To watch a video recording of this sermon, click here.

What is most important to you?

What rises above everything else – truly, everything else – as the most important thing or task, practice or creative pursuit, person or being, in your life?

They say addiction is about putting a substance on top as the most important thing. The love of money, the love of novelty, the love of attention: Maybe you put a vice or a guilty pleasure on top as the most important thing. I know I have done that.

What is most important to you?

Matthew is one of the four evangelists in the Christian Testament. “Evangelist” is a word that means “one who proclaims the Good News.” Each of the four Gospels are proclamations of the Good News by a particular community, not just one person, let alone a definitely male person. (Was the beloved disciple in John, the first-hand witness to the life of Jesus for John’s Gospel, actually a woman? Maybe! Some scholars suspect that to be true.) As for Matthew, was he the same Matthew the tax collector we met last week, the man who sat in his tax booth until Jesus called him to join the movement? Maybe. We’ll never be sure. And it may not matter too much. It’s more helpful for us to remember that in all of these accounts of the Good News, a particular community stands behind the text. Matthew’s Good News looks at Jesus through the lens of a particular community.

And more than the other three, the community that gave us Matthew’s Good News seems to enjoy lists. Matthew opens with a big list, the genealogy of Jesus. Now, Luke has a genealogy, too, but in Matthew the family tree of Jesus enjoys pride of place. We are meant to understand that Jesus is the fulfillment of the messianic hopes of God’s people. And even though all four Gospels give us a list of disciples, it seems particularly fitting that Matthew includes such a list, and that the list is given pride of place in today’s Good News.

This week, an unhoused neighbor and I had words. Neither of us was in a happy mood. It wasn’t a pleasant conversation. This is at least partly because it happened at the wrong time of day.

I’ve noticed that often I follow a daily emotional arc, in my effort to get ahead of the chaos that swirls around Uptown in these hard times. In the early morning I feel quiet, thoughtful, insightful, sometimes even serene. Then, at the proper beginning of the workday, I feel anger: a righteous anger, something akin to a “mama bear,” even though I am not a mama, strictly speaking. As the sun reaches its zenith, I feel more regulated and steady, working alongside staff and volunteers with level-headed reliability. For an hour or so in the mid-afternoon, I feel tired, in need of rest. Then I rally in the late afternoon and feel energized and in good humor, leading to a relaxing evening with follow-ups and a look at the next day’s tasks. That’s the pattern; that’s the arc. I’ve noticed that other leaders here at St. Paul’s follow their own emotional arcs, but I’ll let them describe their own experiences.

In any case, one day this week, an unhoused neighbor bumped into me during my mama-bear hour.

Click here and go to minute 26:19 to watch this sermon on video.

Some time ago I was talking with someone about renting our space downstairs, and we were discussing the complications of parking and basic safety, given the various challenges posed by our neighborhood, which is of course on the front lines of the ongoing Seattle housing crisis. After several generations of national political and cultural conflict, major cities like Seattle have seen a slow, yet devastating, dismantling of the social contract: we simply do not live in a nation that reliably works together, giving people a hand when they need one, everyone doing their part, all citizens understanding that each of us receives good things from the whole, so each of us therefore should give and serve; we should do our part.

Of course this has always been a problem, down the whole history of the United States, and if I have failed to see that, it is only because I have enjoyed privileges that allow me to look away. Founded by slave owners, our nation gave the vote to women only about a century ago, and we seem always to have been quarreling with one another about how best to build and sustain a just society. It may just seem even worse now, and worse for more people, but the struggle has endured throughout this country’s relatively short life. 

To watch a video of this sermon, click here.

Creation is splendid.

God creates a vast, blazing array of burning globes that fling themselves eternally outward from God’s first, fierce bang of energy and light. Our light by day is a cheerfully yellow star in the long stride of middle age, and our great night light glimmers with a silver sheen. God invited these lights into being, and they complied. 

God creates an astonishing, lush tapestry of trees and flowers, sea creatures and birds in flight, cattle and creeping things. Even the rats that bedevil our office building: even they are part of God’s splendid creation, if a troublesome part. And then, on the same epochal day when God creates the creeping things, God says, “Let us make humankind in our image.” And God proclaims humans and all the creatures of the earth very good.

Let me begin by saying that I do thoroughly love the City of Light, Paris, one of the greatest world cities, perhaps the greatest world city. I love walking in Paris, exploring a market in Paris, gazing at stained glass in Paris, figuring out labyrinthine museum floor plans in Paris, and above all drinking espresso and eating baked bread in the morning on L’Île Saint-Louis in Paris.

I love it all.

But I struggle with Paris. Specifically, I admit with embarrassment that I struggle with the language in Paris. I was a careless and inattentive French student. In high-school French class, I focused less on the House of Être and the genders of nouns, and more on the thrilling and vexing crush I had on one of my classmates. (But you know, that’s kind of French of me, now that I think about it.) And then I moved through young adulthood without studying languages other than English, and now I am right down the middle, a disappointingly average adult who finds it hard to learn new languages.

