Cast No Shadow: A Sermon for Pride (John 8:12)

“Is the dress black and blue or white and gold?”

That’s the question asked by one of the internet’s viral sensations of 2015, “The Dress.”

Do you remember?

It all started when a woman named Cecilia went dress shopping.

She was looking for something to wear to her daughter’s upcoming wedding, and the soon-to-be mother of the bride found it in a lovely blue number with black stripes from the retailer Roman Originals.

Cecilia bought the dress and sent a picture of it to her daughter, Grace.

And Grace looked at the picture and thought, “Mom just bought a white dress with gold stripes.”

But Cecilia knew that she had just purchased a blue dress with black stripes.

And that’s where things got weird.

Grace showed the picture to her friends.

Some saw black and blue.

Some white and gold.

That trend continued when she put the picture on Facebook.

Even at the wedding, where mom was clearly wearing a black and blue dress, many guests couldn’t believe that it was the same dress in the photo.

Not long after the ceremony, one of Grace’s friends posted the picture on her blog.

The when “The Dress” became a phenomenon.

I know it seems like a quaint memory from the distant past, but there once was a time when the internet could make us laugh and smile about silly things rather than filling our lives with rage bait, pseudo-science, and AI generated nonsense.

That’s what happened when “The Dress” went viral.

At its peak, the friend’s blog “was receiving 14,000 views a second.”

An online poll about “The Dress” set a record with more than 670,000 people viewing it at the same time.

And on Twitter, debate about the dress inspired competing hashtags—"#whiteandgold", "#blueandblack"—and was ultimately “the subject of 4.4 million tweets within 24 hours.”

More than ten years later, “The Dress” remains something of an enigma. Scientific studies have found connections between the viewer’s age, gender, even the time at which they usually wake up and the colors they saw, but there’s no consensus explanation for why people perceive the colors of the dress differently.

So “The Dress” lives on in our culture’s memory like something of an optical illusion, a trick of the mind, another example of light’s fascinating movements and properties.

And it is fascinating, this science of light—how white sunlight becomes a rainbow, how we see the stars in our nighttime sky as they existed thousands of years ago, how two people can see the same object in different colors.

I thought about light often this week in preparation for this service–the science of light, but also the various meanings we ascribe to it.

From the familiar lights of the places we call home to candles lit in memory of a loved one, we look to light for comfort, clarity, and direction.

Literally and figuratively, light helps us understand our surroundings and shows us where to go.

Light plays a prominent role in our faith tradition, too, as there are numerous scriptures that describe light as embodying the qualities, character, and even the presence of God.

“The Lord is my light and my salvation;” confessed the writer of Psalm 27, “whom shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1)

Or, in Psalm 119, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” (Psalm 119:105)

Or, in the Prologue to John’s Gospel, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:4)

Then there’s Jesus, and what he had to say about light.

Again Jesus spoke to them saying,“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

This is the passage that’s at the heart of our worship today because there’s an essential link between what Jesus said, what we understand about light, and Pride Sunday.

You see, when all the colors of the rainbow are together and unified, like on a sunny day—when their wavelengths are unimpeded–when the colors are, if you will, free—then light is clear and we have our best opportunity to accurately assess our surroundings, what we’re looking at, and where we’re going.

But when colors are filtered or blocked, when the wavelengths of colors are manipulated, our perceptions are less about the object before us and more about whatever is filtering the light.

Now when we go to a show on Broadway, a good lighting designer can block and filter colors to create a mood or atmosphere that enhances the overall production, but just ask my costume designing wife what bad lighting can do to beautiful clothes.

In bad light, that which is bright and colorful becomes shadowed and altered. Bad lighting can even make something disappear altogether.

So when Jesus says that he is the light, I understand that, on one hand, he is taking upon himself the hopes and dreams of people like the Psalmists and other faithful hearts. He is declaring himself to be a source of wisdom and clarity, comfort, hope, and so much more.

But on the other hand, when Jesus says “I am the light,” he is also telling us something about how he expects us to look at the world and our neighbors.

He is empowering us to reject and set aside all the filters and barriers with which we try to manipulate our surroundings and turn people into something that they are not.

If bad lighting can ruin a good costume design, then God knows that casting our neighbors in an unflattering light is a threat to the ties that bind us together, the common good, and dreams of Beloved Community.

I mean let’s be honest, the filter of homophobia cast a shadow over almost everything in the United Methodist Church for fifty years, a shadow that twisted reality, tried to make us believe all sorts of pernicious things about LGBT individuals, and, in the end, made most of our global gatherings feel like we were lost in the dark rather than walking in the light.

What Pride Sunday offers us, however, is an invitation to be centered in the grace and truth that makes for genuine community.

No shadows.

No filters.

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body,” said Saint Paul, “so it is with Christ.” (1 Cor. 12:12)

“If we walk in the light,” said Saint John, “as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:7)

Or as our call to worship reminded us, “The colors of the rainbow are distinct, but they all shine together to make one light.”

Friends, we can’t walk in the light of God when we’re throwing shade at others.

That’s true about homophobia, racism, classism, or anything that makes us believe that we are inherently superior to anybody else.

Those are light blocking filters that play tricks with our minds.

