August 24, 2025

My father-in-law, Mike, was a fascinating guy. Born into a logging family on the western edge of the Mississippi River alluvial plain, which is the fancy word for the soil-rich delta region around the river, he never had a chance to pursue an education after high school, but he was a voracious reader with a sharp and thoughtful intellect. He had little patience for foolishness, nor an increasing idiocy that he saw in the world around him. He had a favorite $10 word to encapsulate this, asinine. I think by the time he passed away in March, pretty much everything in his eyes had become asinine at some level or another.

And this prompted me to go down a rabbit hole on the etymology of the word. Originally appearing in English in the 1620s, it was at first a slight adjectival corruption of the Latin word for donkey, and it literally indicated donkey-like qualities. Something was asinine if it was brutish or stubborn, for example. In the modern era, it's taken on an additional range of meanings, indicating everything from pointlessness and senselessness to idiocy and extreme stupidity. And honestly, if anything accurately names the present moment we are encountering in our world and in the chaos of everything going on today, extreme stupidity might be a fitting descriptor.

Now, you may be wondering where I'm going with this. But a couple of weeks ago, when I first sat down with this reading from our gospel, the immediate thought I had upon encountering this leader of the synagogue was, what an asinine response. And in truth, that immediate thought was more accurate than I realized. Because not only is the leader of the synagogue being asinine in the sense of foolish or pointless, but he is also being asinine in that original sense of stubborn and brutish.

But then again, I also don't want to write this fellow off entirely. This obstinance about the Sabbath is coming from a place of good intention. All the way back in Genesis chapter 2, we are told that after the six days of creation, God rested on the seventh day. And through the centuries of law giving and religious formation, this became the observance of the Sabbath day in Jewish ritual practice.

Over the course of time, and especially after the Babylonian exile, this became codified in a tradition of identifying the so-called melakot, which simply means works, but specifically, in this instance, means 39 activities that are prohibited on the Sabbath. Again, this comes from a place of good intention. Throughout the Torah or Old Testament, there are numerous places in which the observance of the Sabbath is discussed and explicated in great detail. But as I've noted before, over time such action began to be more a hindrance to faithfulness than a help. And this is one major point that Jesus is making in today's interaction.

So, where does Jesus' admonition come from? Well, he does not directly quote Scripture here, like he does in some of his other teachings. I think the compilers of our lectionary today make the right decision in drawing our attention to this passage from Isaiah. If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness, and your gloom be like the noonday. This we hear in verses 9 and 10.

But then, more importantly, and more to the point of what Jesus is talking about today, in verses 13 and 14 we hear, if you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, from pursuing your own interests on my holy day, if you call the Sabbath a delight and the holy day of the Lord honorable, if you honor it not giving your own ways, or going your own ways, serving your own interests, or pursuing your own affairs, then you shall take the light in the Lord, and I will make you ride upon the heights of the earth.

What is true observance of the Sabbath? Or more to the point of what we hear today, maybe what is not true observance of the Sabbath? Well, it is not self-serving. It is not self-interested. It is taking delight in the Lord and exemplifying that light and delight to a world that desperately needs to hear good news.

You see, this stubbornness, this stupidity, it's not just asinine. It's also a place and a point at which sometimes people get hurt. People suffer and people die because we are not truly observing the Sabbath. We are pursuing our own self-interests. We are framing and boxing ourselves into the strictures of even with good intentions what we think we are being called to do. When in fact, over and over and over again, all of his teaching ministry, Jesus emphasizes the role of compassion, of love, of care for those in need.

That a true observance of the Sabbath, a true getting away from our own self-interests, is this ability to offer our food to the hungry, to satisfy the needs of the afflicted, and to let the light of those works shine forth in a darkness consumed by self-righteousness and indulgence. And that calls all of us to account.

A recent, and I say recent, within the last couple of years, podcast that will go unnamed, had a fellow on it talking about how we have created in the West an environment of toxic empathy. And I dare say I don't know that there's much further from the gospel truth than the idea of toxic empathy. Because if we are true to our gospel mission, if we are true to what Christ is laying on our hearts, the bedrock of our faithfulness is empathy, is understanding, is openness and compassion in places even that make us uncomfortable.

