God does not hold our sins against us. March 27, 2022. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Years ago, I was doing pre-marital counseling with a couple up in Massachusetts, and it hit a bump in the road — literally. They’d been saving money together for quite a while, when the groom-to-be decided, without consulting the bride-to-be, to use some of that money to purchase a snowmobile, which he really wanted. And then, just a week after buying it without her consent, he was out riding, hit a bump, and wrecked it, leaving him with an expensive and useless vehicle.  Well, I’ve had a number of tense pre-marital sessions over the years, but the meeting after that happened probably takes the cake. She was livid; he was scared. We had to talk through it a lot over the next few months, though I’m not sure how successful those conversations were. I remember asking her shortly before their wedding, “Do you forgive him?’ And she replied, “Yes, but I’m never going to let him forget it.”

I hope that, over the years, she did not hold it against him, but we human beings are prone to doing that. Which makes the central point of our readings today still so wondrous after two thousand years. Paul states it clearly: In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them. God does not hold our sins against us. All along God has promised this. At the very beginning of Isaiah, the Lord says: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow (Isaiah 1:18). And at the very end of Micah, the prophet says: He will have compassion upon us; he will tread our iniquities under foot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea (Micah 7:19). And then Jesus comes and seals the deal. When he is crucified, human beings do their worst to him — and he forgives them while they are doing it, and he keeps on forgiving them after he is raised from the dead, showing no desire to inflict vengeance or punishment. The Risen Christ offers only love, peace, and mercy. God does not hold our sins against us.

 And please note that there is nothing conditional about this. God doesn’t sort of forgive us, as long as we behave well. She doesn’t say words of forgiveness one day and then remind us of all our past failures the next day. In the parable of the loving father, which we heard today, the father doesn’t wait for the son to be sorry before forgiving him: he forgives him before any words of apology are uttered. And there is no indication that he will ever hold his son’s past behavior against him, even if the older brother, a typical human, plans on doing just that. It’s a parable that sums up the Gospel: Jesus lived and died for us while we were still sinners. The forgiveness offered is absolute. God does not and will not hold our sins against us. Period.

 So does this mean God doesn’t care how we behave? No: it just illustrates how God helps us. We often take the route of conditional love and punishment: “I will love you as long as you behave well, and if you don’t behave well, I will punish you or even withhold my love from you.” For many “realists,” this is the way you get the desired results. But apparently God is not very realistic, at least not in human terms. God’s method can be summed up simply: “I will love you into a good, joyful, and abundant life.” This explains the approach Jesus takes to those infamous “tax collectors and sinners.” Remember, the fact that he hangs out with them is what causes all the grumbling in our Gospel passage today and elicits the parable he tells. Jesus does not insist that those tax collectors and sinners change their ways before he eats dinner with them and spends time with them. No, he meets them where they are and loves them as they are. And we know that, at least with people like Matthew and Zacchaeus, his loving them really changes them. And this is his approach to us: he will love us and forgive us, and keep on loving us and forgiving us until we let that love change us and set us free. Until then, our bad behavior may hurt us as it hurts others, but the pain is self-inflicted. God has no desire to punish us: God’s sole desire is to save us.

 And if you think that God’s approach is going to take a really long time to succeed, my response would be, ‘Obviously. God is clearly not in a hurry.” And if you grumble about overly-indulgent parents and how children and adults need discipline, my response would be, “Obviously. We are works in progress: God is a perfect lover, we are not.” But Jesus shows us the direction we must move in to experience a better life. Our ultimate happiness and well-being will not come from tougher punishments but from greater love.

 And there is one obvious way we can move in the direction of greater love, and that is to follow Jesus and stop holding people’s past sins against them. Consider for a moment: Do you ever hold grudges or hold on to grievances? Do you ever in anger remind others of the bad things they have done? Have you ever muttered, “Oh, she’s never going to change.” Are there people in your life whom you have not forgiven? Have you ever said or thought, “I forgive him, but I’m never going to let him forget it”? Having been guilty of such behaviors myself, I know how unhelpful they are, how far they lead us away from love. But even here, God does not hold our failures against us. We may hold grudges and stew in resentment for years, but God will love us anyway and the moment we think, “I don’t want to do that anymore. It’s a waste of time and energy,” God will rejoice. And whenever we ask for help, the Spirit of Jesus Christ will flow through us and empower us to love better and live better. And the more we experience that Spirit, the more we feel God’s unconditional love in our own lives, the more we will be able to show that same kind of love to others. This is part of what Paul means when he talks today about being a new creation in Christ. And we can be a new creation every moment, no matter what we’ve done before — because God’s mercy is new every moment, and God does not hold our sins against us.