That’s the kind of stuff Jesus tells us to get rid of if we want to see others as he sees us.

This week I found something really interesting in our church’s archives. It was an announcement for a community Lenten service that would take place here at Asbury on March 11, 1960. The guest preacher was Rev. Martin Niemoeller.

That caught my attention because Niemoller is remembered as one of the prominent voices of Christian resistance to the Nazis in Hitler’s Germany. He even spent several years in a concentration camp for running afoul of the regime that he once supported.

What he is most well known for today, though, is a quote that, for me, illustrates what happens when we allow the sahdows of our prejudices and self-centeredness to block God’s light and obscure the worth and dignity of others.

About the Nazis, Niemoeller said,

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Niemoeller learned that those who cast shadows on their neighbors will end up in the dark.

We can’t walk in the light of God when we’re throwing shade at others.

But Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.”

May we always walk in the light.

Amen.

Significant Simplicity (Luke 24:48-53)

My father worked in highway construction for fifty years. Beginning when he was a teenager and continuing until he was almost seventy, Dad helped build roads all over the state of Indiana.

He loved his job.

Dad’s love for what he did helped me appreciate that roads are so much more than a way to get from Point A to Point B.

Roads are storytellers.

Sometimes the stories are about how the road was made–the slopes, the drainage, the width of the shoulder—but take a ride with my dad anywhere south in Indianapolis and you’re most likely to hear the road tell tales of hidden sinkholes and springs that slowed a project’s progress, engineering challenges that had to be met, long lost historic sites that required roads to be rerouted, and memorable work site shenanigans.

You’ll also hear about the colorful cast of characters Dad met on the road. Co-workers, gas station owners, nice old farmers, mean old farmers, criminals, crime victims, law enforcement, hitchhikers, and stranded drivers—when I was growing up, Dad seemed to know just about everyone who passed through, broke down in, or from Southern Indiana.

Throughout my life, I’ve known people who are into cars, or travel, or even kitschy roadside attractions, but I’ve never known anyone who was into the roads themselves like my dad.

Dad’s influence must’ve predisposed me to connect with the idea that the spiritual life is a journey, a roadtrip even, because I’ve always found that to be a meaningful and useful way to talk about Faith.

In fact, of all the quotations, lines, and lyrics rattling around in my head, several of those that resonate with me the most speak of the spiritual path we travel throughout our lives. There are the opening lines of Dante’s Inferno, for example.

Midway along the journey of our life

I woke to find myself in a dark wood,

for I had wandered off from the straight path. (I.1-3)

There’s Robert Frost’s preferred path.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. (The Road Not Taken)

And there’s the way the hymn “Marching to Zion” compares God’s grace to the bounty and beauty of a lush and verdant landscape.

The hill of Zion yields a thousand sacred sweets,

before we reach the heavenly fields,

or walk the golden street.

My affinity for talking and thinking about the spiritual life in ways like these, with images likes these, leads me to receive the choir’s anthem for this service with open arms.

“The Road Home” is a piece composed by Scott Paulus with lyrics written by Michael Dennis Browne that speak “eloquently about "returning" and "coming home" after being lost or wandering.

Accordingly, the song’s first verse brings to mind the times in our own lives when, either because of choices we made or the impact of circumstances upon us, we lost our way.

Tell me, where is the road

I can call my own,

That I left, that I lost,

So long ago?

All these years I have wandered,

Oh, when will I know

There's a way, there's a road

That will lead me home?

Browne recalls that he was thinking about his sister–who was ill–and his home country– which he had not visited in some time–when we wrote these words, but a sign of the song’s power is that it’s accessible to listeners from numerous emotional paths, not just those that mirror the writer’s own.

He notes,

What I was looking for was a significant simplicity, something memorable and resonant and patterned, but not as complex as poems can often be, need to be; I wanted something immediate. Little by little, the words came. I thought of the speaker as a persona rather than myself, though of course there needed to be a “personal vibration” to it…. I was also trying to suggest the consolation that can come to someone of faith, in times of great stress, as a result of prayer and an abiding belief in divine mercy.

Verse three speaks about that consolation and expresses the promise of divine mercy that helps us make the connection between “The Road Home” and the story of Jesus’ Ascension.

This is how Michael Dennis Browne concludes the song.

Rise up, follow me,

Come away, is the call,

With the love in your heart

As the only song;

There is no such beauty

As where you belong:

Rise up, follow me,

I will lead you home.

While the scripture depicts the Ascension of Jesus as a miracle–as something literally out of this world–it shares “a significant simplicity” with “The Road Home.”

In the forty days following his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples on numerous occasions. He broke bread with them. He spoke with them. He taught them many things about the Kingdom of God. And then one day, he ascended to Heaven.

In the words of our opening hymn, “Christ, awhile to mortals given, reascends his native heaven.”

Both books in the New Testament written by Saint Luke describe the Ascension. It was such an important moment for Luke that it actually connects the two.

Luke’s Gospel ends with the Ascension and the Book of Acts begins with it.

We read the Gospel account this morning.

[Jesus said,] You are witnesses of these things. And see, I am sending upon you what my Father promised, so stay here in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple blessing God. (Luke 24:48-53)

The account in Acts is very similar, with one notable addition.