And there's a glaring example in front of us in our immediate context today. Just a few days ago, the Anglican Episcopal Magazine, the Living Church, published an article about the Diocese of Washington, contrasting two separate congregations in the diocese in light of the recent developments with the National Guard deployment and federal troops in Washington.

One congregation with members who have been directly impacted by what's going on chose to cancel their services, to not gather in public for fear of what might happen to their parishioners. And then another congregation just on the other side of town affirmed that a number of its parishioners felt relief at the presence of these federal agents.

Seeing in this current deployment a reduction in crime that had plagued their direct community, people that had been right outside the doors of the church who had made some of the parishioners concerned, and unsafe. And the truth that I think we must confront is that both of those positions, both of those perspectives, are shared by our brothers and sisters in this very diocese.

We are not of one mind. We are not of one place, one position. We have people who are hurting and suffering on all sides of these issues. And that's not to minimize or to in any way distort the real and present challenges we have towards developing a place, a ministry, a witness of compassion and love. a ministry of deep and heart-centered work to a world that is desperate for good news.

But that's also to say that who our suffering neighbor is, who that challenging person that we must reach is, is not a uniform ideological position. It often catches us off guard. It often disorients us. It often throws us off balance when we are called to be that presence to the people that we are being sent to. And it's so very easy. It's so very easy in this time of great division to be in our ideological camps, to get isolated in our echo chambers.

But today, on this Sabbath, when we are called to a true observance of a Sabbath, may we hear the voices of those in need. May we hear the call to empathy, to love, to greater concern for the people that we are being sent to. And in this time of great stupidity, in this time of great uncertainty, might we ever more hear the call to be a people of work and action?

Not sitting back on our laurels, but also not limiting ourselves to works that we define as good, but being ever more a people called into faithfulness and in that faithfulness called to action in a world desperately needing good works and good love. And good transformation.

Over these last several weeks, we have had this development of our reading. In our epistle from Saint Paul. The beautiful language in chapters 11 and 12. Where we have been given the exemplars of faith through our ancestors in faith. And over and over and over again.

What we hear is not a shying away from work, not an isolating, a barricading ourselves off from a world around us, but an intimate and deep engagement in that world as sojourners. A deep and intimate engagement in this world as people in a transient place, as people who belong to a kingdom that is not of here.

And again, that doesn't obfuscate our responsibility towards compassion, care, and charity. But it appropriately frames it. Getting us outside of the strictures of ideological purity. Getting us outside of the barriers and boundaries that we create in our own human fickleness. And instead calls us to that deep work of transforming compassionate love and care.

And may we, as we hear these words today, as we embrace this Sabbath day, see before us the works that we are called to do, the transforming work that Christ is doing through us, the healing ministries that we may be called to pursue.

And in that, may we ever more fully embrace our observance. Our observance of Christ's precepts to us. And the call to be a people of light in a time of darkness. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

August 17, 2025

I'm really not much of a sweets person. I think many of you know that about me by now. But without fail, every year that we go back to Arkansas, at least on two or three occasions, we buy donuts for breakfast. And so it was that I found myself in Beebe, Arkansas, my wife's hometown, a town that is 90% white or black, and actually even over 80% white. So whatever diversity there is, is very limited. But I found myself at Star Donuts in Beebe, Arkansas. And donuts are an interesting idea. They're quintessentially American.

Donuts as we have them today were developed in the early 19th century by the mother of a seafaring captain in New England. And she took these exotic spices he was bringing home, cinnamon and nutmeg, and started incorporating them into millennia-old practices of taking dough and frying it in oil. And somewhere along the way, either she or her son had the idea of creating the center hole to the modern donut we have today. But it was an amalgam, a mixing of different cultures, different ideas, different concepts, all brought together.

And this particular donut shop in Beebe, Arkansas, lives into that ideal even more fully. The man who runs it is Arab-American. His wife, who was tending the shop the morning I went in, is herself Chinese. And not only do they sell donuts, but they sell kolaches, which are these kind of Czech-Texan pastries with meat filling. And they have breakfast burritos. So it was all over the map. And then, after I had ordered and received my goods, as I was leaving, the lady behind the counter said, safe home, which is the literal translation of the Gaelic-Irish slán awália. And so we have this beautiful blending of all of these cultural dynamics at play from the diversity of the pastries to the people in this interaction, to the usage of language. It was that perfect encapsulation of the American ideal of the melting pot that all of these things come together in some kind of new iteration.

