Today we celebrate Epiphany – we are a couple of days early since the feast day of Epiphany is on Tuesday. Epiphany is the season of revelation – the time when we think about how Jesus was and is revealed to be the Word, the Son of God, the True Light, and we start that process today with the revelation of Jesus to the Gentiles in the form of the wise men from the East.

My good friend Ann, who is our musician this morning, thank you Ann, asked me the other day what I would be preaching about and I said that although its commonplace for us today, the inclusion of Gentiles in the revelation of God must have been mind-blowing for the Jews of the time.

And that’s very true – that the light of Christ is not just for the physical descendants of Abraham but for all people – is astonishing. But if we go there today we miss something rather darker and yet just as important.

You know that this year we are reading from Matthew’s gospel which is the only gospel that talks about the wise men. It tells us that they defied Herod by not returning to Jerusalem but “left for their own country by another road.” And - we skip this bit in our Sunday readings – Herod is not pleased, to put it mildly. Herod is so threatened by this baby that he sends his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the male children of two years or under.

But he misses Jesus, because Joseph has a dream in which God tells him, "Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him." Then, we are told, Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt, and remained there until the death of Herod. 

If we focus on the coming of the light to the Gentiles, we miss this important backstory of murder and flight, of fear and migration.

If this were a movie we might be tempted to call it “The Clash of the Kings” Except it isn’t really a clash – Herod is lashing out and Jesus is taken away.

Perhaps “The Babe against the Tyrant King” or “A Tale of Two Kingdoms” might be better titles. Over this next year we will hear Matthew talking a lot about the kingdom of heaven. It’s a phrase which appears over 30 times in this gospel but not at all in the other three. And in this story about Herod’s anger, he’s setting up the context, beginning to develop the theme of the contrast between the kingdom of human empire grounded in violence, and the kingdom of heaven which is grounded in love.

They are quite different. The politics and economics of human empire depend on division and inequality. The rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, those who can, bullying those who can’t. In contrast God’s politics and economics – the kingdom of heaven – is about healing all the divisions that keep us in conflict. It is about establishing true justice with equity for all God’s children and God’s creatures, indeed it is about the flourishing of all creation. It is about mutual service among equals, never about oppression of the weak by the strong.

That’s why the Son of God didn’t just appear on earth, but was born as a human baby with all the same dependence on his parents for food, hygiene, safety and love as any other baby. That’s why he was born in a stable. Because God identifies with, we can even say he has a preference for, those who are weak, those who are outcast, those who are poor, those who are running for their lives. If God were to incarnate today we might find him in Gaza or Sudan or Somalia or Venezuela or in a displaced persons camp.

It is just so counter-intuitive that the Son of God, the Prince of Peace, would be born not in New York or Geneva but among the poorest of the poor, the least powerful in a world where power is worshiped.

But Jesus broke the mold. Jesus offers an entirely new way of being human. That is the king the wise ones came to see and to worship – a king whose kingdom is not of this world, a king who does not fight but whose power is in non-violence, in humility and patience. Whose people dream dreams and hear the Spirit leading them.

This is our calling, people of God, followers of Jesus.

We are called to be an entirely different kind of human. We are called to cultivate peace and humility in our hearts and our lives. We are called to forgive our neighbors, our enemies, and yes ourselves as well. We are called to respond to events we can scarcely take in with compassion not only for the victims but also for the perpetrators.

And that is why we are here today. We are not here just to see our friends, though that is a joy; we are not here just to sing, though that is good for our brains and our immune systems; we are not here just because people who go to church live longer!

We are here to be transformed. We are here to learn how to follow Jesus. We are here to be sustained in our journey by the presence of God in this place, in one another and in the eucharist. And we are here to pray.

Prayer is our superpower. Prayer is what lets the light in. Prayer is how we align ourselves with Spirit and how we invite Spirit into our hearts and into our world and into Congress and the White House and the Pentagon. And that is powerful. So powerful.

The wise men, the Magi, followed the star which led them to Jesus. We don’t need a star, we can come directly to the throne of God, to the feet of the one who is both our big brother and our Savior. And there we can ask for grace, which is always freely given. Grace to love where we have never dared love before.

Because that is who our God is. Our God is light and our God is love and our God shows us in Jesus an entirely new way to be human. And by deep, gentle, humble loving we become the light of the world. God moving in us and through us can do more than we have ever imagined possible.
Alleluia!

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 

Last week we heard about John the Baptizer preaching repentance in the desert and baptizing people in the River Jordan. Today we fast forward: John is in prison. He is in prison because he preached against the Jewish ruler, Herod. Herod had left his own wife and got involved with his half-brother’s wife. In Mark’s gospel  (6:18), John is recorded thundering to Herod, "It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife."  Like any autocratic leader, Herod had no scruples about throwing John into prison for that!

In today’s gospel reading, John sends a couple of his disciples to Jesus to ask, “are you the one who is to come or are we still waiting for someone else?”

Why was John asking?

Some people think that John was depressed in prison and close to losing his faith. Yet another possibility is that he was puzzled, even confused, by Jesus.

Remember how intense John was in his preaching? No gentle persuasion but straight up “You brood of vipers!” and “The axe is lying at the root of the trees.” Talking about Jesus he said, “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” And now he sees Jesus, preaching the Beatitudes – blessed are the poor in spirit and so on - and healing the sick.

Perhaps John was expecting a very different Messiah. Perhaps he was expecting a Messiah who would free the land from Roman rule, a Messiah who would have power over others. But during his time in the desert, Jesus had already said no to the temptation to take short cuts, to use his power in the wrong way.

So in the reply Jesus sends, he claims his Messiahship by referring back to the Old Testament prophecies of redemption and renewal, “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

Jesus’ ministry of healing is old hat to us, but at the time it was pretty amazing not just because people got well, but because in 1st century Palestine people who got chronically sick were thought to be being judged by God. In healing them, Jesus was not just providing medical services, he was making it clear that they were not garbage who should be thrown away but were beloved of God. He was extending God’s love to include everyone – especially those thought to have been punished or abandoned by God.

So on the one hand we have John preaching God’s judgment and on the other, Jesus showing God’s love and grace.