It’s there that Luke tells how the moment so overwhelmed the disciples, that two angels had to give them a little nudge to get moving again. (Acts 1:9-11)

And I think that’s great, because in both accounts, Luke lets us know that while this amazing, incredible, holy thing happened, the practical importance of the Ascension was that the disciples could still count on God’s love and gracious presence to guide them in the ways that they should go.

The power of the story before us today, you see, isn’t merely that this amazing, incredible, holy thing happened to Jesus.

The power of the Ascension story is that because this amazing, incredible, holy thing happened, we, as his followers, can live our lives with greater clarity regarding what’s important, what matters most, and where we are going.

Luke tells us that Jesus led the disciples to Bethany and blessed them there, and in that blessing their next step became clear. That day they joyfully went back to Jerusalem where, in time, the Holy Spirit moved upon them, their next step became clear, and the Church was born. That’s the Pentecost story. We’ll talk about that next week.

And other steps followed, steps that took them to new places where they met new people, yet steps that were centered in the same love and grace they always experienced in Jesus’ presence.

Even when the road they travelled was tough, the conditions fierce, and enemies seemed to be waiting in ambush, the Lord’s promises held true.

“My grace is sufficient for you,” said the Lord. (2 Corinthians 12:9).

And it still is.

Rise up, follow me,

Come away, is the call,

With the love in your heart

As the only song;

There is no such beauty

As where you belong:

Rise up, follow me,

I will lead you home.

Many paths have brought us to this place, many more will lead us from here, and at this moment, we have a lot of feelings about the next steps we need to take.

It’s graduation season and the school year is starting to wind down, so there’s a nervous excitement in the air as some of us and the people we love make steps into new beginnings in new places.

At the same time, in this era when the unprecedented has become commonplace, many of us feel that the conditions on the road we’re travelling are changing so quickly that we’re struggling to see where we’re going at all and paths that once seemed clear and secure now seem a bit more treacherous.

And then, among us, around us, and even within us, there are places when the journey has taken its toll and we are scared to death about what’s around the next corner.

Tell me, where is the road

I can call my own,

That I left, that I lost,

So long ago?

All these years I have wandered,

Oh, when will I know

There's a way, there's a road

That will lead me home?

Wherever you are today, you need to hear the significant simplicity of this promise.

“My grace is sufficient for you,” says the Lord, and there's a way, there's a road, that will lead you home.

Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.

Image: Photo by Sitraka at https://unsplash.com/photos/grey-concrete-road-Imm-26ExCTs. Free to use under the Unsplash License

Living Stones and Sentence Diagrams (1 Peter 2:2-10)

Note: Most of my preached sermons stick close to what I've written and posted here. I added enough to this in the pulpit that I thought it made sense to include the live version here. It starts just before the 25 minute mark in the video above.

During this Easter season, we’ve heard several passages from the Book of First Peter. This morning, we read what I believe is the most famous one–verses from the book’s second chapter that compare the Risen Christ and his followers to a most unusual kind of rock.

Come to him, a living stone though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter: 2:4-5)

Now, let’s be clear. There’s no evidence that Peter was thinking about some naturally occurring phenomenon here.

The living stones he describes aren’t anything like the trolls in Frozen.

Rather, he seems to be deliberately stretching his audience’s imagination a little bit—using contrast and even humor to get them thinking about their relationship with Jesus in a new way.

Talk of living stones brings to mind images of growth, movement, and vitality–not the sort of things one usually looks for in building materials, but qualities Christians have associated with discipleship since the Church’s inception.

Reading the passage, I also can’t help but think about the role idols and temples played in the Roman Empire. That is, after all, the cultural background for this scripture.

Written in Rome and delivered to Christians who were facing hardships because of their beliefs in another part of the Empire, the author and audience were surrounded by statues and structures dedicated to the pantheon of Roman gods and goddesses.

Today, we call the remains of those statues and structures archaeological treasures, but to many of our spiritual ancestors they were symbols of an Imperial cult built on forced obedience and their oppression.

According to Peter, they were really just rocks.

Instead, he wanted the people to think about their relationship with Christ not as one thinks about a shrine to which they bring an offering or a temple that they visit, but as a force of life and energy to which they are intimately connected.

Like newborn infants, long for the pure, spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow into salvation—if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good. (1 Peter 2:2-3)

Because of their connection with that force, the people take on its characteristics, too.

Peter reminds the Church that things that detract from and destroy relationships must find no room in their hearts.

Things like malice, guile, insincerity, envy, and slander–you don’t build God’s spiritual house with junk like that.

Living stones, on the other hand, are holy, chosen, and set apart for awesome work.

Peter wrote,

You [Church] are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the excellence of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Once you were not a people,

but now you are God’s people;

once you had not received mercy,

but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:9-10)

As my friends and I discussed these verses at our preacher’s Bible Study this week we noted the generous use of adjectives in the passage.

If you grew up diagramming sentences in English class, this passage might give you flashbacks, because it seems as though almost every noun has a modifier connected to it.

Of course, sometimes writing like that comes across as pedantic or ostentatious, and sometimes it reflects a student’s desperate attempt to reach the minimum word court for their assignment.

