"Barsabbas Moments -- the sacred opportunity of rejection" -- a sermon for the 7th Sunday of Easter

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Preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday, May 11, 2015

“So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed and said, "Lord, you know everyone's heart. Show us which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas turned aside to go to his own place." And they cast lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was added to the eleven apostles.”

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What happened to Barsabbas?

Our reading from Acts tells the story of the disciples choosing a replacement for Judas. There are two finalists, Barsabbas and Matthias. They pray and ask God which one of these two should be chosen. Who should be the 12th apostle? And they cast lots, which was pretty much the first century version of flipping a coin and trusting God to guide the result.

Heads, Matthias. Tails, Barsabbas.

Heads it is. Matthias is one of the twelve. And he goes on to do great things.

Tradition holds Matthias planted the faith in Cappadocia and on the coasts of the Caspian Sea. Every February 24th, the Church celebrates the Feast of St. Matthias and we pray “Almighty God, grant that your Church, being delivered from false apostles, may always be guided and governed by faithful and true pastors.”

Matthias is remembered to this day.

But what happened to Barsabbas?

Barsabbas is never heard from again.

We’re a little schizophrenic about our faith. We hear Jesus say things like “the last shall be first and the first last” and “those who exalt themselves will be humbled and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”

Paul gives us the beautiful image of the Body of Christ and says “The members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect.”

The central image of our faith – Jesus on the cross – is the very embodiment of the worst of rejection. He is mocked, spat upon, nailed to a cross and killed and we call it his glory.

And we know all of this. And then what do we do? We turn around and we celebrate Matthias the winner … and we think Barsabbas is someone mispronouncing the name of the thief whom the crowd wanted released instead of Jesus.

So I want to spend just a few minutes this morning talking about Barsabbas. Because we don’t like to talk about Barsabbas. We don’t know what to do with Barsabbas. Most of us live in fear of becoming Barsabbas … or worse of being discovered that we have been Barsabbas all along.

That’s because Barsabbas was a loser. Literally. Barsabbas and Matthias both offered themselves for a position of great honor and difficulty. Matthias was told “Yes” and Barsabbas was told “No.” Winner. Loser.

So right there, we need to stop and own something.

Losing stinks. Not being chosen hurts.

Why?

Well, I suppose there are lots of reasons. When we get chosen, we get an opportunity and when we aren’t chosen we don’t get that opportunity. But I think we all know it’s more than that.

Not being chosen, whether it be in a job, in a relationship, in the church or wherever. Not being chosen taps into our deepest insecurities and triggers painful memories.

Not being chosen can fill us with embarrassment and shame. It can make us feel two inches tall and want to run away and hide.

Not being chosen stabs like a knife. It makes our hearts cry out “Why not me? What’s wrong with me? Why am I not good enough.”

Or even worse, it makes our hearts crumble and whisper: “See, I knew it, I’m not good enough. I was right all along.”

Not being chosen is like a giant amplifier for all the voices in our head and our heart that tell us we are less than, that we are unworthy, that we are unlovable.

Losing stinks. Not being chosen hurts.

And because we don’t like that. And because especially in the church where we are called to love each other -- and not choosing someone doesn’t feel particularly loving – especially in the church, we don’t deal with this particularly well. My experience in the church is we deal with – let’s call them our “Barsabbas Moments” – the experience of not being chosen, in one of three ways.

One, in the words of Brene Brown, we “silver lining it.” We tell people it’s not that bad, encourage them to see a bright side even if it takes some serious gymnastics to invent one.

Two, we offer consolation prizes. You didn’t get chosen for this? OK, we’ll give you this to make you feel better.

Three, we say and do … nothing. We don’t mention it because we fear mentioning it will be painful and make things even worse. So we just say and do … nothing.

Now all three of these responses have several things in common.

First, they are incredibly human and they are at least in part motivated by compassion. We hate to see each other in pain.

Second, they are each at least equally motivated by our own discomfort. We feel badly that someone else didn’t get chosen so we want to make them feel better so we’ll feel better.

Finally, none of these responses actually make it better and mostly they make things worse. Because, frankly, we all know when someone is trying to make us feel better and though we might appreciate the effort, often we end up just being more embarrassed and half the time end up reassuring them.

So what do we do instead?

We realize that our Barsabbas Moments are an incredible opportunity to lean into the deepest truth of our faith.

Hall of Fame baseball manager Sparky Anderson once said: “I’ve had to fire a lot of people. Most of them 18 year-old kids. When you tell them they can’t do it, they think you’re talking about life, when all you’re talking about is second base.”

Much of the time, not being chosen is painful because we take a single experience of “sorry, not this” and inside turn it into a rejection of who we are as a person. And that begs the question where does our sense of worthiness as people come from?

