Some people don’t belong at St. Paul’s.

We don’t want to admit this. You may even strenuously disagree. This week our staff planned and ordered the large canvas banner we hang outside every year announcing the Holy Week and Easter services, and an early draft had it saying, “All are welcome.” I changed it, for a few reasons. First, I think the phrase “All are welcome” has been used so much that it now suffers from “semantic satiation,” that is, “All are welcome” is now (at least for me) just four syllables without much meaning, let alone power. The second reason is that I thought of a powerful alternative, or at least I think I have: the sign will say, “We’d love to see you.” This makes the message about the person who is reading the sign. We aren’t just saying “All are welcome” to no one in particular; we’re addressing the reader directly: We’d love to see you.

But there’s a third reason I don’t care for the phrase “All are welcome” on the sign: I just don’t really believe it’s true. If it were true, lots of folks who rarely or never come here would be here already. Now, it may be true that we authentically want everyone to be welcome here, particularly those who have been notoriously unwelcome in churches—those who are GLBTQIA+ in particular. We also consciously want Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) folks to be welcome here. But while we certainly have many people here in one or another of the GLBTQIA+ demographics, we see BIPOC persons here much less often. It’s not never! But it’s not exactly frequent, either. There is a scandalous historical legacy of segregation in Christian congregations throughout the world, a tragic and often violent division of Christ’s Body that transcends region, nation, and generation. St. Paul’s Seattle can’t easily overcome that. We work on it! Yes, we work on it. Under your previous rector, you made good strides working on anti-racism practices, and our work on land acknowledgment and reparations exemplify how the Holy Spirit is moving here. 

On a Sunday off from St. Paul’s Seattle, I visited Queen Anne Lutheran Church, where I worked for five years (1998-2003) as their parish musician. I led a formation hour on the topic of my new book, and preached at their 8:00am and 10:30am liturgies. It was good to see old friends, and be in a place where I had lived and worked so long ago.

***

He came to Jesus by night.

Night: this means something. This is not just a timestamp, not a meaningless detail from a remembered conversation, as in, “Oh, well yes I went to see Jesus… I think it was after dark, if I’m not mistaken.” No, night is where ignorance reigns: in other encounters with Jesus, the Pharisees can see with their physical eyes, but their blindness to the truth is a kind of night. They are benighted.

Or night is worse than ignorance: night is the dominion of evil. When Judas gets up and leaves the table before Jesus is arrested — when he gets up to betray Jesus — John the evangelist then says, “And it was night.”

Nicodemus does not prove to be evil, but he comes to Jesus in the night nonetheless, the night of his own ignorance, the night of his own anxiety, the night that descends on someone — and surrounds someone — when they don’t have the full picture. They don’t get it. At least they don’t get it yet. But don’t count Nicodemus out: he returns to the story twice after this nocturnal encounter, and each time he distinguishes himself as a worthy ally of the movement. But for now, he is in the night.

I wonder if church makes us better people.

I truly wonder about this.

This question arises, I suppose, out of my background as a therapist, a vocation that attempts to remedy human suffering by helping humans grow, helping them be better humans, helping them be who God created them to be. As a therapist I merely tried to help – I obviously did not accomplish the improvement myself, if it even happened. I would give people ideas, insights, and tools, but ultimately the best help I could give someone who wants to suffer less and both feel and act better was to listen with understanding and care. The relationship between client and therapist is always the best indication of how helpful therapy will be.

I have not seen a client in psychotherapy for nearly six years, but I find that I want my priestly vocation to help people get better, too. You can’t take the therapist out of me, it seems. (And I personally continue to go to therapy, under the assumption that the person I know who is most in need of improvement is myself.) I want church to be, well, therapeutic. I want this to be a laboratory where we work on ourselves, for the sake of our neighbors, and for the sake of one another. I suspect our relationships with one another will, like they do in therapy, determine much of the progress we might make at being better humans.

How do you know who someone really is?

How do you know who you yourself really are, at your core, of your essence?

It’s been said that you can tell who someone is when they think nobody is watching – that how I behave behind the wheel when I’m alone in my car says more about who I really am than how I behave in this pulpit. I confess there are differences in behavior between those two locations. Behind the wheel, my language is, well, saltier. I am, let’s say, less poetic, less serene. Yet there are important parallels. Serious parallels. I have a great fear of harming someone while operating an automobile – it may be my greatest fear – and that is deeply connected to the ethics and values that I proclaim here. When driving, I’ve fallen into the habit of slapping my own hand when I notice that my attention faltered, or I broke a driving rule. Compulsive and silly? Or a way to see that I’m authentically an ethical person? You decide.