But here, it reads as excitement, like this is really wonderful, important, life changing news that the apostle is almost straining to put it into words.

Just listen again to some of the adjectives he uses—newborn, pure, spiritual, living, chosen, precious, holy, royal, marvellous—and all those words either describe the people or the Church’s mission.

What beautiful and evocative descriptions of who we are and what the Church is all about.

Come to him, a living stone though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter: 2:4-5)

I suppose another way to say all this is that Jesus is on the move and we’re called to go, too.

To go with him to those who are hurting with grace that brings healing.

To go with him to those who have been pushed aside and forgotten with grace that welcomes and restores.

To go with Christ to those who are buried under lifeless stones with grace that sets free and gives life.

As Peter wrote in the letter’s opening chapter,

Prepare your minds for action; discipline yourselves; set all your hope on the grace that Jesus Christ will bring you when he is revealed….[Do] not be conformed to the desires that you formerly had in ignorance. Instead, as he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct, for it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” (1 Peter 1:13-16)

You and I, the people of Asbury Church, have been through and, even now, are going through a lot.

There’s heartbreak in our stories, grief in our stories, screw ups and losses and mistakes and troubles in our stories, but, thanks be to God, God isn’t done with our stories just yet.

The message of First Peter is that God’s love is still at work within and among us–speaking hope into our hearts, helping us to bear one another’s burdens, and building us into something beautiful–a real, vibrant, and living community centered in Jesus Christ.

Thanks be to God for this Good News. Amen.

The Shepherd's Voice (John 10:1-10)

From numerous scriptures to countless hymns and sacred songs, “The Good Shepherd” is one of our Faith’s most comforting and enduring images, but did you know that bad shepherds play an important part in our story, too?

When Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd” he wasn’t merely being clever. He was claiming as his own a title of rich historical significance.

Biblical authors often used the image of a good shepherd to make their points.

So, for example, when David wanted to sing of God’s goodness and mercy, he turned to this image.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. (Psalm 23)

Likewise, when the writer of Psalm 78 wanted to recall fond memories of King David’s reign, they, again, turned to this image.

[The LORD] chose his servant David, and took him from the sheepfolds; from tending the nursing ewes he brought him to be the shepherd of his people…With upright heart he tended them, and guided them with skillful hand.

The connection between shepherding and kingship is, in fact, very strong, and it’s not unique to the Bible, either.

Ancient cultures from Mesopotamia to Egypt and beyond used the vocabulary and images of tending livestock to describe how well those in power lead, guided, and protected their people.

And just as there were good shepherds and skilled and benevolent kings, there were also fools who had no business leading a flock of animals, much less a nation.

Bad Shepherds show up all over the Old Testament, particularly in the books of the prophets.

Lamenting how the nation’s leaders had become indifferent to the people’s suffering, the prophet Zechariah remarked, “Their own shepherds have no pity on them.” (Zechariah 11:5)

The prophet Jeremiah expressed similar concerns when he preached, “[The LORD says,] “It is you [shepherds] who have scattered my flock and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you.” (Jeremiah 23:2)

And then there’s Ezekiel.

Ezekiel’s condemnation of bad shepherds is the most expansive in the Bible, and it’s really quite telling.

His words read like a performance review that’s gone horribly wrong.

To the shepherds—thus says the Lord God: Woe, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat; you clothe yourselves with the wool; you slaughter the fatted calves, but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak; you have not healed the sick; you have not bound up the injured; you have not brought back the strays; you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them.

“You had one job,” the Lord God seemed to say, “and you failed miserably.”

Ezekiel continues,

So [the sheep] were scattered because there was no shepherd, and scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them. (Ezekiel 34:1-6)

On a day like this, a day on which we focus on what it means to call Jesus the Good Shepherd, I find Ezekiel’s indictment of poor leadership to be particularly useful.

It’s useful because by so vividly describing what poor leadership looks like, he helps us understand more clearly what the goals of good leadership are in the first place.

To enrich oneself, to satisfy selfish cravings, to regard those being led as rubes to exploit or roadblocks that just get in the way—these are anathema to Spirit-inspired leaders.

Unmoored from God’s love, absent God’s grace, these shepherds lead scattered flocks and build fractured communities.

“If Ezekiel were among us now,” wrote theologian Walter Bruggemann, “he might well conclude that the emergence of the "99%" is a scourge from God that intends to expose and bring down social policies, practices, and institutions that are out of sync with God's will for shalom.” (ON Scripture, 11.16.11)

Less we hear Bruggemann’s words through the lens of toxic partisanship, it’s worth noting that he made that observation during the Occupy Wall Street protests fifteen years ago, a reminder that God’s desire for how we order our lives is so much more than the promises of our political parties and economic theories.

Bruggemann continued,

The promissory nature of Ezekiel's oracles articulates what good leadership looks like...in government, in corporations, all through the private sector. That rule consists in,

Seeking the lost,

Bring back the strayed,

Binding up the injured,

Strengthening the weak,

Feeding the hungry.

In a word, good leadership consists in the restoration of the common good so that all members of the community, strong and weak, rich and poor, may live together in a common shalom of shared resources…What is envisioned (and required) is the formation of a different leadership that has in purview all members of the community. Ezekiel knew that is the only way to have a future that does not replicate the failed past.

