Slowed Down to Move Forward (Exodus 14:19-31)

I enjoy doing genealogical research, learning about my family’s history, and, occasionally, working what I’ve found out into a sermon. For example, I remember preaching a sermon after Dana and I visited the small German town where generations of Radmachers lived about how my great great great grandparents Peter and Anna left that place and came to the U.S. with their kids in 1851. In fact, stories like that reflect one of the things about this kind of research that I find most interesting.

I suppose there are people who get into genealogy because their family tree holds secrets about long lost ties to royalty, tales of fortunes lost and found, and connections to famous people.

That’s all well and good, but it’s not my story.

No, I come from a long line of ordinary people who worked (usually as farmers), got married, raised their children, and, every now and then, picked up everything and started over in a new place.

And I love trying to figure out why they made the decisions they made.

Were they running away from trouble, running toward opportunity, chasing a dream, restless, desperate?

Did they feel like they were jumping into the unknown or did they see themselves as part of a larger migration, a historic movement of people?

Maybe it was a mix of forces and feelings like these.

Thoughts like these filled my mind recently when I did something with my research that I’d never done before. I plotted on a map all the places I knew about from which my German ancestors emigrated.

It started when I noticed that both Dana and I had ancestors from small villages in what is today the modern state of Bavaria. I found their hometowns on a map.

This person lived in a small town in Alsace, so mark the spot.

Hanover, Baden, Westphalia–more ancestors, more villages, more spots marked on the map, and so on and so forth until my map had about a dozen pins in it.

And then I took a look at the big picture.

While pins were scattered across Germany, more than half the spots I marked formed a tight cluster–really it looks more like a straight line–just south of Frankfurt, Germany.

I looked closer and checked some names and dates.

It turns out that, over a fifty year period in the middle of the 19th century, entire branches of my family and Dana’s lived in and left behind small towns in a region that you could drive across in a single afternoon today. Some of our people lived as close as ten, fifteen, twenty miles to each other, before making their way to America.

And it fascinates me to think about and imagine both the personal and collective forces those families felt working upon them.

How amazing would it be to sit with them around their tables or take a walk with them to find out what they were thinking, what they were worried about, what they wanted to accomplish?

You see, while our ancestors ultimately took part in a mass migration of millions of persons from Germany to the U.S in the 1800s, each person, each family, in real time, had to make a decision to stay or to leave what they knew and step out into the unfamiliar, and, to me, those are the decisions and stories that truly capture and express the depth of the human experience.

You know the experiences I’m talking about.

The moments where you ask yourself, “Should I stay or should I go?”

Times when you question if the wise move is to hunker down and ride this situation out where you are, or if you need to get out of there as soon as possible?

The realization that you’re not even sure how you came to be where you are, but you’re here now, so what are you going to do about it?

Now look, as far as I know, my ancestors were able to ask and answer these questions for themselves. Their journey to this country wasn’t forced on them, a luxury that not all of our ancestors had.

Even still, if questions like that stir anything within your heart or spirit, if they get you thinking about your life, your family, or the lives of people you care about, then you’re in the right frame of mind to hear one of the most familiar and powerful stories from the Bible in a new way today.

Moses and the Israelites were on the run.

Theirs was a freedom movement–a sprint to leave trouble, oppression, and bondage behind.

But their former captors–Egypt’s pharaoh and his army–were in hot pursuit.

Then, to make matters worse, trouble got out in front of the Israelites again.

The people were on the run until they couldn’t run anymore.

They’d reached the sea, or was it a swamp? Regardless, Moses and his people were stuck.

They were stuck, but they were not hopeless.

Up to this point on their journey, the people had been following God’s lead.

The Bible says that God guided the people by appearing to them in the daylight God as a cloud of smoke and as a pillar of fire at night.

But now, at the water’s edge, something new happened.

The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night. (Exodus 14:19-20)

The people were sprinting, their captors were chasing, everyone was heading toward a calamity, and then God slowed everything down.

With Pharaoh's army held at a distance, Moses and the people caught their breath, steadied themselves, listened, and found the way forward.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left…. [and they] walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. (Exodus 14:21-29)

The miraculous crossing of the Red or Reed Sea is theological bedrock because it speaks to the very nature of God.

God is a God of liberation.

God rejects oppression.

God will go to great and creative lengths to make a way forward possible for those who yearn to be free.

Now let me just stop here for a moment and point something out. I don’t think our nation or any nation, for that matter, will find a full and comprehensive immigration policy in the story of the Exodus, but we as people of faith can most definitively say a few things about the subject.

Lying about people, treating them with contempt, like they are less than human, that the color of their skin or the place of their birth makes them inherently inferior to red-blooded white Americans, or anybody else for that matter—those attitudes and any policy based upon them deserve to be washed away like the forces of slavery in our story.

Borders and laws exist, of course, but when cruelty becomes policy and people are made to suffer as pawns in the schemes of the powerful and entitled, God’s Faithful Ones should be crystal clear about where we want to be when the Holy Presence moves to separate oppressors and those destined for freedom.

But, I digress.

I am approaching this season at Asbury as if we’re standing on the water’s edge like Moses and the people and that this is our moment to catch our breath, steady ourselves, listen, and find the way forward.

Behind us is a whole litany of challenges that required us to take action, challenges that required us to respond, and challenges that by God’s grace, we’ve met.

I’m talking about things like broken boilers, COVID, and the sea change that has occurred in church life over the last decade.

We’ve met the challenges before us, but life and ministry aren’t just about reacting to what’s chasing after us or what we’ve left in the past.

