Who Is This God Who So Loved the World?

Posted on March 10, 2024 by grimrev

Lent IV

March 10, 2024

The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen S. Grimshaw

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

This is the week in our Lenten walk toward the cross when the lectionary invites us to ask the age-old question: Who is God?

Actually, the lectionary has been laying a trail of bread crumbs for the whole of Lent. Because this is the year in our cycle of readings when we hear five of God’s six Covenants with God’s children. And nothing bares one’s identity like a covenant.

In the first week we heard God’s first covenant with all of creation, in Genesis chapter 9. God looked out and saw that humanity was….well, awful. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. The lot of us.

And God regretted creating us.  Those were almost God’s exact words. And so in a fit of disgust, God flooded the whole world. A sort of divine temper tantrum, as far as I can see. But, it was early on. And God was relatively new to this Maker of Heaven and Earth job, so I can cut him some slack. But let us not miss the theological distance between Genesis 9 when God so hated the world that he tried to wipe it out. And John 3:16 in this morning’s Gospel when God so loved the world that he gave his only son. I just don’t want us to hear this morning’s Gospel in a vacuum.

Anyway even though God flooded the whole world, Noah’s faithfulness saved God’s bacon…..and every other species of God’s glorious creation, by going out on the biggest limb of all time. He built an arc and rounded up a reproducible sample of all of God’s creative work. And it was a good thing that Noah stuck with God. Because as it turned out, God was sorry for his attempt at wholesale destruction of creation. And God promised never to do it again. And God would back up that promise for all time with a reoccurring rainbow as a sign of God’s solemn trustworthiness. It was God’s first covenant. Who is God? Our God is a God who keeps his promises.

Covenant number two came in week two in another reading from Genesis. This time in chapter 17. God made his covenant with Abram, soon to be renamed Abraham. It reads: When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you…..’

This is God’s direct answer to the question who is God? God said to Abram: I am God Almighty. That’s how God introduced himself. With those words. The Hebrew is: el shadai. El – God. Shadai – Almighty.

But actually, not-so-much.

Nowhere in any lexicon in the history of Hebrew lexicons is the word shadai translated as almighty. Nowhere. Ever. This passage is the foundation for our use of the phrase God Almighty.

And every English Bible translates it thusly. And our Christian tradition has run with this moniker for God in every iteration of prayer and praise and worship since the beginning of …our Christian tradition. Our God is God Almighty.  It’s everywhere in our Book of Common Prayer. In every single liturgy, bar none. It is the most frequently used descriptor for God after Father…..which is another sermon for another day.

And it is quite a comforting answer to the question, Who is God? Comforting, but not exactly accurate. Because almighty is not the proper translation of shadai. The Rashi Commentaries[1], a virtual rabbinical textbook on the Talmud, translates shadai not as almighty, but as sufficient. God is enough. The Rashi translation has God saying to Abram: I am He Whose Godliness suffices for every creature.

Sufficient. Not Almighty. Sufficient. Wow. That is a very different answer to Who is God?

Does that change how we see God? How we see ourselves? What might that suggest about our own agency and responsibility in our relationship with God? Who is responsible for making things right? God Almighty with all the power? Or we God’s children who have everything we need? This translation might mean a radical change in the way we see and approach God. And in the way we see and accept ourselves in God’s world. It would suggest that we less like God’s subjects and more like partners. We’ll talk more about this down the road.  But for now it is definitely food for thought. In covenant number two, if we follow the rabbinic translation, God is enough.

And last week we heard God’s third covenant in the so-called 10 commandments.God instructs us to be single minded in our love, devotion, concentration, and commitment to God and God alone. And God says that if we can keep our minds focused on God alone, we will avoid all manner of bad behavior which can and will take us to our knees. In covenant number three God is the center of our lives. God is everything. Which sort of shores up covenant number two because everything is more than enough.

This morning we heard the New Testament’s answer to the question Who is God? And it signifies the last and final covenant of God. Next week we will hear covenant number four when God etches God’s word on our hearts. But in today’s covenant God offers the last covenant. The covenant to top all covenants. Jesus of Nazareth. God’s last ditch effort to bring humanity to love.

This morning’s Gospel from John is arguably the single most often-quoted Christian verse of the Bible. Tattooed on God knows how many arms and football player Tim Tebow’s face.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son; that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.               

It’s all there. Everything we need to know about God.  It’s one sentence. Or so say the scribes who did the translation. But who knows? Because the original Greek of the New Testament, like the original Hebrew of the First Testament, had no punctuation. ALL of the punctuation in our English translations is approximated at best. But punctuation is important. It can totally change the meaning of a sentence. And the punctuation is part of what has always made this verse difficult for me to fully embrace.

If I were translating this text from the Greek, I would have placed a big fat period after the first clause. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son. Full stop. I would not have made the first clause dependent on the second clause. As if God were striking a deal with humanity. As if God gave Jesus only to the ones who believe. Which suggests that a lot of humanity will be left out. And that there is no room for newcomers. I would have separated these clauses, at the very least. Because Jesus’ life cannot be a trade to reward our belief, but a gift to show us what pure love looks like.

Still, this is not my biggest issue with this verse. My biggest issue is not what it says, but how it is heard. Many of us hear: For God so loved the world that he “sacrificed” his only son. The connotation is that Jesus was born to die. That Jesus was born not to teach us how to love – which caused his death. But to die. First and foremost. God gave his only child to die for us. I cannot get my arms or my mind or my heart around a God who would do that.

And that, I think, is why for a long time I summarily avoided this central verse of scripture.

Until…one of my dearest friends in the world lost her only son to suicide a few years ago. It turned out to be an accidental suicide – but nevertheless her gorgeous 26 year old only child was found dead in his room on Fort Wainwright Army Base in Alaska. And there are no words to describe the depth of his mother’s suffering. I went to North Carolina to sit with my inconsolable friend and preside and preach at her son’s funeral. The scripture that Liz chose for the service was John 3:16.

There it was. The confluence of a text that seems to tell of a God who willingly sent his only child to die, in the context of a funeral for an only child whose mother would have given her own life to save his.

I could not translate my way out of that one. The text says what it says. All I could do was listen differently. To try to hear any semblance of comfort in this passage for a mother whose only begotten son had just been taken from her. To try to hear how a God whom I knew loved me was willing to give his own flesh and blood over to death, even for the promise of life everlasting for the whole wide world?

I have been thinking about and studying this verse ever since.

And as usual, I started to rethink the language. The words. The Greek words. Starting with the first concept. For God so loved the world. The Greek word for world is oikos. It covers everything in God’s realm. The whole economy of God. The whole world. Not just the believing-in-Jesus world. The whole world. It does not get more inclusive that this. For God so loved the whole wide world. So far so good. That is indeed the God I have experienced. It sort of contradicts the second clause that narrows the blessing to the believing world, but nevermind for now.

For God so loved the whole wide world…that God gave his only son. The Greek word translated as ‘gave’ is didowmi.  It is used at least a few dozen times in John’s Gospel. But only here in verse 3:16 do we generally understand that word to mean sacrificed. In every other instance in this Gospel “gave” is translated with a tone of hospitality not sacrifice. It is translated to mean offered, with no hardship or sacrifice intended anywhere but here.Jesus gave fish and loaves to those who are hungry.  The word of God is given to those who need guidance. Gifts from the Holy Spirit are given to us. Only in John 3:16 do we read this Greek word to mean more than offered, do we read it to mean “offered up,” as in sacrificed.

There is a Greek word for sacrifice, thusia.  But it is not the word that is used here.

I think we often hear this passage as a prequel to the cross. But maybe it is not. Maybe it is rather a statement of self-sacrifice rather than blood sacrifice. Maybe God gave God’s son to the world in the way that every parent gives a child to the world. Maybe God gave Jesus to the world in a way not altogether unlike the way my friend Liz gave her son Jason to the world. Grounded in love and with the courage to let him go out on his own and live the way he was born to live. God gave his only son to the world knowing that the love he would embody might just cost him his life.

I hear this verse saying that God gave Jesus to love us, not to die for us. But God gave Jesus to love us knowing that love is dangerous. So who is God?

John 3:16 tells us that our God is a God of unparalleled generosity and unfathomable courage and above all unending love for the whole world.

And if that God is not sufficient, I don’t know who is.

Amen to that!

© March 2024 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

[1] I am the Almighty God: Heb. שַׁדַּי – I am He Whose Godliness suffices for every creature. [שֶׁ that, דַּי is sufficient]. Therefore, walk before Me, and I will be your God and your Protector, and wherever it (this name) appears in Scripture, it means “His sufficiency,” but each one is [to be interpreted] according to the context. — [from Gen. Rabbah 47:3] – Rashi Commentaries

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For God So Loved the Wind

Posted on March 5, 2023 by grimrev

Gospel According to John 3:1-17

March 5, 2023, Lent II

The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen S. Grimshaw

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT 

 For There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?”Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

This morning’s lectionery is a powerhouse!  It includes four of the most theologically fundamental readings in our canon.  All stacked up in one week!

*Genesis 12 – the fulcrum in God’s relationship with humanity. The moment when God’s approach changes from levying curses to offering blessings.  A brand new start with the blessing of humanity through ordinary Abraham.

*Psalm 121 – Short sweet and crystal clear that God is above all, our keeper. Not just our Maker. 

*Paul’s Letter to the Romans which lays out the fundamental kernel of Paul’s theology, which is grounded in chapter 12 of Genesis. We, and all of humanity, are heirs to God’s blessing through Abraham, not through Jewish law. Loosely translated, we do not need to be Jewish to belong to God.

*And the Gospel reading from John. Maybe the most recognizable piece of Christian scripture in our canon. For God so loved the world…… 

But this morning in the second week of Lent, we get the story that immediately precedes that familiar bumper-sticker of a verse. We get the context for our belief in eternal life.  The pre-requisite to our belief, says Jesus, is our willingness to ride the wind.

Anyone who wants to enter the Kin-dom of heaven must be born of the Spirit….also known as wind. And the Wind, also known as Spirit….is axiomatically wild. As in wilderness.

The wind/Spirit is on its own path. The wind/Spirit has a mind of its own. It observes no borders. It does not discriminate. We can measure the power of the wind/Spirit only by the displacement of that which it touches. And the kicker is that this agent of wholesale transformation is comprised of nothing more than ordinary air.

The same ordinary air that inspires our lungs every 2 to 3 seconds. The ordinary air that keeps is alive.

Which is why our ancient scriptures use the same word for breath, wind, and spirit. All three ideas are expressed with the same word. In Hebrew the word is ruach. In Greek it is pneuma. The translation is interchangeable.

The wind/Spirit/breath blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

So it is with everyone who is born of the wind.

So it is with everyone who is born of the breath.

All equally accurate translations.There is no distinct difference between the Breath of life that God breathed into humanity in Genesis.  And the Spirit that breathes new life into us as we open our hearts and minds to God as Jesus suggests this morning. That Breath/Wind/Spirit is what ushers us into the Kin-dom of God.

To which this morning’s title character, Nicodemus, responds: “How can this be?” It is the response of the religious elite in a nutshell. He does not understand the role of the wind/Spirit. For Nicodemus is a Pharisee, a “ leader of the Jews,” a “teacher of Israel.”  Nicodemus represents the best that the Jewish elite has to offer. And, not for nothing, the most polite. He calls Jesus Rabbi, and he admits that Jesus has indeed come from God.

But he cannot get his mind around the power of the Spirit. He is grounded in his commitment to the power of…Privilege. Education. Position. Piety.Earthly attributes. Not windborn graces.

Nicodemus comes to Jesus in the dead of night. It’s a wonderful cinema-graphic metaphor for his total and complete ignorance.  For all of his learning and privilege and status, in the end,  Nicodemus is still in the dark at the conclusion of this passage. He just does not get it. 

He is too petrified in his perspective to allow the fresh air of what Jesus has to offer blow through his very starched and stagnant way of understanding the world. He can only think and see and understand in and through the lens of his learned logic. There is no room in Nicodemus for the wild and uncharted ways of the Holy Spirit. 

And I get it. I was a bit of a Nicodemus myself. Until one warm summer August morning a couple of decades ago. I was about half-way through the ordination process. And feeling a bit…uncertain about my calling. And uncertain about who was calling. Was it God calling? Or was it just a selfie?

I was about to begin my last year of seminary at the Episcopal Divinity School. And one of my theology professors had connected me with an Australian sculptor/priest/nun who was the artist in residence that year at EDS. Rev’d. Sr. Angela Solling.  She was a larger than life personality….a larger than life Spirit.  And she often felt like the wind incarnate!

And, she was a bit of a legend in her homeland as both a sculptor, having fashioned the pectral cross for the Archbishop of Canterbury Rumsey. And as a religious force of nature, having founded a convent in the outback and constructed its monastery out of nothing but mudbricks.

She was looking to resurrect a book deal that had fallen through with Random House Australia. Her biography was to be one of 12 published in a series about remarkable Aussies in the wake of 2000 Olympics hosted in Sydney. But Angela’s biographer had botched the draft, and her edition had been dropped from the line-up.

I had some experience as a ghost writer, and so I was introduced to Sr. Angela as a breath of fresh….biographer. We hit it off. She offered me the job.

And after some serious discernment, I was just about to pick up the phone and accept her offer when it rang in my hand. 

I remember that first gust of wind as though it were yesterday.

The voice on the other end of the line said: “Dahling, wouldn’t it be simply gorgeous if you and I took a trip to the Center [she was talking about Australia]. We could just sit there in the desert, with the Aborigines, and listened to the stillness. Wouldn’t it be gorgeous?!!!”  

I reiterate, I hardly knew Sr. Angela well enough to go around the block with her, let alone around the world.  But, I thought, why not. I’m an adventurous soul and a journey to the outback might be just what I need as a bridge from seminary to whatever comes next.

And then came the kicker – for she insisted, and I mean insisted, that we make the trip immediately. 

The breezy wind was beginning to gust!

Sr. Angela was adamant. But I was shell shocked.  I couldn’t go halfway around the world right now.  I had commitments…. school… family…..work… my discernment process…I had no time…no money….no one to take care of my dog. Did I mention she was 75 years old!? And it would just be the two of us! 

And although I was leaning….heavily, towards thanks, but no thanks, I learned in short order that the spirit rarely takes no for an answer. 

The Wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

I had mountain of very good reasons why immediately was not the best timing for this trip.

At the top of the list was that I was not likely going to get an official leave of absence from the fall semester at EDS in time for the trip. So I would be risking my academic standing if I just up and left without any formal approval or dispensation.

But even more problematic was the fact that neither Angela nor I could afford the trip…at least not a last minute trip. I was a student and she was a nun! And she was not just a nun, she was a Poor Clare nun.  She took not only a vow of poverty, but a vow not to have any means of support other than God. So even if her plan to provide for our lodging was failsafe, even if she could come up with a string of friends in Australia who might be willing to put us up on their couches (and I was not at all sure that she could), how would we pay for the airfare? For the exorbitant last-minute price of 2 airline tickets?

Maybe we should wait until next summer, I suggested. Spend the year planning the trip and raising the money and we can go next July….like reasonable people. But that, according to Angela, was out of the question. We had to go immediately. 

The gusts of wind were gaining momentum.