Ezekiel’s vision is just as relevant to our understanding of Jesus as the Good Shepherd as the more pastoral images that we find in the Psalms because the One who takes us to green pastures and leads us beside still waters doesn’t take us there alone.

Rather, the prophet knew the truth that Jesus would embody–that we are members of the shepherd’s flock, part of God’s community, and the gracious blessings imparted to each one of us must fundamentally transform how we relate to, look out for, and live with one another.

Sitting this week with how the Bible talks about shepherds, I’m struck that despite the need for good shepherding, the marketplace for bad shepherds continues to be vast and growing.

We give our time and energy to online platforms that have a vested interest in keeping us angry, then wonder why we’re so mad.

We open our minds to unserious and unvetted sources, then suffer the consequences of lacking understanding.

We make peace with violence and accept that scarcity leads to prosperity, then wonder why no one trusts anybody and why people are so lonely.

We surround ourselves with clowns, then act surprised to find ourselves living in a circus.

The voices of bad shepherds are as loud as they’ve ever been.

[But the good shepherd] calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers." (John 10:3-5)

The voices of bad shepherds are as loud as they’ve ever been, but Jesus says we don’t have to listen to them and we certainly don’t have to go where they would lead us.

The Good News is that Jesus is the Good Shepherd of our souls and our lives, and through the lessons and example of his life, death, and resurrection he is teaching us how to tend to one another….

To seek the lost,

Bring back the strayed,

Bind up the injured,

Strengthen the weak,

And feed the hungry.

May we be found attentive to his voice and faithful to our calling.

The One who takes us to green pastures and leads us beside still waters doesn’t take us there alone, but makes us members of the shepherd’s flock, part of God’s community, where we find blessings that transform how we relate to, look out for, and live with one another.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: Latimore, Kelly. Good Shepherd, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. Original source: Kelly Latimore Icons, https://kellylatimoreicons.com/.

Easter Hacks the Algorithm (Colossians 3:1-4)

Chances are, over the past few years, you’ve heard it said that someone was being “gaslighted” or was “gaslighting” someone else. Maybe you’ve even said it about yourself.

“Gaslighting” has become a way of describing manipulative behaviors that aim to trick people into thinking that they can’t trust their own memory or perception of reality or the truth.

“Gaslighting” is about coercion and gaslighters rely on tools like lying, lying about the lies they already told, and denying that they ever lied about anything to hone their craft.

The term comes from a movie released in 1944 called “Gaslight.” That story centers around a murderous con man’s devious scheme to get away with his crimes by tricking his wife into believing that she was, in a manner of speaking, “losing her mind.”

He gaslights her by moving items around the house so that she couldn’t find them, placing items in her possession to make her believe she stole them, and, even though his clandestine work in the attic was causing the gaslights in her room to dim for no apparent reason, to tell her that everything was fine and that she was just imagining things.

Such were the cruel man’s machinations.

“Gaslight” was a blockbuster. Audiences loved it, the movie made a lot of money, and Ingrid Bergman won an Oscar for her performance as the gaslighted wife.

The movie also gave writers, scholars, and the public a new way to talk about manipulation, and every few years or so the phrase “gaslighting” would pop up in an article or a scholarly paper. There was even a psychology book in the 1990s called “Gaslighting,” but the term has never before found the traction and staying power that it’s experiencing in our era, and I think it’s worth wondering why that is.

What is it about the times in which we are living that made us take hold of this way of talking about malign efforts to distract, disorient, and manipulate people?

As tempting as it is to label a single event or individual as the source of what ails us, the truth, it seems to me, is more complex.

On one hand, we’ve lived through a series of massive institutional failures and betrayals and scandals have shaken to the core organizations that we once looked to as stabilizing forces.

The Church, the Government, the Market—all have had their commitments to the common good challenged and have been exposed as wanting.

On the other hand, as we’ve watched these institutions and others that we inherited experience cataclysmic moments of reckoning, we’ve also seen the new stalwarts of society–the Internet and social media, for example–fail to deliver on so much of what they promised.

There was a time when we were told that we would have libraries of information at our fingertips, and we got that. But we also got casinos at our fingertips, and porn, and torrents of misinformation, and the same platforms that allowed us to share laughs with friends and reconnect with former classmates became hotbeds of rage, deceit, and division.

Combine all this in a cultural pressure cooker where we’re conditioned to hate what we see in the mirror, spend less time with real people, and to believe that we can buy our way to happiness, and you have a recipe for unhappy, unsettled, isolated people who are easy marks for the gaslighters among us.

I think we started talking so much about “gaslighting” in recent years because we needed a vocabulary and a space in which to express our confusion about what’s happening in our lives and our discomfort with what we’re feeling.

As people of faith, we welcome Jesus into that same space to be our sure foundation and to point us in the ways that we should go.

Inviting Jesus into our confusion and discomfort is the substance of Saint Paul’s message in his Letter to the Colossians.

Now, of course, the Colossians didn’t know what gaslighting was, but I think they would understand if we could explain it to them because they definitely knew what it felt like to be the target of someone’s or something’s self-interested and manipulative schemes.