You might expect Jesus to tell his followers that John was wrong or at least that John was not understanding the reign of God but he doesn’t do that at all. He says, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

Now there’s a paradox.

“among those born of women no one has arisen greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.”

We can think of John as being at a pivotal point in our salvation narrative – he is the last of the prophets and the greatest of these, but in the new era, the reign of heaven, he is no more important than anyone else.

Every year we spend two Sundays talking about John the Baptizer yet in the new era, the kingdom of heaven proclaimed and demonstrated by Jesus the Christ, he is no more important than you or me.

Isn’t that astonishing? We are equally beloved of God and equally important in the reign of Christ.
The coming of Christ in Jesus opens up an entirely new way of understanding humanity’s relationship with God. We are not condemned, we are not punished, we are beloved. We are called into relationship with God, more than that, we are called into unity with God. We are called to be Christ-like beings.

Jesus brings us the astonishing gift of grace – we are reconciled with God not by anything we do or don’t do but by God’s gift alone.

This was Martin Luther’s great insight. He was an Augustinian friar, and apparently a very timid one who was afraid of God’s judgement. He was afraid of doing it wrong and being punished for his sins. But when he was studying the book of Romans, he had this transformative insight. We are not saved by what we do or by how much we contribute to the Vatican or any other religious authority. We are saved by the grace of God alone. It is God’s action that draws us into reconciliation, not ours.

 We are saved, he declared, by grace through faith.

In other words, God’s gift to us in Jesus is reconciliation but we get to accept the gift and trust in it.
You may remember that when Jesus visited his hometown of Nazareth, he found he could hardly do any miracles there (Mark 6:5). Why was that? Because the people thought ‘that’s just Joseph’s son’ and didn’t trust him as the Messiah. They didn’t trust so they were not healed.

The gift that we celebrate every year at Christmas, the Feast of the Incarnation, is that God loves us so much that she chose to become human, to take on all the limitations of being human, and in so doing showed that all flesh – all matter – is beloved. God’s longing is for the redemption of the world when all her beloved beings will be brought into right relationship and we will no longer be separated from the triune God, in any way.

Jesus did not come to judge us.

Most of us can remember some version of John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  But do you remember the next verse? Verse 17? “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world.

A lot of people still don’t get this. They think that we are flawed, and that we are condemned and we have to grovel to God. Or they think that other people are condemned, that they are the chaff which John the Baptizer said would get thrown into the fire.

But, people of Advent, people of the Coming, this is what gives us joy, this is what gives us hope, this is what gives us peace. This is what set Isaiah’s feet dancing when, in the first reading today, he proclaimed, “the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert…” This is what made Mary sing “My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”

God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world.  We are beloved, the earth is beloved, the cosmos is beloved. We need do nothing to earn God’s love.
We need do nothing except say thank you, rejoice and live like it’s true.

Because it is.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall

I struggled with this morning’s sermon. I did all the things I normally do – read the readings, consulted a commentary, looked at a close reading of the gospel in Greek and read several other excellent sermons, and still nothing. Nothing to share with you.

I think it’s because rather than filling me with hope and joy, today’s readings left me grieving.  Grieving, because the reality of the world we are living in seems further than ever away from the world that Isaiah and Paul and John were seeing. It’s Advent again and we are still waiting. We are still waiting for the little shoot to grow tall and strong out of Jesse’s stump. We are still waiting for the end of racism that Paul proclaimed in Romans. We are still waiting for the wilderness of our culture to make clear the road for our God. Still waiting.

We avoid grief because it is uncomfortable. I would rather be rejoicing in the generosity of God. But grief is part of our life, and it is part of God’s life in Jesus. We grieve for what we had that is gone, we grieve for what we long for but do not have. There are mystics who say that our very longing for God is a kind of grief because in this life we never experience more than a momentary oneness with the divine. So our longing is always unfulfilled.

When we avoid grief, it can turn sour inside us. Looking around the church this morning, we are deeply grateful for one another and for God’s generosity in providing this building, this liturgy, this music, this faith community. And yet we grieve that there are no children here. We grieve for our children and grandchildren who are not finding God in the way we do, or not apparently even noticing that God is missing in their lives. And if we avoid our grief it can turn to anger and blame.

It must be someone’s fault that the church isn’t what it was in our youth. It must be someone’s fault that our economy has changed and there are fewer well-paying blue-collar jobs. It must be someone’s fault that social security costs the country so much and medical expenses keep rising. Someone must be cheating the system. Someone must be blamed.

We are living in a culture of blame and a culture of racism. A culture where some at the highest levels can describe people who have immigrated legally into this country as ‘garbage’. Can describe people who God has created and who are God’s beloved as garbage. My friends, you don’t need me to tell you that there is no part of Creation which we may see as garbage when God sees it as good.
​
This prejudice and hatred grieve me deeply.

The religious folk who went out to the desert to hear John preach were confident that they were the descendants of Abraham, and they were ok. They were proud of their religious and racial heritage. But John said it was not enough – God could make good Jews out of stones. God can make good Christian Americans out of rocks too. If God wants to. But that is not what God wants.

God wants us to repent and to show the fruits of repentance. We often think of repentance as having a change of heart, yet it also has a connotation of return from exile. Like the Hebrews exiled in Babylon, we are away from our true home which is the presence of God. We have glimpses of it. We get postcards from home. But it is up to us to take the journey through the desert. The journey of repentance which is also a journey of grief.

Yet not just of grief. It is a journey of hope as we return to the God who loves and welcomes all beings, who is creating a new kin-dom where violence is unknown. Where anger and blame are replaced by love because in God’s generosity there is plenty for everyone, lion and lamb alike. This is Isaiah’s vision, the Great Shalom, where all are reconciled with one another and with God. It is this new Creation that God calls us to co-create with her. Not the old one based on hate but a new one based in love, compassion, justice and peace.

A few minutes ago, we sang, “O come O come Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, That mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear.” We grieve because we are still living in exile when we long to be reconciled with God and not just as individuals but as a society, as the whole of humanity, indeed the whole of the cosmos. And we seem so far from that reconciliation.
 
Yet John the Baptizer tells us that the coming of the Christ changes everything.
 
“Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees”, he says, “every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” A fearful image, but Isaiah takes the picture of a tree stump – a tree that has been cut down - and turns it into a healing one. From that stump, that tree that seemed dead, a shoot is growing. A shoot which will become a branch and a branch in which the Spirit dwells.
 
And therein is our hope. That the tree which fails to fruit or whose fruit is bitter and sour will be cut down. Things will change. Yet even that diseased tree may grow again in newness of life. Even that tree may return from exile and be reconciled with God in the coming Great Shalom.
 
There is hope for us. And we are called to grow that hope. Listen to the words of John the Baptizer again, “Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
 
Being good Christians isn’t enough, even being good Episcopalians isn’t enough. We are to bear fruit worthy of repentance. In Galatians, Paul says “the fruit of the Spirit” is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23 NASB). This is the fruit worthy of repentance, “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.”  This is what we are working towards, with God’s help. These are the qualities of the coming reign of Christ, the reign of righteousness, peace and justice. These are the qualities that we are to develop in ourselves and in one another and in our society.
 
This is hard and deeply counter-cultural work. And it is ours to do.
 
Instead of allowing our grief to turn us sour and critical, let us turn instead to Jesus, the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and allow him to work in us and with us the coming shalom, the day of peace, the great turning and return home from exile. Amen.

the Rev, Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 
 
 

I expect you have a favorite movie, or movies. One of mine is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which came out in 2011. Who remembers seeing it?

A quick reminder for those of you who haven’t watched it as many times as me. A group of older British people (all played by familiar actors) decide to retire to India to a hotel which has a wonderful brochure. But when they get there, they find that instead of being beautifully appointed it is direly in need of repair – one bedroom has no door and another is full of pigeons. The hotel is run by a young and eternally optimistic Indian man, Sonny. In the face of their indignation, Sonny frequently declares “Everything will be alright in the end, and if it is not yet alright it is not yet the end.”

Which is a wonderful statement of the Christian hope of the eschaton – that is the end of the age when all things will be reconciled in Christ. “Everything will be alright in the end, and if it is not yet alright it is not yet the end.”

Today we celebrate that hope - the hope of the fully realized Creation, reconciled to God in Christ. The day when everything is brought into balance and the lion lies down with the lamb in the Great Shalom. Today is the last day of the Church’s year and so it is a fitting day for us to celebrate our hope and our trust that “everything will be alright in the end, and if it is not yet alright it is not yet the end.”

And yet, and yet – our Gospel reading is not the victorious Sovereign Jesus seated on the heavenly throne surrounded by Cherubim and Seraphim and by all the beings of the cosmos worshipping and praising, living fully the love of God. No, it’s quite the opposite. Jesus, dying on the cross.
And here my friends is the contradiction, the paradox, the conundrum which is at the heart of the mystery of our faith.

In the middle of human agony, betrayal, suffering, Jesus IS the Sovereign of the world

The Apostle Paul tells of a time when he heard the Holy Spirit tell him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9)

My power is made perfect in weakness.
God’s power is made perfect in the weakness of the cross.
It makes no sense, does it?

Yet this knowledge of God’s power in weakness is absolutely fundamental to our understanding of Jesus’ teaching. He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek…” (Matt. 5:2-5) and “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt.5:44)

These are not positions of power as we understand power. Yet this is the way of Jesus. And as his disciples, it is our way.

On the night of his arrest, Luke tells us that, ‘when Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him. And on the cross, he said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."

Forgiveness and healing, not hatred and violence. This is the way of Jesus the Christ.

God’s power is made perfect in weakness. God takes the total disaster of the crucifixion and turns it around. We cannot separate the crucifixion and the resurrection. You can’t have one without the other. The resurrection and subsequent ascension of Jesus the Christ come directly out of the crucifixion.

Jesus did not defend himself against the soldiers who came in the night. Jesus did not defend himself against the accusations of the high priests. He did not defend himself against Herod, or against Pontius Pilate. His non-defensiveness was his strength. God’s power is made perfect in weakness.

This is not as simple as when we humans are weak and down on our luck, God is strong. It is something much greater and more difficult to understand. It is the paradox that in God’s topsy turvy kingdom, the terrible weakness of Jesus is also his glory.

Philippians puts it like this, “And being found in human form, [Christ] humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.” (Phil.2:8-11)

And how does that passage start? It starts with the instruction that we are to have the same mind as Christ. We are to think like Christ who did not cling to the status and power of being God but instead became human and was obedient to the point of death.

We are to think like Christ?     Wow.

There’s another Greek word for this idea - Kenosis  which means pouring out. Just as Jesus poured out his life for us, so we are to pour out our lives for one another and for the life of the cosmos.
And therein lies the power of God.

We have an example of this pouring out in our galaxy. The sun, which provides the light which is the source of our physical life, the sun is burning itself out. It is steadily using up its fuel and in about 5 billion years it will stop giving out light and become a red giant. The kenosis  - the pouring out and dying of the sun is what gives us life.

In a similar way, the pouring out – the kenosis - of Jesus gives us life as he is the Sovereign of the cosmos.

I find it really difficult to wrap my mind around this paradox. For some Christians, power is in having firearms, or in political power or even in armies and militia. But that’s not how we understand Jesus the Christ. God’s power is made perfect in weakness, in forgiveness, in generous healing love.

Jesus dying in agony on the cross is also, at the same time, the Cosmic Christ.

And the calling forth of Creation, Jesus dying and rising again, the hope of the eschaton is all one story -the story of God’s creative and powerful love which calls a cosmos into being and into intentional and loving relationship consummated in the Christ.

People of God, we are called to live like Jesus. We are called to pour out our lives for one another and for the flourishing of all beings. We are called to risk being seen as weak when we don’t retaliate, when we don’t take up arms, when we don’t fight back. We are called to be seen as weak when we refuse to hate but rather love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

And we can take that risk because we know that God’s power is made perfect in weakness. And we know that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God and that “Everything will be alright in the end and if it is not yet alright it is not yet the end.”

Or as the 14th century mystic, Mother Julian of Norwich put it, 'All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.' 

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 
 
 
 

Last week we reflected on the eschaton or the end of time when all things will be brought into balance. Today’s readings continue that theme. The first reading, from Isaiah, starts with the thrilling words, “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating…” (Is 65:17)

The Gospel however is not so optimistic.