So, the next time we met, I said to her (confident that this would never happen), if you can figure out how we can afford the plane tickets, I’ll go. “Ahhhh, Great!” she said.  And she wrote a name and number on a piece of paper and handed it to me. The name was Liz Hall. I had never heard of her.

Angela said, “Call her and ask if she will pay for the tickets.” “You call her,” I said.  “No,” said Angela, “it will be easier for her to say no to you.  And I don’t want to put her in a box. All we need are the tickets. Just call and ask.”

So I waited a few days, talking myself in and out of calling this complete stranger to ask for what felt to me to be a small fortune. Eventually I dialed the number. I got her voice mail, thank God. “Hi,” I said….tentatively. “You don’t know me, but Sr. Angela Solling gave me your number and I am hoping that you know her. She wanted me to tell you that we are planning a trip to Australia next month to write a book about her life and ministry and she thought that you might be willing to help us fund the plane flight. I know this sounds ridiculous. But if you want to call me back, my number is blah,blah,blah.  If not, please no worries. And I’m sorry to have bothered you.”  

I know almost exactly what I said because I had scripted it. I wrote it down to make sure I did not ramble on about what a ridiculous thing I was asking for. 

Within the hour my phone rang. It was Liz Hall. “I’m so glad you called,” she said. “How is Angela? When are you going? What do you need?” Right off the bat I began to qualify what I was asking for. “Well,” I said, “for some reason Angela thinks we need to go immediately so it is a lot more expensive that it might be if we were not on this crazy cosmic clock. But we are thinking of the second week in September and two tickets are about”, I gulped, “$5,000,  which I know is so much but….”

She interrupted me “oh drat, I would love to come along but I can’t go in September. Never mind, give me your address and I’ll put a check in the mail. Have a great trip!” And sure enough, two days later, in my mailbox was a check for $5,000 from a woman I had never met, made out to me, a woman she had never met. 

The wind was reaching gale force. And all at once I realized, uh oh, Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw, you are not in Kansas anymore. You are on your way to Oz. To the outback. A thoroughly foreign land, half-way around the world with an elderly stranger who will be in your care.

But…..The wind blows where it chooses.

And so before I knew it, I was withdrawing from school for the semester, making travel arrangements , and packing for the wilderness. And I covered every base.

I reserved a 4-wheel drive vehicle to conquer the wild desert terrain. I rented an international cell phone to keep in constant contact with civilization at all times. I packed every conceivable necessity for a trip into the outback. I had a direct line to L.L.Beane – high tech hiking boots, Arctic caliber cargo pants, a battery powered mess kit, a solar powered flashlight, snake bandages, a first aid pouch out of which I could have performed an emergency appendectomy and triple bypass surgery. I was thoroughly, completely, comprehensively prepared and packed for the journey and the wilderness. I had made every arrangement. Tied down every detail. Anticipated every possible need. 

By the Monday morning before our Wednesday departure date I was ready to go…bring on the wilderness! That Monday was September 10th 2001. I was booked on the 9am American Airlines flight from Boston to L.A.,  Flight 11, on Wednesday September 12th 2001. Same flight. One day later than the tragic disaster of 9/11. The wilderness came to me.

Because despite my pleading with Sr. Angela that we cancel the trip, she insisted, and again I mean insisted, that we reschedule on the first available, allowable flight to LA.  And so as soon as Logan Airport opened up, which was Saturday, September 16th, I was on the first American Airlines flight to the West coast.

There were about 35 more-than-nervous people on a jumbo jet. With 6 US Marshalls, in khakis and polo shirts, armed to the teeth, sitting in the aisle seats of first class.

That whole trip to Australia was pure Wind. Pure Spirit. 

Five weeks later I returned home with a brand new sense of myself, and my purpose and my vocation. And my first order of business was a thank you note to Liz Hall….the wind that gave us wings. Liz Hall made it possible for us to go to Australia….immediately. 

And immediately made all the difference.

First, because had we not gone in the wake of 9/11, had I not come so close to being on the fated plane, the trip might have been a great adventure. But it could never have been the wholesale transformation that it turned out to be.

Without the fear and uncertainty and mysterious surrender that was absolutely required by the timing of our journey, I would never have let go of my…….Nicodemus. I would never have been liberated from my….self. I would never have been so thoroughly dependent on the kindness of strangers. I would never have been so utterly vulnerable to the wind and all of its whisperings. I would never have seen the depth of my own humility. I would never have let go.

And the second reason why immediately was so important is that Angela died of a massive stroke three months later, on January 22, 2002. 

I never hear this passage from John’s Gospel without remembering the mighty wind that blew me into my priesthood and the rest of my vocation. It was the single biggest contributing factor to my decision to continue to seek ordination. My trip to Australia with Sr. Angela, was a trip to infinity and beyond . A transformative breath of fresh and life-giving time and space. 

But it was such an unlikely happening, to say the least. It would have been so easy to just say no. Some of my most trusted friends and advisors tried to convince me that saying no was the only reasonable answer.  Because the thing about saying yes to the wind, is that we must be open to letting it move us. In ways that we cannot foresee or control. 

The only way to receive the wind is to let go and roll with it. But my experience tells me that if we are willing, God will be able. And as Jesus said in this morning’s passage: Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen.

And what I know; what I have seen for myself is that:

The Wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.

Amen.

© March, 2023 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

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Welcome Home!

Posted on September 11, 2022 by grimrev

Luke 15:1-10

September 11, 2022: Welcome Home Sunday

The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen S. Grimshaw

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

 All the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. 2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ So he told them this parable:

4‘Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? 5When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. 6And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbours, saying to them, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.” 7Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who need no repentance.

8 ‘Or what woman having ten silver coins,* if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? 9When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” 10Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’ 

                                                                                                                                                                               Luke 15:1-10, NRSV

Welcome back on this lovely September Sunday!

My first Welcome Home Sunday in your midst.

And as I said in my Mailchimp Newsletter yesterday, I am delighted to be here!

We could not have chosen a better Gospel reading for this morning than the one that has landed in our lectionarial laps. For it is the first two thirds of  Jesus’ parables in Luke’s Gospel known as the Lost and Found parables. The two we hear this morning about the lost sheep and the lost coin, and then the most famous of the lost and found stories, the Prodigal Son, which we heard earlier this year during Lent. All three could well be called the Welcome Home parables.

These stories remind us, emphatically, that hope is born into our DNA as children of a Creator who will always seek us out with the fierce resolve of a divine amber alert whenever we disappear from the fold…God’s fold, that is. No matter how lost we feel, no matter far away we have strayed. Or how long we have been gone, we will always be welcomed back. By the One who loves us from their divine toe bottoms.

The story we just heard from Luke’s Gospel about the lost sheep, occurs also in Matthew – but in that Gospel that sheep just “wanders off.” And then the finding of the sheep in Matthew’s telling is passive and hypothetical. In Matthew this message is about a situation, about the way we humans inevitably stray. We inevitably get lost, but we will always be found. It is almost in the passive tense. We will be lost. We will be found.  And so relax. Keep the faith.

But in Luke, the sheep has more than wandered off. The sheep is gone. In Luke, the sheep is seriously lost, not just wandering away. And the moral is not as much that the sheep will be found (passive voice, the subject is the sheep). The sheep will be found. But that God will find that sheep (active voice, the subject is God). God will find the sheep. It is less about the wandering nature of the sheep and more about the deep desire of the shepherd.  

In Luke, the shepherd is actively and intently working to find that lost lamb. In Luke, the verbs are not passive, they are active. In Luke this story is not situational, it is relational. It’s about the relationship between the sheep and the shepherd. About the deep, unrelenting love of the shepherd for the sheep. It is not so much about how it is to be human…wanderers that we are. It is more about how it is to belong to God….faithful and forgiving as God is. It is not so about how we roll, but about where we belong. Here, with God. It’s a Welcome Home parable if ever there were one!

Because the point is that there is nothing, nothing we can do to divest ourselves of God’s love.

No matter how dastardly our deeds, no matter how diabolically depraved, no matter what deception or debauchery, or decay we present, no matter how despairing or desolate or destructive or despondent or demented, disheartened, dismal, dishonorable, damnable, disobedient, displeasing, disparaging, disorderly, disrespectful, (thank God for the dictionary) disreputable, dreary, dreadful. Even if we are thoroughly driveling, drooling, dubious, drunken, dull, doltish, dwindling, dilapidated, dissident, dissolute, distressing, divisive, ditsy, dolorous (that’s a good one!), dumb, doubting, dough faced, deluded, depressed, defeated, defensive, deflowered, deformed, deficient, degraded, demoralized,  deteriorated, distracted, devilish (another goodie!), dishonest, disagreeable, disbelieving. No matter how discontented, discommodious (I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel here) discouraged, discourteous, disgraced,  deviant, difficult, damaged, dehydrated or downright reprehensible we are. We are all always welcomed back by God.

Good Lord, I never realized how depressing the D’s are!  

But I suspect that litany of nouns and adjectives just about covers all of us; something in that list hits at least one nerve in each and every one of us. One place where we feel so lost that we may not be found….or even more torturous, one dimension of our essential selves that makes us not worthy of being found. Or maybe even not worth being looked for. One place that we think stands firm as the divine deal breaker.

And so, Jesus offers these parables to each and every one of us. Because they apply to each and every one of us. No matter what our status…..social, political, economic, religious, or otherwise. No matter where we are. From where ever we come with whatever we bring.  We are always welcome home.

These lost and found parables are told in response to a complaint on the part of the religious elite who declare that the folks on the margins of society, the tax collectors and sinners, the ones who are apparently unwanted and unwelcome in their houses of worship, are unworthy to eat and drink with Jesus. These religious elite declare that these folks on the margins are even unworthy to hear Jesus preach.

All the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus preach.  2And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them. So Jesus told them these parables.

The charge against the lost ones is that they are coming to be found. They are coming to hear what Jesus is preaching. They are coming to church! And the charge against Jesus is that he welcomes them, that he is hospitable. He “welcomes” them, as though they were invited all along, desired to be there, sought out even.

This itinerate preacher who makes his home on the road, traveling from town to town, himself seemingly homeless and ungrounded in the social structure. One who might as first glance look like a lost sheep himself. And yet where ever he is, he is home with God.

This parable is about the despicable almost scandelous hospitality of the living God.  Because although we tend to think of hospitality as opening our doors and welcoming everyone in. These lost and found stories tell us that God’s hospitality is not just welcoming in, it is fundamentally seeking out.

If we want to live with Gospel hospitality, we must be seekers. Which means we must change our understanding of who belongs in the fold. And we must be willing, ourselves, to be changed by the strangers whom we welcome. We must work to build the Kin-dom of God rather than just the church filled with our friends. Because the church is far too small to contain the depth and breadth of God’s hospitality.

A few years ago a Roman Catholic church in Florida posted this welcome sign in its front yard[1]. It’s a fairly long sign, so make yourselves comfortable. It said, and I quote:

“We extend a special welcome to those who are

 single, married, divorced, gay, filthy rich, dirt poor, or no habla Ingles.

We extend a special welcome to those who are

 crying newborns, skinny as a rail or could afford to lose a few pounds.

We welcome you if you can sing like Andrea Bocelli

or if you are like our pastor who can’t carry a note in a bucket.

You’re welcome here if you’re “just browsing,” just woke up or just got out of jail.

We don’t care if you’re more Catholic than the Pope,

 or haven’t been in church since little Joey’s Baptism.

We extend a special welcome to those who are

over 60 but not grown up yet, and to teenagers who are growing up too fast.

We welcome soccer moms, NASCAR dads, starving artists, tree-huggers,

 latte-sippers, vegetarians, and junk-food eaters.

We welcome those who are in recovery or still addicted.

We welcome you if you’re having problems or you’re down in the dumps

or if you don’t like “organized religion,” we’ve been there too.

If you blew all your offering money at the dog track, you’re welcome here.

We offer a special welcome to those who think the earth is flat,

Who work too hard, who don’t work at all,

or if you are here because grandma is in town and wanted to go to church.

We welcome those who are inked, pierced or both.

We offer a special welcome to those who could use a prayer right now,

to those who had religion shoved down your throat as a kid,

or to those who just got lost in traffic and wound up here by mistake.

We welcome tourists, seekers, doubters, bleeding hearts … and you!

As the sign says, every sheep in God’s flock, which is every sheep with a beating bleating heart, is welcomed by God. And that makes the hospitality of God is a fearful and awe-inspiring thing! It a thing that makes all of our constructed social and political divisions moot.

A few months ago I was talking with a friend about my coming to this parish to serve as your priest. She asked if this wasn’t the “red” part of CT. And she wondered if I would be a good fit here. And so she asked, “What color is your church?” I tilted my head like my golden retriever Fin when he has no idea what I am asking of him. And she said, “red or blue, what color is your church? Generally speaking.” she added as a qualifier.”

Oh, I said. Well, what color is kindness? What color is compassion? What color is justice? Mercy? Generosity? Friendship. What color is peace?

What color is the peace that obliterates all partisanship? The peace that comes when those who feel lost are welcomed home. The peace that speaks truth to power with love. The peace that surpasses all understanding.

That is the color of my church. We humbly and fiercely stand for every shade of peace.

And so on this Welcome Home Sunday, as we celebrate the endless, ceaseless love and care of our shepherd and the open arms of our flock, I invite us to gather our hearts and minds and courage. And to put ourselves to work this program year painting the world the color of Gospel hospitality.

Welcome Home Friends!

Onward!

Amen!

© September, 2022 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

[1] https://www.episcopalcafe.com/the_church_that_welcomes_everyone/

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Knit…..Pearl

Posted on September 4, 2022 by grimrev

Psalm 139:1-18

September 4, 2022

The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen S. Grimshaw

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

Psalm 139 , NRSV

 O Lord, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up;   you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down,   and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue,   O Lord, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before,   and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;   it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Where can I go from your spirit?   Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there;   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me,   and your right hand shall hold me fast. If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,   and the light around me become night’, even the darkness is not dark to you;   the night is as bright as the day,   for darkness is as light to you.

For it was you who formed my inward parts;   you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.   Wonderful are your works;that I know very well.    My frame was not hidden from you,when I was being made in secret,   intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written   all the days that were formed for me,   when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God!   How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them—they are more than the sand;   I come to the end—I am still with you.

If there were one promotional phrase, one bumper sticker from scripture to promote God and the value of a religion that finds its hope in God, this first line from Psalm 139 would be it…..in my humble opinion.

Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; You trace my journeys and my resting-places and are acquainted with all my ways.

And, in my humble opinion, Psalm 139 is a perfect passage of scripture for this moment in time.

It’s a moment in this nation and in the wider world we need some grounding for hope; some reason to believe that the violence and the racism and the bullying and the greed and the seeming wholesale destruction of our planet, our political system, our civility as one nation under God, our sense of security, and a hundred other losses will some how, some day stop.  

We need a reason to hope in this weary and broken world; in this world in which we seem to have forgotten how wondrously and marvelously, albeit differently, made is each and every one of us. We are each and every one of us created by the same God. Who is neither a Democrat, nor a Republican, nor even an Independent. Who is neither white nor black nor yellow nor any other shade of the rainbow. Who is neither American, nor Russian, nor Chinese, nor any other nationality. Our Creator is beyond every label. And etched on every heart.

