical reality which I focused on throughout my teaching career, you’ve heard me speak of experiential reality; what we know is real not because we can see, hear, touch, taste or smell it, but because we’ve experienced it, we’ve lived it. Sadly, though, none of this seems to be good enough anymore.

 First of all, more than in the past it seems to me, perceptions can be mistaken. The increasing prevalence of artificial Intelligence for example, can leave us wondering if what we thought we experienced actually happened. For that reason a line I read in a book decades ago seems particularly relevant today: Just because you experienced it, doesn't mean it happened that way. The author’s point was that one of the values of community is that those around us offer us the opportunity to check our perceptions, our memories, of a given event or interaction. Of course, for our community to be valuable to us in this way, we have to be willing to share our feelings, our perceptions about whatever it was that we experienced. Sadly though, even if we do withhold judgment in a given situation until we’ve talked with someone we trust to see if what we’re thinking or feeling is accurate, that only pertains to our personal experiences. How in the world do we know these days what is true, what is real in the world beyond the boundaries of our day to day activities?

 The internet is rife with misinformation and disinformation. Social media sites have been programmed to lead the viewer to more and more sites that say exactly what the viewer wants to hear, leading people deeper and deeper into a world completely removed from reality. Sadly though, I’ve read in what I hope was a reliable source, that 55% of the US population relies solely on social media for their information. Even those of us who turn to more traditional news sources are left wondering how trusting we can be these days of the information we’re receiving. Gone are the days when Walter Cronkite broadcast the news and we all knew, we absolutely knew, that he was telling us the truth, because in those days both broadcast and print journalists dedicated their lives to conveying to their readers and listeners exactly what had occurred in a given situation. Nowadays it seems as though even the most traditional news sources are at least as concerned, if not more so, about maintaining their viewership as they are about what they report and how they report it. As a result I’m not sure there's a news anchor today, on any network, any news broadcast, who has earned the sort of respect some of us remember according Cronkite. So where does that leave us? It leaves us right here, in church, listening to the Gospel. Jesus answered Pilate’s question, So you are a king? by responding, You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. But when Pilate asked Jesus, What is truth? Jesus simply stood there.

 We can only wonder if any part of Pilate knew as he spoke with Jesus that day that he was staring into the face of God. Odds are as a Roman procurator who had been taught that the emperor himself was a god, he probably did not. While there’s no way we can know one way or another about that, what we do know is that just as so many of us would have done, in the heat of the moment Pilate did what was expedient. We can only speculate if later, alone with his thoughts, or perhaps with his wife who had advised him earlier to have nothing to do with that innocent man for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him, Pilate came face to face with the answer to his question.

 We live lives today besieged by a cacophony of sound bites. Whether they are literal thirty second snippets taken perhaps out of context to sway our opinion one way or another, or the visual headlines that show up on our watches and phones, unbidden but there nonetheless, they just never stop. We can however, choose to put our phones, watches, and all the other electronic devices that at once serve us and haunt us aside from time to time, in order to spend time as Pilate once had the chance to do, alone with Jesus. Rather than looking outside ourselves we can choose to pursue our search for truth by taking time to turn inward, imagining ourselves looking into the human face of God while listening in the silence for the answers to our questions. In the words of Paul Simon:

Hello darkness, my old friend

I’ve come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never shared

And no one dared

Disturb the sound of silence.

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made

And the sign flashed out its warning

In the words that it was forming

Then the sign said, “The words of the prophets are

written on the subway walls

In tenement halls”

And whispered in the sound of silence.

Let us pray: Good and loving God, send your Spirit to work through these words that they may bring us peace, comfort, and hope. In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sustainer. Amen.

From psalm 16, verse one: Protect me O God, I take refuge in you. You are my Lord, my God above all other.