When some people were admiring the temple Jesus instead of admiring its beauty, declared that it would all be destroyed. And he was right. Some forty years later it was gone. In the year 66, there was a Jewish uprising against the Romans, and in 70 the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, eventually destroying the city, killing or enslaving tens of thousands of people and razing the buildings.

I don’t know whether Jesus had a premonition, or whether he knew that the ways things were going politically it was bound to happen or whether, since the gospel was written after the destruction of the temple, the gospel writer figured that Jesus would surely have foreseen such a terrible event. Whatever it was, we can be certain that this gospel passage relates to the devastation of Jerusalem.

The destruction of the temple meant an end to temple sacrifices and Judaism changed radically to a religion based on the Torah and Rabbinic teaching and centered in synagogues. At the same time, Christianity was developing as more than a Jewish sect and Christians were being persecuted. So we can take this whole gospel text as describing the upcoming conflict with Rome in Jerusalem and the terrible persecution of Christians under the Emperor Nero.

Which for us is almost 2,000 years in the past. Can an ancient text prophesying an ancient disaster have any relevance for us today?

Whenever we read scripture there are two of us present. Us, the readers, and the Holy Spirit. We can think of it as a triangle – the scripture, the gathered community of faith (that’s us) and the Holy Spirit. So our task is to read and listen and ask “What is the Holy Spirit saying to us this morning?”

I hear something about permanence and impermanence. What lasts and what doesn’t.

In the past week or two several people, both members and non-members have commented to me about how much they like this space for worship and for music. But as a congregation you know that buildings do not last forever. Just like the temple, in 1961 St. Peters was destroyed by fire, but unlike the temple you were able to rebuild and this is the result.

Church buildings do not last forever and neither does church as we know it. Rectors retire and move on, beloved parishioners die or move or are no longer able to get here. Everything changes.

Except one thing.

The incredible and astonishing love of God.

The one thing that lasts is love. Which is why Jesus can say “…do not be terrified… not a hair of your head will perish.”

He is not promising that our bodies will be permanent. He is not promising that we will be protected from danger or kept away from grief. We only have to look at his own life to know that. What he is promising is that God’s love is permanent, God’s love is greater than warfare, greater than betrayal, greater than pain and God’s love always underpins us. God’s love always sustains us even in the darkest times. God’s love will bring us through.

And our love too, our love lives on.

For love is the one thing that is permanent. Not the sentimental, hallmark type of love but the deep love that Christ births in us. The deep love that wants just one thing, the flourishing of all beings in the reign of God.

As you know, the two great commandments are to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. This is bedrock. This is permanent.

Whatever we are doing we can do it with love. Sometimes I imagine that all our lives we are busy building things, building a family, a career, a church, a good life but that when we die all that falls away. And then we realize; we realize that what we thought was real and important was just the scaffolding. What we have actually been building, the one thing that lasts, is love itself. And as the scaffolding falls away, we can see with God’s eyes the love that we have built.

There’s a wonderful song by Dolly Parton, “When we’re Gone, long gone.”  Here’s the chorus:

And when we're gone long gone
The only thing that will have mattered
Is the love that we shared
And the way that we cared
When we're gone, long gone.

For love is the one thing that lasts and that is our eschatological hope, that in the end it will all fall away except for love.

The prophet Isaiah put it like this:

“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.”

In the place of the old physical Jerusalem which beautiful as it was could be destroyed by the Romans - in place of the old Jerusalem, the old world, God is creating a new heavens and a new earth. A new heavens and a new earth filled with joy and people who delight God’s heart – the Great Shalom.

And as co-creators with God we too are building the new heavens and new earth, the Great Shalom of love. Whenever we choose to let go of anger and resentment, whenever we forgive, whenever we look for the best in someone rather than criticizing them, we are building the new. Whenever we stand up for justice and refuse to be caught up in politics of hate, we are building the new.

People of God, this is our calling. We are called to share God’s steadfast love even in times of change, in times of disaster – we are midwives of the new heaven and the new earth which God is even now creating in our midst. And we can be confident that however bad things get, God’s love is sustaining us and holding us close.
 
Let us pray for help in creating the new. Please join me in the prayer attributed to St Francis which you will find on page 833

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is
hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where
there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where
there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where
there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to
be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is
in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we
are born to eternal life. Amen.

​the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 

The season is changing, fall is here and winter is on its way. I had the joy of spending most of this week in Virginia with dear friends, surrounded by trees, many of whom were shedding their leaves for the winter and creating an ever-changing display of extraordinary color and beauty. And here on Morro Bay, the wintering birds are arriving together with the beginning of the rainy season.

In the Church, the season is changing as well. In just two weeks we will be celebrating the last day of the Church’s year, the Reign of Christ; and then Advent starts as we prepare once again for our remembrance of the coming of the Christ in Bethlehem. If you forget that the Church’s New Year is right after Thanksgiving, it can seem surprising that one week we celebrate the culmination of the Christ event – the time yet to come when all things are brought into balance - and the next we are preparing for the coming of the Christ in the Incarnation.

But if you listen carefully to our readings now and into Advent you will hear a common theme. “Get ready, Christ is coming!”  Both these last Sundays in Pentecost and the first Sundays in Advent are focused on the hope of Christ’s coming, both in the incarnation and at the end of time. We have a long word for our belief in the coming time when God  will, as we say in our Eucharistic prayer, “in the fullness of time, put all things in subjection under your Christ.” Theologians talk about the eschaton which comes from the Greek word for last. So our eschatological hope is in the coming of Christ in the end times.

Some people get caught up in ideas about the end times. The end of the world has been predicted again and again, some people count as many as 300 times over the years. In today’s gospel reading the Sadducees (who didn’t believe in resurrection) were trying to trick Jesus by asking him a question about resurrection. He told them they were thinking too literally.

There are many people who want to take things literally – who want the certainty of knowing exactly how the end times will unfold, and who compare the political events in our world with Biblical prophecies.  It seems that the church in Thessaloniki was getting confused by people doing exactly that, because in the New Testament lesson we heard Paul telling them not to get caught up and scared by stories about the end times. The stories he said were just a scam.