Paul describes a situation there in which competing worldviews and truth claims were pulling the people in every direction, leaving their steps unbalanced and their faith and confidence shaken.

Paul addresses all this in the passage just prior to where we picked up the story in our first reading.

There, in chapter 2, Paul starts calling out some of the forces that were pressing, pulling, and coercing the Colossians.

Watch out that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit…[but remember Christ] disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in [the Resurrection.]” (Colossians 2:8, 15)

And as he continues, Paul works himself up into one of his characteristic rhetorical runs—encouraging the people to remain steadfast in the face of those who would "condemn" them, telling them to reject whatever had “an appearance of wisdom…but [was really] of no value,” empowering them to resist anyone who would tell them they weren’t good enough or acceptable to God or anyone else for that matter.

He said, “Do not let anyone disqualify you [because they’re] puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking.” (2.18)

I love this section of the letter because Paul’s warnings to the Colossians resonant so clearly today.

Beware of “empty deceit”!

Watch out for those who have “[only] an appearance of wisdom [but add no real value]’!

Just stay clear of those who are “puffed up without cause”!

It’s like someone handed Paul their smartphone and he’s just scrolling through it in horror at what he sees.

But Paul also understands that the Risen Christ hacks the algorithm to set the people free from all these disorienting forces, what he elsewhere calls “the principalities and powers”–free from manipulation, free from exploitation, free from systems, institutions, and leaders that are only in it for themselves and not the people’s wellbeing.

As one commentary on Colossians puts it, Paul is clear that “no part of human existence remains untouched by the loving and liberating rule of Jesus.” (The Bible Project: Colossians)

Loved by Christ, liberated by Christ, and set free by Christ, we are, therefore, able to be our true selves.

Paul’s run reaches its crescendo in chapter 3.

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on the things that are above, not on the things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. (3:1-4)

To be clear, we should understand that the promise here is so much more than “Easter means that we get to go be with Jesus in heaven when we die.”

It’s so much more than that.

The promise that we call Good News is that, because of what Jesus accomplished in his life, death, and resurrection, we are not bound by this world’s gaslighting plots and schemes, but are elevated and empowered to stand firm on solid and holy ground.

“Seek the things that are above,” said Paul, “Set your mind on the things that are above.”

And as we keep reading we find out what that’s all about.

Those who “seek the things that are above” leave behind harmful and destructive ideas and practices–things that degrade and harm the Creation, their neighbors, and themselves.

They overcome vice with virtue.

They build communities in which old and divisive barriers and labels are cast aside because they know that God’s love has no end or limitations.

They clothe themselves with love, let the peace of Christ rule in their hearts, and they are thankful. (Colossians 3: 5-15)

“If you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is,” because Jesus knows and cherishes the real you—not in order to control you, or exploit you, or to sell you something you don’t need—but “to give you a future with hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

The Risen Christ hacks the algorithm of death, destruction, lies, and violence so that we can be free.

We started talking about “gaslighting” in recent years because our communities are filled with a lot of unhappy, unsettled, and isolated people and we needed a vocabulary and a space in which to express our discomfort with so much of what we’re feeling.

As people of faith, we welcome Jesus into that same space to be our sure foundation and to point us in the ways that we should go.

And he is faithful to come into that space, to see us and hear us.

So “if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is,” because Jesus knows and cherishes the real you—not in order to control you, or exploit you, or to sell you something you don’t need—not to gaslight you, but “to give you a future with hope.” (Jeremiah 29:11)

Christ is risen! Alleluia! Amen.

Image: Theatrical release poster

An Ugly Cry (John 11)

“Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O LORD. Lord, hear my voice: let thine ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications.” (Psalm 130:1-2)

For centuries faithful men and women have found their voice in the words of Psalm 130. Ancient Israelites, Christian apostles, Catholic monks, Protestant reformers, and believers like us made this prayer—a prayer born of the pain and loss that shape the human condition—their own.

Psalm 130—often called De Profundis after its opening line in Latin—has also earned an esteemed place in the canon of literature and music. Writers like Oscar Wilde, C.S. Lewis, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning drew inspiration from this text, as did great composers like Bach, Mozart, and Mendelssohn.

And it’s easy to understand why.

While so many passages of scripture seem foreign to us and alien to our world, this one is at home on our lips and in our hearts.

As hard as we might try to convince others—convince ourselves, convince God—that we’ve got our stuff together and are utterly self-reliant and independent, we know something about being down, even if we don’t want to admit it.

“Out of the depths,”—not from the mountain top of my triumph, not with my best foot forward, not in my carefully curated social media presence—“Out of the depths” of my loneliness, brokenness, and pain “I cry to you, O Lord.”

The revered theologian Walter Brueggemann helps us understand Psalm 130’s radical perspective.

Brueggemann writes,

From where should the ruler of reality be addressed? One might think it should be from a posture of obedience, or at least from a situation of prosperity and success, indicating conformity to the blessed order of creation. One ought to address the king suitably dressed, properly positioned, with a disciplined, well-modulated voice. But this psalm is the miserable cry of a nobody from nowhere. The cry penetrates the veil of heaven! It is heard and received. (The Psalms and the Life of Faith, p. 104)

We’ve come together today to unite in prayer and thanksgiving because God still sees and hears the cries of nobodies from nowhere like us.