Yes, protect us God, today and tomorrow and into our unknown future. If we say that you are our Creator, and not just the creator of humankind, but of ALL creation, then truly you are in charge of our lives as the good above all other. And if we can turn or return, again and again, our focus on God, then the psalmist reminds us that our hearts WILL be glad. Our spirits WILL rejoice and our bodies SHALL rest in hope. Yes please. That’s what I’m looking for today and always.

Today’s psalm reminds us that God WILL show us the path that brings life. It is in the presence of God that we find fullness of joy. What sweet words from the psalmist. Just like last Sunday when Bingham reminded us to put our trust NOT in human leaders who are fallible and who fade away, but rather, to put our trust in the everlasting and perfect love of God, today’s psalm reminds us of the refuge, the sanctuary, the almighty goodness, and reason for joy, gladness and rest that we need. Where can we get that? Where do we find it? How?

It can be found in God alone.

How can we move forward through the worries, fear, and despair of our human lives? With God. God will show us the way, the path of life. God will be present. In that companionship, that support, love, and guidance, we will find our path, our purpose, and our renewed joy.

I’ve been really feeling the need to unplug from my usual news scrolling in the morning over breakfast lately. Instead, I recognize the need to start my day in the scriptures. I read the psalm or psalms for the day, a reading from the Hebrew scriptures, something from one of the epistles, and then the Gospel. What a difference it’s been making! What a much more serene start to my day. God caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning, they are inspired by the Holy Spirit, living, active, and good for learning and understanding who God is, how God interacted with humans in the past, how Jesus modeled God’s loving care in words and actions, and how the first followers of Jesus sought to follow in his footsteps.

Today’s collect reminds us to listen, read, mark and inwardly digest scripture. This is for our good, for our reassurance, for mental and spiritual health. We need to inwardly digest it, to really chew it over. It is, after all, divine nourishment that fuels and build us up. Especially in tough times, scriptures offer us hope. Hope that we will make it through, hope that God knows our sufferings and is with us through them, hope that love wins, hope that God’s dream IS becoming reality,

 and WILL, in the end, be fully realized. Spending time in the bible reminds us who we are, and whose we are. It reminds us what’s really important in our lives, where we can put our trust and confidence. And it encourages us to be God’s hands and feet, serving up and multiplying divine love in our world.

In today’s second reading. We are reminded of the covenant, the agreement that God made with us:

I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds…I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.

God has imprinted the divine law of love on our hearts and in our minds. We have within us the ways that we are called to act and be in this world. And not only that, but God has put away our sins, those times we fell short, failing to love ourselves and others. They---Are---Gone! Such good news, reminders of God’s presence, grace, and forgiveness. And from that, encouragement: Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for the one what has promised is faithful. Yes! Our good and loving God is faithful. Of that we can be sure. On that we can place all of our trust and confidence, on the God who created us and our world out of love, for love, to be in love with ourselves, each other, and creation. And so, what are we to do now? How are we to act, to move forward? The Letter to the Hebrews give us our answer.

Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds. Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds. Love and good deeds. Together, as a community, let us move forward with love and in love, encouraging one another, and showing our world what Jesus is all about and what we mean to be all about too.

Amen.

Our psalm today, Psalm 146, is the first of a set of five psalms that finish out the psalter that we might call the Hallelujah Songs of Praise psalms. Why not just call them Songs of Praise without adding the word Hallelujah? It is because this set of psalms is unique in that each one begins and ends with the word Hallelujah. Otherwise, they are similar to other songs praise. They are cheery, they are upbeat, they offer praise to God for all the good things that God has done in this world. Our Psalm today starts the same way, Hallelujah. Praise the Lord, oh my soul. I will praise the Lord as long as I live. I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. It is a beautiful introduction, a classic introduction to a psalm of praise.

But then the psalmist does something a little different than usual. In the next verse the psalmist takes a darker turn and issues a warning: put not your trust in rulers nor in any child of earth for there is no help in them. When they breathe their last they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish. Put not your trust in rulers, some translations say put not your trust in princes. Put not your trust in political leaders or leaders of any kind for they are fallible humans who will disappoint you at some point.