You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “Coffee hour is a good way to provide social connection for parishioners after they attend services,” but I say to you, coffee hour is a powerful tool of Christian evangelism and mission, a communal meal that is located in the center of our community’s heart, and those who prepare and host coffee hour are Spirit-driven apostles in our midst, leading us into God’s future in this place.

You have heard that it was said, “You should welcome the newcomer and orient them to how we do church,” but I say to you, the newest participants in our community are Christ himself, risen and present before us, and we should bow before them in awe, and embrace them in profound gratitude for the blessings they bear, and sit at their feet to learn what they have to teach us. It is not they who are in deepest need of teaching, formation, and leadership: it is us, those of us who are contented and comfortable insiders who do not know how much we do not know.

Everyone in the middle of the story had to be converted. 

Even the women.

Mary was greeted by God’s messenger and given the choice to accept a calling that would pierce her heart open, and change her life—and the world—forever. She could have said no. By saying yes, she consented to a massive and heartbreaking conversion.

Mary Magdalene left behind all she knew and took on the identity of an apostle, the first one, gaping in wonder at the person in the garden who turned out to be the risen Christ. She could have run away. She chose instead to go to the others, to tell them she had seen the Lord, and to launch a movement.

Thomas was brash, assertive, opinionated, and quick to jump to conclusions and ask incredulous questions. But when he was confronted by the risen Christ, he was astonished, challenged, and finally transformed into an apostle: “My Lord and my God!” he cried, becoming the first saint to call Jesus God. And he did so because he saw the wounds: he saw vulnerability. And he was changed forever.

“We have found the Messiah,” Andrew said. He was confident about this despite having very little information: Andrew and his companion assumed that this stranger was a teacher; they knew another teacher was shouting to passersby that this person was “the Lamb of God;” and the stranger invited them at 4:00 p.m. to come and stay where he was lodging, late enough in the day to have reasonably put them off until the next morning, when he could have met them more conveniently, and in a public place. And so this teacher was open, patient, hardworking, and willing to meet with them privately. By the next day, Andrew knew: this is the One. “We have found the Messiah.”

Where do you find God? Where does God feel close to you, or important to you?

To watch this liturgy with Holy Baptism, click here. You can find the sermon at minute 25:00.

One of my earliest memories is the day when I finally managed to inch my way across the edge of a swimming pool, anxiously gripping the rounded and tiled rim of the pool, cautiously releasing one hand and gripping the edge again a few inches further along, and then releasing the other hand, and so on, until finally I traversed the width of the pool. I did this with the gentle guidance of my mother, who floated next to and around me, holding me up. I might have been two years old. Maybe three. I remember my mother encouraging me.

In the following years I explored that pool more confidently, until that awe-inspiring day when I plunged downward in the deep end and touched my toe on the bottom, nine feet below the surface. Nine feet: for a kid who was seven or eight years old, that was an astonishing depth. The deep end felt almost oceanic, for all I knew, growing up some 1200 miles from the nearest ocean, on the high plains of the Midwest.

Click here to watch the Schitt’s Creek video referenced in the sermon.

David Rose and Patrick Brewer are a fictional television couple. You don’t have to know who they are to appreciate their contribution to the Feast of the Epiphany, but if you’re curious, you can meet them on the sitcom with a name that doesn’t sound appropriate when spoken aloud. It’s called “Schitt’s Creek,” spelled s-c-h-i-t-t. In a promotion for that show a few years ago, the actors portrayed their characters in a short interview about Christmas traditions. David and Patrick recounted their experiences as children who starred in Nativity plays. Patrick had attended an all-boys school, and got cast in the coveted role of Mary, the Christ child’s mother.

David had an even more unusual experience in his school’s play. “You know the Wise Men, who bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh?” David asked Patrick. “Yeah, you were one of the Wise Men?” Patrick replied. “No,” said David. “I was offered the part of the Wise Men but turned it down. I played Myrrh. I just thought it would be a more dimensional, challenging opportunity. And I’m sorry, the other parents weren’t coming up to Baby Jesus and asking them to sign the program.” Patrick then said, “How does a baby give an autograph, is my question.” David was exasperated. “So we’re poking holes, I guess, in the story,” he sighed. “I don’t know,” said Patrick. “Myrrh??”