It's that finding unity in diversity that I talk about so frequently from this pulpit. And there is a goodness in that. But, but, if that is true, what do we make of today's gospel passage? If this is our ideal, how do we make sense of this challenging and disorienting set of verses from St. Luke's Gospel today? Well, I want to step back for a moment and remind us all where we were last week. And especially, friends, those of you joining us online who weren't able to hear my sermon, I want to take just a moment to outline my remarks from last week and to kind of frame us where we are in this present moment.

Last week, we were in the middle of chapter 12 in St. Luke's Gospel, and we had the parable of the watchful slaves waiting for their master to return. I observed that in this rendering, and it's parallel in St. Matthew's Gospel, there's this admonition not just against alertness and diligence versus apathy and inattentiveness. But there is also this reflection on good action versus bad. And if we look carefully, the ending of our gospel passage from last week and where we pick up this week, we have nine verses that are cut out. And these nine verses are particularly difficult. Last week's passage and this week's passage bookends this section where Jesus talks about a slave. A slave who is put over his master's household. And when he is in charge, initially he does good things and performs well. And so the master departs. And upon that departure, the slave begins to mistreat the others in the household under his authority. And there is much, there is much we could talk about narrowly in the concrete dynamics of that passage. About how we mistreat each other when we don't think additional eyes are on us. How we take advantage of each other when we think we can get away with it.

But, if we step back from the literal senses of those nine verses, there's a more figurative sense in which there's this dichotomy between right action or good action and bad action and inappropriate action. Action that is framed out of anxiety and fear versus action grounded in trust and belief in the good news of God and Christ. As we discern that difference, it can often be hard to know whether the action we're undertaking is one that is action to bear fruit or one that is action that is reactionary to the forces of oppression and injustice that we see in the world around us. Inasmuch as we constantly feel like we need to be reacting to the present moment, sometimes those actions do no more than spin our wheels and exhaust us and deplete the energy that we are called to reserve as we wait upon the movement of the Spirit and further discernment.

It's a difference. It's a difference between acting out of our own volition and acting out of the depth of faith that we hear explicated and so richly described in St. Paul's portion of Hebrews that we heard last week and this between chapter 11 and chapter 12. It is this difference between discernment and a deepening of our spiritual life and an embrace of faithfulness over freneticism. So last week I said we can't really understand the gospel admonitions that we hear without seeing this fuller picture as developed in St. Paul's letter to the Hebrews. And the faithfulness, the faithfulness that we are called to always and forever ground ourselves in.

And that holds true today as we encounter this particularly difficult and challenging passage from St. Luke's Gospel. But even at that, there are some ways in which, if we pay close attention to this reading today, that it's a little bit more complicated than what we hear just at kind of a surface, superficial level. For one thing, and I have to credit Audrey West at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago for identifying this, it is an error if we see Christ's statements in teaching today as prescriptive. That we are to be these kind of antagonistic rabble-rousers in the world around us. That we are to cause this discord, to sow dissension, to be in adversarial relationship with one another. And instead, the more fruitful, the more coherent understanding of this passage, if we take all of what Jesus teaches us throughout the gospel tradition. It's that this is not so much proscriptive as it is descriptive. When we live into the faithfulness of what it is that Christ is calling us into, when we live into the ideals of love and charity and compassion, there will be times of discord and dissension. There will be fraught relationships, even amongst those we most deeply and closely love and cherish, even in our own households.

And this is seen no more clearly than in the great parable of the prodigal son. Because in as much as we like to focus on that resulting reconciliation, between the father and the second son. That reconciliation springs forth. Brings out of it a separate level of conflict. This new place of contention. Between the older son and the father. So even as the father is living into the ideals of the gospel. There is this new conflict that springs forth. And when we are attuned to that, we find the truth of what Jesus says to be not so much a difficulty as it is an authentic and honest recognition of what we face. when we embrace the love and charity and compassion that we are called to consume ourselves with in preaching and proclaiming the good news of God in Christ.