 

Challenging us to actually live. March 20, 2022. The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Luke 13:1-9

We already know this: Pilate was not the last tyrant to hurt or kill someone and Siloam was not the last tower to fall. We know this because tyrants and towers are the reality of the world in which we live. And they come in all sorts of ways and forms. Sometimes their intentional and of human origin, other times they’re accidental and the way of nature. Regardless, tyrants and towers abound. Putin and the war in Ukraine and Covid-19 with all of its suffering easily qualify under the category of tyrants and towers. But there are others as well, random accidents, systemic broken relationships, diseased bodies, to name a few.

Whenever tyrants act and towers fall we are faced with the reality that life is fragile, unpredictable, and sometimes even tragic. At such times we often try to grasp for control, to make sense of the chaos and look to explanations like, “They got what they deserved, “God has a plan,” or “Everything happens for a reason.”

It seems that Jesus is hearing something along these lines as the people tell him about Pilate and his responsibility in the deaths of the Galileans whose blood was mingled with their sacrifices. “Do you think,” Jesus asks, “that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?” To this kind of thinking - that bad things happen to bad people - and all other simplistic rationales that we hold onto in hopes of making sense of the world, Jesus says, “No, I tell you.”

No, because that is not who God is or how God works. Actions and choices have natural consequences - sometimes they result in tragedy and suffering, other times in good fortune and joy. The hard truth is that good things happen to both good and bad people. And bad things happen to both good and bad people. Tyrants and towers, along with God, show no partiality. Which Jesus makes clear when he declares, “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

“Unless you repent.…” Guaranteed, that is not what the people wanted or expected to hear from Jesus after they told him about Pilate’s latest brutal act. And surely Jesus’ follow-up report of another tragic tale about eighteen people killed in a freak accident when the tower of Siloam fell on them didn’t help much either. Then to top it off he says again, in case anyone missed it the first time, “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.” Cold comfort, indeed.

Can you imagine coming to me or Fr. David with the news that your daughter is getting divorced or that your father is dying or that your good friend is suicidal and hearing the response, “Well, unless you repent.…” Understandably, you’d be hurt and, hopefully, shocked because that’s not how we do pastoral care around here. And quite rightly you’d probably follow up with a scathing phone call reporting us to the bishop. Because Jesus’ words are not all that helpful. They offer no explanation, no comfort. “Unless you repent,” is not what we want to hear, but sometimes it’s exactly what we need to hear.

To state the obvious, Jesus is not operating as pastor in this reading from the gospel of Luke. He is behaving as a prophet. Because a prophet speaks truth, oftentimes hard truth that we’d rather not hear. Tyrants act and towers fall. Those are facts of life that Jesus is really not interested in arguing about. What he is interested in is challenging us - in the midst of this fragile, unpredictable, and sometimes even tragic life - challenging us to actually live. “Unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”

Which launches him into a parable about a man who plants a fig tree and then three years later is frustrated when the tree has not borne fruit. The gardener, then, comes to the poor tree’s defense, asks for one more year, and promises to give it special care and nurture in the meantime. The story raises the question, where is our life bearing fruit? And where is it not? Where do we need to repent? In the sense that repentance is the changing of one’s mind, a turning of the heart towards God and God’s ways of love and mercy in this world. Where are we nurturing and growing in our repentance and where are we just “wasting the soil” in which we have been planted?

There is an urgency to the story because time will eventually run out. This is not because God is out to get us. But because God knows how short and precious and sacred life on this earth is. Jesus is more concerned with why people do not fully live than explaining why people die. Everyone dies, but not everyone truly lives.

The last lines of the poem, “The Summer Day,” by Mary Oliver captures this point beautifully.

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

This is the heart of Jesus’ call to repentance. And it is our Lenten journey. Turning our hearts and minds towards God, is the way to really live the “one wild and precious life” that we have been given. Repentance is the path to life. The way of becoming more fully who we truly are - beloved children of God who are created to not only be loved but to love. To act in ways that expand the experience of love and mercy in all the world. Repentance, ultimately, is about choosing to live and live fully. So choose. And if you see that you have made a wrong choice, choose again. For it is never too late. “One more year,” implores the gardener to the landlord. One more year. Which is not about the span of twelve months really, but about forgiveness, grace, love, and unlimited second chances. So tell me, how might you live more fully into repentance? What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?