Sometimes we need a new vision for where we can go with God and sometimes God gives us the space and the time to glimpse a way into the future that we might otherwise miss.

A lot of life is meeting the moment when you have to do something, and that’s ok. Life’s “Have To”s are important.

But sometimes the moment comes when we say, “Of all that I can do, I’m choosing to do this because it’s where God is calling and leading me.”

I think it’s possible that we’re in such a moment—like when the pillar of smoke and fire became a hedge of protection around God’s people—and that the series on prayer we just finished, and the Dream Catching sessions we’ll begin next week, and our retreat next month can help each of us find a new way to be our best selves and a reinvigorated church.

That’s what I hope and I pray that we’ll find our new path together. Amen.

Image: Kotarbiński, Wilhelm, 1848-1921. Crossing the Red Sea, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.

Perfect Harmony (Colossians 3:12-14)

Dolly Parton died this week, a breaking news story that touched disparate corners of this country like few others can.

Who else will be mourned this weekend in gay dance clubs and evangelical churches alike?

Only Dolly.

Even more than her talent as a songwriter and a musician, Dolly’s true genius, it seems, was her love for people. I think that’s why so many mourn her death. They mourn because, even though they never met her, they believed that she cared about them, that when she said, as she so often did, that “she just loved people,” she meant it, and that her love included all of us.

By putting people above everything else, Dolly had a special way of getting us to appreciate and think about things that really matter, about holy things, and the ways of Jesus, and it was her death that got me thinking about a story from the Gospels.

One day, having worked up an appetite while following in his steps, Jesus’ disciples plucked some grain, some wheat or barley, from a nearby field and ate it.

And that’s when the trouble started.

Mark’s Gospel tells us that some Pharisees–that is to say members of a Jewish sect who were particularly zealous about observing the community’s religious law–took issue with the disciples’ snack break.

The problem was that it was a Sabbath Day, the God-ordained day of rest, and, in the eyes of the Pharisees, the disciples’ actions constituted a Sabbath violation.

The Pharisees said to [Jesus], “Look, why are they doing what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” (Mark 2:24)

And Jesus, as he did so often when asked a pointed question, responded with a story.

In this instance, he gave the Pharisees a history lesson, and reminded them of the time King David played loose with the rules in order to feed his troops.

And he said to them, “Have you never read what David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need of food, how he entered the house of God when Abiathar was high priest and ate the bread of the Presence, which it is not lawful for any but the priests to eat, and he gave some to his companions?” (Mark 2:25-26)

Then, as he also did so often, Jesus took a conversation about food and made it into something so much more than food.

He said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind and not humankind for the Sabbath.” (Mark 2:27)

Said another way, “The Sabbath was made for us. We weren’t made for the Sabbath.”

Jesus’s point is pretty straightforward.

As a day of rest, the Sabbath is a gift from God to humanity for our enjoyment and benefit. It’s a celebration of freedom and God’s blessings, not a chore or a cudgel.

According to Jesus, it was the religious gatekeepers “tsk tsk,” not the disciples’ snack, that most seriously missed the mark.

In this way, the story about Jesus and his disciples getting scolded for eating heads of grain on the Sabbath illustrates some timeless conflict that exists in religious circles—the conflict between law and grace, between rules and freedom, the conflict between people and institutions.

An observation by Professor of New Testament Matt Skinner elaborates on this point. Skinner writes,

It must be noted that Jesus’ argument was hardly novel and therefore not scandalous on its surface. In fact, when he notes that the purpose of the sabbath has always been to serve humankind (as opposed to making humankind serve some stern religious principle), he is essentially restating [a well known scripture] in which God institutes the sabbath so a people who once toiled in slavery can forever enjoy at least a modicum of rest. Rabbinic traditions dating to a century after Jesus if not earlier expressed opinions similar to his words in Mark 2:27…The proper function of the sabbath is to promote life and extol God as a liberator. Everyone knew that.

The next time we read through Mark’s Gospel we can dig into why Jesus made the authorities angry if he was only doing what everyone agreed was right. After all, he didn’t end up on a cross without stirring up some trouble.

For our purposes this morning, however, I want to dwell a bit longer on the conflict at the heart of this story and how we can apply it to our ongoing discussion about praying. Specifically, I want to bring it to bear on the topic of confession and praying for forgiveness.

Maybe more than anything else we do, praying for forgiveness and to forgive others brings to mind our relationship with the rules that we aspire to live by because praying like this is both an exercise in telling on ourselves for breaking those rules and naming names when we believe someone has broken a rule and harmed us.

When engaging in such prayers, our hearts and minds can be pulled to one or two extremes.

On one hand, we can become so obsessed with the rules that we find infractions and sin everywhere we look. Some will turn their gaze inward and become obsessed with their own failures and wretchedness, while others will excel at pointing out the problems with what everybody else is doing.

In the end, however, it doesn’t matter where they’re looking, because the closer one drifts to this extreme, the more calcified and joyless their heart becomes, the more burdensome their version of faith becomes, the less like Jesus their witness becomes.

This reminds me of the scene in the movie “Saved!” in which the judgmental character played by Mandy Moore angrily hurls a Bible at a wayward classmate as she snarls, “I am filled with Christ’s love!”

On the other hand, the other extreme turns talk of forgiveness, pardon, and salvation into some sort of toxic brew that convinces believers that the rules don’t apply to them.

People who succumb to this temptation act as though Jesus has somehow given them carte blanche.