I admit find myself doing it sometimes – wanting to identify this world leader as the great beast of Revelation, and this one as the Anti-Christ, as though somehow condemning them in my mind will make it all better.

But our eschatological hope is in something much more vague and yet much more certain – the unconditional and never-ending love of the living God. Our eschatological hope is that the living God is creating in every minute and working with us to bring about the very best outcome in every situation. So even when it doesn’t look like it, the ever-expanding universe is being drawn towards the highest and best.

That is our hope, people of God, that in every situation however dire, God is living, God is here among us and beside us and within us and is working with us to bring about the peace and justice of Shalom. We translate shalom as peace, yet it is a fullness of peace which means much, much, more than just an absence of conflict. Its root in ancient Hebrew has the sense of making whole, of well-being and health.

The living God did not just start the ball rolling with a big bang and then wander off. The living God is right here with us as we work to expand the reign of God, as we work for shalom in our lives, our community and our world.

Working for shalom does not necessarily mean doing things because shalom is a state of being.
Looking again at the New Testament reading. Paul does not give thanks for all the good work that the Thessalonian church is doing, no, he gives thanks that they are called to be “the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth.” I’m not going to unpack that statement this morning; my point is that who they are in Christ is as important as what they are doing. The doing flows naturally from the being.

Our own experience of shalom is important. Jesus once said that the kingdom of God is within you. (Lk 17:21) When our inner life is one of shalom it creates a beautiful ripple effect which blesses those around us. I imagine Jesus was like that. I think that just being in his presence would have brought a sense of comfort and peace because he was abiding in God. Wouldn’t it be amazing if our inner lives were so deeply grounded in Spirit that wherever we go, even to Albertsons, people around us would find themselves calmed and turning toward God?

Inner shalom does not come by ignoring the difficult things both in ourselves and around us but by praying for healing, and remembering that difficulty is not everything.

I don’t know if you have ever had this experience - I’m listening to the news on the radio while I’m driving. I’m driving through great and amazing beauty but my mind and my attention is on something that is happening in Washington, and it’s not good. But then I turn off the radio and suddenly notice that the tide is low and the estuary is full of birds and the hills are starting to turn green, and the marine layer is giving way to sun. My attention shifts and I give thanks.

I think it’s like that with the ‘not-yet but coming’ end times. They give us hope because they provide us with a vision of what is possible. Although we get to focus on what is in front of us, bringing shalom into the difficulties of daily living in this time and place, we do that within the context of something much bigger. Within the context of the creative love of God drawing all things towards balance and completion.

Our trust in the endless love of God helps us to know that we are working and walking towards something glorious.

Most of us in this room have more of our lives behind us than in front of us. It has been fascinating to read the biographies that y’all have been sharing in the Pebble - the places we have been, the people we have loved, the decisions we have made and how our lives have unfolded in expected and unexpected ways. And my friends we have the confidence that our path is taking us toward something much more glorious yet – the day when we will meet God face to face.

And we can take every step between now and then with hope. Yes, our bodies are not what they once were and sometimes it seems like just simple activities take so much longer, but we are, both together and individually, living every day in the presence of the living God, with the support and encouragement of the Spirit, knowing that we are, however imperceptibly, moving toward the Great Shalom.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 

Our gospel readings for the past few weeks have all been about prayer – faith, gratitude, and today persistence. Luke is very clear about Jesus’ intention in telling the parable of the unjust judge and the persistent widow. He headlines it “a parable about the disciples’ need to pray always and not to lose heart.”

Which is a good thing.

Because we might get confused and think it’s a parable telling us about the nature of God.

It was the job of the judge to protect the vulnerable – the widows, orphans and foreigners – but either he couldn’t be bothered, or he had other ambitions which consumed him. One widow needed him to make a judgment on her behalf. We don’t know what exactly but probably it was to do with her deceased husband’s estate. And so she kept on at him. She kept demanding that he do his job and finally he did, just to get rid of her.

If this is a parable about prayer, does it mean that God needs us to keep reminding him of our needs before he gets round to doing anything?

Now remember that the parable is about the “need to pray always and not to lose heart.” And Jesus specifically says, “will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.”

So there’s a problem.

If God will quickly grant justice to his chosen ones, what about the times we pray and God does not seem to respond, period? It’s not just that we don’t get an answer quickly, we don’t get an answer at all, or at least not the one we want. Does that mean that we are not God’s chosen ones, or that God isn’t paying attention? Or that we didn’t pray persistently enough or use the right words? Or maybe we weren’t sufficiently grateful or simply didn’t have enough faith. And what about situations of blatant injustice? Does God not care?

I suspect that we need a paradigm shift in our understanding of God and the way God works. And that’s not easy. We are used to thinking of God as being someone, like the judge. who listens to our prayers and then decides whether or not to answer them. And if we think about God like that, then we hit some unanswerable questions.

For example, when the Twin Towers came down on 9/11 2,700 people were killed. Yet on a typical day 50,000 people worked there, and around 17,000 people were in the towers at the time of the attack. What made the difference? Did God not care as much about those who died as about those who gave thanks that they survived?

In the last century there have been many new ideas about the way the universe works. Quantum physics has developed to show how the tiniest particles of matter work; chaos theory offers new insight into complex systems; string theory suggests that all of creation is based on vibration, and at the other end of the spectrum, cosmologists now think that the universe is expanding because of so-called ‘dark energy’. Scientists suggest that the cosmos is made of about 4.9% ordinary matter, like you me and this building, 26.8 % dark matter and 68.3% dark energy. And I really have no idea what they are talking about.

But if we have all this new information and all these new theories about the universe, isn’t it time that we revise our pictures of God?

What if God is not omnipotent in the way that my questions about the Twin Towers assume? What if God does not directly intervene in the life of the cosmos but rather participates?

That would mean that God is not directing the events of our lives, but is accompanying us and creating with us. Scripture tells us that God is love. If God is love then Love is what sustains us and pulls us forwards; Love is what always bring the highest possible outcome from every situation.

So when we pray, we are praying for Love to be manifest. We are not begging an omnipotent but distracted God to pay attention to our situation, rather we are adding our love to God’s love – we are co-creating the best possible outcomes together with the God who is participating in our lives and is participating in the continuing work of Creation.