The psalmist is probably writing sometime during the exile, although it may be right after or right before or right in the middle, but either way the psalmist knows their history. The psalmist knows that for hundreds of years their rulers have failed them. The prophets tell us why: they stopped loving God and stopped loving their neighbor. They stopped loving God and stopped honoring the image of God in their neighbor. That was manifested in many ways: the worship of idols, the oppression of the widow and the orphan, injustices, greed, corruption. They were all fallible humans who failed the people. That doesn’t mean all the rulers were bad. There were some that were better than others, some who came along and realized things were not on the right path and tried to turn back and get the people to turn to God, but they also let the people down. They were fallible humans. Ultimately they didn’t go far enough, or they died and their project of reformation died with them. Put not your trust in rulers.

In contrast, the psalmist wants us to put our trust in God, the God who made the heavens and the earth. While the rulers will all go down to the dust, this is the God who made the dust. That is more stable ground in which to put our trust. For while the rulers will let us down, we have a God who will not give in to injustice, and will love you and care for you and support you through it all.

The psalmist knows from the prophets why the other rulers have failed them, so the psalmist chose a contrast with the God who is the exact opposite. Those rulers failed because they were not able to move the people toward God’s dream for this world, so the psalmist reminds us of that dream. We have a God who gives justice to those who are oppressed and food to those who hunger. The Lord who sets the prisoners free and opens the eyes of the blind, the Lord who lifts up those who are down, the Lord loves the righteous and cares for the stranger, which can be translated as sojourner or resident alien. The Lord sustains the orphan and the widow but frustrates the way of the wicked. We are to put our trust in this God with a dream for a world in which each person is made in God’s image and is given the full dignity and respect they deserve as the image bearer of God.

The psalmist wrote these words twenty-five hundred years ago, give or take a couple of hundred years, but it is wisdom that resonates throughout the ages, wisdom that each generation discovers time and again, wisdom that resonates today and will continue to resonate in the future. Leaders will fail us. They are not where we are to put our hope or trust. Instead, the psalmist says put your trust in the Lord.

I encourage you to try and do that. I encourage you to read, mark and inwardly digest this psalm, to write it on your heart. No matter what the world throws at you with all of its fear and darkness and its fallibility, remember the words of this psalm and put your trust in the God who is eternal and loving and caring. Keep walking forward in faith with this God who is worthy of our trust.

This is wisdom to carry us forward, but it can also be a bit dangerous to do this. Sometimes we can say we trust in God, God has it all taken care of so I don’t need to do anything. That, my friends, is not what the psalmist is trying to tell us. That is apathy and it is not what God wants for us.

The Gospel lesson we just heard is a beautiful example of continuing to do good even when it seems insignificant. Jesus is at the temple with the Disciples and observes people putting their money into the offering box. He sees folks who come forward and put a whole pocketful of coins in, maybe a few checks that are big enough to make a transformative difference, maybe even big enough to get a building named after them. Then Jesus sees a woman, a widow, who puts in two coins, the kind of gift the world would think is insignificant, the kind of gift the accountant would consider a rounding error. And Jesus says, let me tell you something. Of these huge gifts that the world thinks are really important and the really tiny gift that the world thinks is meaningless, the small one is the one that is most important. Some people are giving the spare change out of their pocket and it is almost an afterthought. But the woman is giving her everything. While the world will say that doesn’t matter, God says that is the thing that matters most. Each and every single one of us, doing what we can, in the place in which we have been put, with the gifts that God has given us, no matter how insignificant it might seem, is how we should live our lives. And this is beyond the subject of just money.