“I’m forgiven,” they seem to say, “so I can do whatever I want.”

Or they come to believe that “rules are for suckers” and that having a good cause or reason for what they’re doing means they're no longer bound by any authority.

And in the end, the closer one drifts to this extreme, the more calcified and joyless their heart becomes, the more burdensome their version of faith becomes, the less like Jesus their witness becomes.

This reminds me of politicians, or pastors, or anyone who lies, cheats, or even commits violence to protect the reputation of their leader, their movement, their institution, their church, or, as is probably the case most often, to protect their own fragile ego.

“Rules for thee, but not for me” would be their motto.

But as he did on that Sabbath Day so long ago, Jesus points us to a more excellent way.

We just don’t get a sense that Jesus wanted us to be religious for religion’s sake. He, instead, lays out a way of living that sets us in harmony with God and one another.

Dolly was on to something when she aspired to just love people.

Listen to how Saint Paul explains this is our reading from Colossians.

Therefore, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. (Colossians 3:12-14)

Notice how Paul speaks about forgiveness in the context of practices and virtues like compassion, kindness, and love that build and repair relationships.

There’s nothing static or legalistic here.

Rather, the Gospel message sets us free from such rigid systems, systems that prioritize their own survival, and turns us towards one another as a matter of utmost importance and a means of strengthening our relationship with God.

So it seems we can bring all of this to bear in our understanding of forgiveness.

Just as Jesus would point out that the Sabbath is made for us and that we aren't made for the Sabbath, I think it can also be said that forgiveness is made for us and we aren't made for forgiveness.

By that I mean that we have been given this gift that sets us free from having to be defined by and to define others by the biggest mistakes that we make.

Instead, we can rest in God's love and to aspire to the kind of harmony, partnership, and friendship that Jesus demonstrates and invites each of us to enter into with him.

And that brings us back to Dolly.

This week you've probably heard a little bit of the background behind her huge hit, “I Will Always Love You,” a song born of her friendship and business partnership with a man named Porter Wagoner.

Little side note, Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton played the county fair in my hometown in the early 70s.

Anyway, during that era, Dolly was coming into her own as an artist and was ready to break out and pursue her solo career. She had a contract with Wagoner, though, that he intended to enforce and that inevitably led to conflict.

The situation became quite bitter.

Dolly wrote “I Will Always Love You” for Wagoner as a statement of self-respect and defiance.

She was going to do her thing.

She was going to break out on her own, but her action was not born out of hatred or animus.

She did, and always would, love him.

Now, that's a beautiful sentiment, but I think one of the really powerful aspects of that song’s significance is that, towards the end of Porter Wagoner's life, as their careers had gone in very different directions once they split, Dolly purchased his entire musical catalog and gave it back to him as a gift, so that he and his family might have a measure of financial security.

It's one thing to sing songs about always loving someone. It's another to demonstrate the kind of forgiveness that bears witness to that love in real terms.

Dolly gives us a beautiful example of that of what it means to put people first.

And as we come to be a people of prayer, thinking about forgiveness, thinking about our own need for it and our own calling to share it, I pray that we'll do the same.

I pray that we will come to understand prayer as a force of our liberation and the liberation of others. Prayer offers us a way to reach our highest ideals, and, above all, as St. Paul tells us, it is a means of clothing ourselves with love–a love that binds everything together in perfect harmony.

It’s only right that on the Sunday after Dolly passed, we find ourselves thinking about perfect harmony, isn't it?

So let us endeavor to do that in how we live, how we pray, and how we treat others.

Thanks be to God then for this good news today. Amen.

Image: Publicity shot of American singer Dolly Parton, 1977. Public Domain

How to Pray in a Food Fight (Acts 6 & 1 Cor. 13)

There’s an obscure story in the Book of Acts that gives us an answer to an important question—how do you pray in a foodfight?

The story takes us back to the period of time immediately following the miracle of Pentecost. At that point in our history, under the leadership of Jesus’ closest followers Christianity was still a religious movement within Judaism. Jesus was Jewish, his disciples were Jewish, and in the weeks and months right after Easter so was everybody who took part in the community gathered in Christ’s name.

Back then, the Church was decidedly less diverse than it would ultimately become, but even then, people still found ways to divide themselves into camps of “us” and “them.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Are you rich? Poor?”

“How do you feel about the Romans? Are you ok with their Empire or do you want to see their government fail?

Questions like these still mattered to a lot of people and put their commitment to Jesus and his Lordship to the test.

It was difficult, you see, for even the first members of the Easter People to set aside their Good Friday mindsets, dividing the whole into segments of “my kind of people” and “those kind of people.”

And if you’ve ever sat through an awkward holiday dinner or a disastrous first date, then you know that no chef or recipe can overcome the misery of sitting down for a meal next to someone who thinks that they’re better than you and that you’re not even worthy to sit at their table.

That’s why table manners like humility and love were so important in the early Church. The Gospels speak about them, Saint Paul writes about them, and Acts records more debates about what should happen when Christians break bread together than just about any other theological issue.

We shouldn’t be surprised to learn, then, that the Bible even tells us about the Church’s first food fight.

This comes from Acts 6.

Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. (Acts 6:1)

Ok, so it’s not as if the widows were chucking bowls of mashed potatoes at each other, but this was just as threatening to the community.

At issue was a division in first century Judaism that converts to Christianity brought with them to church. Luke called the people on one side of this divide Hellenists—that is to say people who were raised Jewish yet spoke, read the Bible in, and identified themselves as culturally Greek. On the other side were the Hebrews—people raised Jewish who spoke and read the Bible in Hebrew and who, it’s likely, practiced a more rigorous form of Judaism before hearing the Gospel.