Willing to trust God. March 13, 2022. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Luke 13:31-35

It is Lent, so in the spirit of the season I can confess to you that there are many things I would rather not do for God, things that I feel frankly unwilling to do. I would not, for example, be willing to go serve as a missionary in Siberia. I would not be willing to sell my house, give the proceeds to the Salvation Army, and live on the streets. I would not be willing to wear one of those sandwich board signs saying “the end is near” and preach repentance to people on the downtown mall. I would not be willing to hire a band and turn this service into a rock-and-roll-Jesus praise service. I don’t know how I would respond if God actually appeared to me in a vision and commanded me to do one of these things, but I know that I would not feel willing to do any of them. And I’m sure all of us can easily think of things we would be unwilling to do for God.

With that in mind, though, this Gospel passage just leaps out at me. Jesus laments over Jerusalem because the people there are not willing. But what are they not willing to do? Engage in heroic acts of virtue and sacrifice? Stand up to the might of Rome? No. Listen again to what Jesus says: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing. Forget about frightening feats of love and courage: the people of Jerusalem are not even willing to let God shelter them and comfort them, not willing to let God take them under her wings like a mother hen protecting her young.

We know that the two great commandments Jesus gives us is to love God with our whole being and love our neighbors as ourselves. We know that such love demands action on every level, from the personal to the global. And the world desperately needs more of such love. But in the life of faith, in the spiritual journey that we are all on, there is something that precedes such love, something that makes such love possible. I think Jesus is pointing to that something in this Gospel. And I see that something firmly underlined in our first reading from Genesis.

Abram (soon to be Abraham) has a moment of existential angst. He is an old man with no children: he sees no future for himself or his family. And the LORD appears to him in a vision, brings him outside to look at all the stars of heaven, and tells him, So shall your descendants be. And then comes one of the most consequential verses in the entire Bible: And [Abram] believed the LORD, and the LORD reckoned it to him as righteousness. Let that sink in for a moment. According to the story, what makes Abram a good man, what makes him right with God, is that he is willing to believe God, which in this case means he is willing to trust God. Can it be that, first and foremost, God just wants us to trust her?

I feel certain that the answer to that is yes. After all, I can stand up here and preach all day about how important it is to love, but why would you heed my words? In a world where our daily lives can be filled with pain and struggle, a world where diseases wreak  havoc and children are being bombed in Ukraine, we might question any message about the power of love. Even if we believe that love is a good and beautiful thing, how can we fully give ourselves to it? Doesn’t it make more sense to grit our teeth, build our walls, and do everything we can just to protect ourselves and make it through the day? How can we justify dropping our defenses and making love paramount in a world like ours?

What Scripture teaches and our tradition affirms is that we can justify it by believing God: believing that God exists; believing that Jesus reveals the truth: God is love; believing that Christ is alive and resurrection is real; believing that this life in this world is just one part of a much greater story; believing that God’s loving providence will never ultimately be defeated and that, as Julian says, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and manner of thing shall be well.” This is the belief, the trust, that Jerusalem lacks; this is the belief, the trust, we all need. In the life of faith, everything depends on trusting God. 

So in a season of self-examination, we might fruitfully spend some time honestly assessing how much we do — and do not — trust God. And the aim of such self-assessment should not be to berate ourselves. After all, if our belief is imperfect, we are in good company: every biblical figure other than Jesus has imperfect belief. Even Abram’s faith is a bit shaky: he believes God, but as we can see in that reading from Genesis, he also needs lots of reassurance. And we can ask for reassurance as well. When our own faith feels weak and we are not trusting, we can pray the way the father of the epileptic boy in Mark’s Gospel prayed: I believe; help my unbelief! God will help us to believe, if we are willing to ask.

Beyond that, the most important thing we can do to show our willingness is to practice trusting, practice believing God. There is no magic formula for that: it means applying it however we need to apply it. If we are struggling to love someone else, for example, we can practice trusting by acting as if showing that person love will make a positive difference, even if we can’t immediately see it. If we are suffering from some disease or distress, we can practice trusting by acting as if God will use what we are experiencing for our good and the good of others, that our pain is not meaningless but redemptive. We just have to be willing to try it. I don’t know how you need to practice believing God: I just know how I need to. And I know how much such practice has helped me to grow over the years. I’ve done it enough to see that the more we practice trusting God, the easier it is to love. And the more we love, the easier it is to trust. It’s true; it happens. If we are just willing, choosing to believe will bless us beyond measure. If we are willing.