From this perspective, persistent prayer makes sense because every situation is always in flux. Things are always changing. Prayer brings our love and the love of the Creator into that state of change. And that is powerful. And persistent prayer brings love persistently.

When we look at it like this, persistent prayer is not begging a bored judge to pay attention but more like keeping our foot on the accelerator. Steady and even. Though that metaphor also breaks down because the foot on the accelerator provides control and prayer is not a form of remote control.

Prayer brings our positive and loving energy into the state of flux which is our reality and God’s reality. Our love joins with God’s love and as we participate together in loving creativity so something new becomes possible. We don’t know the best possible outcome of any situation because there are so many variables which we don’t know about, and which are outside our control.

A simple example is that a couple of weeks ago I was on call for jury duty. After calling in twice, I was meant to call after 5 on Tuesday. I woke up in the middle of the night and realized I had forgotten to call. So early Wednesday morning I went to call in, but could not find the card with my jury number on it. We turned the house upside down looking for it. I kept praying for help to find the card. We didn’t find it. There was no-one in the jury office until 8:30 and when I got through, a nice woman called Jasmine told me that I should already have arrived and reported for duty. And then she helped me think of a truthful and legitimate reason that she could excuse me. By the time I came off the phone I was excused from jury duty for 12 months and excused from spending the whole day in jury selection.

As far as I knew, the best solution was to find the jury card and that is what I was praying for. If I had been in control, it would have turned up. But then I would have spent the day at the courthouse. But I was not in control and God was not sitting in the clouds deciding whether or not to help me find the card, God was participating in my life and in the unfolding of the universe for the highest good of all beings.

After talking with the disciples about faith, and demonstrating the importance of gratitude, in this week’s gospel Jesus encourages us to be persistent in prayer and not give up hope. There are many reasons why we may be tempted to give up hope. We live at a time when the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, where uncertainty and insecurity lurk at every corner, and our courts are under threat.

But our prayer helps to bring Love, love with a capital L into every situation. Our prayer joins with God’s activity and helps bring about outcomes we cannot even imagine.

So my friends, let us pray always and not lose heart.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 

I think it was Oprah who popularized the “attitude of gratitude.” Whoever it was, the idea of having a practice of gratitude has become part of popular culture. It’s an extension of the older idea of “counting your blessings.”

In this morning’s gospel reading, a group of ten lepers asks Jesus for help. Lepers were people with skin disease. It probably wasn’t what we know as leprosy or Hansen’s disease which is caused by a bacterial infection that can damage skin, eyes and nerves. Whatever it was, lepers were the outcasts of society. They had to stay separate from everyone else not so much because they were infectious but because they were ritually unclean, and in the event that their skin infection cleared up they had to get a clean bill of health from the priests before they could rejoin their families.

Jesus tells them to go and show themselves to the priests. They went.

Notice that they are not healed at the time they set out. They are still lepers. Yet they do what Jesus says. In the few verses before todays reading the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith, and here we have a story about faith. The lepers are healed and restored to the potential of full engagement in society as they are doing what Jesus told them. Not before, not after, but in the process of obedience to Jesus’ command.

Our faith increases as we are obedient to God’s word to us. The Holy Spirit always speaks quietly, prompting us to follow the highest leading of Christ. I think most of us don’t usually hear a voice or get an email from God. For most of us it’s probably an inkling or an intuition. I wonder how it is for you?

Let’s just take a moment to think about it. How does God speak to you?

Now please find someone else to talk to and think together about how you hear God’s voice speaking to you. If that’s not an experience you think you have had, that’s ok, you can think about how you might hear God.

It may mean changing seats but let’s make sure everyone has someone to talk to about how you might experience God speaking to you.

…
 
I think for me it’s a combination of things. First, I regularly ask God to lead and direct me in God’s paths, so I am actively seeking God’s direction. My days are usually pretty flexible, and so I am often asking which of the many things I could do, should I do next. And secondly I trust that God will guide me. Of course, there is a shadow side to that. I have a tendency to procrastinate and so it’s easy to think that doing the things I like to do and putting off the others is following God’s voice! Knowing my own shortcomings helps me to discern what is mine to do today.

I also hear God’s voice as I ponder the readings and prepare sermons, and in my conversations with you. I may start a train of thought which helps me to see things differently and consider my own responses in a new light. The spiritual path is one of constant re-evaluation in the light of Jesus’ teaching and the prompting of the Holy Spirit within the context of faith community. We teach one another. We are the voice of God to one another.

Our faith deepens as we dare to listen for God’s voice and then act on it.

The lepers heard Jesus’ instructions and set out to show themselves to the priests even though they were still unclean. The miracle occurred on their way. They were healed. As you know, only one of them came back to thank Jesus. He was so thrilled to be healed that he came running back hooping and hollering and praising God.

And Jesus points out that he wasn’t a good Jewish person, but a despised Samaritan. This guy was not a good Episcopalian but someone who never bothered to go to church. He wasn’t white and well educated but his family came from somewhere else and he only spoke broken English.  Not only did Jesus heal someone who wasn’t part of the in-crowd, he used him to demonstrate faith and gratitude.

Gratitude has been found to be very beneficial. It not only improves your mood but it can also lower your blood pressure, improve your sleep and improve your immune system.

But for us, as disciples of Jesus, gratitude is much, much more. We are not just generally grateful but we praise and thank God – it is an integral part of our relationship with God, our beloved.

Someone once told me that they didn’t see why God needs all this praise – like God needs us to say “good job, buddy.”  I think praising God is qualitatively different from praising a child or an employee. Our praise of God is a combination of worship, gratitude and awe. We continue to praise and worship God even when things are not going well for us, even when God doesn’t seem to be helping
.
The psalms are often a good example of this.

In today’s psalm we read:
Bless our God, you peoples; *
make the voice of his praise to be heard;
Who holds our souls in life, *
and will not allow our feet to slip.  
I think we can all get behind that but then the psalmist goes on:
9 For you, O God, have proved us; *
you have tried us just as silver is tried.
10 You brought us into the snare; *
you laid heavy burdens upon our backs.
11 You let enemies ride over our heads;
we went through fire and water; *
but you brought us out into a place of refreshment.