When everything around us seems so overwhelming and we cannot do anything to change it, when it seems that there is fear and hatred spilling out everywhere, and powers and principalities are winning the day, Jesus says keep trying. Keep giving. Keep serving. Keep loving. Keep caring. Keep working toward the dream that God has for a world in which injustices end, where every single person is nourished, people are liberated, the eyes of the blind are opened, and those who are bowed down can stand up straight, in which the stranger, the resident alien, are cared for and treated as one of our own, in which the orphan and widow are sustained. Keep working towards that dream that God has. The tiny little bit that you can do in your place, in your school, in your work, in your home, in your community, even if it feels insignificant, it is not. It matters. It matters to God.

So, my friends, remember these words of the psalmist. Put your trust in the Lord. So many things are asking for your trust, but put your trust in the Lord because the rest of them are fallible and transient. Put your trust in the Lord. Mark these words, write them on your heart. But when you do that, do not grow apathetic. Instead, work towards trying to realize this vision that God has presented to us from time immemorial, in which every single person has dignity and respect, even when the world does not give it to them. Keep moving forward in faith and hope and love.

AMEN

In this long season after Pentecost, we are 17 weeks into it, we have been hearing stories from the Gospel According to Mark. We have been working our way through Mark’s telling of the Gospel, and we have been hearing stories of Jesus’s teaching and healing, stories of calling Disciples, gathering people around him. We have heard news of him spreading about, and people wondering who this guy is.

This has all been taking place in the region of Galilee, which is the area around the Sea of Galilee. But today we have moved out of that section of the Gospel, which is about the first third of the Gospel, and have moved into the middle of the Gospel. One of the indicators that we have moved is that we are in a different geographical place. We are now in Caesarea Philippi, north of Galilee, and Jesus is with the Disciples.

This section of the Gospel, this middle chunk, is book-ended by two stories about the physical healing of blind people. In literary criticism, when there are two book-ends like this, it is pointing to something that is in between them. So what does it mean to have two stories of the healing of blind people on either end of this middle section of the Gospel?

I would argue that we have these two stories of healing of blindness because what Jesus is doing in this middle section is trying to heal the blindness of the Disciples. He is trying to open the eyes of the Disciples to understand who he is and what it is that God is doing with him in this world. We begin to hear about the cross and the resurrection, and we will hear it time and again through the next several weeks, in various ways, with implications about what that means for us and our faith.

This section starts out with Jesus asking the question that everyone has been asking, who do people say that I am? I wonder if Jesus is testing his Disciples: are your eyes open, Disciples? Do I need to heal any blindness here? But in answer to his question, the Disciples say that some say you are John the Baptist, others say you are Elijah or one of the other Prophets. By the way, Herod, in the story we heard several weeks ago, thought that Jesus was John the Baptist “who I killed”, raised from the dead. Then Jesus asks the Disciples, then who do you say that I am? Peter steps forward and says, you are the Messiah. Remember that Mark gives us the abridged version of all these stories, because a longer version says, you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Jesus says A+, Peter. That is fantastic. You got it right. In the other Gospels Jesus says, you, Peter, will be the rock on which I build my church. That’s pretty impressive. Peter got it right, and he is important for having done it.

Then the Gospel goes on to say that Jesus explains what that means. He starts talking about having to die and be raised again. This scandalizes Peter, so Peter pulls Jesus aside and asks, what are you saying? You can’t say this. This is not what the Messiah is all about. Jesus rebukes him and says, get behind me Satan. That rock on which Jesus is going to build his church is now the rock on which people will stumble. Peter goes from being right to being wrong. He goes from understanding to not understanding.

I am going to argue that Jesus is going to use this middle section of the Gospel trying to convince the Disciples of what this is all about. He is going to try to open their eyes, heal their blindness, and is not going to succeed. We know where this story goes: the Disciples continue to misunderstand Jesus and what he is all about. This Peter, who gets it right and then gets it wrong, is going to get it right again. Then he will get it wrong again, then right, then wrong, then right, and then he dies. That is the story of Peter. A lot of back and forth.