Psalm 139 is a bit of an odd duck in our psalter. It is the only psalm in the book that focuses on the individual. In fact, it might even be the only place in the entire Hebrew Bible where the state or fate of the individual is not only addressed, but stressed.

The Hebrew Bible is almost always the story of the people of God; never a single person of God. But Psalm 139 speaks directly and specifically about the intimacy of our personal relationship with and to God. 

The first 18 verses of the psalm are divided into three parts.

Part one, verses 1-6 say unequivocally that God knows us through and through, top to bottom, stem to stern, inside and out. Yahweh, You (and it is the emphatic you) have searched me and You know me.

Part two, verses 7- 12 say that no matter where we flee, or how far we run, or how dark the hole in which we are buried, God will always find us. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? And the unequivocal answer is, loosely translated, nowhere.

And then part three, verses 13-18 insist that God knows us fully and stays with us always because God has woven every thread of our being into the tapestry of our unique selves by hand…..intentionally….joyously…..without one single regret. No matter who we think we are.

No matter how many regrets we have for ourselves, God has none. Not a one.

This psalm is the story of who each and every one of us is as beloved individuals of God’s wondrous creativity to serve God’s unfathomable purpose. And so it is very personal. The God of Psalm 139 is not Our Father who art in heaven. The God of Psalm 139 is the author of our existence who dwells within us right here on earth. The God in whom we live and move and have our being, as it says in the Book of Acts. The God who knows us fully and from whom there is no escape – a God who is with us always because we are God’s most precious creation; and not just created, not just constituted as the work of a divine potter, as this morning’s reading from Jeremiah says.

But in Psalm 139 God has not just made us, God has knit us together –woven us out of whole divinely endowed cloth….the first knitting ministry, as it were! And we are the pearls of God’s labor.

It’s an image of God’s creativity as a process of careful integration and intricate design. We are the way we are, every mole and freckle, every nook and cranny, every warp and woof, knit and pearl of our being is by God’s grace-filled design. And this is, as I see it, a sort of good news / bad news situation.

Because it means that where ever we go, however hard we try, we cannot escape the knowing breath of God. We cannot preclude the unbearable vulnerability that comes with God’s unyielding attention and interest. However desperate we feel to free our fragile egos from the terrifying assurance that we are simply and inherently good enough, that our brokenness may not be a mistake or a failure, but may in fact be by design – whatever it is that haunts us in our self-proclaimed unworthiness, it is not a fatal flaw or an original sin, but rather a beloved  built-in opportunity for growth and reconciliation and eventual magnificence – an opportunity that would hardly exist if we were perfect from the get-go…..which of course we are, as this psalm tells us in no uncertain words.

But here, then, “perfect” requires some serious revision and redefinition, does it not?

For if we are awesomely and wondrously made – perfection, each and every one of us, in our own unique ways – then our old connotation of perfection, our old notion that perfection is some universally objective quality that precludes cracks or wrinkles or character – the idea of perfection as that without room for improvement, well, that is clearly not what God intended in God’s perfect creation of humanity. For we are indeed a collection of uniquely perfect opportunities for magnificent creativity and growth, each with our own unique cracks and unsightly crevasses.

 And so this psalm speaks not only of our magnificence, but also of our vulnerability, our built-in propensity for falling down as a part of our wondrous and awesome creation. Let us stop lamenting our failures. They are built in.

But this psalm speaks to that inner fear that each of us has experienced at one point or another in our perfectly insecure lives. That deep and abiding suspicion that if we were truly known…that if our true selves were ever revealed, we would be sooooo busted. Busted as the unworthy children that we know ourselves to be. Busted as worthless, shameful, unlovable failures.

This is our secret fear….well, I’ll just speak for myself here, but if the shoe fits….then this psalm may fit you, too. But, it assures us that although we ARE known, fully, completely, without any privacy whatsoever when it comes to God, although God sees it all, still we are loved beyond our wildest dreams; and not just loved, adored.

We are each the center of God’s full attention. And so God is inescapable.

But the Good News in this psalm is not that God is inescapable, it is that only God is inescapable.

Which is why this psalm comes not a moment too soon in this season of vicious and seemingly hopeless political warfare. A moment in our American history when our ugly arrogant heads have been given full throated voices and our self-centered self-righteousness plays out in unbridled incivility and violence in our streets and even in our schools, almost on a daily basis.

But hear this, Psalm 139 assures us that no matter how dire the civil climate, how impossible the odds, no matter how high the mountain, no matter how unjust, unkind, unfair, uncompassionate, or unlikely that our current state of affairs will be, or can be changed…the only constant is that God is still here. Inescapable. And our steadfast hope lies in the sure and steady knowledge that only God will prevail. Everything else will change, eventually. Only God is inescapable.

For as the Psalm says, even the darkness will not be dark to You, O God.

This is the psalm for these trying times.

I would like to close with a poem that I wrote twenty five years ago, long before I had ever really heard of psalm 139.  I wrote it for my then 6-year-old niece and godchild, Lauren.

It was included as the first of a collection of poems about nature, well, insects to be exact, called Big Bug Creek that was published in 1998. And today I would like to dedicate it to an undying faith that with the Gracious and Ever-Loving God of our creation, anything and everything is not only possible, but possible within our current means….That is to say, inescplicable, miraculous possibility is already here and now.

Bee-lieving.

Pursuant to the theories of most scientists renowned,

The bumble bee, all quite agree, should not get off the ground.

The principles and test results will verify with might,

That bumble bees, like black eyed peas, were not designed for flight.

It’s simply that their shape and weight are not in right relation

To the wingspan that is needed for this mode of transportation.

Sure, we of sound and solid mind indubitably know

That what the laws of physics say is surely what is so.

But somehow, somewhere, someone failed to thus inform the bees;

And so although we’re in the know, they buzz off as they please.

It’s utterly impossible, preposterous, no-can-do;

Unreasonable, high treasonable, and yet, by gosh, they do.

It could be simply strength of will, or winging on a prayer,

Or possibly the bumble bee is just a fluke midair.

It doesn’t really matter which, the point is when they say,

“It can’t be done, you’re not the one,” just smile and fly away.

And the peopel said: Amen.

© September, 2022 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

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Truly He Was An Innocent Man

Posted on April 13, 2025 by grimrev

April 13, 2025: Palm Sunday 

The Passion Narrative According to Luke

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

It is almost impossible to imagine how it must have felt. Riding into Jerusalem, the largest city of its day. At Passover. The largest religious event of its day. The city was most certainly packed to the gills. Wall to wall people. Standing room only. Exactly why Jesus was there. 

And they knew who he was. A throng of humanity choked the streets as he arrived. I’m guessing there was a modicum of surprise though when he showed up not atop a stallion. Or ensconced in a chariot. But on the back of a donkey. A plain, ordinary ass.  The most storied healer, teacher, prophet the world had ever known. Trundled into Jerusalem to star in a scene that would change the world forever, as though he were an average Joe. As though he were you. Or me. Can we imagine how it must have felt?

It was the dead of summer in 2018. We entered Jerusalem on a tour bus. Fifteen Christian clergy on a tour of the holy land sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston.

We had come from Tabgha where Jesus is said to have turned two fish and five loaves of bread into a feast for five thousand. Hosanna!  And from there we traveled to Capernaum to the house of Peter’s Mother-in-Law where Jesus healed the dying woman with nothing more than a loving word and a soft touch. Hosanna!  And then to the synagogue where Jesus himself preached on the sabbath. Again, Hosanna!  And from there to the place where Jesus offered his beatitudes, the eloquent assurance to all on the margins that they are at the center of God’s heart. Hosanna! And then on to Jerusalem. Ho…..oh no…..oh no…that’s right, its crucify him!

We got to the city late in the afternoon. It was packed with folks who had come from all over to march in the parade. And also some who had come to protest the parade. Emphatically. The road was lined with them. Protestors.  Not an unruly crowd, but they were well chaperoned by a solid contingent  of well-armed military might.

The protestors were shouting at the passing vehicles. Ours included. And thrusting their picket signs in the air. The message on the placards, mostly hand written in Hebrew was….loosely translated….Crucify them! They are an abomination!  They violate God’s law!  Crucify them!

It was surreal to say the least.

Jerusalem’s 16th annual March for Pride and Tolerance parade was just getting underway in the center of the ancient city where old and new converge as though time had both stopped and insisted its forward march without apology. 

This was the local gay pride event that had happened every year since 2002. 

But it had become an international media event since 2015 when an ultra-Orthodox Jewish man stabbed to death 16- year-old Shira Banki and wounded six others as they peacefully walked for human dignity and the right for every child of God to simply be who they are created to be.  A similar violent occurrence happened exactly ten years earlier in 2005 when several marchers were also attacked with seething hatred and knives wielded in the name of God. In this most holy city of God.

We were not expecting this.

We heard this story as our bus shuttled through the conflicted city streets, increasingly crowded with hordes of humanity – kept in check by a path of police officers in green berets carrying oozies slung over their shoulders. Surreal and unsettling.

As we arrived at our night’s lodging, the Parade was just beginning to gather steam. The entrance to our hotel had been cordoned off by the military.  And so the bus parked on a side street and we were shuttled on foot with our luggage past the crowd control barriers into the back door of the Tryp Bat Shevah Hotel.

The Jerusalem Post estimated that there were 25,000 marchers through the narrow streets, with 2,500 military peacekeepers in the mix –  there to prevent any more violence and death at the hands of an angry mob. Lest this event become another Palm Sunday….every clergy person on the bus was thinking.

We watched from the lobby of the hotel as thousands of marchers waving pride flags boldly swept through the city – a torrent of human dignity of all ages and abilities and complexions – All with the multi-colored message that love is more powerful than……anything. Hosanna!

Four of our contingent of clergy, felt the pride of this parade in our own bones. This was our parade. We were so encouraged and hopeful by the throng of supporters. Hosanna! And yet, we could not forget the protestors on the road as we entered. Or their angry signs. Crucify them! 

After we had checked in to the hotel, the four of us wrenched our way into the crowd and marched side by side with all manner of pride-full people-  Jews and Palestinians alike, some wearing t-shirts that said, “God created me this way” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  An international glob of humanity connected only and forever by our insistence on love. Not separated by land rights or national affiliation or even religious tradition. We were connected, Christians and Jews and Muslims and folks of no religious affiliation at all, connected by our faith in love alone. There, in the heart of Jerusalem. 

In the very place where love was sentenced to death. Where 2000 years ago such a gathering of people celebrating love in this very place, turned to the most renowned execution of all time. In the shake of a lamb-of-God’s tail, as it were.

But standing there in that place at that time was a visceral reminder that this story that we imagine every Palm Sunday, as though it were ancient history, is alive and well 2000 years hence.

Every one of us can see and hear and feel ourselves in at least a part of the story that we heard this morning.  We recognize, we re-cognize, literally we re-know this story in our own lives. The ways in which we betray each other and are betrayed.  The ways in which we deny each other and are denied.  The ways in which we turn on each other, and sometimes sell each other down the river or up onto the cross, to protect our own ….well, whatever it is that we fear losing more than we fear losing our own personal power, as the Jewish elite did with Jesus. 

But also in the ways in which we tend each other and are tended….like the woman who anointed Jesus. The ways in which we bear each other’s crosses when the weight is simply too devastatingly heavy to bear by ourselves….like Simon of Cyrene.  And the way we can count on a few companions to go the distance with us….like the women who followed Jesus from Galilee and waited for him at the foot of the cross.  I dare say each of us has walked in all of these shoes at one time or another. And so it is not hard for us to hear this story as familiar…in our very bones.

And that is the very point of Palm Sunday.

It is the moment at the start of Holy Week when we are invited to situate ourselves in this chapter of our Jesus story. To look around us and notice where we stand. And to plant our feet on the path of…..life. Each year, we hear the climax of this story on Good Friday from a different Gospel perspective.

Last year, we heard Mark’s version which calls out our human vulnerability. Most of us can relate to Mark’s recounting of Jesus’ last words on the cross:  “My God, My God! Why have you forsaken me!?” Mark invites us to relate to Jesus in the deepest suffering of our own being.  This is Jesus giving us permission to doubt God in the depth of our suffering.  Permission to feel abandoned. Permission to question where God is in our despair. Because Jesus did. 

But not in Luke. This year in Luke, Jesus’ last words on the cross are not pastoral, they are much more…..political. And I mean political as in having to do with the realm of public affairs. That is, how we are in relationship to and with each other.  As we have been hearing all year, Luke’s Gospel is the divine manual for love in action;  how we are meant to treat each other when the rubber meets the road. 

In Jesus’ last words from the cross, Luke beckons us not to relate to Jesus’ anguish, but to wake up and realize what is really happening. To get to the truth of the travesty. To realize that the institutions of the day, the state and the religious elite and all of their explicit and complicit supporters have crucified an innocent man. 

That is Luke’s primary message in telling of the passion narrative. In Luke, Jesus’ message from the cross is : Father forgive them for they know not what they do.  They do not know that they are taking an innocent life.  This is the both the ultimate crime against humanity and the cost of a life lived according to love alone. That innocent children of God are put to death. That the image of God that is etched on their hearts is worth less than…the image of God etched on others.

In Matthew and Mark, after Jesus dies, the centurion says: this man truly was the Son of God. 

But in Luke, after Jesus dies, the centurion says: this man truly was innocent. Even Pilate says that Jesus is innocent. Three times. He says to the crowd, “Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death.”  If nothing else, everyone agrees that Jesus is an innocent man.  And yet the crowd demands his demise, his destruction, anyway. 

It’s easy to pass right over this seemingly obvious detail.  That Jesus was innocent. But I think it is at the heart of what Luke wants us to know about the caliber of love that Jesus has come to share.  Love is always innocent.

Luke calls us to make the connection between the execution of Jesus and the execution of equally innocent life in our own context.  And Holy Week is the perfect time to ask  Whose innocent blood stains our own hands in this world in which we live?

Father forgive them for they have no idea what they are doing.  The words of Jesus as he hung on the cross. That was then. But this is now.

And now we do know what we are doing. We do know that we are complicit in the destruction of innocent lives.  And we do know that our leaders are committing unspeakable crimes to innocent neighbors in the name of profit and power. We do know that the least among us are the most at risk. We do know that suffering is unfolding far and wide with our tacit permission. We do know what we are doing. We do know what is being done in our name.

Palm Sunday is our wake up call.

So let us plant our feet firmly in Jerusalem this morning. And remember who and whose we are.

And then let us set our clocks ahead to love.  

Welcome to Holy Week.

Amen.

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It’s The Identity, Stupid

Posted on April 7, 2025 by grimrev

Gospel according to John 12:1-8 

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT 

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them* with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii* and the money given to the poor?’ 6(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it* so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

                                                                                                                                                                     John 12:1-8, NRSV

This is the last Sunday before Holy Week in our season of prayerful wandering. Next week we will enter Jerusalem with Jesus and the last phase of his mission on earth. 

Last week we engaged with three distinct identities in Luke’s story of the Prodigal Son. This morning we have three more in John’s story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet before his passion. And in fact, this entire season of Lent in year C has been all about identity.

In Year A the Gospel stories in lent are all about the power of God to heal and reconcile and resurrect. In Year B they are all about what we must do and how we will suffer in order to follow Jesus. But this year, Luke’s year, the stories are all about identity. Who are we as Christians? Beginning with the very first reading on Lent I with Jesus being led into the wilderness. But first, unlike in Matthew or Mark, Luke gives us Jesus’ full genealogy, the full rundown of his divine credentials in between his baptism and his tempting by the devil. Identity. And so too, in this last week before Holy Week begins, identity is the thing.

This morning we find Jesus in Bethany, a town just east of Jerusalem. At the home of Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus, whom Jesus has just raised from the absolutely dead. Really. Resurrected. Actually. Jesus has just resurrected Lazarus from the grave. (we heard that story last year.) This year’s Lent V story begins just after that miraculous resurrection. The family is hosting a dinner in Jesus’ divine honor for his raising of their beloved brother.

A thanksgiving meal, as it were. In this morning’s Gospel reading Jesus and Lazarus are at the dinner table together, and I imagine that Jesus is drilling his friend on the experience of death and resurrection. So Lazarus, what was it like?

Martha serves the meal, while her sister Mary fetches a jar of very expensive oil. Probably the oil that was left over from the anointing of Lazarus. And Mary takes the costly oil and anoints Jesus’ feet. This is the second week we have heard about a wasteful extravagance in the service of love.

And it is the second chapter in three consecutive chapters in John’s Gospel that speak of foot-tending.  Today’s reading is the beginning of chapter 12. But chapter 11, the chapter in which Lazarus is resurrected, begins by introducing Lazarus’ sister Mary with the line: “Mary was the one who anointed Jesus with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair.” And then there is this morning’s story. And then in the very first scene in chapter 13, Jesus washes the feet of his disciples at the Last Supper. Immediately after Mary has washed his feet in chapter 12.

And I can’t help but wonder, did Jesus get the idea to wash the feet of his desicples as the ultimate service of love, from Mary? Was the foot anointing that takes place in this morning’s reading, the true source of that message? Was Mary the example, the teacher?  I mean, we get the idea from Jesus – every Maundy Thursday we hear how Jesus washed his disciples’ feet. But did he get the idea from her? In this morning’s reading? Are we really following Mary with our tradition of foot washing? 

This story of the woman anointing Jesus with oil is told in all four Gospels. But really very differently. In Matthew and Mark, it happens at the home of Simon the leper. And after Jesus has entered Jerusalem.

Mark’s version is appointed as the reading for the Monday in Holy Week. And the woman anointing Jesus is unnamed. And it is his head, not his feet that are anointed. In both accounts she pours expensive nard, extravagant oil, on Jesus’ head.

The story also appears in Luke. Although this morning we hear John’s version, not Luke’s. In Luke, the incident happens at the home of a Simon the Pharisee. Not Simon the Leper. And an again unnamed woman is anointing his head and kissing his feet. In Luke’s version we are told that she is a “sinner.” 

Suggesting that maybe this Mary is Mary Magdalene. But she is not. We are told this information because it is Jesus’ forgiveness of her,  and not her wasting of expensive oil on him, that seems to be the point if the story. And so the part of Luke’s story that resembles this morning’s story in John is not the wasting of expensive oil, but that the woman particularly tends Jesus’ feet.

John’s account, the one we heard this morning, takes parts from each of these three Synoptic accounts – John borrows from Mark and Matthew’s version the indignation of the dinner guests toward the woman who is seemingly wasting precious resources on Jesus’ comfort rather than the survival of those on the economic margins. And John borrows from Luke’s version the emphasis on tending Jesus’ feet.  John incorporates each of these core pieces of the story and then adds one more element to the mix. An element that changes the conversation altogether. John names the characters.

John does not speak of a nameless women and the non-descript guests who chastise her, John gives us their identities. 

He names the woman. She is Mary the sister of Jesus’ friend Lazarus. And she is identified from the start, from the beginning of the previous chapter, as “Mary, the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair.”  Mary is her name, and the one who anoints the feet of Jesus is who she is. That is her identity. 

And not for nothing, but this Mary has real agency. A rarity for women in scripture. The oil she is using is hers. It does not belong to Judas or to Jesus. It is not their decision as to how it should be used.  She has all of the agency. Mary can use the oil any way she wants to.

Nonetheless, in today’s reading, as Mary tends Jesus’ weary feet with this costly oil there is an objection from the peanut gallery, as it were. Some one asks, why isn’t this fancy oil sold and the money used more appropriately?  And once again, unlike the other Gospels, John provides us with a particular identity of the objector. 

In Matthew the objection come from “the disciples,” as a group. But in John, the objection is raised by Judas, particularly. And John does not stop by just offering us a name. He tells us, in parentheses, 

that Judas is the one who is about to betray Jesus. And John does not even stop there with his identification of Judas. John tells us in a second set of parentheses that Judas did not object because of his love for the poor, but because Judas was a thief and had a habit of using the money from the common purse for his own needs. In other words, the objection flows from sinister motives and Judas is nothing short of a dirty rotten scoundrel. 

This is TMI. Really. This is too much off-topic information.  Why is John telling us all of this? Isn’t this passage about the appropriate use of our resources in this weary suffering world? And yes, that is the theme in Mark and Matthew’s versions. But not here. 

This passage in John’s telling is all about identity. John wants to be absolutely sure that we know that Judas is the bad guy. That we know that he will betray Jesus, and that he is a thief to boot. Mary is loving her neighbor with everything that she has. And she is doing it even in the face of descent from the disciples. 

It is an aside that the Gosepller shares with us so that we are clear about the identity of Judas. But that lets us know that Mary has no clue, which makes her even more courageous as she stands up to him. And so even as a chosen disciple chides Mary for anointing Jesus, she continues to do what her heart tells her to do. She continues to anoint him, to tend him, to offer him relief from his pain. This is her identity… and, I believe, it is the paradigm that John’s Gospel offers us for our own identities as followers of…..Jesus and…Mary. 

And then there is Jesus. His identity here is fully human and fully divine. In this holy season of Lent, we have gone from the slanderer who challenges Jesus’ identity as divine, to this morning’s anointing of Jesus’ feet with costly oil that assures us of his identity as fully human.  John makes sure that we know that he is fully divine by opening the story with an almost redundant reminder that Jesus has just raised

Lazarus from the dead. How could we possibly have forgotten, it just happened in the previous chapter? Lazarus has no other role in today’s story. He is mentioned only to confirm the divinity of Jesus. The whole setting of the dinner is in celebration of Jesus’ divinity. And then Mary anoints his feet, and we are reminded that just as Jesus is fully divine, Jesus is also fully human. Only humans need anointing.

And then Jesus delivers that totally baffling, thoroughly confusing, completely perplexing last line of this reading when he seems to justify Mary’s use of costly oil to soothe his own weary feet and suffering spirit by saying: You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.  Okey dokey. The end.

This is the showstopper. 

This is the piece that we are tempted to drive right by on our way to coffee hour. Because it is so confusing. What does Jesus mean by this? Doesn’t Jesus care about the poor more than he cares about the ritual of his own anointing? Isn’t this the same Jesus who has spent and entire ministry telling us to sell what we have and give it to the poor? Imploring us to relinquish our earthy delights, surrender our material comforts and our wealth and feed those who have no bread.

With all due respect, this Jesus sounds like a bit of a hypocrite here. I mean, when his feet are soaking in fine grade-A nard his tune seems to change. Give YOUR comfort and wealth to those who are poor, but leave MY comfort out of it. It is sooo not what we expect to hear from Jesus. 

Or is it. I think that this is one of those places where the truth is buried in a very hard realization. In this passage, Jesus is speaking directly and specifically to Judas. He is not talking to his disciples in general, as in Matthew’s account. He is speaking specifically to Judas in response to Judas’ veiled concern for the poor.  Here Jesus is responding specifically to Judas’ insincere indignation that serves as a shill for his own unholy agenda. Judas says: Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii* and the money given to the poor?

He is not concerned about the plight of the poor. He is concerned only about what he can take for himself. It is the point of all of those parenthetical asides.  Judas is just using the poor as a distraction. A distraction from his true identity as a thief. He wants the money from the expensive nard for himself. No matter that the nard does not belong to him. 

It is hard not to see the many parallels of this passage taking place right before our very eyes. Here and now. The abject coveting of every neighbor’s nard by the chosen few. And holy cow, was Jesus right, the poor are still here. And they are multiplying like rabbits. Because we are witnessing the betrayal right before our eyes. 

The savage disregard for human dignity with which those who have been entrusted to forge and shepherd our way are using the so-called “best interests” of their flock to steal them blind. To take their wages and health care and education and personal security and free speech and human rights and peace of mind and I could go on all morning. It is hard not to see the betrayal perpetrated by our chosen few in this morning’s description of Judas.

And so Jesus responds to what he knows is Judas’ gross deceit.  I think Jesus respond almost sarcastically to Judas – in a way that lets Judas know that he knows that the “poor” are being used as a cover story.  Jesus says, Judas, “the poor” will always be with you. But I will not be. As if to say, Judas, there will always be a reason, and often times a seemingly good reason, to distract you from me……from God. 

To focus your will and your energy on something other than God before you. The excuses will always be with you, is what I think Jesus means here. 

And this, I think, is the hard lesson in this morning’s passage. Because I am sorry to say, I know in my bones what he is saying. I think of all the “good causes,” all the good excuses that sometimes distract me  from the harder work that God is calling me to do. That distract me from the hard work of loving my neighbor without expectation. The hard work of letting go without distress. The hard work of investing everything I am in this mystery that is God, so far beyond my understanding. And so I, like Judas, am often good at putting socially responsible names on my distractions. 

Our challenge as Christians, is to be more like Mary than Judas.

Fortunately, as we heard in this morning’s reading from Isaiah, God is about to do a brand new thing. The Good news this morning in Isaiah:

I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

 Hold that thought.

Easter is right around the corner.

Amen.

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De-serving Love

Posted on March 30, 2025 by grimrev

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

March 30, 2025: Lent IV

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So Jesus told them this parable:

“There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”‘ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe–the best one–and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.

“Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'”

How great is the story of the Prodigal Child?!  It’s one of those stories that we all know from our childhood, and, from the center of our humanity. It’s a story that is familiar both in our life’s literature and in our life’s experience. It is a story about faith and forgiveness, about repentance and hope; and it is, as are all of Luke’s best stories, about loving each other from our toe bottoms. Loving each other the way God love us. ….no matter who we think we are or what we may have done. Where we have left home and frittered away the family inheritance or sacrificed our own dreams to stoke and tend the family hearth. Either way, we are loved, and meant to love, beyond measure. 

In Latin, the word prodigal means: wasteful. And that description does indeed fit the behavior of the younger son with respect to his inheritance. He is said to be as wasteful as a drunken sailor. But prodigal also describes the love of the father when his wasteful son returns. Lavishing him with love and acceptance as though there were no tomorrow. As though there were no yesterday. As though the only thing that mattered was the moment before them. Wasteful, as in, not in any way measured. A wasteful amount of love. No amount of love was held back. Nothing saved for another day. Nothing spared for retribution. This is a story about the sort of wastefulness that comes when love is all that matters. The sort of extravagant love that can change the world. 

This parable is exclusive to Luke’s Gospel. It doesn’t appear anywhere else. The upside of its exclusivity in Luke is that it is not worn out in our lectionary. The down side is that we only get a crack at it once every three years. 

And this longest parable in our Gospels always appears in the season of Lent – at least it has been since the introduction of the RCL in 1992. Always, we hear this story in the context of our walk with Jesus through the wilderness. …the season when we are reflecting on ourselves and our own walk with God. And so we are set up to hear this parable as a commentary on ourselves, and not just on the world at large. Unlike many of the parables in Luke’s Gospel, this parable is not about how we must overturn the systems of injustice in the world – there are other parables for that. This one is rather about how we are to behave with the ones that we already know, the ones who are already in our midst, and the ones that we already…..love.

Actually, we might more accurately call this parable the Prodigal Family than the Prodigal Son. This parable is about how we reconcile our flaws and failings and feelings about each other in the context of family. And about how we welcome each other home. 

Unlike the lost sheep and the lost coin in the stories that immediately precede this one in Luke’s Gospel, the lost son is not sought….no one is looking for him. He is the agent of change in this story. Not the shepherd. The lost sheep. He comes home of his own volition. And so unlike the message of the lost sheep, which is the comforting, yet passive assurance that Jesus will never stop seeking us, the message here is: put on your big boy boots and go home. Even if you have some serious music to face. Even if you must grovel. You can always go home.

But this story in not really just about the return of the wasteful son. It is also and equally about the reception he receives from his heartbroken father. And too, his bitter and jealous older brother.

And so we are invited to try on all three of the main characters. One at a time. The child who has strayed and suffered and returned – not a wild success, but a destitute failure. Poor. Hungry. Humbled. Many commentaries call the return of the young son an act of repentance. But I doubt it. I think he was simply at the end of his rope and had nowhere else to go. It was an act of self-survival.

Then there is the parent who has lost a child and then found that child. Who has suffered and forgiven and welcomed and sacrificed the fatted calf for the one, the beloved, who has caused the suffering and feels unworthy of such a grace. 

And finally, the stay-at-home-follow-the-rules- sibling who is so blinded by rivalry and jealousy and the fear of his own inadequacies, that he cannot see the forest of love for his own trees of competition and regret.

And I might add a fourth character. The beckoning, judgmental unforgiving world that taunts us and calls us to disconnect with our foundations. The wider world that says, I have something that will make you greater than you are. And all you have to do is leave home and find it. The fourth character in our contemporary world might be the relentlessly soul-crushing pressure levied by social, and really all forms of popular, media. Constantly beckoning, and passing brutal judgment on our most vulnerable parts.

Yep, this is a story that has it all. All of our possibilities. And all of our demons. 

As with Luke’s other famous exclusive story of the Good Samaritan, I think that probably we all embody a part of each of the characters here. We all have at least a smidge of the wasteful son. We have all wasted something of our lives on frivolous impropriety at one time or another. And surely we all have a dose of the loving forgiving father who is delirious with gratitude at the return of the son whom he had taken to be lost forever. And I will bet that we also all have a bit of the begrudging older sibling who receives the same inheritance as his philandering brother, although he keeps his half in the family. The older obedient sibling who grumbles about the wasteful behavior of his younger disobedient rival. The older sibling who grouses about the unfairness with which his younger sibling is accorded comfort and kindness and prime grade A nourishment and forgiveness. The scripture says:

The elder son said to his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 

You have never given me so much as a young goat to celebrate with my friends. Ouch. Can you feel it? I can. Because this is where this simple parable gets very complicated. I am guessing that we can all understand and process the first two parts of this story. We can all relate to and maybe even teach the lessons of returning when we have strayed and forgiving when we are able. 

But what do we do with this older sibling? The part about our own anger with the unfairness of it all. The part where we are incensed by the way some of us seem to get away with bloody murder, figuratively speaking, of course. The part where we feel our own worth challenged by the “worthiness” of those who who fail to measure up to us?  The part where we measure our worth by seemingly everything other than our capacity to love as we have been loved.

Through this lens, this is the Parable of the Unfair Heir.

Through this lens we are treated to a ring side seat of the pettiness and the rueful bitterness that I suspect most of us know all too well. The feeling that we and our accomplishments are somehow diminished when someone else is accorded benefit that we feel is an undeserved or unearned. An accolade, an award, acceptance, credit for something well done, a better job, a higher position, you name it. We seem to be wired to want not only what we need in this world, but what we think we “deserve.” And not just what we deserve, but we want some sort of fairness quotient applied to what everyone around us deserves, as well. 

We might relate to all three of the characters in this parable, but the righteous indignation of the older sibling seems to me to be the Gospel pay dirt. Lest we miss the connection between the Pharisees and Scribes at the preamble of this parable who are grumbling that Jesus is treating tax collectors and sinners as though they were……as entitled to hospitality and respect as are the religious elite. 

This parable starts: All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”It is the grumbling of the religious elite that prompts this parable in the first place. 

It is that familiar grumbling that often comes almost automatically when we feel that there has been an injustice, that we are not getting what we deserve. And/or that others are getting more than they deserve, by our count, at least.

The Greek word for “grumbling” is  diagonguzo. It’s a great sounding word. Almost onomatopoeia. It recalls the connotation of the Israelites in the wilderness when they were hungry and thirsty, and took the injustice of their discomfort out on Moses and Aaron in the form of some seriously sensational grumbling (Exodus 15:24; 16:2, 17:3, Num. 14:2, Deut. 1:27).  It is the grumbling that we tend to do when we feel that we are not being well-served…..when we are not getting what we “deserve.” 

I think this existential grumbling is alive and well and thriving in our national discourse even today. I think it is at the core of the current assault on all things diverse, equitable, and inclusive. The fear and anger and resentment that others are getting more than they deserve. Even from those who seemingly have it all.

For some ungodly reason we featherless bi-peds measure our own just desserts by the just desserts of others. And the grumbling that comes with our anger over what we perceive to be their unearned privilege  is often coupled with our abject blindness of our own unearned privilege. And that could be at the heart of every systemic evil that plagues our common life. A judgment and jealousy of someone else’s unearned privilege…just like the older sibling in this morning’s story.

This notion that there are hierarchical levels of deserving may be at the heart of our panoply of social diseases….dis-eases: Like White Supremacy. Sexism. Homophobia. Anti-Semitism. The destruction of creation.  Our national immigration policy. And the list goes on. This notion that some deserve more than others is the delusion of our deserving. 

The delusion of our privilege, which of course is no delusion at all. Privilege is quite real. But it hangs on the coattails of the notion that we deserve what we have. And so I think it is well worth asking the question: what exactly do we deserve? 

Is what I deserve different from what you deserve? Is it grounded in justice or in my own human concept of fairness? Do we deserve only what we earn? What if what we earn is a function of what we inherit? Do we deserve what we inherit? And what if our earning power is derailed or impeded by no fault of our own? Does what we deserve change? Is that fair? 

And so calibrating what we deserve can be very complicated. Can we quantify or even know much less articulate what we deserve? 

Because that may well be the question that is at the very heart of this Holy Season of Lent; a season that begins with the imposition of ashes which reminds us that we are equally from dust and returning to dust. 

And the litany of penitence that we confess clearly states that we deserve absolutely nothing. In fact, we have quite a negative balance on our tab. On Ash Wednesday we freely acknowledge that we need to be wholly forgiven before we even think about deserving anything.

I think the truth about what we deserve is buried in the semantics of the word itself. Deserve. De-serve.

When we think we deserve something, we are actually de-serving it. That is, we are not serving it. When we think we deserve more credit for our work, or more appreciation for our effort, or a young goat for our obedience we are de-serving what we seek….we are diminishing it. Our notion that we deserve love, de-serves love. When we grumble that we are not being properly served, not getting what we are due, we are actively      de-serving everything that we value…..or say that we value…..as Christians. 

Because de-serving is the opposite of what Jesus came to do. Jesus came to serve, not to be served, not to     de-serve. In fact, if we believe Jesus, we don’t deserve a thing. Everything of value that we have is freely given to us by God, none of it is in any way deserved. And the fastest way to stray from our faithfulness in God’s goodness is to shift our attention from whom we are serving to what we are de-serving. And likewise, the most reliable way back to God is to shift our attention from what we think we deserve to what we can do to serve. 

And so here we have our parable that juxtaposes the undeserving son who returns home to a windfall, and the self-deserving son who grumbles that he is not getting the beneficial consideration that he thinks he de-serves. And in between, these two siblings, the un-deserving and the de-serving, is the prodigal father – wasteful beyond measure with his love for both of his sons. Neither of whom earned their inheritance. But both of whom are equally loved and served without judgment or regret by their father. 

And that is both the Good News and the exhortation in this morning’s reading. None of us deserves anything. Not the ones who waste what we are given. Not the ones who put it in the bank. None of us is entitled to more than the breath in our lungs at this moment. 

Which means that we are totally free. Free to let go of what is fair and focus on what is just. Just what we were born to do. Serve each other.

Service is today’s spiritual practice of resistance. And the undergirding of all service is humility.

So my friends, let us go forth into the world as the humble servants we were born to be. Serving each other with wasteful, lavish, extravagant, prodigal love. 

Wastefully loving each other without until the cows come home!

And the people said: Amen.

© March 2025, The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

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Who Is God? Becoming.

Posted on March 23, 2025 by grimrev

Exodus 3:1-15

March 23, 2025: Lent III 

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

 Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3Then Moses said, ‘I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.’ 4When the Lord saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And he said, ‘Here I am.’ 5Then he said, ‘Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’ 6He said further, ‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

7 Then the Lord said, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.’ 11But Moses said to God, ‘Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?’ 12He said, ‘I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.’

13 But Moses said to God, ‘If I come to the Israelites and say to them, “The God of your ancestors has sent me to you”, and they ask me, “What is his name?” what shall I say to them?’ 14God said to Moses, ‘I am who I am.’* He said further, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “I am has sent me to you.” ’ 15God also said to Moses, ‘Thus you shall say to the Israelites, “The Lord,* the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you”: This is my name for ever, and this my title for all generations.                 

 Exodus 3:1-15, NRSV

In this third week in the Holy Season of Lent, we are served up two familiar readings that seem perfectly appointed for this season. Both ask us to change course; to stop what we are doing, stop treading our usual paths tending our usual priorities and very intentionally, pay attention to God, and God’s priorities. And these 40 days of Lent, seem to give us the permission, or maybe just the very intentional space that we need to try that on, as we say.

It is no surprise that both change-agents are firmly grounded in the natural world, rooted in God’s creation. The burning bush in our reading from Exodus. And the barren fig tree from our reading in Luke. Neither one is acting according to nature’s expectations. The bush is not consumed in flames and the tree is not covered in fruit.  But in their irregularities, both get the attention that is needed for God’s work to begin. Or how about this – maybe only in and through their irregularities are they able to live into God’s call. Both are prime examples of that old addage that God works in mysterious ways. 

But let us not lose sight of the purpose of God’s mysterious ways. It is easy for us to hear this story of Moses as a paradigm of how God helps us to find our calling. Look for the burning bush in our own lives and there we will find ourpurpose. But it is God’s purpose that is fulfilled here. As soon as we put our attention on God, as soon as we turn aside and look at the divine in our midst, God’s work begins; life and liberation abound. 

Moses is the quintessential example. God does not receive any applicants for his prophet-in-charge position from the diocese or any head-hunting angel. God finds Moses the natural way……with a burning bush. A bush that ignites in the middle of Moses’ everyday life and then burns on without ceasing. Until finally, Moses “turns aside to see” what is happening. Why isn’t this bush burning up?

And then bam! Just like that, God has him. Moses is paying attention.

And so God hires him on the spot for a special project of gargantuan proportions. God puts his new…..let’s call it, Director of Liberative Operations immediately to work at a job that comes with substantial sacrifice and risk, and little clarity regarding what exactly is in it for Moses. Other than the inner satisfaction of serving the purposes of God Almighty, of course. 

It is a job for which Moses did not apply, unlike Isaiah’s story which we heard early last month. Moses does not raise his hand when God asks “Whom shall I send?” Moses is rather recruited. And without a lot to recommend him for the job, I might add. The same marginalized Moses who as a helpless baby, floated in a papyrus basket among the reeds of the river to avoid Pharaoh’s death detail, is now recruited by the Creator of the Universe to march straight into Pharaoh’s court and demand the release of the Hebrew slaves, of which he was once one. 

This second book in our Holy Bible is the consummate story of how God works with and through God’s human partners. God’s prophets. It’s a job description that is inscribed on each of our hearts at birth. We are all born to be prophets. So today’s story is a campaign ad of sorts. Or maybe a campaign promise.

Today’s story begins after the Israelites have been in Egypt for several generations. Long after the patriarchs and matriarchs, whose stories were told in the Book of Genesis, have gone. The Israelites have been enslaved by the Egyptians for roughly 400 years. And a new Pharaoh has come to power; a shortsighted, fearful, arrogant Pharaoh who rebukes and fears the number of “foreigners” in his land.  Who feels threatened from the get-go by the growing contingent of immigrants who are reproducing at an astonishing rate. In this case, the immigrants are the Israelites.

And so Pharaoh begins to make life uncomfortable for them. He uses a compliment of age-old, tried and true weapons of mass discomfort – ostracism, demonization, bondage without recourse, hard labor, and the list goes on. 

As we might expect, the oppressed people, the Israelites, suffer greatly. And they cry out for help. And the text says that God hears their cries. And God responds as God always responds to the pain and suffering of God’s beloved people, God hooks up with a human partner and begins to liberate the enslaved. In this case, the partner is Moses.

Now, we might wonder why God doesn’t just fix these things without all of this rigamaroll. After hearing the desperate cries of God’s suffering people, why doesn’t God just take Pharaoh out? 

If God is indeed all-powerful, why can’t all this suffering be taken care of with a wave of God’s almighty hand? Why does God always seem to be waiting on flawed, fragile, frail, fractured human beings to do God’s work?  Why does God even bother calling the likes of Moses – a shepherd of no special distinction, except of course that he is a criminal, having killed an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew and then burying the body. It would be a great episode for Law and Order : Biblical Intent!

And then, when Pharoah learns of this murder, Moses is forced to flee to a foreign land. And that is how he ends up in Midian. Moses is an alien in Midian.  And he is a criminal for murdering the Egyptian who was bludgeoning his Hebrew brother. Not for nothing, but this is the guy God calls to run his Department of Liberation. The heart of God’s salvation industry. An ordinary alien agricultural worker who has a criminal background. All true.

But back to our question, why does God need a human partner in the first place?

Because we know for sure that God never acts alone in our world. Nearly every story and theme in the Bible backs that up. God is never a lone wolf. The Bible would be a very short text if our Almighty God ran the world as an all-powerful ruler. God is many things, but authoritarian is not among them.

Not because God cannot work alone. It is not for lack of power. But, I believe, because God does not choose to work alone. And part of the way we know how much God loves us, is how deeply and centrally we are included in God’s work. You don’t choose to work with people you do not love. And if you love them, you give them a voice and agency. God always gives us a voice and agency.

And so God always chooses a prophet to lead the work detail. Prophets are ordinary people who pay extraordinary attention to God. Ordinary shepherds who notice that the bush is burning but not being consumed. Or the fig tree that is not bearing fruit is not being properly tended. Prophets are the ones who, like sacraments, point us to God’s purpose in this world; the ones who articulate the path to what we Christians call the Kingdom, or Kindom, of God. 

In his classic book, The Prophets, Rabbi Abraham Heschel writes that God’s biblical prophets always address a single stumbling block that keeps we humans from rising to our best God-given selves. And that stumbling block is what he calls the human “failure of freedom.” He says that the main message of all of God’s prophets is that human beings have, “choice, but not sovereignty.” [1]

We have the freedom to choose between options, but not the sovereignty to control the options from which we can choose. Boy that rings a bell with me right off the bat. I bet it does with you too. Whether or not we follow God’s call is up to us. But we do not have the sovereignty to change the call.  We pick up or hang up, but we cannot dial another number. This is the fabric of our partnership with God. 

And it is the first ingredient in the formula that is God’s call to God’s prophets. When God calls, the job of the prophet is simply to answer. When the Lord saw that Moses had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ And Moses said, ‘Here I am.’ God called. Moses answered.

And, God not only decides what the call is, God also decides the timing. God calls us when we are ready, not when we are wanting. We can hope and pray and wring our hands waiting for God to call. Like the barren fig tree in this morning’s Gospel reading. Only God will know when the time is right. And when it is, then the bush bursts into flame! Then the tree bears fruit!

Sometimes we are called too early for our liking. Sometimes, willing and able are in two different time zones. Which seems to be the case with Moses. And so he tells God that he cannot be a prophet because he is not prepared. And, he warns, he is a rotten public speaker and so maybe God would rather call his brother, Aaron. But God snaps back: Just go. I will be with you and teach you what to say.  Again, Moses has the freedom to act, but not the freedom to change the calling or its timing.

Moses insists on his unfitness for God’s call no fewer than four times! Moses is a prime example of how God never calls anyone into their comfort zone. Every prophet, every agent of God’s deepest will, has, at one time or another, been frightened to their core to answer God’s call.  Fear is never the opposite of courage. It is the catalyst. Just as compost is the catalyst for blooming daffodils or fruitful fig trees.

Since God never calls us into our comfort zone, God always provides a catalyst for our best work. Just ask Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Elizabeth, Mary, Joseph, Jesus, Paul, Peter……All sucked summarily out of their comfort zones. So, my prophetic friends, fasten your seatbelts.

And lastly, if the call is from God, it will be calling us to wholeness, above all else. God calls us just as we are, just as we were created to be. God calls us to be reconciled with all that we are, the good the bad the ugly and the magnificent. Any calling that denies our whole selves is not God’s calling. Any calling that seeks for us to be good rather than whole is a trap. Every time. Because good is humanly subjective. Wholeness is absolutely divine.

But as the writer Anne Lamott is fond of saying, “God loves us just as we are but too much to let us stay that way.” And so Moses is called out of his comfort zone by God to do the unthinkable. To reunite the Israelites with their freedom. Wow! With God, all things are possible. Never give up hope when God is involved. Which is to say….ever.

But, it’s not hard to see why the marquis prophets of God are few and far between. God’s call is daunting. But Moses has the courage to answer. He sees the burning bush, he hears God call his name, and he answers  “Here I am.” 

But, he does not accept the job strait away. He seems to have one condition. And only one. He wants to know the name….the exact name…..the official name of his new employer. 

Not so that he will have clout when he comes up against Pharaoh. Not to protect himself should Pharaoh retaliate. But so that the frightened Israelites whom he is sent to lead out of Egypt will have the courage to follow him.  He wants them to know that they too are called by God.

So Moses asks God: Whom shall I tell them is calling them? It will not work to tell them “the God of Your Ancestors” has sent you. That’s a cop out says Moses. I need a name. Moses as Jack McCoy. But God obliges. God honors God’s partner’s request.

God says to Moses, “ok, tell them you are sent by: Ehyeh asher ehyeh.” The NRSV which is the translation we most frequently use, reads: “I am what I am.” 

But that’s not a great translation, in my humble opinion. There are only two basic active verb forms in Hebrew. The perfect and the imperfect.  The perfect applies to things that have been completed. Finished. Perfected. Actions that have occurred in the past. The imperfect tense applies to ongoing actions, things in process or that will happen in the future. Things that have not yet been completed. Not Finished. Not Perfected.

Ehyeh asher ehyeh contains the imperfect tense of the verb I am. If it were in the perfect tense the translation would indeed be I am what I am. Completed. Perfected. Done. But it’s not. It is in the imperfect tense. And the much better translation is: I am becoming what I am becoming. Not yet complete. Not yet finished. Not yet perfected. This is how the main Hebrew Lexicon defines the verb form in this statement.[2]

This is the name of God from God’s own lips, assuming God speaks Hebrew. I am becoming what I am becoming. And so ours is a theology of becoming.[3]

But the question is always: Who is God becoming with us? Who are we becoming with God? Who is God calling us to become?

Keeping in mind the prophetic formula that we will have the choice to answer the call, but not the power to change it. Keeping in mind that God will likely call us out of our comfort zones. If the call feels uncomfortable…please hold for God on the line. And the true yardstick of a calling from God is that it will be calling us into wholeness. Into right relationship.

And so with God we are each and all becoming who we are becoming. Ehyeh asher ehyeh.

So the question is: Where is the burning bush in your life?

And where is the burning bush in our life together?

I don’t have a ready answer. But I do think it is some nourishing food for the remainder of Lent….and beyond!

And the people said: Amen. 

© March 2025, The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

[1] Joshua Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, pg 190.

[2] The Brown Driver Briggs Lexicon

[3] A term coined by theologian Katherine Keller in the title of her wonderful book on Genesis: The Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. 

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The Word of God Matters

Posted on March 16, 2025 by grimrev

Book of Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 

March 16, 2025: Lent II

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT 

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.’ 2But Abram said, ‘O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’* 3And Abram said, ‘You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.’ 4But the word of the Lord came to him, ‘This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.’ 5He brought him outside and said, ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ 6And he believed the Lord; and the Lord * reckoned it to him as righteousness. Then he said to him, ‘I am the Lord who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess.’ 8But he said, ‘O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?’ 9He said to him, ‘Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtle-dove, and a young pigeon.’ 10He brought him all these and cut them in two, laying each half over against the other; but he did not cut the birds in two. 11And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away.  As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and a deep and terror and darkness descended upon him.

When the sun had gone down and it was dark, a smoking fire-pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant [literally cut a deal]] with Abram, saying, ‘To your descendants I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.

Well here it is. For those of us who like to know where the beginning is, it is here. The seed of the claim. The start of the conflict. The crux of roughly four thousand years of religious tradition. The trunk of the tree is planted right here in today’s reading from the Hebrew Bible. It is the very source of the three mainstream Western tributaries of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The three so-called Abrahamic religions claim their divine authority from today’s reading in the Book of Genesis. They all trace their roots back to this exchange between the God of Creation and the ordinary man named Abram; who, at the tender age of roughly 75, packed up his wife Sarai and his father Terah and his nephew Lot, and left his home and extended family in Ur (a land a bit southeast of modern day Bagdad) to travel through Syria and Jordan and Egypt to the land of Canaan (a land that today constitutes much of Israel, the West  Bank, Gaza, and Lebanon). There, the God of Creation became the God of Abraham. As we heard this morning, God spoke to Abram in a vision. (God would soon change his name to Abraham and Sarai’s name to Sarah) And in that vision was the promise, The promise, with a capital T:  ‘Look towards heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.’ Said the God of all Creation to the childless senior citizen. ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And Abram believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as justice.

  And just like that the covenant was cut. The covenant.The covenant that ties all three of the so-called Abrahamic religions to God, and to each other. God promised Abram a universe of descendants, all the people of the earth. And Abram believed God and thereby stopped worshiping the gods of his ancestors. 

And our monotheistic traditions were born. 

Well, not just yet. But they were soon to be born. Abram and his wife Sarai were both in their senior years and they had no children. But Sarai had a young handmaid named Hagar, and she became the mother of Abram’s first descendant. The first fruits of God’s outlandish promise.

And this first born son of Abram was named Ishmael. Ishmael is the branch of the Abrahamic tree that is claimed as the root of the tradition of Islam. But Ishmael was not to be Abram’s only heir. Fourteen years after the promise made in this morning’s passage, Sarai, then almost 100 years of age, bore Isaac, Abram’s second son. 

Isaac is the branch of the Abrahamic tree that is claimed by Judaism. Please note, it took fourteen years for God to deliver on God’s word to Abram and Sarai. And please note, that both Abram and Sarai were nearly 100 years old when Isaac was born. So where ever you are in your own span of life, you can be pretty sure that God is not finished with you just yet!

So the Islamic claim to God’s promise is Ishmael. And the Jewish claim to God’s promise is Isaac. The two sons of Abraham are two roots of the claim to God’s promise, God’s covenant, God’s family. But we Christians have an equally powerful claim to the covenant with God through Abraham.

The Christian claim to the Abrahamic tree – as it is articulated in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians- is directly and simply through the Word of God. The promise first spoken in chapter 12 of Genesis, and then reiterated in this morning’s vision. The promise that God made to Abram that he would be the father of all of the nations of the world and that all of the people of the world would be blessed through him, is our assurance of inclusion in God’s promise. 

This understanding was indubitably clarified by Paul. There was a kerfuffle in the early Christian church. The folks in Galatia insisted that only Jews had access to God’s covenant. And so anyone who wanted to be included in that covenant had to convert to Judaism. In short, they thought that only Jews could become Christians. Because only Jews had access to God’s covenant.[1] Buzzz. Thank you for playing, but that answer is incorrect Paul assured them that no such conversion to Judaism was necessary. Their fitness for Christian life was not grounded in Jewish law or lineage, but rather in God’s promise to Abraham and all of the people of the earth. By God’s Word they were as worthy to follow Jesus Christ as was anyone who descended from Abraham. They had God’s Word on that. And we have God’s Word on that. Just as we heard this morning.

The whole premise of our faith tradition, the whole foundation of our Christian edifice rests on the truthfulness of God’s Word. It rests on our being able to believe God’s Word.That as descendants of Abraham, we are heirs to God’s covenant. Members of God’s family. Keepers of God’s Word.

And for us, as Christians, God’s Word comes to us primarily through the Torah of the Hebrew Bible, and the Gospels of the New Testament. The five Books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy; and Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Those scriptures are ground zero for God’s Word in our faith tradition. In our faith, full stop. That scripture provides us with everything we need to know about who and whose we are in this life. And, what we are called to do with this life.

We are beginning a Lenten series on Spiritual Practices of Resistance this morning after church. This series is a response to the rapid and radical changes that are pummeling the norms and values of our “One Nation Under God.”

These are trying and fearful times for many of us. As many of us lose the footing on which we have predicated our lives. Our jobs. Our security. Our peace of mind.  Many of our neighbors whom we are called to love are feeling deep fear and dread. And not because some of these changes are not needed.  But because the rapid and ruthless manner of change seems to be unfolding without regard to the wellbeing or the dignity of those who are most affected….and everyone who loves them.

Like the 1,400 United States Aid for International Development workers who were summarily fired without notice or recourse, and the millions of marginalized people around the world whom they served with humanitarian aid. And tens of thousands of federal employees like park rangers and scientists and teachers and researchers to name just a few who were left without severance pay or health insurance, and holding untrue termination letters that listed poor performance as their cause. So good luck finding another job. And thousands of United States veterans who have served this country courageously with their very lives and are now experiencing serious cuts to their benefits like healthcare. Anyone whose livelihood depends on Social Security. Anyone whose healthcare depends on Medicare or Medicaid. And let us not forget the planet, God’s good earth that is increasingly treated as a commodity rather than a gift.

All of these creatures and creations of God are understandably feeling newly threatened in ways that violate every Gospel value in the book.  Values that we as Christians are required to uphold and defend if we are to be true to our faith. If we are to have any integrity as followers of Jesus Christ who gave his own life for those values.

And we all know those values by heart. Care for those in need, welcome the stranger, tell the truth, walk with compassion and mercy, share what we have, honor the dignity of every living creature, love our enemies, love our neighbors. Love each other. Love every descendant of Abraham. Love God and God’s Kingdom and God’s Word. Full stop.

These are the values that undergird the Kingdon of God.The Kin-dom of God. The family of God. The heirs to God’s covenant. These values are the Words of God. And they matter!

And so as Christians, I believe we are called to, as Paul says in this morning’s reading from Phillipians, stand firm with the Lord. And God’s Kingdom. And that standing firm with and for God is a necessary resistance. As Christians we must resist the claim that there is anything more desirable, anything more important, anything more holy than the values by which Jesus teaches us to live in our Gospels.

The values for which Jesus died on a cross.

I think we will do well to continue to find our peace and our resistance always in the Word of God. And there is no Word of God that is more prolific, more prevalent in our scripture than God’s assurance to Abram in this morning’s reading: Be not afraid.

In fact, those words show up more than anything else in our Holy Bible. Approximately once for every day of the year. 365 times in all. Coincidence? I think not. They appear in this morning’s covanent that credentials our faith, and then 364 more times in case we did not hear it. God tells us that we have nothing to fear.

And like Abraham, I think we should believe God. Because the one thing we can take to the bank is that God keeps God’s promises. The Word of God matters. 

So Spiritual Practice of Resistance number one: Be not afraid.

I want to leave you with a poem that I refer to over and over and over again when things get difficult in my own life. It is by the wonderful naturalist Wendell Barry.

It’s called  The Peace of Wild Things.

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, 

and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

 I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. 

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and I am free.

And the people said: Amen.

© March, 2025 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

[1] This is apparently what the churches in Galatia had been told by a troupe of unnamed Christian missionaries.

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Jesus Christ the Son of Light and Hope

Posted on December 10, 2023 by grimrev

Gospel According to Mark 1:1-8

December 10, 2023: Advent II

The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen S. Grimshaw

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. As it is written in the prophet Isaiah, “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you, who will prepare your way; the voice of one crying out in the wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’” John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”                              

If brevity is the soul of wit, this beginning of the Gospel According to Mark invites a whole new level of wit-ness. For today’s short reading tells us just about everything we are going to need to know about how God will work in our world from this point forward.  The beginning of the Good News…of Jesus Christ….the Son of God…..who will baptize YOU with the Holy Spirit. That’s it. All we need to know.

In this terse passage that kicks off the earliest and shortest of our four canonical Gospels, we know, right off the bat, about who God is and how God will interact with us, from now on. God is Jesus. Period.

Unlike Matthew and Luke who begin with lengthy genealogies of Jesus, linking his heritage back to Abraham and Adam, respectively, substantiating his birthright and ancestry, lining up his credentials before he even lifts one miracle-making finger, Mark has none of that.  Matthew and Luke try to define Jesus in terms of human generations. And then they give Jesus, God in the flesh, his start on earth in utterly chronological terms: they begin with the narrative of his birth.  They begin at the beginning. And while that genealogy and birth story make for very handy pageant material, they spend a lot of time setting the stage before getting to the meat of the mission.

But not so in Mark’s Gospel. The very first line of Mark offers us the one distinctive claim of our Christian faith tradition. The one thing that defines Christianity among all of the world’s mainline religions. And that is that our God has come to dwell among us. That’s it.

The incarnation is the defining characteristic of the Christian tradition. The one and only thing that sets Christianity totally apart from every other mainline religion is that God takes our flesh. Fully human & fully divine. That is all the Good News that’s fit to print. At least according to Mark.  

The resurrection does not make us distinctive. It is what makes Christianity a bonafide religion rather than just a genre, like utilitarianism or stoicism or jazz. The promise of brand new life is the religious component of Christianity. But almost every other religion promises brand new life in some form or fashion. New life is what makes an ideology a religion.So the resurrection is not what makes us distinct, it is what makes us religious.

The distinguishing feature of Christianity is that the God of our Creation and Redemption has come to walk in our own shoes. To experience time in our human context. To feel suffering and joy with our human heart. And to stand with us in our human condition. The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God. Full stop.

And where does the Good News begin in Mark’s Gospel? Not in a city like Jerusalem or even Galilee, not even in the shelter of a stable. In Mark’s Gospel the Good News is born in the wilderness. The Good News begins in the crowded muddy waters of the Jordan River where Jesus, already a grown man, stands with every manner of skank and scallywag to be baptized with God’s Holy, life-giving Spirit. That is the start of Mark’s Gospel. Jesus is the son of God. Jesus gets baptized. And then, he heads into the wilderness. And we’re off!

In Mark. We get no human genealogy. No birth story. No Mary. No Joseph. No immaculate conception. In Mark when we meet Jesus, he is fully grown. No relation to Adam or Abraham or King David. We have no idea from where or from whom he has come. We only know that from where ever it is, he brings with him the power of the Holy Spirit.

Because once he is baptized by the Holy Spirit, he is driven immediately into the wilderness by that same Holy Spirit – where he will come face to face with his newly-minted humanity. Where he will put his baptism to the test. The wilderness is where Jesus gets his street cred.

Not for nothing, but that rings a bell. Baptized with the Spirit and then flung out into the wilderness to put that baptism to work. That sounds exactly like our story too.

And all of this happens, in Jesus’ story, in the first 13 verses of Mark’s Gospel. We are only one third of the way through the very first chapter of Mark.  And we already know who Jesus is, and what we can expect of him. Mark is a very good expectations manager.

And so in this earliest of our four Gospel’s (and hands down my favorite), the Good News begins in the wilderness….without fanfare….but with the sure and certain escort of the Holy Spirit.

This is the only time in our three-year lectionary cycle when we hear the all important first line in Mark’s Gospel. The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ the Son of God.

We will hear the part about Jesus’ baptism again in a few weeks. And we will hear the part about being driven into the wilderness, in the first Sunday in Lent.  But this beginning of the Good News comes only here. In Advent of year B. A time in our liturgical calendar when Jesus is, technically speaking, not yet with us. And so this reading here and now, at this particular theological time, has always seemed to me to be slightly out of joint, as Hamlet might have said.

How can this be the beginning of the Good News? Shouldn’t we wait until Jesus is born, liturgically speaking. Mary has not even heard from the angel…albeit in Luke. And so if Mark’s Gospel lacks a birth narrative, shouldn’t we just hold off before jumping into Mark’s Gospel until we get to Jesus’ baptism? That’s where Mark actually begins.

I used to think that would be a much better fit. Why muck up the message of Advent by jumping straightaway to Jesus’ baptism before we even get to the manger or the star. It’s just too confusing to begin….not at the beginning. But in Mark’s Advent, the world turns on its head before we even get to Christmas.

And, when we think about it, this tension between our linear chronological time and God’s not-at-all linear theological time is at the heart of our Christian challenge. This fundamental tension is at the heart of our Christian faith. A faith that asks us to act now as thought the Kindom has already come. Every Sunday morning when we receive communion, we get a foretaste of the banquet still yet to come. And as Christians, we “believe” that Jesus is the first fruit of the life that awaits us in the Kindom of God. It offers us a teste of that Kindom before it has come. Just like reading Mark in this year B of Advent, introducing us to Jesus before he is born. And it is just the sort of time-twisting theology for which Advent is ideally suited.