Remember these are reasons for praising and blessing God – because we have experienced heavy burdens and life has been so hard that we have been overwhelmed by enemies and went through fire and flood, but God remained faithful and sustained us through it all.

We are called not just to count our blessings but to continue to give thanks and praise to God for who God is regardless of what’s happening in our lives. This is a real challenge for me as I tend toward depression. We are not just to be grateful for the good things -food on the table and a roof over our heads – but even when food is scarce and the roof leaks. Because that does not change our fundamental reality that we are profoundly loved by the God who is always faithful and is always love.

And the nature of our relationship with God is love. Even when we are angry with God, even when things are not going well, we are sustained by the underlying love of the living God. And for that we are grateful.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 
 

I apologize for getting the gospel reading wrong in your bulletin. If the one assigned for St. Francis Day which I just read seems familiar to you it is because we read this just two months ago. I guess God wants us to take special note of this passage this year.

I play a lot of games on my phone and so I see a lot of advertisements. They are mainly for other games or for exercise routines but almost every day I see one asking me to send money to help orangutans whose forest is being cut down. I have enjoyed watching orangutans in the zoo and wondered why their native forest is being destroyed. There are several answers, but I was amazed to learn that one major reason is that Americans like RVs.

Yes, RVs. Recreational Vehicles.

When I think of the simple life of St Francis and how I might live more simply,  with very few possessions, one of the options seems to be to sell the house, get an RV and see where the Spirit takes me.

But RVs are made of a particular timber.  It is processed into a lightweight, moisture-resistant, flexible plywood then R.V. makers use it for interior walls, flooring, cabinets and other features. And where does that special timber grow? In the forests of Borneo where the orangutans live.[1]

In the last five years alone, tens of thousands of acres of the island’s forests have been chopped down. This has contributed to the disappearance of some of the world’s largest rainforests and wetlands, unleashing dense stores of carbon, upending the lives of Indigenous people and endangering the habitats of orangutans and other animals. All so that we can enjoy our RVs.

Who knew?

Of course we didn’t. But my friends, the information is out there.

The man in Jesus’ story knew that death was a possibility as any moment. The information was out there. But he chose not to think about that. Instead, he chose to build big barns to store all his goods. He chose to be rich in material wealth but not spiritual wealth.

And this is the challenge that St Francis gives us. He came from a wealthy family and as a young man had no trouble spending money on all the things that rich young men in the 13th Century spent money on. After a conversion experience and a big fight with his father, he became an itinerant beggar. He spent his time restoring local churches and nursing lepers. Eventually he built himself a hut and dedicated himself to a life of poverty – the complete opposite of the guy in the parable. He started preaching peace and brotherly love and soon gathered a group of men around him. The order was recognized by the Pope and grew rapidly.

There are many stories about Francis and animals. It is said that he preached to the birds and that on one occasion he brokered peace between a village and a wolf.  It is certain from his writings that he saw and honored God in Creation. In 1989 Pope John Paul II said that St Francis "invited all of creation – animals, plants, natural forces, even Brother Sun and Sister Moon – to give honor and praise to the Lord. [He] gives us striking witness that when we are at peace with God we are better able to devote ourselves to building up that peace with all creation which is inseparable from peace among all peoples."[2]

When we are at peace with God we are better able to devote ourselves to building up that peace with all creation which is inseparable from peace among all peoples.

So we can see that peace has three dimensions – peace with God, peace with one another and peace with all creation. And by peace I don’t simply mean no fighting. Peace in the spiritual sense is shalom – shalom means wholeness, or completeness. We might think of shalom as living in harmony with all beings, a state where there is abundance and an ethic of restraint which makes sure there’s enough for everyone.

The man in the gospel story is trying to create shalom for himself, but he doesn’t get that shalom is living in harmony, with generosity and care for all beings.

Jesus has already brought about our peace with God; it is a free gift, given purely through grace as a result of God’s amazing love for us and for all creation. Yet we get to live into it. We get to learn to live in peace by surrendering our lives – making a commitment to living shalom with all beings, guided by the Holy Spirit. I’m not sure if we ever get there, but the vision of God’s holy shalom draws us onward.

And it is that same vision of shalom which inspires us to cultivate peace in all our relationships. This is difficult. Relationships have at least two people involved and that means there are always at least two viewpoints. Even when we are estranged from someone, we can work to offer them shalom in our hearts; to cultivate an attitude of open love that allows them to be fully themselves – to know the joy of their own true nature. We can do that even when we disagree.

And then there’s peace with nature. This morning we are celebrating our companion animals, those creatures who share our lives and inhabit our hearts. Yet however much we live in harmony with our beloved pets, we know that the relationship between human and nature has become fundamentally disordered. And that disorder has reached a point where it threatens animal and human flourishing.

The orangutans of Borneo are not the only creatures threatened by our habits. Some scientists are calling our time the sixth mass extinction. There have been five previous times when huge numbers of living beings have been wiped out in a very short period. Now, due to human behavior we are losing biodiversity at a rate of somewhere between 100 and 1000 times the rate that would be expected were we not cutting down forests, wiping out coral reefs and increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

How then are we to love creation?

Perhaps it is time to take an inventory of our lives. The fourth step of Alcoholics Anonymous is “Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.” Perhaps it is time to make a searching and fearless moral inventory of the ways our lives impact creation. And then with God’s help look for ways to change our behavior and learn to live more simply with less negative impact.
There is a lot of information available about the impacts of which bank we use or where we invest our money, the food we eat and the food we throw away, the cars we drive and how much we walk; how to make our yards drought tolerant and insect friendly, and where we can send dollars to help save habitat for orangutans and other creatures. I could go on, but you know these things. The information is out there.

People of God, the big aha that we need is to realize that we are part of an incredible web of life – God’s ongoing creation. And our actions, our prayers, yes even our thoughts, impact that web. And we are called to pour love into the web. We are called to be points of Shalom which bring peace and healing. The love which we feel for our companion animals is a start and it is only a start.

St. Francis calls us to live simply so that we may share the abundance we receive from God with all beings and so that we do not use more than our share of creation. Because building bigger barns to store stuff for ourselves is missing the point. God made us to live in shalom with all beings. At peace with God, at peace with our neighbor and at peace with creation. 