Today, we remember and give thanks that when we cry from the depths God comes into the depths so that we might be lifted up and set free.

A story about Jesus and his friends Mary, Martha, and Lazarus reveals Good News to us.

Reading the 11th chapter of John, we find Jesus receiving some disturbing news.

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” (John 11:1-3)

Our experiences in hospital waiting rooms and taking and making distressed phone calls help us sense the gravity of the situation.

A loved one was dying.

When Jesus and his disciples finally made it to Bethany, Lazarus’ funeral had already happened and attention had turned to consoling his grieving sisters.

But the sisters wanted more than Jesus’ sympathy.

Sister Martha met Jesus first. The two talked there for a while about what had happened and about what Jesus might have been able to do if only he had come more quickly.

“Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:21)

The two talked about resurrection, about their shared hope that death was not the end of Lazarus’ story, and it became clear in that moment that Martha believed Jesus had the ability to do something amazing for his friend—even if she wasn’t absolutely clear about what that amazing something might be.

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.”

Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” She said to him, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” (John 11:23-27)

Then Martha went to get her sister.

When Mary came where Jesus was and saw him, she knelt [the King James Version says “she fell”] at his feet and said to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. (John 11:32-35)

Jesus asked to be taken to the grave, and there he began to weep. Actually, one of the Greek verbs used here says that Jesus “snorted” which indicates that there’s more than a tear on his cheek.

This is a full blown ugly cry, and that matters.

Throughout Lent, we’ve focused on the ways in which Jesus sees and hears us, and we’ve found in this quality a blessing.

It’s the promise that nothing–not our questions, not our weariness, and certainly no label that someone else has placed upon–can separate us from God’s love.

Of all the stories we’ve read this season, however, it’s what took place in Bethany that reveals the significance of this promise most clearly.

Jesus doesn’t see and hear us from a safe distance, but comes to be with us, wherever we are, even in the depths of grief, even at the grave of a loved one.

This is the power and the mystery of the Incarnation, the conviction that…

though [Jesus] existed in the form of God,

did not regard equality with God

as something to be grasped,

but emptied himself,

taking the form of a slave,

assuming human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a human,

he humbled himself

and became obedient to the point of death—

even death on a cross. (Philippians 2:6-8)

This early Christian hymn helps us understand what happened next.

Emptied of all but love, Jesus stood before Lazarus’ tomb.

He asked that it be opened.

He prayed, and then, “he cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.”

And “the dead man came out, his hands and feet bound with strips of cloth and his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.” (John 11:44)

The Requiem for Lazarus became a Jubilee.

So many elements of Lazarus’ story are painfully common. An unexpected death, grieving family and friends, questions about “what if” and “what could have been”—we know this story.

We’ve lived this story.

But this morning we remember the incredible turn Lazarus’ story took.

We remember that the one who said “I am the resurrection, and the life,” ugly cried at his friend’s grave.

We remember that “he who was dead came forth.”

And we remember that this wasn’t the last time a stone was moved away and a death shroud set aside.

And in those memories, we find Good News.

We’ve come together today to unite in prayer and thanksgiving because God still sees and hears the cries of nobodies from nowhere like us.

Today, we remember and give thanks that when we cry from the depths God comes into the depths so that we might be lifted up and set free.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

Image: Weeping Angel

Now I See (John 9)

Nicholas Klein might not be a well known historical figure, but you’ve probably heard a version of something he once said, especially if you spend a good amount of time online.

Klein was a leader in the labor movement of the early 20th century. It was in that role, while giving a speech in which he was encouraging his audience to remain steadfast in pursuing their demands, even in the face of often violent opposition, Klein remarked,

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.

This has become one of those quotes that resurfaces on social media from time to time, often detached from its original context, or even misattributed to another speaker.

Nevertheless, Klein’s statement reflects a certain truth about the human experience.

People who accomplish great things rarely do so without facing resistance and opposition. In fact, one might say that an accomplishment’s greatness is measured, in part, by what must be overcome to reach it.

If that’s true then the athletic accomplishments of Oksana Masters are among some of the greatest ever.

This month Masters dominated her events at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Paralympic Games. Winning four gold medals, she raised her career total to 23 medals, making her the most decorated winter paralympian in U.S. history—an achievement as utterly and completely improbable as any story you’ve ever heard.

Oksana was born in 1989 in Ukraine, which was then a part of the Soviet Union.

Exposed to high amounts of radiation in utero, she was born with a long list of physical defects. She had “six toes on each foot…webbed fingers on each hand, and no thumbs. [Her] left leg was six inches shorter than [the] right, and both were missing weight-bearing bones.” (The Hard Part Out Lord)

Oksana was put up for adoption and spent the first seven and a half years of her life in a violent and abusive orphanage system.

She was an outcast among outcasts—the kind of life all too frequently treated as disposable, like a nobody whose life means nothing to no one.

However, one day before Oksana’s fifth birthday, Gay Masters, a college professor in Buffalo, New York, saw a grainy black and white photograph of her in a publication from an adoption agency.

Masters would later say that, upon seeing that picture, she knew that Oksana was her daughter.

“It was her eyes,” Masters said. “They just pull you in.”