But Advent is not the only season we celebrate this week. We are smack dab in the middle of Hannukah which began on Wednesday and lasts for eight days. Hannukah is often called the Jewish festival of Lights. And this year, in the wake of the October 7th Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, it has a poignant power and relevance. The history of this holiday is grounded in the evil of antisemitism  as the Syrian King and his army attempted to wipe out the Jewish population in their midst.

In Hebrew, the root of the word Hannukah points to a “dedication.” And historically on this occasion it refers to the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem. The heart of Jewish life and worship which had been desecrated by the Syrian armies led by King Antiochus IV in the second century before the common era, or before the birth of Christ as we know it. Around 175 bce.

In broad strokes, Syrian King Antiochus ruled over Judea, and made it illegal for Jews to practice Judaism. He wanted them to worship Greek Gods. He wanted them to be….not Jewish. And when the Jewish community summarily refused to abandon their religion, the king had his forces all but destroy the Jewish Temple.  You know, the one originally built by Solomon. And King Antiochus replaced the altar to God with an altar to Zeus. It was the consummate act of antisemitism. And not much different than the intense antisemitism that we are wrestling with to this very day.

Likewise, the Jewish population (two thousand years ago) rebelled against the Syrians, and fought to regain control of their Temple. The Jewish contingent was led by Judah of Maccabee. And after a decade or more of violent conflict, the Jewish Maccabees prevailed. Judah was liberated, returned to the Jewish people.

And the first order of business was to restore and rededicate the Temple. But there was a snag, as there usually is in our best laid liturgical plans. Although there were plenty of lamps to light in the Temple, there was only one jar of candle oil left.  Only enough oil to light the candles in the ransacked Temple for one day.

Hmmm. A liturgical and theological dilemma. After years of fighting and scrounging for their very existence in the darkest period of their lives, what sort of message would it send to rededicate the Temple only to have the light go out again after just one day? Not a good message.

And it would take a week to prepare and consecrate enough oil to light all of the candles, and to keep them burning with God’s light into the future.  So why not just wait a week for the dedication? Why not wait for more oil?

Why not? Because the Temple belonged to God’s. And God would decide and provide. Our job as God’s children is not to orchestrate the future. It is to walk forward in faith with whatever resources we have here and now. Sometimes, even when our logic might tell us to do otherwise.

And so these faithful, God-fearing souls thanked God for their survival and lit the candles with their one-day supply of oil…..A one day supply that lasted for eight days. Somehow. But we know how.

The same way God can keep all things going even when there seems to be no earthly explanation for their endurance. The way Jesus survived in the wilderness with only the Holy Spirit to his name. The way we sometimes experience God’s awesome power in our own lives, when God keeps our own lights lit even when we are fully out of oil.

The story of Hannukah is the story of steadfast faith and unwavering hope….mixed with a decent dose of courage. It is the anti-anti-antisemitic antidote. The menorah is the symbol of God’s enduring light in the darkness. Eight days of light running on one splash of oil. Yeah. God can do that! As long as we light the lamps.

This second week of Advent week is just overflowing with Good News. Jesus Christ the Son of God is here.  And, God, against all odds, has left the lights on for us.

I’d like to leave you this morning with one of my favorite snippets from Austrian poet, Ranier Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours (I 59) It is the way I imagine God might instruct us to walk through this season of Advent.

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,


then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,


go to the limits of your longing.


Embody me.

Flare up like a flame and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going.

No feeling is final.


Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.


You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

And so onward, deeper and deeper into Advent we go!

O Come, O Come Emmanuel!  

Amen.

© December, 2023 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

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Georgeorgeorgeorgeorgeorge

Posted on December 3, 2023 by grimrev

The Gospel According to Mark 13:24-37

December 3, 2023: Advent I

The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen S. Grimshaw

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

‘But in those days, after that suffering, 
the sun will be darkened,
   and the moon will not give its light, 
and the stars will be falling from heaven,
   and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. 
Then they will see “the Son of Man coming in clouds” with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.

 ‘From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

 ‘But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly. And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.’

It is finally Advent! Welcome to the season of insanity……if the definition of insanity, not the serious clinical definition but the cultural colloquial one, is doing the same thing over and over again with the expectation of a different result. Because here we are again, the first Sunday in Advent. Just like last year, and the year before, and the year before that, here we are beginning our story, again. Our same age-old story, in a new year, presumably in a new way. And yet, it is not a new story, not even close.

Advent could easily feel like …Ground Hog Day, the movie…the same old unfulfilled promise of peace on earth, once again.  Every year we wait with joyous expectancy for a gift that never seems to come. Are we that foolish? Or is God that untrustworthy? How can it be that God has already come on earth, and earth is still without God’s peace?

And to make matters worse, this morning’s Gospel reading from Mark makes us wonder if the promised peace on earth will even be worth the cost. Because on this first Sunday in the festive season of Silver Bells we have made our way here through a world overflowing with twinkling lights and lawn Santas; through a maze of retail ads choking every conceivable media, touting a thousand affordable ways to make this Christmas bright.

We have navigated gluttonous lists organizing a fleet of holiday festivities and gift giving. And having made our way here through all of that, we gather this morning in the home of the Good News, to kick off this season of good tidings and great Joy to the World. Merry Christmas is our vernacular. And then bam! We are met with this morning’s abominable reading from Mark’s Gospel.

….the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light….Heaven and earth will pass away….

From holiday cheer to earth-ending fear. From Santa is coming, to life as we know it is on the way out. Which candidly, might actually sound like Good News to some in this world. But I am guessing that for most of us it is……terrifying. Heaven and earth will pass away…...forever?

Jesus, Mary and Joseph!….and I invoke these names in the most reverent way possible. Is this really the time for such an apocalyptic text? In this the Most Wonderful Time of the Year? Was this Gospel reading chosen by the Grinch?

‘in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven….

 O Holy Night! O Holy cow! Jesus is not talking about an eclipse. This cataclysmic Advent premonition doesn’t lend itself to Johnny Mathis or Bing Crosby or Rosemary Clooney. But the stark truth is that nothing in this Christian life, the life that begins anew this season of Advent, does.

Because Christianity has almost nothing in common with popular culture. And that is Good News, although sometimes it seems like bad news. But this morning’s readings could not be more clear. This is Christianity 101.

If we want to live into the outrageous story that begins with the Incarnation of the Divine and ends with the Resurrection of a Human Being, we are going to have to get a handle on the relationship between endings and beginnings. Or more to the point, the Good News that connects endings with beginnings.

And so the first trick to getting Christianity is learning how to hear the end of one thing as simply, miraculously, thankfully, the beginning of another. Not unlike spelling George over and over again. Georgeorgeorgeorge. The end is also the beginning.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

Jesus’ words are like George continuously beginning in the ending. We hear this general message every year in the Gospel reading for the first Sunday in Advent.

The readings always assure us of the Second Coming of Christ. They always deliver the Good News that peace is still on the way. But they also remind us that peace will not just grace this world, it will replace this world. Altogether. Like the Incarnation and the Resurrection, the Second Coming will turn the world on its head; it will involve both an earth-shattering ending and a life-affirming beginning.

This year, in Mark’s Gospel we hear a slightly more intense edge to this message than we hear in the years when we read Matthew and Luke. But both of those Gospels end with a return appearance of our Saviour after the resurrection. In those Gospels, Jesus returns to the disciples and promises never to leave them…. At least in spirit.

But Mark ends much more definitively. With just an empty tomb. No return appearance for reassurance. And the ones who have come to the tomb are nunderstadnably terrified. Not mystified, as in Matthew and Luke. Terrified. How can the tomb be empty? Where did the body go? The last verse of Mark’s Gospel dewscribes the women who came to tend Jesus’ dead body: 

So they they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them;

and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid. 

The end. Drop the mic.

I always hear Linus in my head when I read this last sentence in this Gospel. As though the women at Jesus’ tomb in Mark were somehow connected to the shepherds at Jesus’ birth in Luke: and they were all sore afraid!

This is the end of Mark’s Gospel. And, some might argue, the crux of Mark’s story. There is no soft landing in Mark. Jesus does not return to comfort his disciples. In Mark, the tomb is just empty. In Mark, Jesus has simply come and gone. And the ones left behind are terrified. It is not the ending we expect when we start this story. With the babe in the manger and the promise that peace will inhabit the earth with his very being. Where is the peace? It’s been two thousand years. Where is the peace?

And that is when we remind ourselves that the story does not begin in the manger. It begins with Advent. And Advent comes with the message that peace is indeed coming, but…… Not until everything else has passed away. And so the hope of peace on earth is in the Second Coming. Not the birth, but the Second Coming of God’s flesh on this earth. The Second Coming that is foretold in this morning’s Gospel.

There is hardly anything more uniformly and widely attested in the New Testament than the Second Coming of Christ. It is in all three synoptic Gospels, Acts, Corinthians, The Book of Revelation, etc. And even though we do not, in our contemporary culture, talk much about the Second Coming per say, we embrace that hope every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer. Every time we pray that God’s Kindom will come on earth as it is in heaven. That is an explicit prayer for the Second Coming of Christ.

And so this morning we hear Jesus’ answer to that prayer. Sit tight. I am coming. I’m on the way. But, I can not do this without your help, says Jesus. So here is your instruction. It’s not complicated. Just stay awake. Jesus does not tell us to Deck the Halls or even to Go Tell it on the Mountain. He says sit tight!  Keep Awake! That’s it. God’s Christmas wish for us: Keep awake.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away…..so Keep awake!

It sounds easy. Sort of. But personally, I’m a big chicken. And if the world is going to come to an end, I would just as soon sleep through it! I don’t want to keep awake. It scares me to death. And I am guessing I am not alone. Like the war broiling around the world that scares us to death. Like the almost commonplace gun violence almost in our schools and houses of worship that scares us to death. And the opioid epidemic that scares us to death.  And the nearing tipping point of climate change scares us to death. Like Covid before the vaccines, scared us to death.

And so as it turns out, Mark’s Gospel proclamation of the Second Coming does not have a lock on terrifying endings. We already know what it feels like to be scared to death. But the difference is, in Mark’s Gospel, the end is not just the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad end. It is more of a means to an end. An end that is required to clear the decks for a brand new, life-giving beginning.

Because every beginning is preceded by an ending. It’s just the law of Creation. It’s by God’s own design. As the popular preacher Barbara Brown Taylor says in her sermon on this passage in Mark, this end comes not in the absence of God, but with God front and center.[1] And God is not only present at this ending, God causes it. Intentionally.

Which makes this passage no less terrifying in my book, but it does offer an enormous light at the end of the tunnel. And not just a light, a light whose brilliance and comfort we can scarcely imagine. A light that so outshines our fear that we will want to be awake to see it.

Although I must admit that if I were Mark’s editor, I might have suggested a slightly different instruction for our preparation. Because, while staying awake is surely good practice, I think that a more helpful instruction might be to let go. Let go of all the things that block our embrace of this ending as anything other than a divine new beginning. Let go of everything that we fear we will lose in order to gain the Kindom of God.

Let go of our obsession with security.

Let go of our grip on prosperity.

Let go of our cultural and constructed and limiting notions of home and family.

Let go of our comfort and complacency and competitive drive.

Let go of our notion that death is worse than suffering.

Let go of our notion that life begins with, and belongs to, us alone.

Let go of every human construct that gives us something to lose.

Because lose it we will. All of us. All of it. Eventually. Whether we lose it now or later, in the course of our lives or at the end of the world, we are going to lose it. But the Good News is that either way, there will be life abundant in the aftermath.

So Advent may well be the time to prepare for the new beginning by letting go of our fear of the ending.

This morning we lit that first candle on our Advent wreath. It is the inextinguishable sign that we are not in Kansas anymore. We are now powered by God’s particular light, empowered by God’s expansive vision, and overpowered by God’s everliving love.  We are in God’s time. With God’s blessing. In God’s hands.

I think it is no coincidence that our Christian calendar begins in the darkest part of the year. When the days are short and the light of hope is waning.  I think December 21st….the longest night is a bit of a metaphor for Mark’s message.

The days become shorter and shorter….darker and darker until one day, in the blink of a single night, they suddenly begin to grow longer and longer…lighter and lighter. December 22 is immediately lighter than was December 20th. Just like that. One day turns the whole tide. From darkening to lightening in a flash. So fear not!

But let us be duly aware that there will be darkness before there is light. 

The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven.

And then there will be a radical new world that we cannot begin to foresee!  To say that the Second Coming of Christ will be mind-blowingly radical is an understatement. It will be off the wall! Over the top! Beyond the pale and out of this world! Profound. Extravagant. Revolutionary.

This binding of endings and beginnings in God’s realm will turn the world and everything in it on its head. All of our expectations will be moot. And all of our norms will be shattered. And all of our fears will be cast out by nothing less than love. And all of this is guaranteed by nothing less than our steadfast faith.

Let us begin our Advent practice by letting go of everything but….the promise. The promise that God will never, not ever, never leave us. Jesus said:

Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

And that is nothing but Good News!

Amen.

© December 2023, The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

[1]Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine (Cowley Publications: Cambridge, MA) 1995. 135-6.

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The We-Attitudes

Posted on October 29, 2023 by grimrev

October 29, 2023; All Saints Sunday

The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw


Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:”Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.  “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. “Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

                                                                                                                        -Matthew 5:1-12 , NRSV

Happy All Saints Sunday!

My friend Mark Bozutti Jones says that the difference between Jewish Saints and Christian Saints is that Christian saints are perfect and Jewish Saints are people. But according to St. Paul, every one of us was called by God to be a saint.

The feast of All Souls is among my very favorite celebrations. It is, in fact, the third most important feast day in our liturgical calendar, after Easter and Pentecost. Like Easter, the liturgical color is white. White is the color of all celebrations of the resurrection, all celebrations of new life. Everlasting life.

This morning we celebrate the saints who have gone before us. And who live among us here and now. And who are being born as we speak. We celebrate the current and future members of the cloud of witnesses who have died to the flesh, but live on in God’s Kindom. And too, we celebrate the saint in each one of us.The saint that we were each called to BE!…. a God-given attitude, according to the Apostle Paul.

Every one of us is a bonafide saint on layaway!

This morning’s familiar reading from Matthew’s Gospel gives us an idea, from the lips of Jesus, of what saintliness looks like in the mind of God. It is the portion of the Sermon on the Mount that we call the Beatitudes. Latin for blessed. It is among the most familiar pieces of scripture in our canon. But I think we often mishear this recipe of sainthood as a list of do-attitudes rather than be-attitudes.Things we must do to qualify to inherit the earth…to receive the mercy…to see God…to be called children of God.

And maybe because we do not think these attitudes describe us, sometimes I think we hear these beatitudes as descriptions of other people. Meeker people. Poorer people. More marginalized-in-this-world people. And not…successful people. Not popular people. Not powerful people. Not productive people. Not the people we want to be, necessarily. And so we don’t necessarily want these beatitudes to describe us.

Maybe because these beatitudes don’t sound like blessings, at least not in this world. In this world where we value productivity and acquisition and winning, seemingly above all else. In fact, we so value competition and conquest that we excuse even the most vulgar behavior and the most spirit-squelching conduct in our so-called winners. Winning is the ticket that seems to absolve us of even our human decency. And so who in this competitive, blue ribbon world would consider it a blessing to be poor or meek or persecuted, even for righteousness? 

But that is precisely the difference between the Kindom of God and the Empires of…..Us. When Jesus talks about the radical order that is God’s realm, the mind-blowing paradigm that is God’s creation – that extravagance of love can only flourish when we are free of our delusions of grandeur.And so Jesus, God in the flesh, assures us that the poor among us are indeed blessed.

Blessed are the poor. It is an utter reversal of our hierarchy. Jesus is turning our understanding of the world and its hierarchy of value on its head. I think one of the things that trips us up with these beatitudes is that we do not want them to describe us. We do not want to be the poor. Holy cow, who does?! Poor is not a choice most of us would willingly make. And so we sooth ourselves by rationalizing that Jesus is talking about a select group of people who….are not us. Maybe even placating a select group of people who…..are not us….by the grace of God. Don’t worry you unfortunate lot of unpowerful folks, blessed are the poor.

Interestingly, the verb in this sentence is not articulated in the Greek. The Greek just reads blessed the poor, but our English vernacular requires a verb, and so we add the are. As the English majors among us will know, are is a to be verb. To be verbs represent states of being. Unlike other sorts of verbs like imperatives or action verbs, to be verbs speak to who we are rather than what we are doing. Blessed are the poor speaks to an existential state.

But Jesus is not just speaking just to those who are poor now. To those who are living in a state of poverty at the moment. Because there may not be a verb in the Greek, blessed are the poor. But there IS a definite article.  THE poor. And that definite article tells us that Jesus is talking to the existentially poor, not the socio-economically poor. Get the difference?

Jesus cannot just be speaking to those who are living in poverty, because if they suddenly found themselves out of that poverty, lifted to a life of not-poverty, like if they hit the lottery – then would they no longer be blessed? Because that would mean that the bless-edness of which Jesus speaks depends on a particular socio-economic status. Jesus’ beatitudes would be completely contingent on a human construct.

If Jesus were speaking only to those who are living in poverty, then their blessedness would be as fluid as a crap game. And the holy monitor in my gut tells me that this is balderdash.

So we may not want to resemble these beatitudes. But we do.

Jesus must be speaking to those who are poor at the core of their humanity. And that my friends is all of us, you and me and every member of congress and every priest and parishioner on earth. Every saint in the book. Underneath whatever we have acquired in our lifetimes, we are still and always poor in spirit. Every one of us. We are still completely contingent, completely dependent. Existentially poor.

The Jesus who came that we all might have life and have it abundantly is not just talking to a temporary culturally cast-out subset of humanity in his Sermon on the Mount. He is talking to every one of us. We are all the poor in spirit, all of us, whether we realize it or not. We are all one breath away from catastrophe. One breath away from losing everything we love the most. One breath away from the mournful, meek, pure hearted peacemakers of which Jesus speaks. We are hungry and thirsty for right  relationships, every one of us at our core.

As your priest I have seen this truth in living color over and over and over again. There is not one of us who will not know these beatitudes in the core of our own being at some point in our lives, if we do not know them already.

I myself never really got these beatitudes…until all of sudden I did. Our first golden retriever was named Rosie. Dame Rosalind of Big Bug Creek to be exact. Rosie entered my life just as I was discerning a call to the priesthood. Rosie was my spirit-guide, my companion, my therapist. And I loved her from my toe bottoms.  But at age 6 she was diagnosed with a brain tumor that required surgery.  Apparently, the surgery went well, but the recovery did not. When Thalia and I got to Angell Memorial Animal Hospital on that rainy Saturday morning, we found our sweet Rosie in a plexiglass cubicle in the recovery room looking like….well, death warmed over would be a euphemism. The very sorry surgeon was just about to put her out of her earthly pain.And so I sat on the floor of that critical care unit at Angell Memorial Hosptial and held that precious creature in my arms as her life slipped away.


And through my river of tears glancing up through the plexiglas window of her recovery bay, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. I saw in that window the most gentle…most grieving…most poverty stricken spirit I had ever seen. I saw a hunger for mercy, and a thirst for peace, and a pureness of heart that were, to my very great surprise, embodied in the reflection of…me. It was my hunger and my meekness and my mourning that stopped me in my tracks. I was/am THE poor.

And so although we sometimes hear this passage as a litany of “virtues” that we must achieve, a sort of job description  for sainthood – It is really instead an assurance thereof. That is, I think we sometimes hear this passage – Blessed are the poor, and the meek and the thirsty for righteousness – as a set of instructions calling for our obedience. But they are really a description of the blessings that we have already been given.

Somewhere in our lifespan, each of us will be stripped of our competitive, boastful, power-grabbing selves and left only with God. And that will be the moment when the blessing that is each of us, at our essence, will be revealed. It will also be the moment when we take our place at the margins of our world, with Jesus. Because let us not forget that our God is a marginalized God. 

Jesus is nothing if not marginalized. Always standing on the outside looking in. Our God has always challenged the status quo, always confronted those who dominate and fragment and oppress others. Our God has always been rejected as a threat to those who wield and hide behind power and privilege. Our God was the immigrant, the one bearing a frightening new religion that was not to be accepted. The one who was different from the cultural norms,  and challenged the existential status quo of the general population.  The one who challenged every oppression order, crossed every border, and stood with every detainee. Ours is a God who would have gone to the cross to stand with just one poor, meek, mournful soul.

If we are to follow Jesus, we too must take pour place at the margins.  Because at the margin is where we are most fully with the God who created us. The margins are not where we may one day find ourselves if we are among the un-preferred or the unlucky. The margins are where we belong if we are Christian.

The margins are where we let go of our hoarding. Our hoarding of wealth and power and sensible stewardship of all of our possessions. The margins are where we drop our pompous pretense and embrace our human dignity. The margins are where we repair the breach caused by our transgressions. Reparation can only happen when we are bold enough to let go of the pretense. that we are the source of our own success.

These are not the to do attitudes, these are the to be attitudes.

And so on this All Saints Sunday we celebrate the blessings that we are, at our core. And too the new life that happens when we let go of all that keeps us from God and each other. When we have only the dignity of God that is etched on our hearts to keep us afloat. When we allow ourselves to become the saints that we were each called to BE!

Alleluia! The other be-attitude.

Amen.

© October, 2023 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

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The Emperor Has No Clothes…or Power

Posted on October 22, 2023 by grimrev

Gospel According to Matthew 22:15-22

October 22, 2023

Trinity Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, CT

 The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away

Tell us, Jesus, is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?

Those dastardly Pharisees, they never give up, do they. Trying to trap Jesus. Taunting him with such politically loaded interrogations as Is it lawful to pay taxes ?…indeed! But these plotting pundits are relentless in their intent to trap Jesus into saying something that will sink his fledgling career as the so-called Son of God. Which, by the way, is the exact credential written on the Roman denarius in question.

Just below the head of Caesar the coin read: Tiberius Caesar: Son of God. The emperor Tiberius Caesar’s Father, Caesar Augustus, had been declared a God by the Roman State, and so his son was also, naturally, the Son of God. You see the problem.

And so the Jewish elite attempt to stuff Jesus, that other itinerant Son of God, into the black or white no-man’s land of declaring his allegiance….either to God or to Caesar. And, not for nothing, there was no such thing as a separation of church and state in the first century Roman Empire. We have some context for understanding that separation, but no one in Jesus’ time would have any idea what that meant. Church and

state were one and the same.  The coin said it all: Tiberius Caesar, Son of God. And so it was a simple calculation, to reject the state was tantamount to rejecting God.

And so the Pharisees think they have got our rabbi now.  Tell us, Jesus, is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not? A trick question if ever there were one. And although the question is clearly a taunt to get Jesus to sign his own demise on the dotted line by denouncing the official authority of the realm,  these Jewish elites seem to be asking a deeper question, one that continues to be more than relevant today, two thousand years hence:Is living a lawful life in this world compatible with a life devoted to God? Or not? Is it possible to love God with all of our heart and soul and might, and to live according to God’s Law – and to participate in the structure of the state and live according to its law?

And that question still feels more than relevant. And so here we are, two centuries later, waiting with baited breath to hear Jesus’ response. But as we could have expected, Jesus does not take the bait, he does not give his questioners, or us, a straight answer…..sadly, this seems the one thing about Jesus that our contemporary politicians seem to have embraced with proficiency. Not giving us a straight answer.

Nonetheless, Jesus’ response is brilliant. He says: Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s,

and to God the things that are God’s. Great answer! But, what?  How do we know which things belong to the emperor and which things belong to God? Maybe more importantly, what things do not belong to God?

And this is a question that has occupied a good part of my own inner Pharisee for the better part of my adult life.  And I am guessing that I am not alone. How are we to reconcile the commandment to love God,

with all of our hearts and souls and might….with every fiber of our being, and the requirements of a cold hearted beauracracy?

How do we decide when following the law of the land violates the law of love? How do we know how much of our time and talent and treasure belongs to God and how much belongs…..not to God.

It is no accident that this passage shows up just at the start of our church stewardship season.

As we begin to contemplate how much of our earthly gain we can pledge to God…..through the church.

But this question is not just meant to be raised once or twice a year when we are called to pay our taxes or ponder our pledge. This passage is not included by Matthew (whom, I will remind us all, is a tax collector himself ) as a hook for stewardship season.  It is a question which is at the core of who we are and how we live as Christians, disciples of Christ, in this world which is not Christian, or Jewish, or inclined toward God in any foundational way, as far as I can tell.

And so I fear that Jesus’ answer to the Pharisees is anything but Good News….at least for those of us who are….human. For the real answer, after we get past the comfort of the apparent permission to pay our taxes and parking tickets, the real answer is that….uh oh, when we get right down to it, we cannot easily separate what belongs to God and what does not. In fact, we cannot separate it at all.

Every week we sing: Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Do we really mean that? Because if we do, then what Jesus is saying is that everything, and I mean everything we have, belongs to God. That means that nothing that we have does not belong to God.

And that means that we, as Christians, are called to live lives that constantly, incessantly, unrelentingly,

ask the question, am I using God’s gifts for God’s purposes, or am I not? With every dime we spend, with every hour we commit, with every vote we cast, with every talent we offer, with every word we speak, with every breath we take we must be asking: Am I using God’s gifts for God’s purposes?

Last week I saw a TED talk by Krista Tippet.[1] She is the wise and wonderful host of the National Public Radio show On Being. And in her presentation she suggested that there are three grounding orientations that can help to keep us focused on…..God’s purposes (my words, not hers) in this world that seems to be constantly pulling us away from….God’s purposes. Or in the parlance of this morning’s Gospel, three things that we might think about to help remind us that we belong to God and not to Caesar.

Here are her three thoughts to ponder:

  1. See the generative story of our time. She says that catastrophe and disfunction seem to be raging all around us all of the time. And so it is easy for us to lose sight of who and whose we are; to see our own stories as enveloped in bad news and despair. But catastrophe and dysfunction are not our story. Because things are always and ever going right all around us. All of the time. There is good news happening virtually everywhere. Amazingly good news. First of all, every one of us just took another breath. We are still here. Yay! And, we don’t have to look any further than these pews to see people helping each other in myriad and wonderful ways. There is selfless service happening in the nooks and crannies of this world all the time. Acts of kindness, large and small. Mercy and justice flowing in the most unlikely places. Sacrificial love offered to strangers by by strangers.

It’s happening all the time. In plain sight.

The problem is that we are wired to focus on the disastrous rather than the divine. We are more comfortable with rupture than rapture. Because in order to keep us alive, our brains are designed to keep us on the alert. To avoid predators and pitfalls that might threaten our very existence. It’s a survival mechanism….focussing on danger rather than delight. But our hard-wired attention to the death traps around us very often prevents us from attending to what is good and productive and life-giving.

So the first pointer in keeping our eyes peeled for God’s purposes is to take in the good. To see our stories as grounded in a sea of good news and wondrous opportunity,  and to let that perspective shape our idea of the world and who we are within it. To over-ride our hard-wired focus on the pain in our midst and instead celebrate the promise that comes with belonging to a loving God.

  1. Stop looking for answers and live into the questions. This advice is actually from the poet Ranier Maria Rilke who said: “Live your questions now, and perhaps even without knowing it, you will live along some distant day into your answers.” The meat of this life is in the big questions, not the final answers. And so we  must try to love those things that feel unresolved in ourselves. Those are the places where God’s purposes are working themselves out.

Maybe we don’t have the answers to our deepest questions because we are not ready for them. And, once we have the answers, the journey is over. Krista’s second point to ponder is that a new reverence for the questions that keep us engaged with God’s purposes is far better than an obsession with figuring out the answers.

  1. And number three. Measure every calling by its relevance and relationship to wholeness. If what we are doing does not promote wholeness, it is not part of God’s plan. Wholeness is always both the yardstick and the tell-tale sign that we are on the right track with God.

Three simple reminders.

To See our lives as surrounded by promise rather than pain. To live fully into our questions without angsting over our lack of answers. And to weigh everything on a scale of its proximity to wholeness.

I offer these Tippet tidbits because amid the hubbub of life as we know it here and now, I think we need to be reminded every chance we get, of who and whose we are. Reminded that we do not belong to Caesar. We belong to God. And by the transitive property of God, We belong to each other, and each other’s wellbeing.

Yesterday at our healing service I shared an anecdote about Margaret Meade that you might too have seen on Facebook. A rare Facebook find. But I found it very interesting and helpful in resetting my own yardstick regarding who and whose we are.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead was asked by a student what she considered to be the first sign of civilization in a culture. And the student expected the answer to be related to productivity or prosperity. Expected the first sign of civilization to be the excavation of fishing or hunting gear, or maybe iron tools, or clay pots, or basic utensils. Some item of use.

But no. Margaret Mead said that the first sign of civilization in an ancient culture is the discovery of a femur, you know, a thighbone that had been broken and then healed. She explained that in the animal kingdom, if you break your leg, you die. You can’t run from danger, you can’t get to water, you can’t hunt for food. You become defenseless prey. You get eaten. No animal survives a broken leg long enough for that bone to heal.

And so a broken femur that has healed is evidence that someone has taken time to stay with and tend the one who has broken their leg. Someone has bound up that wound, carried that person to safety, and ensured their recovery; ensured their healing. Healing. A word that has the same etymologyical cognate as the word whole. So the first sign of civilization is that someone has ensured the return to wholeness of someone who has been broken.

The first marker of community is not grounded in productivity, or power or popularity. It is grounded in kindness and care. Grounded in healing. Grounded in returning each other to wholeness. We stop being lone wolves and become a people of God when we begin to care for each other. Walking with each other through the adversities of life is the mark of the best that human society has to offer. The best that we can be as children of God.

And so when the Pharisees ask Jesus if it is lawful to pay the emperor his due, the answer is…..Sort of like the emperor who had no clothes but was treated as though he were wearing the finest threads in the land. The answer is that anything of any worth is due to the emperor’s is an illusion. The emperor actually has nothing of value to offer or require.

And not just because everything we have belongs to God. But because most importantly, we do. We belong to God. Jesus tells us so in this morning’s reading And I think we should believe him! And act accordingly.

Alleluia! Amen.

© October, 2023 The Rev’d. Dr. Gretchen Sanders Grimshaw

[1] TED Talk. Krista Tippett, Three Practices for Wisdom and Wholeness. https://www.ted.com/talks/krista_tippett_3_practices_for_wisdom_and_wholeness

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