Entangled States

What I find fascinating in this week’s reading from Acts is the way the gathered Apostles decided to chose the next Apostle, and the faith that they displayed in so doing.

First, they began to prepare for the future. (Twelve was an important number, but it stopped being the defining number. Apostles were killed, or died. New Apostles emerged or were elected. The Way of Love, that Presiding Bishop Michael Curry so often mentions, began to spread.)

They believed that they had a future. They didn’t hunker down waiting for the end. They believed that they had a message to share, and they were willing to give their lives to spread that good news.

Adding to their number, and creating a process to do so is a sign of that faith.

You can find the sermon posted here.

Perhaps you’ve heard someone describe themself as a “Friend of Bill”? That doesn’t mean they’re literally a friend of a person named Bill, they’re not in a relationship. It means that the person is a following the 12 Step program that Bill W had a part in creating. It means that the person is working on overcoming their addiction and trying maintain their sobriety. It’s not a relationship as much as it’s a commitment to a way of living.

What does it mean to be a Friend of Dorothy? Well, according to the site, Pride.com, it stems from The Wizard of Oz books:

Upon first publication, the Oz books were a sensation of their own inspiring musicals, plays, and movies even before the 1939 MGM epic. They were a blockbuster sensation before blockbusters were a thing. And they were really queer. The books are full of strong woman in close relationships with each other, gender bending princes, and more. In 1906’s Road to Oz, Polychrome (literally the Rainbow’s daughter, although that’s pure coincidence as the LGBT rainbow flag as we know it was debuted in the ’70s) tells Dorothy “You have some queer friends, Dorothy.” And our plucky young heroine replies, “The queerness doesn’t matter, so long as they’re friends!”

In both cases, being a Friend means identifying with others and doing something rather than being in friendship with another person in the way we normally think about it.

Jesus tells us that if we want to be a Friend of Jesus, we must do what he expects of us, what he commands of us; to love our neighbor as ourself. That’s the main idea of the sermon this week and what doing that might mean for us.

You can find the sermon at this link.

Describing the ruler of the people as a shepherd of the people is common in Mediterranean cultures. The Pharaoh is often depicted holding a flail and a shepherd’s crook as a sign that he was both a war leader and a shepherd to the people of his Empire. The rulers of Babylon and Assyria were described in the same way. King David was a shepherd before he was the King. And the Psalms often use images of shepherds and sheep to illustrate the relationship between God and the people or between the King and the people. 

When Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd he does so in a way that seems familiar at first glance, but when you look more carefully is very different, radically different even. He isn’t going to kill others to protect his flock, he is going to die to protect his flock.

As Jesus’ followers we are called to live into his example, and that means we must find a different way of living into our relationship with the people who surround us, and who often oppose us. In this week’s sermon I explore that question.

(I’m sorry that I’m re-running a sermon again this week. I did a recording a new version, but the camera system went haywire halfway through the filming and I didn’t have the time to reshoot with a different camera. It’s been quite a run of challenges. I’m hoping that next week I’ll be able to get back on track.

You can find a direct link to this week’s sermon here.

My apologies again this week. I’m writing this from our diocesan Camp and Conference Center (ECC) where I’m spending the weekend on retreat with the deacons of Rhode Island. It’s an incredible blessing to spend this time with them, to get reacquainted after being dispersed around the state and from each other for over a year, to hear their stories, and to pray together. In fact it’s such a blessing that I lost track of the days. One of them, The Rev. Ted Hallenback looked at me today at lunch, and asked what I was going to do for a video sermon this week…

Whoops.

So, though I hadn’t intended to do so this week, the only option I have is to repost a sermon from three years ago. It’s a good sermon – and it’s essentially what I’m intending to say to the deacons as we worship together tomorrow morning in the barn here on the property. 

It’s reflection on the physical, bodily resurrection that we confess our belief in each week as we say the Creeds together. But this week’s Gospel reading is also a reminder that though our bodies in the coming Kingdom of God are new and glorious, they are still our bodies and bear the wounds we have suffered during our lives. If that seems like a disappointment to you, perhaps it’s because you and I don’t see the suffering we experience in the same way that God sees it. Rather than a sign of punishment or disfavor, our wounds, in as much as we can participate in Christ’s woundedness, are the means by which we (and the World around us) are healed. They aren’t signs of illness, but rather they are signs of healing. 

It’s rather a paradox isn’t it?

You can view or download the video of the sermon here.

And The Rev. Andrew Gerns has posted his sermon on this text here. (It’s a fine sermon in case you’re looking for something new and not something reposted.)

It’s been quite the week for me. We had a wonderful celebration of Easter Day at Trinity Church in Newport RI, and then I jumped headlong into a long list of chores and tasks that got put off during the last weeks of Lent and Holy Week.

I say all that to ask for your understanding that I’m not posting a new sermon, but rather reposting one from three years ago. (It was a good sermon, and as I was working on something for this year, I realized that I was going to be saying essentially the same thing.)

https://entangledstates.org/2021/04/10/what-sins-you-bind-are-bound-what-sins-you-loose-are-loosed/

If you’re in a part of the country that is going to have a chance to see the solar eclipse on Monday, either as a total eclipse or as a partial, I’m sending you best wishes for clear skies. It looks like we’ll have fine weather here in southern Rhode Island. We’re just off the path of totality; but with everything coming this week, I’m going to stay home and watch from the backyard instead of heading to Maine or New Hampshire. I’m hoping I get some decent pictures! 

There’s good reason to be worried. There’s good reason to be pessimistic. There is little reason to be hopeful. But Easter brings hope in the midst of doubt.

For those who have eyes to see, or hearts to discern; Easter changed everything, though only a small group of people understood that at the time and that might well be true now too. In the decades following the Resurrection, things didn’t get better, they got worse. The Roman Empire destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and drove Jesus’ people from their ancestral home. Yet, despite the obvious unfolding calamity, the seeds of a new reality had been planted that were to change everything within a few centuries.

Sustaining our sense of hope is seldom easy, especially if we’re focusing on the rush of events and thereby missing the arc of history. Easter is the ground of our hope, though often our hope is more of a spiritual discipline than a clear and present reality. To be an Easter people in a time such as this is to believe when it’s difficult to believe. It’s an act of faith. A stubborn act of faith – when there’s little reason to hope.

You can view the sermon directly at this link.

What we think of success and power is not how God thinks of them. God who has everything, all success and all power, gives it all up to save us and to transform who we are, and to remake the Creation that had gone sideways.

Jesus, stages the “anti” Triumph when he enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. He comes as saving victim, who forgives us while he is dying, a death that happens because of our rejection and turning from God.

This is the “anti-success”. God is remakes Creation in these days, reveals a New Adam – and does it while keeping the promise, made to Noah after the flood, that God would never again destroy the world in wrath and reject that which God had made. God transforms it all but acting out a triumph that to the World seems to be an absolutely upside down version of the Roman one, of the sort that Empires proclaim.

This is not a Lord who requires us to sacrifice ourselves to serve the purpose of the Empire, of the economic engines, but a King who dies at our hands to lead us out of the nightmare in which we have become trapped.

You can find the direct link to the sermon video here.