David seems almost aware of how absurd he is, and the great joke of this couple — and their magic together — is that the sensible, reserved Patrick truly loves and admires David while recognizing fully how ridiculous and over the top David is. Only David would choose to play Myrrh in the Nativity play, and somehow pull it off.

But this has me thinking. Why not? Why can’t the gifts be characters in the play, too?

In the spring of 2004, Andrew and I acquired our first dog together. We picked her up that June. I remember telling the person from whom we adopted her, “We’d like to call her Stella.” “Oh that’s nice,” the person said. It was nice, but it was much more than merely nice. Stella: our star, rising brightly in our hearts, was our first dog as a family. She was followed in 2006 by Hoshi—a Japanese word for “star”—but sadly, Hoshi’s heart condition caused his star to set all too early, on Holy Monday 2009. We quickly acquired Hoku ala—Hawaiian for “star rising”—and we were heartened by this bright star that gave off abundant, dazzling, yet warm light.

After Hoku died in 2021, we took a year off and slowly recovered from the loss. Then this past fall we acquired two rescues, a four-year-old Korean Village Dog named Keiko (“Keiko” is a Japanese name that means “happy child” or “blessed youth”) and a yearling mixed breed, also from Korea, to whom we gave the name Dash, after Dash the mischievous young kid in the Pixar film “The Incredibles” who runs extremely fast. But Dash has many nicknames: Dashiell Hammett, Dashboard, Daschle … I sometimes go to the trouble of calling him Former U.S. Senator Tom Daschle.

Names are important, even for dogs. Andrew and I give our dogs names with deep meaning, with the possible exception of Dash, a creature who seemed to demand a lighter moniker. But even his name carries weight: it perfectly describes him, evoking how he really does exist as a kind of long hyphen in our lives, an Em Dash that stabs the future, pointing ahead to more, always more, delight and love and adventure, just over the horizon.

To listen to a recording of this sermon, click here.

Lately we at St. Paul’s have tried to stop calling our unhoused neighbors “the homeless.” We have our reasons for this. First, they are whole human beings who should not be defined by their lack of a mailing address. Calling them “the homeless” pejoratively labels them: the label refers to something missing in their life, something abnormal, something bad or wrong.

A second reason to say no to the term “the homeless” is that our neighbors are no less our neighbors for lacking a house, and to call them “homeless” might imply otherwise: it might suggest that they are not – that they technically, literally cannot – be our neighbors. And finally, perhaps it’s just problematic in its essence, this term, “the homeless.” It diminishes our human neighbors into objects, into things, and into loathsome things at that. It’s small. It’s mean.

To listen to a recording of this sermon, click here.

The love of a parent for their child is so monumentally important that it can chart the course of a person’s entire life. When a child does not receive secure emotional attachment from a parent, they are haunted for the rest of their life. They are changed – and often gravely diminished – until their dying day.

The term “secure attachment” itself sounds tinny and clinical, not fit to do the profound duty to which it has been assigned: to describe the grand and grave responsibility a parent has to love their child with all their heart, with all their soul, with all their might – with their whole being.

And if you wonder where you’ve heard that before (“you shall love with all your heart, soul, and might”), it is from God’s most important commandment. God commands that we love God this way, while God in turn loves us beyond all human imagination. The love between parent and child is the essence of our faith, the center of all we know, feel, and do when we speak of God, and when we speak of everything that matters most to us, everything that tells us who we are.

What good are dreams, really?

You have dreams. So do I. We all have nightmares too. Do they matter?

(Do we matter?)

What good are dreams, really?

I have dreams so fantastic that I would need to live in a different timeline, on planet Earth in a beta universe, for those dreams to come true. (Incidentally, I mentioned something offhand about parallel universes the other day and our parish administrator Emily said — I think with real affection — “oh, you’re a sci-fi nerd, I see.” Yes, yes I am.) Anyway, we have fantastic dreams, wild and illogical fantasies, ecstatic leaps of the imagination. 

What good are these?

There is another gift waiting for us under the Advent tree.