We will talk about all the stuff that Jesus is trying to open the Disciples’ eyes to see in the coming weeks. But today I want to focus on Peter. Peter is understood to be the great exemplar of the faith, and I think that is right. I think he is a great exemplar of the faith, but the reason is because he gets is wrong. Here is the thing about faith: it is not about getting it all right. It is not about being perfect. That is not what our salvation is based upon. I know there are over 20,000 denominations in this country, because people thinking that getting it all right is the most important thing. When they think someone else has it wrong, they start a new church.

But that is not what the story of Peter shows us should be the way. The story of Peter shows that faith is not about getting everything right, faith is about following Jesus and trying. Faith is not about getting it all right, faith is about taking the journey, knowing that we can’t fully understand and know everything, at least not during this mortal life. As St. James says in the Epistle today, we all make mistakes. As St. Paul says elsewhere, we see through a glass darkly, we see through a mirror dimly. It is impossible for us to understand it all, to get it all right. It is impossible for us to be perfect.

Therefore, faith is not about being perfect. Faith is about trying to follow Jesus, trying to draw close to him, trying to shape our lives based on what he is teaching us, knowing we will not get all the way there perfectly. That is a hard message for us, for in so much of our lives we are trying to be perfect. We think that our value, our worth is found in perfection. We think that about our professional careers, we think that about our relationships, and, oh, my, do people think that about their faith. But that is not the way of God. The way of God is the way of Peter, in which Peter, who gets it wrong, is still beloved. And not just beloved, he is raised up as one of the most important of them all, in spite of all the ways he gets it wrong.

The next story is the story of the Transfiguration. Peter is right and then he is wrong, but Jesus still tells Peter he will take him on a special trip up this mountain. Not because Peter has gotten it all right, but because Jesus invites him to do it.

There is a thing in our faith we like to call grace. Perhaps you have heard of it. If you have sung the words, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see. ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.” Grace.

Another word you might think of is mercy. Another important word is forgiveness. These things are vastly more important that perfection. Here is the fact: God has already offered you grace. God has already been merciful to you. God has already forgiven you for all the ways that you and I have fallen short of what God’s dream is for this world, because God loves you. That love is not conditional upon anything that you have done. That love is because of who God is. God loves you as you are. The life of faith is not trying to earn that love, the life of faith is trying to live in that love, and then realizing there is enough of that love to share with other people. The life of faith is a pilgrimage. It is not about the destination, it is about the journey, the journey of drawing close to God, trying time and again. Sometimes on that journey we are going to be right, and sometimes we are going to be wrong. But in all of it, God loves you and God is calling you, God is inviting you to draw closer, to learn to open your eyes, to heal whatever blind spots you have so you can move closer towards that dream that God has of a world saturated with love. You are not going to get there perfectly, for we all make mistakes. And that’s OK.

Here is what I ask of you, my friends: try and offer a little bit of grace. Try and offer a little bit of mercy. Try to be a little bit forgiving to yourself. Start with yourself. And if you get a chance, offer that grace and that mercy and that forgiveness to your neighbor as well. But start with yourself. Recognize that perfection is not the goal, but try each day, day in and day out, to draw a little closer to God, to see God a little more clearly, and to give yourself that grace, that mercy, and that forgiveness that God has already offered you.

AMEN.

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit, be present in these words. Through them may we know ourselves, one another, and you, our loving God, better. In the name of the Lover, The Beloved, and Love itself. Amen.

Well, no more bread today! Instead, what we have are some pretty biting words from Jesus about traditions. When the Pharisees and some scribes notice Jesus’ disciple aren’t observing all the rules for cleansing, and purifying, especially around eating and food prep, they ask: “What gives Jesus? Your followers aren’t keeping the rules, they aren’t following the tradition of the elders, why not?”

I wonder, is this an honest question from them, or an attempt to discredit the upstart rabbi from Nazareth who’s rapidly gaining popularity? Based on Jesus’ strong reply, I expect their questions are more like accusations.

“Hey, why don’t your followers follow the rules? What kind of teacher are you?” Jesus calls them out.