We see that further in a second sense, in a very specific linguistic turn that we have in our gospel passage today. And I often don't go down linguistic rabbit holes, but I found this one specifically captivating. The word that we hear in verse 50 is that I have a baptism, and this is Jesus speaking, with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed. But that word stress is not really all that helpful or necessarily accurate to what is rendered in the Greek. It is the passive present form of the verb synecho, which has a multiplicity of meanings and can be translated as stress or distress, but can also be interpreted as absorption of consuming attentiveness, compulsion, or preoccupancy. And so, if we think about Jesus saying, not what stress I'm under, but what preoccupancy I have, with the gospel until it is completed? What preoccupancy consumes me until my work is finished?

When we consider today the call we have in being proclaimers of the gospel, the invitation we have is to have that same level of passion and commitment. To be so consumed by, so preoccupied with the gospel that even when we face challenge, even when we have difficulty, even when the road gets tough, we can be so consumed that we stay single-mindedly focused on the goal and the goodness that lies ahead. So what are we compelled towards in our call to be purveyors of the gospel? What is the work that is called out of us and that we are to strive for until completion?

Again, just as in last week, I think St. Paul's letter from the Hebrews today offers our answer. We are again to be a people apart, a people sojourning in faith, even as we encounter and experience times of challenge, oppression, and difficulty. And yet all of these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised, St. Paul says. We are to continue striving even when the results of that striving aren't necessarily clear. And there's, too, a pitfall that St. Paul alerts us to that is important for us to be mindful of today as well. Verse 12, 1, we hear, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely. The sin that clings so closely. And here I found John Shelley from Furman University particularly evocative when he says this mention of sin in 12.1 invites reflection on the nature of sin. The singular form challenges our popular tendency to think of sin as a list of acts or deeds that cause trouble and for which one is worthy of blame.

If we do think of sin in the singular, he says, it is usually a reference to the basic orientation of the self. That we get caught up in these senses of presupposition, arrogance, pride, presumption, the will to dominate. But scholars on the margins have challenged us to consider that maybe the fundamental sin is a bigger temptation of our sense that we are the ones that matter, that we are the ones that fix things, that our eagerness to volunteer for soup kitchens for other social service agencies to assist those living in poverty are the sum and completion of our work. Instead of addressing the real, structural, overarching challenges and changes that must be brought forward in order for lasting and true peace and justice to reign. And what might it cost us, he asks, if we were to commit to such a work? Going back to what I was saying at the beginning, that sense of spinning our wheels on fruitless and facile kinds of efforts can sometimes exhaust us when the real and lasting work His work we are called to in a structural and overarching sense.

And that brings me, in a final sense, back to donuts and dreams. To pastries and progress. How often we take our ideals, the things of this world, that we are so consumed by. The places in which we want things to be just so in our own view, our own perspective. And we do not orient ourselves more fully, more importantly, more foundationally to the work of the Spirit. The work that calls us out of our own. Spaces and places. And ideologies. In as much as we help to disorient others. To a new alternative. A more fuller and richer world of the spirit. And I do not say any of this. To dismiss or discourage. The important works of action. of justice, the important places of witness to inequality and injustice. But my prayer for us this morning is that we take to heart the important points that we hear in this admonition from our gospel and in the teachings from St. Paul in Hebrews that we heard last week in this. that no matter those places of action we have in our lives, no matter the work that we undertake to build a more just and loving and compassionate world in this material space and time, we nevertheless are ultimately called to have our focus over the horizon. On the things of true and lasting importance that are the things of the kingdom.

That the wellspring of our energy, our sustaining ability to work in spaces of justice and peace. Ultimately comes from that reality of being a sojourner. Of being one who is here only for a season. and to center and surround ourselves with this great cloud of witnesses who teach us in their own lives how to be the people of action that are nevertheless a people apart, a people with a gaze and an orientation fixed upon the kingdom that is to come, not on the things of the world in this very hour. So may we, even in this moment of difficulty in the society around us, even in this moment of encountering very difficult and challenging words from our Savior in our gospel today, may we be ever more sustained in our own work of being a people of the kingdom. A people called to be consumed with a preoccupancy on the things of goodness, the things of love, the things of lasting importance. And in being that, and in so doing, may we ever be more nourished, strengthened, and committed to our God. and through our God, to the work that lies ahead. In the name of our Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.