Musings

Your Body is Holy

A sermon preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Port Chester, NY on Sunday, December 31st, 2017 (1st Sunday after Christmas)

Readings: Isaiah 61:10-62:3; Psalm 147; Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7; John 1:1-18

The portion of John’s Gospel that we just read is probably not the first place our minds go when we think of the Christmas story. Where is the manger? The star? The shepherds? Where is the Baby Jesus, for that matter? This story, full of words and light, glory and grace, might seem abstract compared to the very specific details that we heard in the Gospel according to Luke on Christmas Day. And yet, John is the one who offers us this verse that is, in so many ways, the key to our Christian faith: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

The Word became flesh. It’s one of those Bible catchphrases we’ve heard a million times. Every Sunday, we recite a variation of it when we read the Nicene Creed: “He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.” On some level, we understand that being Christian involves worshipping a God who voluntarily became a human being. But how often do we really think through what that means? How comfortable are we, really, with a God who has a body?

It’s fine when we think about it from a safe distance. A baby in a manger: that’s cute. God became one of us, that’s lovely, reassuring, even. But, by and large, we are not so comfortable with bodies. Starting with our own. Having a body is a complicated business. Bodies don’t always do what we want them to. They hurt. They catch colds at the most inconvenient times. They refuse to fit into the clothes we want to wear on a given day. And, sooner or later, they start to fail us in more significant ways. Bones become brittle and break. Cancer cells invade. Memories become fuzzy under the veil of dementia. In a thousand different ways, ranging from annoying to downright terrifying, our bodies remind us of our fragility and our mortality. And for that, we tend to resent and be ashamed of our flesh. We ignore its needs, we disparage its appearance, we demand superhuman feats of our fragile human bodies, or we just wish they were different – skinnier, younger, healthier. The idea that God might have a body just like ours is uncomfortable, scary, and threatening.

To make matters more challenging, the church has a long history of picking up on our general human discomfort with bodies. The Bible is littered with verses that sound like an all-out assault on human flesh: according to Paul, our bodies are basically obstacles to be overcome on the path to enlightened, spiritual existence. In 1 Corinthians, Paul even boasts of punishing and enslaving his body, which brings to mind images of medieval monks flagellating themselves, doing violence to their bodies in the name of Jesus.

But there is a huge, glaring contradiction here. Do you see it? If the Word became Flesh, if God became human, if the divine took on a body, then how can our flesh be bad? If human flesh was good enough for Jesus, then what are we still doing condemning it? If the Word became Flesh, then our bodies are a place where we can meet God. If the Word became Flesh, it was to show us loud and clear, once and for all, that our own flesh is holy.

How would we live differently if we really believed that? What would our medical system look like if we really believed that every human body was worthy of healing and care? What would our immigration system look like if we believed that no human body can be casually labeled as illegal, deportable? What would our lives look like if we treated our human flesh with respect and dignity, if we saw the ways we eat and rest and move not as obligations foisted upon us by others, but as invitations to encounter our own fundamental holiness?

It’s easy for us to imagine Jesus as some kind of divine superman: sure, he looked human, but he can’t really have been just like us. It’s easy to imagine a Jesus who’s a little too perfect – a baby Jesus who never cried. An adult Jesus who never got hungry, never was tired, and who, oh, by the way, was ridiculously good-looking. This super-Jesus is too good for the banal limitations of a body. Human flesh is beneath his divine dignity. But that is not the Jesus John is describing when he writes, “The Word was made Flesh.” He doesn’t say, “the Word looked an awful lot like flesh,” or “the Word pretended to be flesh.” The Word was made Flesh. Period. And that is our salvation.

Why? Because God understands that our bodies matter, that they are much more than just cumbersome containers for our eternal souls. Our imperfect, fragile bodies are the only way we have to meet God: our ears hear God’s word in Scripture, our eyes see God’s beauty in the world around us, our hands reach out and touch God when we greet each other at the Peace, our tongues taste the sweetness of Christ every time we receive the Eucharist. God understands this even when we do not. By taking on a human body, God is showing us that there is no aspect of our humanity that God is not willing to share. That no secret pocket of shame or fear is too much for God to handle, that no brokenness is too great for God to heal, that there is nothing we need to hold back for fear of being ridiculed, judged, or punished. There is no place we can go where Jesus hasn’t already been, no darkness within us that Jesus cannot visit. The Word became flesh to heal our deeply fractured relationship with our own bodies, so that we might be whole and holy, so that we might have the abundant life that God promises us.