Click here to watch a video of this sermon.

This past Monday I arrived in Minneapolis for a conference and decided to take the light-rail train. I was staying downtown but needed to go to the Mall of America to buy a gift for my niece. I boarded the train and watched southeast Minneapolis rush by, noticing some of the many changes that have transformed this region since I last lived there, in the 1990s.

Suddenly, a man behind me exploded in anger. He shouted obscenities into his phone. He simmered down, but then he filled the train again with another startling outburst. After the third or fourth episode of rage, a woman a couple of rows in front of me got up and walked to the forward part of our train car, where there were more people. This left me alone with the angry man in the back half of the train car.

Click here to watch a video of this sermon.

There were several times in my childhood when my father would hold me close, hold me tight. Then a mischievous spirit would steal over him. He would begin to tickle me, and as he did so he would embrace me even more tightly. And then he would begin a chant which always delighted me. He would say this, with increasing energy and excitement: he would say,  “You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away. You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away. You’ll never get away, never get away, never get away.”

Oh, how I treasure that memory, and the unshakeable bond it reveals that holds me close, even now, to my father. And how I long to form and share this bond with others. I do not have children but Andrew and I are closely bonded, and we vigorously welcome dogs into our household and our family. As I’ve said to a few of you, one of our current three dogs – yes, three! – one of them has wandered into the very center of my heart. Now, I do truly love all three of our dogs. I do. But I confess I sometimes take Dash into my arms and hold him close, and I whisper a chant inspired by my father, but corrupted a little by the guilt of my sin of favoritism. I whisper to Dash – very quietly, because I am absurdly afraid the other two dogs will hear it – I whisper, “I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most. I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most. I love you the most, I love you the most, I love you the most.”

Cleopas and their companion encounter the risen Christ later in the afternoon, as evening is approaching.

It seems clear that they prefer the 5:00pm liturgy at St. Paul’s. 

It all lines up, when you look at it. They get together later in the day, as the sun is descending in the west. They are away from the center of things, which for them is Jerusalem, but for us at St. Paul’s, I suppose, is upstairs, in the bright morning. As they walk together, they talk and discuss, and they need a long walk for this discussion, because the news of Resurrection is always disorienting, always provoking not answers but questions, not a definite way forward, but a crossroads. Then, their encounter with the Risen One happens when they are circled around a Table, much like this one. And Cleopas and their companion are “journey, not destination” people: they are on the road back from Emmaus almost as quickly as they arrived, their steps motivated not by a firm plan, but by a desire to understand, a desire to be close to Christ, and a desire to share that Good News with others. 

Yeah, these two hikers are 5:00pm liturgy people.

Two people were on a long walk, and the Risen One appeared to them. He asked them what they were discussing, and “they stood still, looking sad.”

“They stood still, looking sad.”

This is reasonable. It makes perfect sense. The news of Resurrection is complicated. It is even traumatic. They are on a long walk, but they aren’t celebrating after a sumptuous Easter dinner. They are “talking [about] and discussing” all that has happened. That may sound calm and contented, but the Greek word we translate as discussing could also mean reasoning, debating, questioning, or even arguing. They are reasoning about all that has happened. They are debating all that has happened, questioning it, arguing about it.

You can watch a video of this sermon here, at minute 31:20.

We tend a lovely garden here at St. Paul’s. But it is also terrible. We tend a lovely and terrible garden.

First, the loveliness. Our siblings in the faith – Prue, Daphne, Daryl, Catharine, Houston, and others – cultivate lush greens and bright flowers, taking care of God’s earth in the one square of land in all of Uptown Seattle that is not paved over, or trapped beneath a building. We recently restored the labyrinth, a spiritual path that many of our guests and members follow, some of them literally dancing, as they make their way to the center and back again, drawing ever closer to the Spirit of God.

Our garden is about twenty years old now, and it rises above our more seasoned Bolster Garden, where many of our beloved dead are buried. We created the labyrinth garden after we took down an old house, and briefly debated building a much-needed parking lot on this valuable plot of real estate. But we are garden people at St. Paul’s, not parking-lot people, and our choice in the early aughts to cultivate a garden right here – in the center of the city – is a lot like our choice in the early sixties to stay here, and rebuild here, rather than escape up the hill to a bedroom community, cut off from the thrum of city life.

You can watch a video of this sermon here, at location 01:42:10.

The earth herself shakes with Good News, and the faithful women are there to see and feel it. They came to the tomb, but not to visit their beloved dead, not to accept the finality of death, not to “pay their respects” — “pay their respects,” what a flat phrase. No, these women had been paying attention. Like all the other disciples, they had heard his many predictions of resurrection on the third day, but unlike them they had taken it all in. They had listened carefully. Then – again, unlike the other disciples – they stayed and kept watch as Jesus died, and they stayed and kept watch as he was buried. These are not fools, not silly optimists. They have seen death. 