“Oh, I see, you’re the ones the prophet Isaiah warned about! You hypocrites!” Ouch! “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” On the surface they are doing all the right things. Being very diligent in keeping all the traditions of the elders passed on through generations. But why? Are their hearts in it?

Jesus accuses them of abandoning God’s commandments and creating their own human traditions. Ouch again! BUT…I wonder if I’m guilty of the same thing. It’s sure easier to SAY the right things, to GO through the motions, to come to church on Sunday for an hour and then just go on our ways. Much easier to talk about love and justice and racial reconciliation and climate care, than actually DOING IT, right? Do we take refuge in our traditions, talking a good talk, putting our human traditions over what God is really asking us to do to bring about God’s dream for our world?

In our Epistle we heard James’ famous lines: “…Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers.” He goes on to explain what pure religion is: to care for orphans and widows in their distress. To DO something to make our world a better place, whatever, wherever, however we can. To act in love. Love for others, love for the marginalized, the ostracized, the oppressed, those in need, even our enemies! Jesus is saying that we should stop worrying so much about traditions and observations and good words, and we should start DOING something to share God’s love! It’s not about being clean or defiled, or the right or wrong way to worship. What it’s all about is acting from our hearts with love. If we have our hearts set on doing God’s will, God’s good, and loving work for our world, then the question of clean and unclean is moot. We can’t get so wrapped up in just the right way to do this or that in terms of our spirituality. What Jesus tells and shows us, is that it’s all about how we see others and how we interact with them. Are we acting out of compassion? Are we proclaiming by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? Are we seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves? Are we striving for justice and peace? Are we respecting the dignity of every human being? This is pure religion.

How? Start small and go from there. Smile! Be kind! Welcome someone! Where does your heart ache? Is it for the unhoused, for the mentally ill, for those suffering from substance use disorder, for refugees, for immigrants, for the unemployed, for little ones who need stability, who need help to read, who need to know they are seen and loved, for our planet, for our rivers, streams, lakes, and oceans, or, or?

Listen to where God is calling you to act and then go and do your small part to make this world a better place. Show the world the love of God through your actions. Show them that we are Christians by our love, by our love. This is where we should focus our energy and resources. This is pure religion, following the words and examples of Jesus of Nazareth, acting in love and compassion for others. Amen.

A couple of weeks ago we talked about love. I’m not going to rehash that sermon about the centrality of love in Scripture and in our faith, but I do want to revisit a couple of points. I first want to remind you that God loves. God loves you. God loves me. God loves your neighbor. God loves your enemy. God loves everyone, without exceptions. God loves.

The second thing we talked about is that God is love. That is a slight, but important, distinction. God loves is about the doing of God. What does God do? God loves. It is about actions that God takes. God is love is about identity. It is about the being of God. God loves and God is love. They are different and distinct, but related to each other. Because God loves, God is love. God’s identity as love leads to the actions of love. It is important to understand that God’s identity and God’s actions align in this way and are connected to each other. God loves you, not because of what you have done. God loves you for who God is. God loves you because God is love. That means that God’s love for you is not conditional. It is not something you earned. It is not something that you have to be worthy to receive. It is not something that you can lose. It is. God loves you. Why? Because God is love.

The whole idea that God loves you regardless of what you have done, irrespective of your actions, is what we call grace. God’s grace is so enormous that God is going to love you, no matter what. Every once in a while someone will come to me and express concern that they are not worthy enough to receive God’s love. It always breaks my heart. My first reaction is to tell them they are worthy, let me tell you all the wonderful things about you, that God loves you unconditionally. But none of that matters. Because the truth is, even if you were not worthy, God still loves you because of who God is. God loves, not because the object of the affection deserves the love, but because the one offering the love is so full of love that he can do nothing but love you. You cannot earn it, you cannot lose it, you do not deserve it, but that is all beside the point. God loves you already. That is grace.