None of this is easy for us to take in. If we’ve spent a lifetime seeing our bodies as inconvenient, broken, weak, and unworthy, it will take time and patience to unlearn those assumptions enough to see our flesh as inherently holy and worthy of love. But the Incarnation that we celebrate in these 12 days of Christmas shows us that it is possible. And lucky for us, we get an opportunity to practice recognizing the divine holiness of our flesh every Sunday, every time we stretch out our hands to receive Christ’s body into our own in the Eucharist.

When I distribute Communion, when I look you in the eyes (if you’ll let me), place a piece of bread in your palm, and say, “The Body of Christ,” it’s not only the host I’m referring to. It’s you. It’s cool that a piece of bread can turn into Jesus, but what has the potential to change the world is that we become God’s body. So as I give you the Sacrament, my prayer is that that tiny piece of bread will allow you to realize how holy, how beloved your own bodies are. My prayer is that you might recognize that you already share God’s body. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. What if we really allowed ourselves to believe it? Amen.

Breaking Silence

A sermon preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Port Chester, NY on Sunday, December 17th, 2017 (The Third Sunday of Advent)

Readings: Isaiah 61:1-4, 81-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

In this day and age, we read this passage from John’s Gospel and celebrate John the Baptist as a prophet, a saint. We name our churches after him, we lift up his name in hymns, especially during Advent, because he was the one who prepared the way of the Lord. Sure, he was a little weird in his clothing choices and dietary preferences but, on the whole, we appreciate him for his role in paving the way for Jesus.

It is easy for us, 2000 years later, to forget just how extraordinary John the Baptist really was. How much courage it took him to be the lone voice crying out in the wilderness, how risky it was for him to speak his truth, how much strength it must have taken for him to insist to crowds of people who were ready to worship him that he was not the Light, not the Messiah, but a messenger and a witness. John is a true prophet in every sense of the word: willing to speak truth to power whatever the cost, not afraid of public shaming and scrutiny, so sure of who he is and what God has called him to do that he can endure taunts, imprisonment, and eventually, execution without losing his integrity.

When we hear the word “prophet,” I think many of us imagine someone who can predict the future. But, in the Bible, prophecy actually has much more to do with the present. Prophets don’t arise in times of peace, when everything is going well. They appear on the scene in times of crisis, in pivotal moments when a breaking point has been reached and humanity has a choice to make: change, or suffer dire consequences. Prophets show us the untenability of our current way of life. They tell us the truth that none of us want to hear. They are not afraid of upsetting the balance of power, or calling out the rich and powerful, or making people extremely uncomfortable…and they suffer for it.

As we come to the end of 2017, it’s clear that, at least for the United States, this has been a year of reaching our breaking point. Both as a society and as individuals, we are faced with the question: what now? How will we respond to the enormity of hate and evil that has been unveiled in the past year? Will we stay silent, telling ourselves that our voice wouldn’t make a difference anyway? Will we remain bound by our fear? Or will we look around us for the prophets rising up in our midst, for those modern day John the Baptists, and take the risk of joining our voices with theirs in denouncing evil and testifying to the Light?

Two weeks ago, a group of modern prophets appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. The coveted honor of Person of the Year, often awarded to Presidents, Popes, and other celebrities, went to a group of women – black, white, Latina; young, old; famous and ordinary. They were called the Silence Breakers: women who had reached their breaking point in keeping quiet about the sexual harassment and assault they endured at the hands of men, some famous, some nameless. The article included harrowing tales of hotel housekeepers being cornered and assaulted by guests, movie stars receiving death threats from their producers, example after chilling example of abuse that has become so widespread, so sanctioned by collective silence, that it has become normal. All of this comes on the heels of the trending social media hashtag #metoo, which went viral overnight when an actress dared to share her experience of sexual assault on twitter and awoke to over 30,000 voices proclaiming that she wasn’t the only one.

Like John the Baptist, most of these Silence Breakers felt like a lone voice crying out in the wilderness when they dared to speak out. Like John, their truth telling was met by everything from ridicule to death threats. Their prophetic message was too dangerous to be heard; it threatened to expose an epidemic of disrespect for human life that has festered everywhere from corporate boardrooms, to movie sets, to church sacristies, to the White House for generations. Their prophecy confronts us with a choice: will we hear their difficult, painful truth and allow it to change and convict us? Or will we, by our silence or our murmured remarks of “it can’t really be that bad/she must be exaggerating/but he’s such a good guy” allow the epidemic of violence, of abuse, of sin to continue?