      Shalom

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall


[1][1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/world/asia/indonesia-borneo-deforestation-rv.html#:~:text=American%20demand%20for%20tropical%20wood,clouded%20leopards%20and%20sun%20bears.
 

[2] https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/messages/peace/documents/hf_jp-ii_mes_19891208_xxiii-world-day-for-peace.html

It’s good to be with you all here this morning. Especially as it was touch and go earlier in the week… with all the anticipation around the Rapture. You heard about that, right? Apparently, someone shared with the world that Jesus came to them in a dream back in 2018 to let them know the Rapture would happen on September 23, 2025.[1] I realize this isn’t the first time the world’s anticipated an event like this, but this year, given where we are as a country and as a world, when I heard the Rapture was imminent, a part of me didn’t think it would be so bad. Even though this is absolutely not my theology, I like to think I keep a somewhat open mind … and, I must admit, I didn’t think it would be too bad to be proven wrong on this, and have the Rapture actually take place sometime on Tuesday, as promised.

… I’m not proud of it, but I was a little bit disappointed when I woke up on Wednesday and absolutely nothing had happened.

Having Jesus take care of it all would actually be so good, and so welcomed right about now. Nothing we’re doing seems to be making much of a difference, and so for a fleeting moment there I, too, longed for God to do something massive, to take care of it for it for us, in one dramatic and decisive divine act.

We live in a strange and peculiar world. We have millennia of accumulated wisdoms, tested spiritual knowings that connect us today with the ancients who came and lived before us. Our bodies, our physical selves, have evolved to be wonderfully and intimately interconnected with the world we live in, with the complexity of life we share this world with; and we have our Christian faith, born of a wildly long lineage that reaches back through the ages, a lineage of spiritual teachings that offer us firm guidance for how to live, how to be. We’ve repeatedly been told, through the ages, how to do life well together, how it all could be so much better than it is.

We’ve been taught a ton through the history of humanity; humanity has witnessed and responded to a lot; as human beings we sense a lot and have an instinct for even more, and yet … we, humans, tend to ignore all we “know”-  trading it, instead, for the junky ideas floating on the surface of the current moment. We get caught up here, on the surface, and we get frustrated and uncomfortable that things are the way they are. And so we yearn for the world to change, for something to happen, for someone to do something. For an event like the Rapture!

And the junk floating around on the surface, it’s only really concerned with the individual self. It places super-high value on comfort, on wealth, on having power over people and place; it values these things, actually, more than the life of the whole. And for those of us shaped by a society like this, all the world, the people, the plants, the animals, all of it can be thought of as existing solely to be ‘of service,’ all of it as resources to be taken and used, misused, and abused to indulge our comforts and wants. With this worldview, if we want things to be better, it’s the world that needs to offer it up – because the world ‘out there’ exists for us and for our needs.

Even when he’s dead, the rich man in our Gospel reading today, expects someone else to do something for him! “Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue” he calls out to Abraham. The rich man looks out, spots Lazarus, and immediately has a plan to put him to work for his own benefit, for his comfort.

In this context, it’s a staggering self-centered move! And yet, we’re the inheritors of a cultural way of being that shaped the rich man and still shapes us today. I think it’s highly likely that at some point or another, each one of us has thought: if only that person/those people would do what I want them to do, live or think or act the way I want them to – then, the world I’m forced to live in would be far more bearable. But people aren’t so quick to do our bidding, they have their own ideas, we are not of one mind - and so perhaps this is one reason why there’s so much violence of speech and action in this world we live in.

The rich man also begs Abraham to send Lazarus to his father’s house, to his five brothers, who – we must assume – are living as large he was. He wants to “use” Lazarus, a man from the dead, as a way to teach his brothers how they should be living, as a warning, so they can amend their lives and avoid ending up where he is. Abraham counters, he says if they’ve not paid attention to Moses and the prophets (if they’ve not learned from millennia of tested teachings and wisdoms handed down to this generation by the ancients) they absolutely will not listen, even to someone who’s back from the dead.

And this is true today, right?

We have it all, all the ancient wisdoms and teachings, God has given us Holy Scripture, a Savior, the Church, the Saints - but our society is noisy and demanding, and we are easily distracted. The culture we live in insists on being our primary teacher, so we learn to look out at the world around us, see it as separate from us, and we learn to claim and wield power over it to make it what we think we want, what we think we need, we learn to want to change it, and to change the people in it to suit us.

Yet, as Christians, we’re also inheritors of the Way, of Jesus’ Way – a way of living that draws our attention, crucially, to our interior world. Jesus’ Way teaches us to spend time ‘there’ get to know that world, work to transform that world, our own interior world. Jesus’ way is the most ancient of ways, and it emphasizes we are entirely interconnected, actually, and entirely dependent on God, and on this planet, and on one another for all of life, for all we have, for all we are; we are all in this together.

This is a ‘knowing’ that’s found deep in the being, in the heart; our relationship with God is a truth of our embodiment, of our whole selves. Jesus’ Way calls our attention to that, teaches and encourages our embracing of that, so that this inner knowing, our call to our own ongoing transformation, that is what we’re called to pay attention to, to listen to, and that’s what we can change.

Our best life, our true comfort, a healed world, an end, finally, to humanity’s abuse and exploitation of this planet and of one another doesn’t start and end out there, with everyone and everything ‘out there’ changing. There is no voice, no information, no new thought or well-articulated idea, there is no scientific development that can ever speak out a truth that will finally bring about the kind of change we’re all waiting for. … the change that’s needed must happen in here. It starts with each one of us taking seriously the immense impact our own conversion of life will have on the great unbroken story of life in God that’s still unfolding on this planet.

But it’s not easy, and it will take effort, and it’s going to take courage and creativity and commitment and faith,
it’s going to take all that for change to be lasting and to be real and good, and it has to come from within.
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So, in these times, whenever we find ourselves longing for the world to change, longing for God to do something decisive that will heal this broken world, let’s remember that God already did. In Christ Jesus we have all we need, have been taught all we need to learn, have been told all we need to hear; it’s up to us whether we choose to listen. Amen.

the Rev. Linzi  Stahlecker
September 28, 2025
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[1] https://www.today.com/popculture/rapture-tiktok-september-23-24-rcna233251