From that moment, it took two long years to complete the adoption process.

Oksana was seven when she finally came home to Buffalo for the first time. Later, the new family moved to Louisville, Kentucky.

Along the way, nurtured by her mother’s love and support, Oksana grew stronger and fierce.

She was a competitive and active child, despite eventually having both legs amputated.

Rowing was the first sport that Oksana fell in love with. She even set a world record and won her first paralympic medal in 2012, but a back injury required her to give it up rowing when she was only 23 years old.

Grieving the loss of a sport she loved, she tried others—skiing, cycling, biathlon—and she excelled at all of them, too.

More records and medals followed, which brought Oksana more accolades and opportunities to tell her story. She became an author and an advocate.

She even made a trip back to Ukraine with her mom–visiting orphanages and wounded veterans, in her own words, “to try and show people in Ukraine that no matter what their circumstances, their futures have yet to be decided.”

Oksana has this drive, this fire, to overcome anything set in her path by anything or anyone and she wants to help others do the same. It’s a quality that our cynical impulses often dismiss as naive optimism, but animating someone who has been through so much, done so much, survived and endured so much, our better angels recognize it as genuine and powerful hope—a quality she learned from her mother.

Oksana writes,

For two years, [my mother] waited for me. She wanted me when I was five years old, but legislation in the Ukraine made it impossible for her to take me to America. For two years, she didn’t quit.

“Get a Russian baby,” they told her. “That’s what everybody else is doing. You can get a healthy Russian right now.”

They even offered her information on some Russian adoption agencies. But again and again, my mom refused.

“I just want my daughter.” she told them.

For two years we weren’t able to speak or communicate in any way. I only had one picture of her, but every day I would look at it. I would stare at the only photo I had of my new mom. I’d sit alone, in the dark, and tell myself over and over that one day things were going to get better.

I’d do it again when I lost one leg, and then the other. Every time I was hurt, or alone, or the future looked bleak, I would say the same thing: “It will get better.”

And in the end, it always did. (Live Better, The Players’ Tribune)

First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.

I think the man at the center of our Gospel passage would’ve seen the truth in these words and celebrated the power of Oksana’s story.

John’s 9th chapter tells us about “a man born blind” who was judged and dismissed by many, but who Jesus saw, heard, and healed.

It’s said that Jesus and his disciples once encountered a man who had never been able to see. Making mud and then spreading it upon the man’s face, Jesus told the man to go wash himself in a nearby pool of water.

Then he went and washed and came back able to see.

After the healing, Jesus and his disciples left the man and continued on their way. However, with the gift of sight, our man would see for himself how judgemental and dismissive his neighbors could be.

First, they doubted him.

The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar began to ask, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some were saying, “It is he.” Others were saying, “No, but it is someone like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” But they kept asking him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ Then I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

The Pharisees—members of the religious establishment—were dubious of the man’s claims, too. They inquired so as to learn if this really was the same man who once was blind.

Once they were satisfied that it was the same man, they were less than enthusiastic.

First they doubted him. Then they criticized him.

Once the evidence convinced the authorities that a healing had, indeed, taken place, criticism about how the miracle occurred replaced their doubt.

It wasn’t the right time for healing, they said.

A holy man would know better than to heal on the Sabbath.

The authorities questioned the healed man’s parents, then gave him one more chance to denounce Jesus.

“We know that this man is a sinner,” they said.

He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.”

They answered him, “You were born entirely in sins, and are you trying to teach us?” And they drove him out.

First they doubted him. Then they criticized him. And then they drove him out of town.

That’s where Jesus found our man again.

Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.” And he worshiped him.

His neighbors had so little regard for this man, he was such a nobody, that not only could they not be bothered to celebrate his life changing healing, they actually counted it as another disappointing chapter in his disappointing life.

He was such a screw up that he couldn’t even get healed correctly.

But these labels that belittled and dismissed meant nothing to Jesus.

He saw the man just as he sees each one of us–as we really are, not as others define or even as we define ourselves.

He sees and hears the truth about us and he “loves us, gave his life to save us, and, even now, is living at our side every day to enlighten, strengthen and set us free.”

He also invites us to share the same grace we’ve received with others by pushing past the labels they’ve had placed up on them and honoring them as the beloved children of God that they are.

Jesus calls us to be his disciples and to continue his work—to see and hear our neighbors for who they really are and to love them.

Nicholas Klein once said, “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”

Oksana Masters went back to a place she dreamed of escaping “to try and show people…that no matter what their circumstances, their futures have yet to be decided.”

The healing of a man born blind unleashed a firestorm of judgement and criticism, but the man remained clear eyed about what had happened.

“One thing I do know,” he said, “that though I was blind, now I see.”

May we, as the Church, take Klein’s wisdom, the power of Oksana Masters’ story, and the witness of John chapter 9 to heart.

With the confidence of those who are seen, heard, and loved by a gracious, merciful, steadfast God, may we reject every label that belittles, dismisses, and damages God’s children, so that we may see, hear, and love our neighbors just as they are–-just like Jesus.

Amen.

Image: Oksana_Masters_Rob_Jones_mixed_sculls_final_2012.jpg: Steve Selwood from Yate, U.K.derivative work: IronGargoyle, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons