Sunday's sermon

 

June 25, 2023

        Matthew’s Jesus must have gotten up on the wrong side of the bed on the morning of today’s gospel.

        He says some things we don’t want our Savior to say ever.

        Listen: “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

        For I have come to set a man against his father,

        And a daughter against her mother,

        And a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,

        And one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.”

        He goes on to say if you love your father or son or daughter more than me ‘is not worthy of me’.

        I’m going to let us off the hook on all of that.

        When Matthew wrote his gospel—in the late 70’s or early 80’s of the first century—the Christian church was already dividing families. If one person in a family had become a Christian, the others would turn their backs on that person or even shun them.

        So, Jesus’ dire warning in today’s Gospel rang true to the early church.

        And that was true even before the Romans began persecuting Christians.

        But it’s not true today in our country.

        Only 41% of Americans consider themselves Christian. Most of Americans—especially young Americans—are not affiliated with or even identify with Christians.

        We are not ‘in danger’ for being Christians—mostly we are ‘ignored’ and ‘tolerated’.

        Now, I’m not going to suggest that there is something we can do about that.

        Only 1.2% of Americans are Episcopalian.

        We’re a rare breed!

        What I want to point out is that we are on the sidelines of America. There is no way we’re going to turn that around and become ‘significant’ again. In fact, it’s just going to get worse as time moves on.

        What I do want to say is that we can use being ‘ignored’ as a way to do the things Jesus told us to do. We’re ‘under cover’ and can act with integrity and passion.

        I see the food and clothing you bring to the back of the church. I know your work in soup kitchens and other forms of charity. You bring Christ to the world—whether or not the world understands that.

        Do invite people to church—but don’t worry if they ever show up.

        Let me tell you about a phone call I had with Sherry Shoblom on Friday. She said she visited 40 churches before she found Trinity and that the care and love she found her has put an angel that had been missing on her shoulder.

        Hear that: you put an angel on her shoulder.

        That’s what being a Christian is all about.

        I humbly applaud you. Ponder your gift to the world.

Amen.

 

Australian poppies

These lovely yellow/orange flowers come up in our front yard every year.

I love them.

But I didn't know their name until today.

Bern told me they were Australian poppies.

"But they're not 'real' poppies," she added.

Since I wouldn't know a real poppy from a fake one, I didn't respond.

But the flowers are beautiful.

Whatever they are.

 

Juneteenth

        It is the day slaves knew they were free.

    Something to celebrate and rejoice about!

    But since then, things have not gone well for Black and Brown and poor White folks.

    There's still a lot to fix in the country.

    But today was better than July 4, because we all became Americans on that day.

    Really, but not quite yet.

    Happy Juneteenth. 

    Keep working for equality.

    Here I am, a white man with English roots in a $330K house asking for equality.

    We all need to examine ourselves as we try to make this nation more equal.

 

Today

Somehow, I can't find the sermon I preached today, on Father's day in my documents.

I'm a novice at all this so it isn't surprising.

It was about my father and 'our Father in Heaven'. 

If I find the pages on Wednesday, I'll print them here.

I ended with a prayer for Pride Month.

I take pride in the LGBTQ community since I know so many wondrous human beings who are a part of it.

I am disgusted with what legislatures around the U.S. are doing to them.

So, my prayer supported them as 'being' as God made them.

That is what I firmly believe.

Today and always.

 

a blast from the past

 I just got off the phone with Ron W.--a college friend. He had met a priest friend of mine who gave him my number.

We both went to high school in the same town--Gary, WV. But until my senior year of high school I had never gone to school with Black students--the schools were still segregated. My senior year Gary District High sent three male athletes and three smart girls over to Gary High to break the color barrier. Ron was not one of them.

The next year the schools merged--black students all over the county (our county was about 50%-50%) went to the white schools because they had, of course, been better maintained.

Ron and I met at West Virginia University our freshman year.

He introduced me to his friends by saying, "This is Jim. We went to different high schools together."

Old friends and book ends do hold things together.

We promised to keep in touch.

Summer is coming

 Just 9 days until summer is here.

I love the heat, so I am ready for it.

We haven't put in our air conditioners yet but will soon.

But the heat is what I love.

Being cold is always with me. Even today when Bern said it was hot and humid, I had on jeans and a long sleeve shirt.

I was even cold on Oak Island much of the time.

Strange to be cold in North Carolina in June!

Let the summer come!

I welcome it, so much....

Sunday's Sermon

June 11, 2023

          It’s hard to write a sermon at the beach.

          I told Gene that a day or two before we left for North Carolina. He told me—“write about what you’re experiencing.”

          I decided to do that.

          Our first few days were cool—like the temperature.

          Much like the Pharisees were “cool” toward Jesus when they saw him eating with sinners and tax collectors—both ‘unclean’ to devout Jews.

          But Jesus heard them and told them: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick….I have come not to call the righteous but sinners.”

          The Pharisees and Sadducees didn’t trust or like Jesus. They saw him as a threat to their power.

          But some, like the leader of the synagogue in today’s gospel, understood he had great power—the power to bring the dead back to life. Like his daughter.

          The beach here faces south. The sun rises to my left and crosses the sky directly overhead, finally setting on my right.

          During the day there is an island miles away which looks like an ocean liner by day. But at night, it lights up and reveals itself to be an island. That’s a lot like ‘looking for Jesus’ in our world. Jesus can’t be seen in the sunlight, but in the dark night of our souls, he shines in the distance.

          That’s what the woman who had suffered from hemorrhages a dozen years saw as Jesus passed—a light shining in the darkness of her pain.

          She touches the hem of his garment as he passes and the power flows out of him to heal her.

          Jesus turns to her and says: “take heart daughter, your faith has made you well.”

          As broken and you and I may be, our faith—what little we have—can make us whole again.

          Then there is the wind.

          The wind blows almost constantly on Oak Island. It sweeps across us wherever we are.

          Tim and Eleanor put up a kite today—shaped and colored like a monarch butterfly. It flew higher and higher and higher in the wind. It took both of them and Mimi and Bern to bring it back to earth.

          God is like the wind—blowing us always toward Him. Resist as we might, the wind blows our souls higher and higher toward the Almighty.

          It is as it should be—always moving toward God, propelled by the wind of his Voice. Always upward….Nearer and Nearer….

          And the birds…the birds!

          Three young women were on the beach feeding bread crumbs to a sea gull. Within moments they were surrounded by 40 or 50 gulls. They ran out of bread and had to flee the birds, laughing as they ran.

          But my favorites are the Pelicans. A few hundred yards beyond the western edge of Oak Island, there is a tiny island known as Pelican Island. Hundreds of pelicans nest there and fly east each morning over our heads and return west in the early evening.

          Their shadows fall over the house we’re in both morning and evening. During the day they fly, in formation, just above the water, occasionally swooping down to catch fish.

          Birds are the last of the dinosaurs and the forerunners of the angels of God.

          Finally, there is the ocean itself.

          Vast and seemingly endless, the Atlantic stretches from the Artic to Antarctica. Between North and South America and Scandinavia, Europe and Africa to the East.

          Like the ocean, God’s love is vast and eternal.

          It is that vast love, surging through Jesus, that takes that dead girl’s hand and gives her life again.

          “She is just asleep,” Jesus tells those gathered outside the synagogue leader’s house.

          They laughed at him. How could he not know dead is DEAD?

          But when he comes back, holding the girl’s Oh-so-alive hand, they laugh no more and tell of Jesus’ miracle throughout the district.

          So much here at the beach points me toward God.

          Just pay attention to the wonders all around you each day and turn your hearts toward Jesus and your imagination toward God.

          Try it—pay attention to what surround you and long for God…

          Long always for God….

Amen.