Prophets like John the Baptist, like these Silence Breakers remind us that the coming of Christ that we’re waiting for is a profound threat to the powers that be, both in the world at large and within our own hearts. The arrival of Love and Truth in a world filled with hate can be violent, because it exposes evil for what it really is. When the Prophet Isaiah announces that the Lord has anointed him to bring good news to the oppressed, proclaim liberty to the captives, and release the prisoners, that’s great news for the oppressed, the captives, and the prisoners. But it’s a death blow to oppressors and to everyone who profits from the abuse of others. The arrival of Love in our midst is deeply threatening to a lot of powerful people. And when people feel threatened, they attack. It’s why women who speak out against their abusers often end up being scoffed at, getting fired, or suffering physical harm. It’s why John the Baptist ended up with his head on a platter. It’s why Jesus ended up dying on a cross. The truth is a dangerous thing.

But, as Christians, every single one of us is called to follow in the footsteps of John the Baptist, to preach the truth, to witness to the Light that is stronger than the darkness that surrounds us. To boldly insist that the way things are right now is not the way they will always be. That change and healing are possible; that they are, in fact, already underway. All around us, crooked paths are beginning to be made straight, by the bravery and faithfulness of ordinary people who stand up for love and justice. Powerful people are being ousted from their thrones by those they have oppressed: on Tuesday, a child abuser failed to win a highly contested senate seat in Alabama because black women turned out in full force to vote against him. All around us, mountains are being brought low and valleys are being exalted.

Don’t think for a moment that this Gospel reading is just an account of something that happened 2000 years ago. This scene between John the Baptist and the Pharisees is playing out in real time right now. The question is, which character are we? Confronted by the bold and uncomfortable truth of prophecy, how will we react? Will we take a risk and join John the Baptist, the Silence Breakers, and prophets everywhere in their truth telling and advocacy for the oppressed? Or will we, whether by our silence or our words, ally ourselves with the Pharisees, with the powers that be, and fight the arrival of Love, the arrival of Justice, the arrival of God?

Today, my prayer for all of us is that we might encourage and strengthen each other to take the risk, to be brave, to join our voice with John the Baptist and cry out in the wilderness. Because the time is NOW. Change is coming, injustice is dying, and Love is arriving. The question is: are we ready? Amen.

We are God’s Children NOW

A sermon preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Port Chester, NY on Sunday, November 5th, 2017 (All Saints’ Day)

Readings: Revelation 7:9-17, 1 John 3:1-3, Matthew 5:1-12

If you think of the major feast days and observances of the Church – Christmas, Epiphany, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension – most of them are rooted in things that happened to Jesus a long time ago. Sure, those events continue to be relevant and life-giving for us today, but, at their core, they’re commemorations of things that happened to someone else in the past. But All Saints’ Day is different. All Saints; is about us. Yes, we remember famous saints who lived a long time ago, but the whole point of the Communion of Saints that we celebrate today is that it extends into the present. Saints aren’t fictional creatures like unicorns or extinct ones like dinosaurs. When we talk about saints, we are also talking about us. The Communion of All the Saints is present right here, right now.

On All Saints’ Day, the veil between heaven and earth feels particularly thin. As we celebrate and remember the great cloud of witnesses who went before us – apostles and martyrs, prophets and reformers, grandmothers, artists, Civil Rights leaders, teachers, healers, visionaries and dreamers of all kinds – we can feel their presence with us here today. The boundaries of time, past, present, and future, soften a little bit, bleed into each other. And so does the boundary that usually seems to separate the holy from the earthly, the boundary that separates us from God. On All Saints’ Day, heaven and earth kiss each other and we are swept up in God’s holiness, not in some future paradise, but right now.

So let’s dive into the great holy now. Let’s set aside, just for a moment, as a thought experiment, our nostalgia or grief for the past and our anxiety and dreams for the future and really sink our teeth into this moment, this now. I love these words from 1 John that call our wandering attention back to the present: “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed.” We are God’s children now. What if that were enough?

We are God’s children and God calls each one of us blessed. Our Gospel reading today is not some great and glorious miracle, or a dramatic prophecy, but nothing other than the Beatitudes, from the Sermon on the Mount. It is a list of ways in which ordinary human beings are blessed, holy, and beloved. Think of who was gathered at Jesus’ feet as he preached this sermon: not kings, not high level officials, not celebrities, but a crowd of normal men and women, beautiful in their brokenness, hungry for words of life and healing. It is a crowd we can easily imagine ourselves in, leaning on a rock, feeling the bodies of our friends and neighbors pressed up against us, hearing Jesus’ refrain, “Blessed are you, blessed are you, blessed are you.” The Beatitudes are a reminder that we are not excluded from God’s vision, that we too can be wrapped in holiness, that we too are blessed, that we too are part of the Communion of Saints. And notice that Jesus doesn’t say we will be blessed at some later date, but insists that we – meek, merciful, poor in spirit, mourning, and persecuted – are blessed right now.