Long simmering, tension over cultural stuff boiled up when the apostles heard that a food assistance ministry intended to benefit all the widows who had need was being administered unfairly and that some were being left hungry.

Realizing that a resolution had to be reached and, more importantly, that reconciliation needed to take place, the apostles devised a plan. They had the church identify “seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom” who would see that the food ministry was managed properly and that all who had need were included.

This group would be the church’s first seven deacons—a title that the Church still uses derived from a Greek root word meaning “to serve”.

The apostles prayed for the seven deacons and laid hands on them—ordaining them for faithful service—and then they went to work, and that’s the last thing we hear about that particular ministry.

Moving on from it, Luke says simply that “the word of God continued to spread; the number of the disciples increased greatly in Jerusalem.” (Acts 6:7)

This story has fascinated me for a very long time. It fascinates me because what seems at first glance to be a story about an administrative matter and logistical concerns truly is as close to the heart of the Gospel as those more familiar stories about Jesus miraculously feeding five thousand people or eating and drinking with sinners.

You see, while it’s those stories about Jesus that point to the expansiveness of God’s love and grace, that reveal to us that everyone has a seat at Chirst’s table, it’s an intentional commitment to be the Body of Christ that helps us remember our table manners once we’re seated.

Think about this.

Acts 6 recounts the story of a church whose leaders were Jesus’ closest friends and whose members—at least some of them—probably knew Jesus before he died and possibly saw him after the resurrection, yet, if left to their own devices, even they would have failed to live out the Gospel’s barrier breaking mandate and fallen back into old and divisive habits.

People who had the likes of Saints Peter, James, and John as their preachers still found it easier to ignore the needs of their neighbors than to reach out beyond themselves to care for them.

And you’ve just got me! Yikes!

The Church described in Acts, therefore, had to take the time to make an intentional commitment to love others as they had experienced God’s love through Jesus.

The food fight had to stop and the people had to do some work, to proceed with a certain degree of humility and caution, if they were to meet the high standard for relationships that Jesus and the Apostles set for them.

And so should we.

Saint Paul would describe that growth like this,

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. (1 Cor. 13:11)

Now Paul wasn’t part of that decision to ordain to first class of deacons, far from it, but he came to understand that included among the childish ways that must be put to an end are every habit, attitude, and action that belittles, divides, and leaves people feeling as though they’re just not good enough to break bread with Jesus and his friends.

Whatever we do as a Church, said Paul, if we don’t have love for one another we’re just making noise and we have nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1)

Truthful and active love, on the other hand, is intentional and deliberate, admitting that it is imperfect, that it is capable of failing, and that old prejudices can corrupt good intentions.

These lessons about love needed to be taught and learned even in the afterglow of Pentecost.

How could we possibly believe, then, that just by happenstance we can casually grow into a perfect love affair with God and neighbor without giving close attention to the details of our actions and our motives.

And that’s how this story brings us back to the topic of prayer.

When we’re honest about it, it’s very easy for our prayer lives to share some things in common with that food fight described in Acts 6.

Praying for ourselves, our families, and the people we love comes as naturally for us as breaking bread with people with whom we have everything in common.

And there’s nothing wrong with that.

The Gospel just invites us to go beyond it.

Prayers for forgiveness, to forgive others, for our enemies, for leaders that we don’t like and whose actions we find repellant—these don’t come naturally at all. They’re more like a chore that we put off doing for as long as possible, if we ever get around to doing it at all.

That’s why we need to open ourselves to the Spirit’s movements and the Wisdom of the Ages.

Jesus said,

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you expect to receive payment, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. (Luke 6:32-36)

Jesus, it seems, wants to show us how we should pray in a food fight or at least how we should pray when we’re so upset that we want to throw our dinner against the wall.

We should pray with purpose, intention, and mercy—following in the steps of the Apostles, the first deacons, Saint Paul, and Jesus himself—who leads us beyond the barriers within and between human hearts to the expansive and inclusive love of God.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: neoncouch, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

My Nemesis (2 Samuel 16:5-14)

Preached at Cragsmoor Stone Church in Cragsmoor, NY

Have you ever had a nemesis–someone or something that seemed to exist only to annoy you and make you miserable?

The person who works in your office who has the unique talent of getting under your skin with everything they say, do, or think;

The friend of a friend who interjected themselves into your social group and now makes you the butt of all their jokes;

The gopher who drove Bill Murray the groundskeeper mad in the comedy classic Caddyshack.

Have you ever had to deal with someone or something like that?

I have a nemesis, but I’m a little reluctant to talk about them here, less they get wind of what I say and redouble their efforts to do me wrong.

For the sake of this sermon, however, I’m willing to risk it, and name them publicly.

My nemesis is the boiler in my church’s basement.

Good Lord, this thing drives me crazy.

I’m told that the boiler runs on natural gas, but I’m convinced it just burns money.

$1000 here, $5000 there, $10000–I’ve authorized so many repairs after walking into a freezing cold sanctuary that I just have to laugh at the thought of it.

And just to keep me on my toes, there was even one time that the boiler wouldn’t turn off and I walked into a fellowship hall that was 90 degrees and getting warmer in the middle of winter.

One boiler guy once told me, “You really do have a Ferrari, Rev. Beautiful to look at, but good luck if something goes wrong with it.”

The fun with the boiler never ends.

Last year the heat went out the week of Halloween. We didn’t get it fixed until the Friday before Christmas–a saga that upended the church’s Thanksgiving and Advent celebrations, as well as lowering my holiday cheer to Scrooge levels of bah humbug.

The seasons in which the boiler doesn’t require extensive work are few and far between, a problem that’s exacerbated by the fact that every replacement part apparently needs to be handforged at some undisclosed location that is perpetually eight to ten weeks away from the New York metropolitan area.

And of course I take all of this personally. The boiler obviously wants me to fail, wants me to feel discouraged, and wants everyone in town to go to that other church with the elitiest theology, but dependable heat in the winter and, God help me, air conditioning in the summer.

There’s an inverse correlation between the amount of time I spend in the church’s boiler room and my happiness.

That’s the power of a persistent nemesis.

We’ve read a passage from the Bible this morning about King David, a man with a long list of rivals, enemies, and antagonists.

There was Goliath–the giant who tried to kill him, Saul–the old king who tried to kill him, and Absalom–David’s own son who tried to kill him.

Compared to those figures, it’s easy to overlook Shimei (Chamay-e), son of Gera, but I rather like his story, and I believe that it’s there that we find the point of contact between our lives and God’s Word today.

Shimei was angry enough to kill David, but all he did about it was cuss him out.

It happened at a real low point for David.

Devastated by the personal and political chaos his son Absalom’s betrayal unleashed, David’s life and kingdom were in tatters and Absalom had a real chance of seizing his old man’s throne.

At this moment, while David and his loyal forces were making a rather pitiful retreat from Jerusalem, Shimei, one of Saul’s kinfolk, appears on the scene and, according to the scripture, “he came out cursing.”

He really let David have it.

Shimei shouted while he cursed, “Out! Out! Murderer! Scoundrel! The Lord has avenged on all of you the blood of the house of Saul, in whose place you have reigned, and the Lord has given the kingdom into the hand of your son Absalom. See, disaster has overtaken you, for you are a man of blood.”

“You’re getting what you deserve, you blood thirsty tyrant!”

“You’ve taken other people’s lives and their wives, and I think it’s hilarious that someone has finally taken something of yours.”

Shimei was on fire, bringing down insult after insult upon David’s head.

One of the king’s generals eventually had enough and offered to take Shimei’s head off, but David was resigned to his fate.

“My own son seeks my life,” he said, “[so what’s it matter to me if this guy wants to curse me]! Let him alone, and let him curse.”

So David and his men went on the road while Shimei went along on the hillside opposite him and cursed as he went, throwing stones and flinging dust at him. The king and all the people who were with him arrived weary at the Jordan.

Time passed, David’s foul mouthed nemesis lived, but Absalom’s rebellion didn’t, and as David was settling back into power, guess who showed up?

Shimei, son of Gera. Only this time, he sang a very different tune.

“May my lord not hold me guilty or remember how your servant did wrong.” (2 Samuel 19:19)

“Yeah, I’m really sorry about all those things I said about you, King, but we’re all good, right?”

And the scripture says that the same general looked at David again and said, “Now? Now do I get to kill him?”

But David chose forgiveness. He spared Shimei’s life and sent him on his way.

And there you have it. The story of David and Shimei–a story about choosing forgiveness instead of revenge, a story about being humble in defeat and magnanimous in victory–another shiny treasure pulled from the mess of David’s life.

But wait a minute. There’s a shocking twist still to come–and it’s the twist that’s so important to us.

Years later, as David was dying, he called to his side Solomon–his son who would become king, and said, “[Remember] Shimei son of Gera “who cursed me with a terrible curse,” but who I forgave and promised not to kill? That doesn’t apply to you. Once I’m gone, you should get rid of him, too.” (1 Kings 2:8-9)

And that’s what Solomon did.

So you see, the story of David and Shimei isn’t so much an inspirational tale about forgiveness and taking the moral high road as it is a cautionary tale about how twisted our hearts and minds can become when we hold on to grievances, wrongs, and slights and give our nemesis a power over us that they could never earn on their own.

It shouldn’t be lost on us that when David first came into the spotlight he had the faith and the courage to face down Goliath, but as he made his exit, he was plotting, scheming, and making his own promises worthless because of he wouldn’t let go of one man’s curses and insults. That’s the power of a persistent nemesis.

I’m sure that all of us carry within us genuine hurt, heartbreak, and scars, but I’m convinced that so much of what ails us is attributable to the fact that, like David, we seize upon trivial and insignificant things and allow them to short circuit our capacity for growth, healing, and transformation.

We give small things so much power that we’re too exhausted to tackle the things that really matter.

The opening line of the Serenity Prayer is on point, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Bono also provides a bit of wisdom when he sings, “Choose your enemies carefully 'cause they will define you.”

Do I really think the boiler in the church basement is out to get me? No.

Is it annoying when there’s no heat in the building? Of course, it is.

But is being so obsessed with that annoyance that I make my wife and kids miserable when I come home from work really the choice that I want to make, the decision I want to live by? No, that’s not what I want to do. That’s not who I want to be.

Maybe you feel something similar about the impact your nemesis has on you, too.

Saint Paul tells us that one of the gifts given to us by God to help break such unproductive habits and cycles is communion with Christ that is so liberating and transformational, so rooted and grounded in God’s love, that our thoughts and our actions actually become Christlike.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul proclaimed.

As we go from this place I pray that that’s what we’ll do.

I pray that we will let go of grievance and take hold of God’s gift.

I pray that we will know Christ and walk with him on our path.

I pray that we will face every nemesis, hardship, and challenge with serenity, courage, and wisdom.

And I pray that will never cease to give God thanks for the Good News that makes this and all signs of new life with Christ possible.

Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.

Image: The Stone Arch overlooking the Rondout Valley

Don't Cover Your Scars (Romans 8:15-17 & Mark 14:32-42)

A few months ago the band U2 released a song called “Scars” that, to use a phrase my family has heard me say countless times regarding U2’s music, speaks to me.

The song’s lyric is a word of encouragement to one who is tempted to hide the evidence of their life’s heartbreak, failures, and pain–their scars, as it were.

The opening verse sets the stage.

You got lost, love, and you found trouble

When you went looking for your life

You got some scars and some others suffer

But you keep on reaching for the light

Those of you who know how much I like to preach about Dante’s Divine Comedy or who remember our worship series The Gift of the Dark Woods from several years ago should feel your ears perking up a bit at the thought of finding grace in the midst of trouble, or at least the promise that the light that beckons us forward is stronger than the present dark that holds us.

Bono continues,

The doors of your heart were kicked open

But you're leaving history far behind

Can't break what's already been broken

And now it's time

I know, [know, know]

All that you've been through

So I know, [know, know]

Who you are, [who you are]

Let them show, [show, show]

It's your scars that give you beauty

You're a beauty

Don't cover your scars

Now you don’t need to make a spectacle of them either. They’re your scars, it’s your experience, your story, and, ultimately, you should get to tell it or show it how and when you choose to, but this lyric points to a path that leads to freedom found in owning our story and scars–what people mean when they talk about knowing their truth–and discovering that there’s a lot of power in what once felt like weakness.

The interplay between power and weakness is a recurring theme in the Bible, especially in the letters of Saint Paul, and meditating on the relationship between the two is one of the more radical and important spiritual exercises in which we can engage.

Father Richard Rohr brought up this point in a sermon taken from 2 Corinthians 12. That’s the chapter where Paul confesses that he has this enigmatic “thorn in his flesh” that he asked the Lord to remove, but that Lord told him to learn to live with it instead, saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9)

Here’s how Rev. Rohr unpacks that verse.

I must be up front with you. I don’t really understand why God created the world in this upside-down way. I do not know why “power is at its best in weakness,” as Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:9. I cannot pretend to understand God, but this is what I see: People who have moved from one seeming success to another seldom understand success at all—except for their own very limited version. People who fail to do something right, by even their own definition of right, are those who often break through to enlightenment and compassion.

Paul can talk in this paradoxical way about power and weakness because he meditated on the mystery of the cross. The one who was a failure became the redeemer. The one who looked naked and weak and like a loser became the ultimate winner. And so Paul sums it up in his beautiful philosophy, ending with the line, “It is when I am weak that I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

Let’s honestly admit almost none of us believe that. We think it’s when we’re strong that we’re strong. But no, it’s when we’re weak that we’re strong. It doesn’t make a bit of sense to the rational, logical mind. Only people of the Spirit understand how true it is. The Twelve Step Program made it the first step: We have to experience our powerlessness before we can experience our power. (Strength in Weakness, dated 9/27/22)

Since we are trying this month to mine the depths of our tradition for wisdom about prayer, I want to lift up for you the phrase “Abba, Father” as a tool to help us better understand the relationship between weakness and strength in the Kingdom of God.

We heard this phrase read in our readings from Romans and Mark this morning. Amazingly, those are two of only three instances where “Abba, Father” is found in the entire New Testament. There are lots of references to God as a father, mind you, but the only other example of “Abba, Father” being used is in Galatians.

Now, if you’ve ever heard someone expound upon this phrase in a sermon or a study, you’ve probably heard that “Abba, Father” is something like a term of endearment used by a child and that it means, “Daddy” as in “Daddy God.”

There’s a growing body of evidence in biblical studies, however, that point out that that’s not what it means at all. Rather, “Abba, Father” is an expression evocative of a mature relationship existing between an obedient adult child and a trustworthy parent. (Tonstad, pp 10-11)

And the theme of an obedient adult child and a trustworthy parent is on full display in Mark’s Gospel account of the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested.

They went to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took with him Peter and James and John and began to be distressed and agitated. And he said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake.” And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. He said, “Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me, yet not what I want but what you want.” (Mark 14:32-36)

You can see and hear how reading that as “Daddy” falls short. How it doesn’t really make sense that Jesus would use a child’s idiom here.

No, in Gethsemane Jesus exerts his will and desire to have the cup of his suffering taken away even as he pledges to obey–to walk the path that he must walk–as an expression of faith and trust that with God his steps are not in vain.

The fact that Paul could invoke “Abba, Father” in letters to places like Rome, places that he hadn’t even visited yet, indicates that the phrase had a tremendous reach and resonated with Christian believers from all sorts of backgrounds and perspectives, not because it gave them a familiar and intimate Aramaic nickname for God, but because it connected them to the very source of their faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior of us all–the story of the Passion, the Cross, and the Resurrection.

This is the story in which our scars are redeemed and power is made perfect in weakness.

“The experience of powerlessness is where we all must begin,” writes Rohr, “just as Jesus himself always went where the pain was. Wherever there was human suffering, Jesus was concerned about it and sought to heal it in the very moment of encounter. It is both rather amazing and very sad that we pushed it all off into a future reward system for those who were “worthy”—as if any of us are.”

That brings us to the place where we can make a connection between “Abba, Father,” prayer, and our scars.

I know I’m not alone in feeling, at times, a powerful temptation to regard prayer, doing the right thing, and basically living a life of faith as a hedge or an inoculation against suffering and things in my life going sideways.

The problem with that mindset, however, is that even though prayer and faith can keep some hurtful things at bay, succumbing to that temptation can lead us to believe that suffering is evidence of our failure, that we or they must’ve done something really bad to deserve something so tragic, that scars are signs of shame.

And that is, of course, a lie.

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs: heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if we in fact suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:15-17)

Since we are trying this month to mine the depths of our tradition for wisdom about prayer, I want to lift up for you the phrase “Abba, Father” as a tool to help us better understand the relationship between weakness and strength in the Kingdom of God.

Today, hear the wisdom of Christ and his Passion.

In prayer, as in life, don’t cover your scars.

Amen.

Take a Load Off, Colin

Note: Colin Poellot was my good friend and my son's godfather. He died last year of respitory complications caused by ALS. On August 5, 2026, Colin's 57th birthday, his wife Barbara Lynn gathered a wonderful group of old friends at Colin's former workplace in SoHo to remember him. I wrote this piece of that event.

Twenty three years ago, I moved to Manhattan with my wife Laura Leigh Davidson. Within a year of our move, Laura started working here at Scholastic, and soon after that she started talking about a guy she worked with named Colin.

“I really want you to meet him,” she said. “I think you’ll like him.”

The opportunity for that meeting occurred at a karaoke bar in Midtown.

Several people from Scholastic were meeting after work at a place on 38th Street and boyfriends, girlfriends, spouses, and significant others were invited to tag along.

I was genuinely looking forward to going out that night, but I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into as soon as we got there.

I remember a lot of blue and pink lights, and a lot of blue and pink drinks, and the kind of music that one hears at a bar with blue and pink lights that serves blue and pink drinks.

I was quickly getting into that state of mind where I tell myself I’m going to have a bad night before the night even begins, when Laura caught the eye of someone she recognized from work who waved us toward a back room where the Scholastic crew had gathered.

And at the front of that room, there was a guy singing a karaoke version of “The Weight” by The Band, a song that is about as far removed from the vibes of blue and pink drinks as possible.

Take a load off Fanny, take a load for free;

Take a load off Fanny, And (and) (and) you can put the load right on me.

Now if any of you are still going out and singing in bars, you can let me know if things have changed, but back in the mid-oughts not too many people had Robbie Robertson’s greatest hits in their repertoire.

So as this surreal scene of sights and sounds played out all around me, my mind began to race.

What was happening here?

What had I just walked into?

And as I tried to make sense of it all, Laura tapped me on the arm and pointed at the guy.

“That’s Colin!” she said.

Yes it was and my life in this city was so much more interesting and fun, my faith in God is so much stronger, and my appreciation for the weight and gravity of friendship is so much greater because of him.

The memories of laughter and incredible times I shared with Colin are just the best, and I know I’m not alone.

All of us gathered here carry something within ourselves that we count as a gift or a blessing that Colin gave to us—a memory of a Rush concert, riding bikes across Iowa, a photograph, a kindness, a conversation.

Hey Barbara Lynn, remember that time we went to the Astoria Beer Garden to eat pierogies and hear that sketchy band Laura Leigh met up with on the subway?

Remember that time driving around upstate when we saw the sign that said “Beware of the Monkey” and immediately passed a monkey that was sitting in the road, eating an apple, and giving us the stink eye?

Remember the Christmas Eve service at my church when—like a scene straight from Rev—the drunk guy started heckling me while I tried to preach and little baby Oliver made a break for it down the aisle?

What gloriously ridiculous memories we have.

Hey Barbara Lynn, remember when my family had no heat or electricity after Superstorm Sandy and Colin drove into Lower Manhattan during the blackout so that we could join Jeff and Tom as your Superstorm house guests?

Remember when Laura got sick and you and Colin tried so hard to love us and help us even as things got increasingly out of control?

Remember when I came back to the City by myself for the first time after she died and Colin met me for a drink?

I don’t recall a single thing he and I talked about that day, but I remember Colin was there for me, and that’s all that mattered.

That’s what Colin did and that’s who Colin was.

What gloriously messy, beautiful, heart breaking, and life affirming memories we have.

In his book The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis wrote, “Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What! You too? I thought I was the only one.”

By the time Colin put down the microphone that night and walked across the room so that Laura Leigh could introduce us, our moment had already begun.

Late last year, my wife Dana, and now-teenaged Oliver, were walking from Grand Central to Madison Square Garden. Navigating our way through the crowds and trying to find a place to eat, we ended up walking down 38th Street, right past that same karaoke bar.

And I thought, isn’t it amazing and wonderful that the one time I ever walked into that place, I met someone who changed my life.

Of course, our fondness for this city will tell us that that’s part of New York’s charm and magic. And maybe that’s true, but let’s face it. Pink and blue drinks under pink and blue lights are more likely to lead to a headache and maybe regret, than meeting someone who you will remember and love forever.

No, even more than this city, it’s the charm and magic of a unique soul like Colin Poellot who touches us, who changes us, who we are blessed to call our friend.

Rest in peace, Colin. Thank you for everything. I love you.

Amen.

An Honest Conversation (Philippians 4:4-7)

Sweet Hour of Prayer: Week 1

It wasn’t too long after Dana, the kids, and I arrived at my parents’ house earlier this summer that my mom handed me a small stack of papers.

I could tell by the age of the paper and the handwriting what they were. They were pages from my Grandma Kemp’s prayer journals.