While we love the idea of love, I think we are challenged by the idea of grace because we do not live in a society that teaches us much about grace. We live in a society that says your worth is in what you achieve, how good you are, maybe even being good isn’t enough, but you need to be great. You need to be perfect. We live in a society that says what goes around comes around, and that people deserve the good things that happen to them, or deserve the bad things that happen to them. And I have to tell you, my friends, that that is not the way of God. That is not the way of our God who is so full of grace that He will love you even if you don’t actually deserve it. And I am not saying there is a person here who doesn’t deserve it, but even if you don’t, God still loves you. That is grace.

For the past month or so we have been reading from the Book of Ephesians as our New Testament reading each Sunday, and this is what Paul has been laying out in his letter. He is talking about the enormous love of God. Paul said the height and breadth and depth and length of God’s love is more than you can imagine. God’s love surpasses knowing. If you close your eyes and imagine the length and breadth and depth and height of God’s love, you will still not imagine the whole thing. It is more than we can imagine. Paul says that the love God has for us is grace. We didn’t deserve it. He says we were still in sin when we received the grace, because grace is an undeserved gift that you are given. Paul tells the Ephesians God loves you, you didn’t do anything to earn it, and you are not going to lose it. God loves you because God has super abundant grace that He showers down upon this earth. That is the essence of Paul’s letter up to this reading.

Today’s reading is answering the question, so what? God loves me, I don’t deserve it, it is a gift, it is grace, so what? Paul says, so then. So then put away all falsehood. Speak with truth. Be angry, it’s OK to be angry, it happens, it’s an emotion, but do not sin. Walk that fine line. Thieves must give up stealing. I love that line because it reminds us that the grace came before the good work. The thief is still stealing but they already have the grace, so Paul says to give up the stealing. Labor honestly with your own hands. Share with the needy. Do not let evil come out of your mouth, but make sure the words coming out of your mouth build others up. Put away from yourself all bitterness, put away all wrath, put away all anger, put away all wrangling, put away all slander, put away all malice. Instead, be kind. Be tenderhearted. Forgive one another. This is a list of concrete ways that we can respond to God’s grace. We do not do all of these good and wonderful things to earn God’s grace, to earn God’s love, because we already have that love through grace. These things are instead our response. It is an order of operations. God loves you, therefore do these good things. Paul’s list is not meant to be exhaustive, it is just a list of suggestions. I imagine Paul talking out loud to his scribe, thinking of ideas. I’m sure he missed some, and I imagine you could come up with some ideas for yourself. What is it in your life that you need to do to respond to God’s love given to you in grace?

In the end, Paul’s letter goes on to say, therefore be imitators of God. All of these ideas that Paul throws out, all the ideas that you can come up with are all meant to help us be imitators of God, the God who is love. It goes on to say, and live in love. Be imitators of God, and live in love. We do that, not to earn God’s love, rather we do it because God has already given the love. The grace of God is so abundant, God has given us so much love that we have some to give away. We have so much love that God gave us that you will never run out of that love yourself. There is more than enough love to go around.

So, my friends, this week take some time to reflect on all we have been learning these past few weeks. Take some time to remember God’s love for you. Try to imagine how enormous God’s love is. Try to imagine the height by imagining the highest thing you can think if, and then go even farther. Imagine the longest thing you can imagine, and then go longer. Imagine the broadest thing you can think of, and then go broader. Imagine the deepest thing you can think of and go deeper. When you have that in your head and think how enormous that is, remember you have not gone far enough. God’s love is even more than that. Try to stretch your brain every day to imagine God’s love as even bigger than you imagined it the day before. Remember that God has given it to you whether or not you earn it, whether or not you deserve it. You are loveable because God loves you, and it is nothing more than that. He does not love you because you do something special. You are loveable because God loves you. Reflect on that, and then ask yourself, what can I do in response. I, who have this enormous amount of love filling me every day, how can I share that same love with someone else? At work, at home, at school, on the street, in the store, wherever you are think of how you can share that love with my neighbors, with my enemies, with all of creation. How can I share that love that God has already given me in grace? Why? Because God loves you.

AMEN.

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit, speak through these words. Help us dare to believe you have all the food we need. In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, one God. Amen.

In today’s Gospel we pick up right where we left off last Sunday. It’s the next day and the crowd of thousands who had been fed with five loaves and two fish, are looking for Jesus. They know there was only one boat and they didn’t see him get into it. How did he get to the other side? Jesus, in typical fashion, answers their wondering with more food for reflection.

“You’re looking for me because you got your fill of bread? You should be looking for the kind of food that never spoils, the kind of nourishment that’s for eternal life. That’s what the Son of Man will give you. That’s what you should be working towards.”

Umm, ok Jesus. We were just thinking about all that extra bread and kind of wondering how you got all the way across the sea without boat. Perplexed, they ask what they need to do. Isn’t this just like you and me? Don’t we want to know exactly what we need to do? Give me the checklist. Lay it all out. What plan do I have to follow? How many good things do I have to do? Which deeds are worth the most points? Jesus, once again, offers a less than satisfactory answer, exactly what they WEREN’T looking for.

“Here it is. This is it…Just believe. Just put your trust and confidence in the one whom God has sent.”

That’s it? Hmm. How will we know, FOR SURE? What signs will you give so that we can SEE and believe? What works (apparently they’ve already forgotten about t the 12 baskets of leftovers!) As Jews they know well the story of the manna that fed the Israelites in the wilderness, and so they bring this us up to Jesus. What about that? Can you do that? Jesus again, ups the ante, and goes MUCH deeper. First, he reminds them that it was God and NOT Moses who provided, and then he explains that it’s God who give the “true” bread from heaven. It is this bread which comes down from heaven (read incarnation, God taking on human form to live with us as one of us), it is this bread that gives life not just to wandering Israelites, but to the whole world. “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6: 33).

This sounds even better than the manna that our ancestors ate, give us this bread please! And then, BOOM, Jesus drops the bomb. It’s me! I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. Jesus has disclosed to this crowd and the disciples, and to us, his divine identity and his purpose. Jesus is what we need to live. Jesus has come to feed us, to nourish us, to offer us life through relationship.

In John’s Gospel Jesus says it in a slightly different way. “I came that they might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). Jesus is here to bring us full and abundant life. Isn’t that what we’re looking for? Isn’t that what we’re hungry and thirsty for? SO many other things are competing for our hunger and desires. SO many other things that we thing will fill us up. But no. They don’t. They won’t. What we need to fill us up is Jesus.

This was definitely mind-blowing for the people of Jesus’ time and it still just as hard, maybe even harder for us to wrap our minds around it today. That’s why we come together to listen, to talk, to ask questions, to remember and experience together. And we try to make sense of these perplexing words of Jesus.

What if Jesus really is the bread of life? What if Jesus really did come to bring us life, to fill us up, so our hunger and thirst would be satisfied? If we embark on this journey to understand these words and their implications, if we dare to hope, to trust and bring who we are to the God of love, it just might be that we’ll find what we have been hungering for. Today, as you come forward to receive communion, the bread and wine, body and blood of Christ, I invite you to ponder these words of Jesus for you and your life today. Whoever, however, wherever you are, you are invited to this journey together with this St. Mary’s community and SO many others who have sought to understand and take in these words of Jesus.

Jesus has come to give us life, to feed us, sustain us and restore our relationship of love with ourselves, one another, with our earth, and with the divine dance of love itself, with the parent creator God, the human brother God, and the flowing, inspiring, comforting Spirit God. So come! Come to the table! Join me! Join us! Join with followers of Jesus around the world and throughout time! Come to receive the bread of life! For surely, whoever comes seeking to know Jesus will never be hungry again. And whoever trusts in Jesus’ loving care will never be thirsty again.

Amen.