We are God’s children now. Later today, this community will have the joy of welcoming two new children of God into the Communion of All the Saints in the sacrament of Baptism. Baptism is always a beautiful and joyful thing but today it feels especially poignant and powerful. Our community has been living in a state of mounting fear of the threat of deportation. Just in the past month, more and more cases of Port Chester residents fighting with everything they have to protect their lives and those of their families have reached the media and captured public attention. More and more people are coming to us at the church and asking for help. The fear is real. Its effects are palpable. This is happening.

And it is right in the midst of this fear and terror that we welcome new Christians into the Communion of Saints. Where ICE agents sow fear, we sow hope. Where the government tells our fellow human beings, “you are illegal. You are an alien. You do not matter. You are not welcome,” today we get to offer an alternative proclamation. Today, we will trace chrism crosses on fragile foreheads and say, “you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” What we are really saying is: “your value and worth as a human being does not depend on where you were born or what your immigration status is. You are beloved. You are Christ’s. And no power in heaven or on earth can ever change that.”

By virtue of our very existence, we are all children of God. By virtue of our Baptism, we are living members of the Communion of Saints, the Body of Christ. In Baptism, there is no legal or illegal, there is no citizen or alien, there is no US-born or immigrant; there is only equality. Around this font and this altar, we are all equally blessed, equally holy, equally much God’s children. And these days, more than ever, we need to publicly celebrate, proclaim, and remember that truth. Because the world is trying to sell us a different story, a story of division and hate an enmity.

We are God’s children now. In the book of Revelation, in this beautiful and strange vision of heaven and earth melting into each other, we hear the question, “Who are these robed in white, and where have they come from?” They are the saints. The baptized. Those who have washed their robes and made  them white in the blood of the Lamb. They are Ingrid and Luis Alejandro, who will be baptized in a few hours. Who are these robed in white? Look around you. They’re each one of us.

So today, rejoice in your holiness. Rejoice in this thin space, where we get to see and taste and touch heaven, here and now. Let us claim our place in that great fellowship of Saints, remembering that, no matter what persecution may befall us, no matter what messages of hate and exclusion the world offers us, we are God’s children now. And nothing can ever change that. Amen.  

Radical Forgiveness

A sermon preached at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church, Port Chester, NY on Sunday, September 17th, 2017

Readings: Genesis 50:15-21, Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13, Romans 14:1-12, Matthew 18:21-35

The lectionary is certainly keeping us on our toes today. Today, in our Old Testament reading, we get the tail end of the Joseph story from the book of Genesis. Normally, when reading a story, one reads the ending only after having read the rest of the story. Well, not today. We haven’t heard ANY of the Joseph story! Last week, we were in Ezekiel, for heaven’s sake! At first I thought there was a mistake. It wasn’t. So what is this strange snippet of the Joseph saga doing in our readings today?

It turns out that this is one of those Sundays when all of our readings band together to shout a common message loud and clear: Genesis, the Psalm, Romans, and Matthew are all here to speak to us about forgiveness. Yes, forgiveness. That age old topic that we simultaneously know we need to care about and really struggle to put into practice. Forgiveness, the way it’s often talked about in church, can seem so impossible as to be quite off-putting. In today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus’ famous command to forgive those who sin against us, not just 7 times, but 77 times. It sounds lovely, until you actually imagine forgiving the idiot who always illegally parks in your parking spot 77 days in a row. Really, Jesus? 77? That seems like overkill.

Jesus’ commandment is memorable. It cuts right to the heart. It convicts us. But it doesn’t actually tell us how to forgive to the point where it feels absurd. The story of the king and his slave serves as a cautionary tale for how not to receive forgiveness, but it doesn’t really show us what forgiveness looks like when done well between humans.

That’s where Joseph comes in. So, since we haven’t had the pleasure of reading through the whole Joseph story, let me catch you up real quick. In the book of Genesis, Jacob has 12 sons. Joseph is the baby, and receives all the special privileges of a youngest child – including his brothers’ fierce jealousy. The brothers get fed up with Joseph, first try to kill him off, but then think better of it and end up selling him into slavery to some passing traders. Joseph ends up in Egypt where, to make a long story short, he makes himself famous by interpreting Pharaoh’s weird dreams, and ends up serving as a high level government official. Many years later, a famine strikes the land, and Joseph’s brothers make the trip to Egypt where – irony! – they find themselves begging for food at the feet of their brother, whom they no longer recognize. Joseph reveals his secret identity, they have a happy family reunion, the brothers go back to Canaan to get their father, and everyone settles down in Egypt to live. With me so far?