“I made one last trip to Frank’s house before the auction and pulled out some pages that mention you and your brothers,” mom said.

You see, my mom’s younger brother Frank, who lived on the old family homestead, died suddenly last year and before the property was sold at auction this spring, my cousins invited the family to come and take whatever mementos or keepsakes they wanted.

My brother took some football cards.

My niece got Uncle Frank’s fishing tackle box.

My cousin found an old picture album that we passed around at our 4th of July cookout.

And my mom went through Grandma’s journals one more time.

I’ve mentioned Grandma and her journals in several sermons throughout my career because her example of spiritual devotion and practice still stands out in my mind.

Every day for fifty plus years, she spent time organizing her prayers by writing out who and what she was praying for.

She didn’t compose full prayers, mind you. She’d just write names and maybe a short note, a sentence or two about what was on her mind. She’s circle names as she prayed for them.

And those spiritual doodles hold a treasure trove of memories.

Thumbing through the pages mom handed to me, I saw references to illnesses and accomplishments, as well as other slice of life concerns of our family’s loving matriarch–things going on in our homes, our parents’ jobs, our grades and sports–the stuff that was on grandma’s mind as she read her Bible and drank her morning coffee.

And then, I saw the note that made me burst out laughing.

It was from the autumn of 1979. I was four years old, and, obviously, I’d been testing the patience of those who cared about it.

“Dear Lord,” my grandmother wrote, “please help little Jason to be stable.”

Now, no one remembers the exact circumstances that led Gram to pray that prayer, but we all have our guesses, and no one would’ve blamed Gram, either, if there were times when she questioned whether or not the Good Lord actually heard her.

I was a bit of a handful as a little kid.

Nevertheless, that’s a story for another day and another sermon, or another series.

But holding those papers in my hands, in addition to remembering what a wonderful grandmother I had, I couldn’t help but to feel a great sense of appreciation and admiration for the example she set as someone who prays.

Her prayers weren’t about buttering up God in order to get what she wanted. Neither were they about wallowing in shame and regret, as if God would regard any notion that she was more than a worthless clump of dirt as a damnable sign of pride.

No, Gram’s prayers were never so affected.

They were just the things that were on her mind and in her heart, and since she believed that God cared about her, then it seemed only natural that God would take an interest in those things, too.

That’s the example of prayer that I find most compelling.

We’re beginning a worship series this morning that invites us to think deeply about how we pray. Along the way, each week you’ll be given a chance to take an object in your hand–something like a cross or prayer beads–and, while holding it, you’ll be given a model prayer, too, to help you organize your thoughts and concerns, and to increase your ability to concentrate. We’ll also try to make connections between prayer and other things we do with our hands or bodies—crocheting, drawing, circling names on a paper—or things we do with our bodies—walking, working, exercise.

This emphasis on the “how” of prayer is an acknowledgment that, with all the stuff spinning around our minds and going on in our lives, we need a little more guidance in prayer than just being told to sit quietly, bow our heads, close our eyes, and talk to God.

That might be enough instruction for some of you, but for many–maybe even most–that’s just not going to cut it. We’ll end up thinking about a project at work, or our next trip to the grocery store, or what we’re having for lunch.

The mind does wander.

So, over the next few weeks, we’re going to talk much more than usual about how we pray.

But today, it’s really important that we begin with “the why” of it all.

So, why do we pray?

Because there are people, situations, tragedies, triumphs, aspirations, challenges, hardships, and celebrations on our minds and in our hearts, and since God cares about us, since God so loves the world, then it’s only natural that God would take an interest in those things, too.

Part of loving someone is being invested in what’s happening in their lives, and God is invested in you, and me, and this planet that we share with everybody else.

That is why we pray.

There’s a famous line about prayer in the oldest surviving letter written by Saint Paul. In First Thessalonians, the Apostle wrote,

“Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (5:16-18)

Words we’ve read this morning echo this same thought.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:4-7)

Now, if anything less than love is the reason God invites us to pray, then calling us “to pray without ceasing” or to pray about “everything” is suffocating and oppressive.

If anything less than love motivates our prayer practice, then our prayers will be guarded, edited, fake, weak.

But prayer rooted in love, fed by love, sustained by love is free, open, powerful.

“To pray,” noted Father Richard Rohr, “is to practice that posture of radical trust in God’s grace, and to participate in perhaps the most radical movement of all, which is the movement of God’s Love.”

The lyrics of an old hymn describe the same truth.

Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, unuttered or expressed,

the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast. (v. 1. “Prayer is the Soul’s Sincere Desire”)"

Prayer, at its best, is an honest conversation.

That’s why I appreciate the connection Paul makes in Philippians 4 between praying and experiencing the “peace of God, which surpasses all understanding.”

God’s peace is transcendent, but certainly we can relate it to the peace we’ve experienced by just being able to sit and talk for a while with the people we love and the people who love us.

Everyone in our family knew that Gram spent time praying and writing in her journal every morning, but maybe the best example she set in her prayer life was making her home a peaceful and loving place where all of us knew that we were always welcomed.

More than any model for prayer that you might learn, more than any object that you may grasp, what I want for you over the course of this series is a growing sense and a deepening appreciation for God’s love in your life.

I want you to know the peace of an honest conversation with God.

I want you to know that what’s on your mind and in your heart is enough to keep God interested.

I want you to know that the door will be opened because you are welcomed in God’s presence.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: Blunden, Anna E., 1829-1915. For Only One Short Hour, or, The Seamstress, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.