 

Simplicity. Awareness. Ash Wednesday 3/2/22. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

 

Ash Wednesday

Let me just start off by saying that it feels strange to invite you into Lent, since I know some people feel like we have been living in Lent for the past two years. Certainly we’re all ready for some resurrection and new life right now after a long and painful pandemic. But this is also a teachable moment. We might think of COVID life as Lenten because it has involved austerity and lots of restrictions. And for many people in our culture (and perhaps for some people here) that seems to be what Lent is all about: going without things that we enjoy and generally being somber, even though we would rather not be. But if that is our thinking, then we are missing something crucial. Lent is a serious season, to be sure, but the essence of Lent is not deprivation. Rather, it is about discovering or re-discovering where our treasure lies.

And to do that, the teachings of Christ and the wisdom of our tradition call us, in broad strokes, to do two things. The first is simplify, simplify, simplify. We inhabit a complicated world and lead complicated lives. We’ve got lots of clutter: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. We can gorge ourselves with food, news, videos, music, you name it. Fasting is the practice of simplifying. That pertains directly to food, of course, but we can fast from many other things as well. After all, so much of the stuff that occupies us on a daily basis is non-essential; so many of the things that we devote time and energy to can actually distract us from the one needful thing. Our treasure does not lie in our snacks or our entertainment; it doesn’t lie in our clothes, our possessions, our social life, the things we obsess over, or all the thoughts that crowd our brains throughout the day. We can fast from some of these non-essentials for a while, we can let them go, in order to focus on what matters most. It’s not like being in prison and forced to eat only bread and water: it’s like choosing to stay home for the evening with a beloved spouse or friend, letting go of everything else for a time, and giving that person our undivided attention. 

Before I went to seminary, I served as an intern at a parish. I was unmarried at the time, and this wonderful family adopted me and frequently invited me to their home. But every time I went there, they would be bustling around doing chores and getting the meal ready. They meant well, but I never really got to visit with them because they just wouldn’t slow down and actually talk to me or listen to me. We can be very busy with lots of things and our lives can be so full of stuff. But sometimes we need to drop some of our busyness, get rid of some of the clutter, create some space, and breathe. This season bids us to do just that. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

And along with simplicity, Lent calls us to awareness, awareness, awareness. Greater simplicity inevitably leads to greater awareness. There is no spiritual growth, indeed there is hardly any spiritual life, without awareness. Just consider what this liturgy invites us to do. In receiving ashes we are called to be aware that we are creatures, made by and for a God of love. In confessing our sins we are called to be aware of all the ways we don’t love and aware of our need for God’s mercy and forgiveness. To give alms is to be aware of the suffering and the needs of others. To pray is to be aware of God, whether that comes as a strong sense of God’s presence or just our desire to be in God’s presence. And beyond this worship service we have opportunities to practice being aware literally every moment: hugging a loved one, walking the dog, preparing for a difficult meeting, brushing our teeth. The only thing it takes to be aware is to be aware.

But we can be so preoccupied, so busy doing so many things that we aren’t fully aware of any of them. Or often we just want to escape and not be aware of whatever we are doing or feeling. But it is only in the reality of the present moment that God can meet us and love us. I know when I get anxious, for example, I may take that out on others by being irritable or difficult like an unconscious reflex, or I might try to distract myself by reading something stupid or grabbing something unhealthy to eat without even thinking about it. But when I can just be aware, everything goes so much better: I am aware that I am anxious, I am aware of what triggered it, I am aware that this negative energy within me can be directed in bad ways, I am aware that feeling this way won’t kill me. And I am aware that God knows it all, cares about it all, and will give me all that I need. Awareness, awareness, awareness.