But now they are back to see something else, again because they listened. They paid attention. They remembered his promise that life would defeat death. And so, when the earth herself shakes with Good News, the faithful women are there to see and feel it.

[Spoken from the imagined perspective of Judas Iscariot.]

I am Judas Iscariot. Do you want to look at me?

If so, I think I can endure your gaze. I think I have endured worse.

The New Testament is not kind to me. All four evangelists record my story, or better said, they record my small yet enormous—and horrible—part in The Story. Luke says that I trip over a rock, and my bowels gush out. He is not wrong. I seem to be tripping over that rock all the time, for all ages. Have you ever felt like this? Have you ever been so consumed, so torn apart, by anguish and regret … or maybe by that most deadly combination: fear, and loneliness, and small-minded resentment … that your guts are roiling and want to gush out?

Maybe not. Maybe you have your moments but you are generally better than all that. That’s fair.

You can watch a video of this sermon here, at minute 39:40.

Judas brought a detachment of soldiers together with police from the chief priests and the Pharisees, and they came there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him, came forward and asked them, “Whom are you looking for?” They answered, “Jesus of Nazareth.” Jesus replied, “I AM.” … They stepped back and fell to the ground.

***

When this room is uncomfortably crowded, the pews are holding about two hundred people. Now multiply that by three: fill this room three times, fit to burst, with people, and you have a “detachment,” also called a “cohort,” by Roman imperial standards. Judas summoned about six hundred officers, a mix of government soldiers and temple security. They assembled – presumably in rank-and-file formation – outside the garden gate. The Light of the World was inside the little garden of olive trees, waiting for them with his small clutch of friends.

You can watch a video of this sermon here, at minute 32:30.

His own feet were probably still delightfully, gloriously fragrant with rich perfume. Just four days before this night, Mary anointed his feet with an extravagant abundance of expensive pure nard. Alone among his disciples, she had the presence of mind and heart to know that his body needed to be prepared for burial. She alone knew how important, how ultimate, how everything, he was, and is.

But their feet were probably disgusting. There was no asphalt on the roads, let alone street sweepers, and everyone’s mode of transportation – whether they walked or rode – was a biological creature, prone to poop. They did not get their shoes at Nordstrom. Everybody stank.

But they stank in more ways than one. One of them, despite his anxious protest at the meal, would deny him three times, later that same evening. And another, God help his damaged soul, would betray him before the meal was even over, breaking the friendship down the middle, tearing asunder the beloved community woven tightly around the One with fragrant feet. This wretch escaped into the bleak night of ignorance, violence, and despair. The One with fragrant feet may still be searching for him.

You can watch a video of this sermon here, at minute 52:50.

“I am as useless as a broken pot.”

“My strength fails me because of affliction.”

“Then all the disciples deserted him and fled.”

“Peter went out and wept bitterly.”

“Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, Judas departed; and he went and hanged himself.”

“It was out of jealousy that they handed Jesus over.”

“Pilate saw that he could do nothing.”

“They compelled Simon to carry the cross.”

“Many women were also there, looking on from a distance.”

Everybody is powerless. Jesus is powerless by choice. As Paul sings in his letter to the Philippians, probably quoting an ancient hymn, Christ Jesus “emptied himself” and “humbled himself.” But everyone else is flailing helplessly against their will. Overcome by fear, they run away. Punched in the gut by remorse, they stagger from the courtyard and weep. Defeated by despair, they die by suicide. Gripped with envy, they retaliate with bitter malice. Squeezed in the vise of a political dilemma, they fretfully wash their hands. Plucked from the crowd, they are forced to carry a heavy load. Exhausted by fear and grief, they can only look on as their friend’s body is lowered and prepared for burial.

You can watch a video of this sermon here, at minute 35:50. It is preceded by a dramatic reading of an extended Gospel passage, John 9:1-10:21. John scholar Karoline Lewis notes that the first 21 verses of John 10 are essential to understand the meaning of the healing in chapter 9, so we proclaimed the whole text, inclusive of the sign of the healing, the dialogue about it, and the Good Shepherd discourse.

***

My happy place is a quiet lodge at the top of a hill, accessible only by a winding road, and all but invisible from above. I can rest there in beautiful solitude, in a bed with perfectly fitted, white sheets, deep pillows, and a plush comforter. A cool breeze is flowing over me, gently and steadily, as I rest. It is delightfully quiet. No one knows I am there, and they are not able to contact me. I am asleep. My breathing is slow and contented. All is well.

The rest of the world is also doing well when I am in my happy place, because it would disturb my slumber if others were suffering greatly while I relaxed in comfort. And so I dream of a repaired world, a healed world, as I slumber beneath the covers, and the sunlight dapples through the green leaves that cover and protect my dwelling.

This is my happy place. This is where I go whenever a therapist or meditation leader says, “Go to your happy place.” I’m sorry that it does not actually exist, but imagination is powerful, and when I take naps I can sometimes imagine myself there, and gratefully fall asleep.

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.