That’s where today’s story picks up. Jacob has died and, all of a sudden, Joseph’s brothers get nervous. What if, now that Dad is gone, Joseph decides he’s still mad at us for, you know, selling him into slavery? An understandable enough possibility, so the brothers scurry to cover their bases. They come to Joseph, claiming that, just before his death, Jacob told the brothers to beg Joseph to forgive them. Pause. The disadvantage to not having read the full story is that this seems plausible enough. But it never happens! The brothers are making this entire deathbed conversation with Jacob up. They’re not actually sorry. They’re just trying to protect themselves.

What does Joseph do? We don’t know whether or not he buys the story, but we do know that he responds with compassion. And something about his response seems to open up his brothers’ hearts too. What Joseph says in this moment is, to me, one of the most powerful statements in the Bible about how forgiveness really works: “What you intended for harm, God intended for good.” In one sense, this applies to the greater arc of the story: thanks to the brothers selling Joseph into slavery, an entire region was saved from famine. But I think the sentiment applies to the brothers’ imperfect “apology” as well. In other words: God can work with our imperfect human hearts to bring about love, and justice, and mercy.

The Joseph story tells us that learning to forgive is an imperfect process, full of ulterior motives, reluctant beginnings, and outright mistakes. We don’t have to get it right on the first try. In fact: it’s pretty much guaranteed that we won’t. Forgiveness, at least for us humans, is not a one and done affair. The important thing is that we start somewhere. The important thing is that we open up a conversation – with God and, if possible, with those whom we have wronged – so that we can start being honest. Because growth can only happen where there is honesty.

Asking for and receiving forgiveness is incredibly hard work. It’s a practice, something we have to commit to chipping away at day by day, maybe even moment by moment. Forgiveness is never about condoning abuse or violence. Nowhere in this story does Joseph say, “I know you didn’t really mean to hurt me,” or “30 years later, I understand why you did what you did.” No. What’s done is done, and it was evil. When we forgive someone, we do not change the past – but we do give ourselves an opportunity to let the past stop ruling our lives and our hearts. When we forgive someone, we are reclaiming our power, our authority – often the same authority that those who wronged us were trying to take away. When we forgive, we say, “what you did to me does not define who I am. My identity is secure in God.”

When we forgive, we break the chain, we refuse to return violence for violence. That doesn’t mean that we don’t speak out against evil or that we don’t seek justice; it simply means that we decide to take control of the only thing we can – our behavior – and refuse to put any more violence into the world. Yes, we receive harm at the hands of each other. But hurt and violence are not the only things we receive in this life. We also receive a constant stream of love and compassion from our God who, the Psalm promises us, is “full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger and of great kindness.” When we forgive, we actively choose what we’re going to pass on to the world. We choose compassion and mercy over revenge and hatred.

And that, really, is what Jesus is getting at in Matthew’s Gospel. Forgiving is not something we do on our own steam. We do it because God has first forgiven us. Because God has modeled the kind of behavior God wants from us. If we’re stuck in our own vicious cycles of retribution, then we have, in a fundamental way, lost touch with God, forgotten who God is. And Jesus is quite right to say, in the parable of the king and the slaves, that forgetting of that magnitude is a serious problem.

But God is well aware that our attempts at forgiveness will always fall short. God knows this, and God forgives us for it. Our job is to keep trying, to keep growing, to keep picking ourselves up when we mess up and not give up hope. Forgiveness usually doesn’t arrive in our hearts with fanfare and fireworks, but sneaks onto the scene, little by little. And so, to close, I’d like to offer a very simple, very effective practice by which we can begin to open the doors of our hearts to God’s compassion and mercy. Every day, take 5 minutes and call to mind a person who has wronged you. Instead of rehashing the story of who said and did what, simply say to them (aloud, or in your head): “I wish you well.” And then release them to God. Perhaps you will find that, like Joseph’s brothers, you don’t really mean it at first. That’s ok. God can work with it. Keep practicing. 77 times, if necessary. Keep going forward, knowing that our God is full of compassion and mercy, slow to anger, and of great kindness. There is always more than enough forgiveness to go around. Amen.