Simplicity and awareness are the distinguishing features of authentic Lenten observance, and they always point us to our real treasure: the undying and unconditional love of God, revealed to us in Jesus and poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. That treasure is always within us and always available to us. Finding that treasure is the only reason to go through Lent. If we focus on depriving ourselves, we are missing the point. If we focus on punishing ourselves, we are missing the point. If we focus on generally being grim and unpleasant, we are missing the point. As we enter into Lent, I encourage you to look honestly at your life and ask yourself, “What most prevents me from knowing and experiencing the love of God?” And then find ways to simplify your life and let go of some things that distract you from that love or get in the way of your relationship with God. And then practice being aware: live each moment, or as many moments as you can, present to reality and present to God. Find your treasure and in doing so, you will find the core of your being, your true self. For as Jesus says, where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

With unveiled faces. February 27, 2022. The Rev. David M. Stoddart

2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I was theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation . . . This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud . . . I have the immense joy of being a man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate, As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are, And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. He had a powerful epiphany, but what really strikes me about his experience is that God did not suddenly make him one with all those people; God did not suddenly cause all those people to shine. Reality did not change at all: Merton changed. He woke up and saw what has been true all along and is always true. “It was,” he said, “like waking from a dream of separateness.” Any sense we might feel of being separate from God or others is an illusion, a dream. And his implication is that too many people spend too much time sleepwalking, living without fully seeing Reality as it truly is. 

And that comes to my mind as I sit with this extraordinary passage from Luke’s Gospel. In this story, the disciples were weighed down with sleep: the sleep of exhaustion, perhaps, but also the sleep of everyday life in this world. But in that moment, they have the grace to wake up and see Jesus shining like the sun, one with Moses and Elijah. Jesus does not become radiant just then: Jesus is always radiant with God’s light and God’s love, just as Jesus is always one with God and all of God’s children. But in that moment, spiritually awake and alive, those disciples see Reality as it truly is. And what did they do? They kept silent and in those days told no one of the things they had seen. Which is understandable. You can’t explain what they saw: you can only experience it.

Over the years of my priesthood, I have known many people who have experienced it, who have had their own moments of revelation. Often those have come around death: dying people who see departed loved ones and even Jesus; grieving people who have experienced divine Presence and deep comfort. Others have had epiphanies at unexpected times that have affected them profoundly. And I have had moments myself of almost blinding clarity, when I have seen the love of God enfolding us all in light and mercy. Such moments of intense insight do not last: maybe they can’t last. The poet T. S. Eliot wrote that “human kind cannot bear very much reality.” But enough people have had enough such moments for all of us to know what is most real and what is not.

The Apostle Paul writes today that many people, even religious people, walk around with a veil over their faces, unable or unwilling to see the truth that God is love and that all of us are one with God and each other in that love. The results of such veiled living are obviously harmful: evidence of that is unfortunately all around us and all over the news. And Paul gives a stirring wake up call, a vision of how we could be living in Christ: And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. That is beautiful, but how do we live with unveiled faces? Moments of revelation are gifts from God that we cannot make happen, but there are certainly things we can do to at least begin lifting the veil. 

Let me briefly mention three of them. First, we can and should recognize how heavily the veil lies on us much of the time. If we’re going to wake up spiritually, we need to realize how often we are asleep, how frequently we live as if God were absent and as if we were not deeply connected to each other. We will enter into Lent this week, a season of self-examination, and it is a healthy practice for us to acknowledge how often we don’t even try to see the truth. The goal of that is not to feel guilty: the goal is to open our eyes and to awaken our hearts. Second, we can connect with our deep desire for God. That desire may be buried under the busyness and anxieties of life, but it’s there in all of us: we would not be here right now if it weren’t. Getting in touch with that desire, allowing ourselves to feel it, is key because the desire itself is a sure sign of God’s presence within us. Jesus tells us to seek, ask, and knock with confidence because what we most want, we already have. God’s Spirit lives in us as individuals and unites us as a community. Our desire can lead us to know that with greater assurance and joy. Third, we can all live as if God is love and as if we are one with God and each other in that love — even when we don’t feel it. That is what it means to have faith. So pray frequently, regardless of how you feel. Come to worship, regardless of how you feel. Love others as yourself, regardless of how you feel. There was a poem found at the end of World War II, written on a wall in a German concentration camp by an unknown prisoner. It reads:

I believe in the sun

even when it is not shining.

And I believe in love

even when there’s no one there.

And I believe in God

even when he is silent.

We don’t always feel God’s love and we don’t always see the light of Christ shining. But we have compelling reasons to trust that that love and that light are suffusing us and all of creation right now. And with desire and faith we can even now wake up and lift the veil — and live in the Real world.