Maybe you’ve already guessed this, but I love gifts at this time of year. I was the kid up at 4:30am tormenting my drowsy parents about the loot Santa left us down in the living room. And now as an adult and a faith leader, I love exploring the idea of gifts, of giftedness, God giving gifts, God as a gift. Sometimes we roll our eyes about arrogant people and say, “They just think they’re God’s gift.” But that’s actually how I think about you, people of St. Paul’s, except in a kind and good way. I think you really are God’s gift — God’s gift to me, of course, but more vitally — and even urgently — you are God’s gift to this neighborhood, this city, this world. And so I thank God for you.

This morning we have another present to open, waiting for us underneath our proverbial Advent tree. Last week we opened the first one, wrapped elegantly by our ancient Christian forebears of the first century. (In my imagination, they used fine blue and purple paper and a handsome silver ribbon.) Their First Sunday of Advent gift to us was the insight that even when the world is falling apart, the shared work of cultivating a faithful community, right here, just here, is one powerful way that God mends the world.

Cultivating community is one powerful way that God’s dominion dawns.

We now turn to our second Advent gift. This gift is wrapped roughly, in brown shipping paper and gnarled twine. It does not shine; it doesn’t seem to be cheerful. But it is a gift, nonetheless, so let’s open it.

Click here to watch a video of this sermon.

Wake up!

Open your eyes. Stretch. Yawn. Stretch again. Roll to your side, take a breath, and lift your shoulders up from the bed. Sit up straight. And then stand. Stand up and walk.

Drink water. Stretch again. Rub your eyes: yes, it is morning. You are not dreaming. You are awake. You are alive. The sun is rising. The day is beginning. The time is now.

Click here to watch a recording of this sermon.

***

Water divides.

Water cuts.

Water carves giant canyons in the earth. Water marks the borders of states and nations, on this side Israel, on that side, Jordan. Water separates one people from another.

We often imagine our beloved dead across the water. We say “they have reached that other shore.” A friend of mine once said that when his family told his grandmother that she had to move into a nursing home, she said “No, I’m just gonna take my cross and cross on over.” Losing her independence felt like a death to her, and so she thought of rivers and canyons, the living all here, the dead over yonder, across the river. She wanted to go home, and she knew that home was now across the water.

Click here to watch a recording of this sermon.

***

My position is wrong.

I’m wrong about almost everything. I think I know who God is, and what God is – and I think I know that those are two different questions, that God is in some sense an object, a Something, but God also is a subject, a Someone. But really – do I know what I am talking about?

I think I know how we should worship, what songs we should sing, which prayers are the best, why bad things happen to good people, and what happens after we die. I think I know whether Grace Church is healthy, and I think I know that Grace Church is healthy. I am pretty sure my congresswoman is a person of integrity, and I think I was a polite and attentive dinner companion last evening. I think I know a lot of things.

But my position is wrong.

Click here to watch a recording of this sermon.

***

“Do you ever look at someone and wonder, ‘What is going on inside their head?’”

This is the opening line of the Pixar film, Inside Out, a colorful animated trip into the mind of an eleven-year-old girl named Riley. When we travel inside Riley’s head, we meet different characters, including Joy and Sadness, and watch as they interact during the upheaval of Riley’s outside life.

You may enjoy – or dismiss – this concept as a cute fantasy, but there is something to the idea that small people, or parts, live inside each of us. Maybe you have said something like, “Part of me wants to apply for that job, but another part thinks it’s a bad idea.” The language of “parts” isn’t just a way of saying something – it may point to how we really function psychologically. Saying “Part of me this, part of me that” also helps you cope with life better. If it’s just a part of me, say, who is erupting in anger, other parts can help soothe him. And my core self — the true Me at the center — can manage every part and build self-aware wisdom.

Click here to watch a recording of this sermon.

***

Don’t lose heart.

Be of good courage.

Buck up, now.

Dig in and stick with it.

Focus on your feet. Take another step. Hold on. Hold onto yourself. (You have yourself to hold onto.) Stay. Stay steady. Breathe.

Now take another step.

If you look up, you could see how far away the mountains still are, out there at the very edge of this wilderness you’re crossing, and you could despair. But don’t worry: you’re not supposed to be all the way to the mountains today. You belong here today. It’s okay. Focus on your feet again. Take another step.