The truth we absolutely must remember is while we can and should affirm each other’s goodness and belovedness, if we are dependent on human beings for that sense of goodness and belovedness we will always be subject to brutal disappointment.

The deepest truth of our faith that our Barsabbas Moments invite us to lean into is that our goodness and belovedness come from God and God alone.

We can know we are good because God created us in the divine image and looked on us and said “this is very good.”

We can know we are beloved because for each and all of us, God loved us so much that God was willing to empty the divine self into human form and love us to the point of death on a cross.

Our Barsabbas Moments are opportunities for us not to lean on the admiration and adulation of one another but in those moments where we are feeling the deepest rejection to lean back into the loving arms of a God in whose eyes we are always good and always worthy and always deeply, deeply beloved.

And that is incredibly difficult to do. And that’s why we have to help each other. And we help each other not by offering consolation prizes or silver linings or silence but by speaking deep truths to one another.

We help each other by speaking the plain truth when we believe someone is not the right person for the job. And if those words are painful to hear, we sit together in the pain, letting words and tears flow as need be. Not offering a consolation prize or looking for the silver lining but just being with each other in the pain and reminding each other that even though any rejection can be hard, our goodness and our belovedness are never up for debate. Our goodness and belovedness were established by God in creation and sealed by Jesus on the cross. And let our steadfast love for one another, let our ability to sit in the pain and not try to fix it be the incarnational testimony to that.

One of the best leaders I have ever known is the Bishop of Nebraska, Scott Barker. I’ve known Scott for nearly 17 years now and I have seen him fearlessly speak difficult truths, take bold chances and offer himself up to the flip of a coin. And through it all he maintains a calm, deep faith and sense of self.

And so I asked him one day, Scott, how do you do it? How do you risk rejection and suffer disappointment so well? And he looked at me and said with utter conviction:

“Because I’m absolutely, positively sure that Jesus loves me.”

As we as a church cultivate that conviction in ourselves and one another. As we more and more joyfully embrace our Barsabbas moments as opportunities to lean into the arms of Christ , there will be no limit to what we can do and who we can be.

What happened to Barsabbas? We are Barsabbas. Rejected and hurting. Beloved and good. Letting the truth of Christ’s love take root in our hearts, in our lives and in this world.

Amen.

"Showing up and saying stop." -- a sermon for the 6th Sunday of Easter

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Preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday, May 11, 2015

Come Holy Spirit, and kindle in us the fire of your love.

Take our minds and think through them.
Take our lips and speak through them.
Take our souls, and set them on fire.

I have been feeling decidedly unbrilliant this week. I look at this Gospel that is the heart of what Jesus offers to us .. “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you” … and I want to break this open in some new way that is going to help us. Some way that will give us insight. But I kept coming up with nothing.

But as I prayed with this, what I kept coming back to is that this is not so much a passage that needs to be broken open but a passage about being broken open. And I couldn’t just stand up here and talk about being broken open but that I had to let myself be broken open … not as a way of making this about me, I never want to do that … but about going to a hard place first and inviting you to come along, and maybe finding out in naming it that we’ve already been standing in this hard place together.

This has been one hell of a year. I don’t know any other way to say it. It has just been one hell of a year. I know it has been for me and I know it has been for you and for us all. And it just keeps on going and going and going and going.

And yet, I would not trade it for anything. I cannot unsee what I have seen and I cannot unknow what I am coming to know, but even if I could, I would not. Because so much of what has made this one hell of a year has been the beginnings of scales falling from my eyes, my beginning to see realities that have always been there but from which I have turned away. And as easier as it was for me to live in that former world, the Jesus I follow will not let me and I thank God for that. Because if Jesus is going to be our savior, he has to save us from something and save us to something and part of that is saving us from a life of the prisons of self-deception and saving us to a life of honesty and truth that will set us free, even if sometimes that truth is hard to discern and even harder to bear.

My first day back from vacation last summer was August 10. And all I was looking forward to was being back together with you all and having a joyful and exciting year. And I was feeling recharged and refreshed, and as I was getting ready to get in the shower that morning, I got a text from Traci Blackmon asking me to join her at the Ferguson Police Department that afternoon for a prayer service. The day before, a young man named Michael Brown had been shot and killed and his body had laid in the street for four and a half hours and we were gathering the community to pray and to cry and to cry out.

And I knew then that this was going to be a thing. That the stories Ruby Sales had told us when she had been here in February of the epidemic of young black men being killed by police – that this is what it looked like. And so I tore up my sermon and rewrote it. And that afternoon some of us in this room were in that gathering in front of the Ferguson Police Department. And we watched young people start sitting down in the streets, and all I wanted was for them to get out of the streets because I didn’t want any trouble. I didn’t realize that trouble had been happening, too much trouble had already happened and that’s why they were in the streets.

I knew this was going to be a thing but I had no idea how big a thing it already was … and how big a thing it was going to become. That from that street a movement would start that would sweep across this nation … that Ferguson, Missouri of all places would become a national symbol for how far from Dr. King’s dream we truly were … that the seismic energy that has been building since the 1960s and 70s about race and class in this country was about to be set loose and that we in St. Louis were at the epicenter.

I don’t need to go through the litany of the last nine months, we all know it too well. Not just what has happened in our city and our nation that started in that street but what has happened in this Cathedral community and what has happened in each of our lives.

And not just this Sunday, but through the whole ordeal, Jesus has always been telling us “Love one another as I have loved you.” And I have kept coming back to that commandment over and over again this year, trying to figure out what that looks like. And nine months later, I still have so many more questions than answers.

What does it look like to love like Jesus when I see incredibly courageous young people standing up for freedom, committed to walking the tightrope of expressing their rage and staying nonviolent … and chastising the church for not being out there with them.

What does it look like to love like Jesus when I sit across from a police officer who tells me through tears in his eyes how betrayed he feels by me when he sees me standing with those young people, when he tells me how he stays up at night thinking about being faced with a young black man with a gun and hesitating because he doesn’t want to be the next Darren Wilson and then imagining that moment of hesitation ends with his wife and kids standing over his casket.

What does it look like to love like Jesus when some of us are so tired of talking about race and class and poverty and justice because it makes us feel guilty and bad and we come to church yes, to be challenged, but also to have our spirits fed and can’t we just have a break?

What does it look like to love like Jesus when some of us are hearing these same conversations and sermons and are feeling like we can finally breathe because at long last we are finally talking about the reality of our lives that has been there all along.

What does it look like to love like Jesus when we have a $150,000 budget deficit, when we have different ideas of what it means to be faithful with money and when are trying to figure out the future of Christ Church Cathedral at a time when some of the stands we are taking might very well be upsetting the people who have the money and the power in this city?

What does it look like to love like Jesus as the Cathedral of the whole Diocese of Missouri when many, many people in our diocese believe this movement is wrongheaded at best and that we are supporting and inciting violence at worst?

What does it look like to love like Jesus when while all this has been going on our lives haven’t stopped. That we are still trying to raise kids and care for aging parents, navigate troubled marriages and fight for the very right to marry, struggle to pay our mortgages and try to figure out where we are going to sleep tonight or get our next meal.

Jesus says “love one another as I have loved you” and every time I hear those words I have so many more questions than answers. But what I keep coming back to is that this is not so much a passage that needs to be broken open but a passage about being broken open. And when I ask what that looks like, where I am right now is that it looks like at least two things – showing up and saying stop.

First, showing up.

Showing up just means we have to hang in there and we have to hang in there together. We have to plead with God to help us remember that what binds us together is so much greater than what might tear us apart. And when it gets hard – and real relationship will always get hard – when we are most tempted to run away that is when we hold onto each other most tightly.

That we remember that the heart of loving each other is vulnerability. That there is no greater vulnerability than that space between saying I love you and waiting for the response. But that space is where Christ lives.

And so I need to say first of all something I don’t say nearly often enough and that is not just that God loves you but that I love you. And that every day I ask God to love you through me and to help me love you better.

I have the best job in the world. Because I get to sit with you during the week and stand here at the altar every Sunday and look out at you and love you all so much. Do you have any idea how beautiful you all are? Do you have any idea how incredible it is that you keep showing up here. This is such a hard place and you all know it, because if you were looking for a church that was easy you certainly would have chosen somewhere else. This Cathedral has never been easy, but this year we have taken it up about 20 notches and you are all still here. And that’s what love looks like. Love looks like keeping showing up.

Second, saying stop.

This week, Celeste Smith was telling me a story of spending a morning in court just watching the proceedings. And she said every single person who came before the judge was set up to fail. She told me about a man who pled guilty to failure to pay child support – and given a series of fines and jail time as punishment. How is he supposed to pay a fine much less the child support when he couldn’t pay the support to begin with and he can’t earn money when he is in jail?

It’s the same with women who are arrested for prostitution. They are given jail sentences and fines … only the only way they can pay the fine when they get out is by turning more tricks.

And every time this happened, she just wanted to jump up and scream “STOP! This is CRAAAZY! Can we just take a minute and look at what we’re doing here? Can we just stop and take a minute and see what it might be to listen to each other, to be human with each other, to look at a model of justice that is actually about restoring human dignity instead of further stripping it away?”

What happened in that courtroom wasn’t just the judge’s fault or the public defender’s fault or the defendant’s fault or the fault of any one person. It was the fault of systems that are overburdened and broken. It was the fault of a society that has criminalized poverty and made sane justice increasingly something that is available only the rich, who usually happen to be the white.

The impulse Celeste had was absolutely the right one. When Jesus says “Love one another as I have loved you” it is absolutely not just about showing up but when we do … and when we see ourselves doing things that are denying of human dignity treating one another as less than beloved images of God, we jump up and say, “STOP! This is CRAAAZY! Can we just take a minute and look at what we’re doing here? Can we listen to each other – even each other’s pain and anger that is so hard to hear because it is scary and it triggers so much inside us? Can we try to find another way?”

More than any other time in my life, this year we have faced situations that just leave us shaking our heads and not knowing what to do. And these situations are gifts, because it is when we face situations that are beyond our capacity we are forced to turn to Jesus and say “'you gotta take this one because I just can't do it.”

And every time this happens I hear his words that we hear this morning and say the same thing … “We’ve just got to love each other through it.”

And a lot of times I don’t know what that looks like …except we keep showing up, and we keep saying stop. And we listen with our hearts. And when things are crazy we find a way to listen more carefully, to trust more deeply and to say “no more.”

It’s been a hell of a year and my guess is we’re just getting started. But there is no place I would rather be than Christ Church Cathedral and there is nobody I’d rather be with than you. And I hope you feel the same, and even if you don’t – especially if you don’t – God bless you for showing up anyway.

Jesus says, “A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have loved you.” We will continue to try to do this knowing that we – and certainly I -- do this spectacularly imperfectly.

I don’t know what the next year is going to hold … I don’t even know what the next week is going to hold. But I do know this. We are going to keep going. We are going to keep our eyes on the cross and our ears tuned to Jesus’ words. We are going to keep showing up and we are going to keep saying stop. We are going to keep saying I love you and living in that space of vulnerability that follows. We are going to wrestle and fight but we will not hide from the truth and we will not hide from each other and we will not hide from the presence of Christ calling us into new and strange lands.

As Christ Church Cathedral we are going to love one another as Jesus loves us. My God be with us, and may God help us … each and all. AMEN.

"The Lord is my shepherd: Unpacking the 23rd Psalm." - a sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Easter

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Preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday, April 26, 2015

The Lord is my shepherd.

Is there any verse in the Bible that lowers our blood pressure more than this?

Hearing those words is like leaning back into a lover’s embrace and feeling their arms wrap around us and hold us close.

The Lord is my shepherd

There’s a reason we include the 23rd psalm in just about every funeral. It is comfort. As we are wearied by the changes and chances of this life, it invites us to rest in God’s eternal changelessness. It is safety. The 23rd psalm reminds us we are under the loving gaze of a God who gives rest to the weary, blesses the dying, soothes the suffering, takes pity on the afflicted and shields the joyous.

But it is so much more. Just as Jesus himself is so much more than comfort and safety, the 23rd psalm invites us, in the security of those loving arms, to dive deeply into what it means to be under the shepherdship of God.

And so that’s what we’re going to do for a few minutes this morning. We’re going to say these words, and we are going to lean back into God’s loving arms and feel them enfold us. As we welcome Ivy and Kyden into the Body of Christ, we are going to consider what it truly means to claim the Lord as our shepherd.

So pull out your service leaflet and find Psalm 23 at the top of the page … we’re going to take each of the six verses, one by one, starting with the first. Let’s say it together:

The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not be in want.

That word “want” needs a little unpacking. Want doesn’t mean every desire of our heart will be fulfilled. Want doesn’t mean we will live in luxury or we won’t ever have to work hard. “We shall not be in want” means we will never lack the necessities of what we need to live.

“I shall not be in want” is our first hint that although this psalm is written in first person singular, it is not about us as individuals but as a community. Because we know plenty who are in want, including some of us in this very room. And scripture is the story of God providing not for the person but for the people. And a shepherd never only has one sheep … at least not a shepherd who is long for the job.

So “I shall not be in want” is the song not of you or me as a person but of us as a people … a people who were in the desert and each morning God gave us manna just enough for that day. It is the trust in the providence of God we echo each time we pray “give us this day our daily bread.”

“I shall not be in want” is the embracing of the sacred enough for each and for all. God will provide enough. Our daily bread. Enough for me. Enough for all.

“I shall not be in want” means our job and joy with the abundance of what God provides is not to hoard it but take just what we need, just what will keep us out of want, just that sacred enough, and with the rest experience the divine joy of sharing and providing for one another.

“I shall not be in want means” there is enough. It means as the church we stand as prophets against the false Gospels of acquisition and consumption and the fear that if we do not hoard we will be in want. It means as the church we take it upon ourselves to make sure we are providing that sacred enough for one another. It means as the church we meet the fear of scarcity and the reality of poverty with this simple verse:

The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not be in want.

Second verse. Let’s say it together.

He makes me lie down in green pastures
and leads me beside still waters.

Being under the shepherdship of God means we are people of Sabbath. We lie down in green pastures and walk beside still waters. We breathe and smell the roses. We don’t let the speed of the internet dictate the pace of our lives. We appreciate and embrace the sacrament of the present moment.

Like the first verse, this verse leads us to prophetically preach that sacred enough --not in the face of fear of scarcity of stuff, but in the fear of scarcity of time.

For God’s flock, there is always enough time as long as we remember that time is not just measured in the ticking of the seconds but also in depth of time, what in Greek is called kairos. Kairos is how we can sit at a coffee shop lost in conversation with a friend and time seems to stop. Kairos is how we can spend a half hour stuck in traffic and a half hour walking at the Botanical Garden and they are two completely different amounts of time.

Kairos is the difference between how long the sermon is and how long the sermon feels.

This week, one of our first residents at Magdalene St. Louis, wrote a blogpost about her experience of getting out of prison and re-entering the world after being incarcerated for 12 years. Here is what she noticed about how we live today:

People are so wrapped up in their devices, there’s no eye contact and people are always in such a hurry they forget to “stop and smell the flowers.” We all look like walking zombies … it’s kind of creepy!

Being under the shepherdship of God is not that kind of life. It means there is enough time. It means God leads us into places where time is measured not in length but in depth and our response is to stop and breathe deeply. It means we can and even must take the time to lie down in the green pastures and bathe in the stillness of the waters.

And invite the world to do the same.

Third verse. Let’s say it together.

He revives my soul*
and guides me along right pathways for his Name's sake.

Our Cathedral mission statement says “We seek a deeper relationship with God and each other in Jesus Christ.” It is God we seek … knowing that God is experienced both in the stillness of our hearts and in the love given one another in community.

We know that as humans we are prone to addiction and any manner of things we use to fill the emptiness inside or to self-medicate our trauma and loneliness. But as members of God’s flock, we strive to choose a different path. As members of God’s flock, we hold hands and together remind ourselves and one another that these are false gods and lies, that they will never give our hearts what we crave.

It is not the anesthetics of the world but God alone who revives our soul.

Together, in God’s flock, we sing to God with St. Augustine, that “our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.”

And because we are seekers for God, we know our actions and words matter. We know that there is such a thing as right and wrong pathways, as loving and unloving.

As members of God’s flock, we not only seek the reviving presence of Christ, we submit to the authority of Christ. We are guided by the word of God in scripture, heard in prayer and discerned in community. We strive to go along the right pathways not for our own sake but for God’s sake … in gratitude for and for the sake of the one who gives us life itself.

Fourth verse. Let’s say it together

Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; *
for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

We do what is hard, and we do it without fear.

God does not just lead us beside still waters but through the most turbulent waters there are. Following Christ means we absolutely will pass through Good Friday on the way to Easter Sunday. We will walk right into that valley of the shadow of death. It will be the death of attachments, the death of relationships, the death of dreams and maybe even the death of life itself.

We will face deep loss.

But that’s not what makes us different. Everyone goes through the valley of the shadow of death. Everyone faces loss. As sheep of God’s flock, what makes us different is we shall fear no evil because we know God is with us. What makes us different as followers of Jesus is our absolute conviction with St. Paul that we are convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

We walk fearlessly through the valley of the shadow of death. Not dodging it and living in denial of it, but naming it and even through tears and with trembling voice, singing Alleluia. And in those moments when each of us is tempted to despair, tempted not to trust the bonds of God’s love are forever, in those moments we are there for each other to believe when each other is in doubt, to hold each other up as we are prone to fall, and to wipe away every tear and steady every trembling voice.

Fifth verse. Let’s say it together.

You spread a table before me in the presence of those who trouble me; *
you have anointed my head with oil, and my cup is running over.

Unlike the rest of the world where we gather in self-reinforcing communities of common opinion and culture, in God’s flock, we share community intentionally and specifically with those who trouble us the most.

That’s what it means when we say in our Cathedral mission statement that part of how we seek that deeper relationship with God and each other in Jesus Christ is through “embracing diversity joyfully.”

These past weeks and months, there has been some pushback on that piece of our mission statement. Not the embracing diversity part … but do we have to do it joyfully?

I get it. This is hard. Embracing diversity is hard. Gathering at table in the presence of those who trouble us is hard. But again, the psalmist gives us truth. For God pulls us together in our deepest difference not for God’s amusement or for our punishment, but because God designs us for each other… and the more different we are from each other, the more necessary we are for each other’s and our common salvation.

And that’s why even though it is the hardest thing we ever do, when we gather at table in the presence of those who trouble us, it is blessing and it is joy and it is abundance of riches. The two parts of this verse cannot be separated. It is the very act of sharing table with those who trouble us that anoints our heads with oil and makes our cups run over.

Finally, the last verse. Let’s say it together.

Surely your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, *
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

We are people of God’s forever.

We don’t trust forever. In marriage we say “until we are parted by death,” and then 50% of our unions end in divorce. Our cars don’t start and our heroes fail. Nations slip into history, and tower and temple fall to dust.

But God is the God of forever. In a world of broken promises and relationships that never live up to our hopes. In a world where we have been used and abused and where trust seems like it should be a four letter word, where the horizon of death can leap toward us with one doctor’s visit or phone call in the dark of night. In a world where the vision of a love that heals seems too good to be true, God looks passionately into our eyes and whispers in our ear:

Forever.

Forever.

Forever.

God’s forever is God’s promise that surely, certainly, absolutely God’s goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life. That we are God’s own -- yesterday, today and tomorrow. That even when we leave this mortal coil, we need not fear for we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

The Lord is my shepherd. And yours. And all of ours.

These are words of incredible comfort, but oh, so much more. They are an invitation into an extraordinary life together. The baptized life of Jesus Christ. The life of the shepherdship of God.

The Lord is our shepherd. And together as God’s flock we will rejoice in the sacred enough of things and time. We will drink deeply from God’s everlasting love and do what is hard without fear. We will embrace diversity joyfully and find in it blessing as abundant as oil dripping down our foreheads and cups overflowing with the finest wine. And together, always together, we will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.

"Has This Been Doing This My Whole Life?!?" -- An Easter Sermon

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Preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral on Easter Sunday, April 5, 2015

So they went out and fled from the tomb,

for terror and amazement had seized them.

On this Sunday of the resurrection, I always remember our friend Becca Stevens, the founder of Magdalene and Thistle Farms in Nashville, because Becca has seen more resurrection than anyone I know.

Becca has spent the last 20 years walking with women whose lives on the streets began with abuse they suffered as children. Women for whom trust has always been a four letter word and hope was a word they dared not utter at all.

Through the Magdalene community, Becca has seen these women make the transition from victim to survivor. To go from lives of pain to lives of power. To encounter love they never thought even existed, much less could be there for them, and find in it the power to heal and make them new.

One of these women is Dorris. Like the other women in Magdalene, Dorris had, as Becca puts it, experienced the underside of bridges, the short side of justice, the back side of anger and the inside of prison walls.

And so early one morning, when Becca and Dorris found themselves on the Florida coast, it was the first time Dorris had ever seen the ocean. And as the sun peaked over the distant horizon and she dipped her foot in the waves and for the first time ever felt the pull of the tide, she threw up her arms and asked:

“Has this been doing this my whole life?”

Can you imagine that joy? That joy not just of a whole new world opening up to you but realizing that it had been there all along? Realizing that the cool sands and the ocean breeze and the pounding of the surf were a gift of God’s grace and love? That this was the life God dreamed for you?

And that if this was real, what other wonders could be out there.

Dorris’ journey to the ocean was a long one. When Dorris was a child, she witnessed her own father’s murder and was repeatedly abused. She ended up walking a 10-block radius on the streets of Nashville for 26 years selling herself and being sold. Before Magdalene, that was her life, and those 10 blocks were her world. It was all she knew.

The ocean? That was for other people.

Love? Well, that was for other people, too.

I love Mark’s telling of the Easter story because it is raw and real. Three women, who had each been through different kinds of hell, show up at the tomb on Sunday morning. They are in deep pain and grief. They don’t even know how they will roll the stone away from the tomb and yet they stumble toward it anyway, knowing all that is left for them is to anoint Jesus’ body so that he -- and their hope with him -- can be buried in peace.

But when they find the tomb empty and a young man telling them the amazing news that Jesus was risen, their response was not to sing Alleluia as we do today. No … they ran away. Mark tells us “they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.”

Terror and amazement. Silence and fear.

That was their response to this miraculous, powerful love that even death could not destroy.

Terror and amazement. Silence and fear.

How utterly … and completely … human.

Because when we are in grief and pain. When our whole world has been turned upside down and our heart has been torn out. When we have been rejected by the world and everything we ever hoped for has disappeared in a massive public shaming, the reality of love so strong, so deep, so wide is simply too much to bear.

We tell ourselves that our reaction to Easter, we tell ourselves that our reaction to this miraculous, incredible love should be Alleluias and rejoicing. But it’s not. It’s terror and amazement. It’s silence and fear. Because the experience of our life is so different from that love, we just can’t believe it’s real.

It can’t be real, can it? It can’t really be for me, can it?

Love? That’s for other people, right?

You see, we are those women at the tomb on Sunday morning. We are Dorris. For the past 40 days we have walked through the desert face to face. We have tried to take off our masks and learn how to speak clearly and listen deeply and have fierce conversations with one another. We have heard the voices of young people crying out in our streets and stared in the faces of other young people who tragically died there.

As a St. Louis region, as a church and as individuals, we are battered and conflicted. We are struggling and we are tired. And in that pain, we isolate ourselves from one another. We see asking for help as weakness, and we compulsively apologize for our tears. And we suffer in silence believing everyone else but us has it all together.

Whether our pain is us longing for the touch of the person who lies in bed next to us night after night and year after year or remembering the painful dark unwanted touch of years or sometimes even just hours before, the truth of this love seems too much to bear.

Whether our pain is the unreachable chasm of silence between parent and child or the echoes of the empty nest, the empty womb or the empty bed, the truth of this love seems too much to bear.

Whether our pain is being told our lives matter less because of the color of our skin or feeling pushed aside and useless with the passing of our years, the truth of this love seems too much to bear.

Whether our pain is the craving of addiction, the humbling of recovery or the helplessness of watching someone we love struggle with both, the truth of this love of God in Jesus Christ, a love more powerful than death, a love that is right here waiting for each and for all of us is just too much to bear.

It’s much easier to look away, to plaster on a smile and say, “Alleluia! Christ is Risen” with everyone else, and go back and suffer in silence.

But I hope we won’t. I pray we won’t. I pray this Easter we will risk the terror and amazement and look this love full in the face.

Because the love of God in Jesus Christ is real. It is real and it is terrifying and it is amazing. It is the single greatest force in the entire universe, and it is for each and every one of us.

It is the God of our weary years, the God of our silent tears bending down from heaven and kissing us powerfully but every so tenderly right where it hurts. It is a love that can help us all make the transition from victim to survivor. From lives of pain to lives of power. To encounter love we never thought even existed, much less could be there for us, and find in it the power to heal and make us new.

What those brave, heartbroken women found at the empty tomb and what we are offered this morning and every time we come together is an invitation to a love that will hold us and heal us and change our lives. A love that will break down the walls that divide us and bind us together as sisters and brothers for life. A love that will free us from the bonds not just of sin and death but also the paralyzing bonds of self-doubt and self-criticism and shame.

A love that will take our secret pain, all those stories of our lives we are barely able to tell ourselves much less someone else, all those pieces of ourselves we hide believing that if anyone ever knew about them they couldn’t possibly love us, a love that will take them and break their hold on us and set us free to sing and dance and to dip our feet into a thousand oceans and feel the pull of a thousand tides.

Like Dorris, our journey to this place has been a long one. And what the women that Easter and we this morning are greeted with as the sun peaks over the distant horizon is terrifying and amazing and beautiful and awesome. And if together we can trust enough to let ourselves believe it and feel it even a little bit we will lift up our arms and shout

“Has this been doing this my whole life?”

“Have I really been wonderfully made and beautiful my whole life?

“Has God really been loving me like this my whole life?”

And the answer, terrifying and amazing as it is, will be yes.

Yes.

Yes.

We are bringing Magdalene to St. Louis -- with our first house opening next month! 

To find out more go to www.magdalenestl.org. 

"Decision points: Following Jesus in a world of guns, gangs and violence." -- a sermon for the 2nd Sunday of Lent

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Preached by the Rev. Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows on Sunday, March 1, 2015

One of the faces of the "Faces Not Forgotten" project -
portraits of young people killed by gun violence
in St. Louis, now on display at
Christ Church Cathedral

Ever have one of those moments where you find yourself having an encounter that you’re not sure you want to be having because you fear it will demand something of you? Perhaps take you down a road you may not be prepared to go? I had such an experience recently—on Thursday, actually. I had been told by a clergy friend that there was someone I absolutely had to meet.

And so it was that I found myself having lunch with a former member of one of Chicago’s toughest gangs. And he was telling me what he tells his former gang member friends—He said, “You have to make a decision—each and every day, you have to decide.”

James Crockett, had been a member of the notorious Four Corner Hustlers gang on Chicago’s west side. On a day when the weather is 10 degrees, he and I and several other church folks are having lunch just north of Chicago in an Evanston café and he purposefully wears a t-shirt so we can see his gang tattoo. The tattoo, doo-rag, and jeans are part of his uniform to say to the other former—and soon to be former—gang members he encounters that his street cred is as real as walk with Jesus. On a good Sunday evening some 45 guys from the streets will gather with him for Bible Study and encouragement. He says, for guys transitioning off the streets, out of addiction, out of crime, each and every day presents an opportunity to decide—are they going to walk with Christ or are they going back to the path that may kill them. Faith is not an academic exercise—the stakes are high.

We had lunch that day so that we might make a decision—a decision to walk together and work together to help end violence on Chicago’s north side. James essentially said, look at me, hear my testimony and decide. He said, I need you to decide not to avert your eyes from the pain and violence in your very midst but walk with me into so we can pull some people out of it. I could barely eat my lunch. And James was asking us not just for a “one and done” experience or a donation of money. He was looking for a long-term relationship because he found that’s the only thing that seems to change things.

There are days when I can hardly believe that part of my job is helping people understand why they should care about gun violence in Chicago and the way in which it takes the lives of young people of color on nearly a daily basis. There are folks—good, well-meaning Christians, Episcopalians—who wonder why they have to keep hearing about it. What does it have to do with them? And it is a painful thing to talk about—in the way that racism, class and income inequality, and segregation are difficult to talk about. Because it reminds us that we are all impacted by the horrible and besetting sin and death that is too much a part of our lives and we don’t want to talk about it, acknowledge it, or have it interrupt the alternative narrative we are trying to build in our day to day lives—because life is already too hard.

So I get it—no one likes gun violence as dinner party chit chat. And yet, like so many other conversations that seem too overwhelming or polarizing or difficult—people of faith must find a way to talk about the violence that is all too prevalent in our lives and we must become, even if reluctantly, conversant in the vocabulary of trauma and tragedy that is part of the daily living and dying of too many of our young people.

Trying to disentangle the intersecting challenges of poverty, inadequate education, joblessness, and the feeling of daily desperation that makes for violence is hard, headache inducing work. But thankfully, we do have people working on it. We have a new generation of community organizers, leaders and agitators who won’t let us forget what is happening in the communities on the margins and who won’t let us forget about how those dynamics impact those of us with choices. What does gun violence on the west side of Chicago have to do with tony north shore suburbs like Winnetka? What does gun violence in north St. Louis have to do with the leafy streets of Clayton? Everything.

Children dying at the hands of other children or adults should break our hearts each and every time. But too often, we can’t bear to hear this news—it is just too much. We want things to be instantly different. Better. Less painful. But people are dying and we are being called to make some decisions.

Today’s gospel lesson highlights another one of those moments when the disciples find themselves on a journey that they said yes to and now are on a road they were not prepared to take—one that will demand things of them they were not prepared to give.

Then Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."

You can just imagine what Peter and the disciples are thinking—they’ve decided to make Jesus their choice—they’ve decided to leave the old life behind and follow him. What is all this business about suffering and dying? Just a moment before they were talking that yes, Jesus, was the Messiah—so what is this business about suffering—that’s not supposed to happen to the Messiah. That is not how the story is supposed to go.

And when Peter points this out and protests Jesus silences him--You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things. And Jesus basically says, you gotta truly be willing to lay down that old life, pick up your cross and follow so are you still with me? He’s asking his disciples not to avert their eyes from the pain and suffering but to walk with Jesus right into it.

That was hard for the disciples to do and it is hard for us too. We, like the disciples, have our minds set not on divine things but human things—which is kind of how we got here. Here, meaning a world so filled with violence that we ache to forget it. Here, meaning a sanctuary filled with the beautiful faces of the dead. Each and every day we struggle to see the divine in our fellow human beings. We forget. Too often our mind is set, focused, tuned into seeing the human and not enough of the divine. We forget that the fingerprints of the divine are on everything and everyone. We forget that the divine spark, the light that is Christ, shines in everyone. And at our worst, we not only deny the divine imprint but we deny their humanity.

Deciding to follow Jesus means being willing to give your life over and live for someone else. For James Crockett, the former gang member who skirted death more times than he can remember, it is his 5 children, the men in his Bible Study, and his love of Christ have given him something to live for—and not just live, but to really LIVE as one who understands what the God of second, third, and fourth chances can do. James’ life now makes resurrection real to young men of the streets who were counted good as dead. His life makes resurrection real to those of us who think that poor inner city streets are only filled with death and despair.

Most of us here today will not have a story as dramatic as James Crockett. But some of us here do know what its like to wake up each day and struggle with the lure of the streets. We do know what its like to wake up each day and decide to walk in the way that is life-giving instead of death-dealing. Each day we can wake up and decide to stay sober. Each day we can wake up and decide to love our partner or spouse. Each day we wake up and decide to not be fearful of the stranger. We can decide not to clutch our bag tighter when we see a black or latino man coming our way. We can decide to see the divinity and humanity in everyone we encounter. We can decide to give our life away just a little bit for the sake of another. We can decide to take up our cross and follow the messiah whose living, dying and rising proclaims that death never has the final word. Ever.

Following Jesus will demand something of us. Following Jesus will take us down roads we may never have expected to travel. But if we decide to follow and if we decide to stay not averting our gaze from the pain and violence, we may just find resurrection. We may just find life. Amen.

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The Desert Inside Us--A Sermon Preached at Christ Church Cathedral and The Church of St. Michael and St. George by The Reverend Canon John W. Kilgore, M.D. on 18 February 2015, Ash Wednesday

But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret…

In a few moments you will be invited to the observance of holy Lent, ‘by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.’ And you will, if you desire, have ashes imposed on your forehead. Ashes from palm fronds of last Palm Sunday, burned. The molecules of living things on this earth. Perhaps of ones you knew here, or your forbears. And in the future perhaps molecules of you will be imposed on someone else’s forehead. Lent, and the ashes, remind us of our transient nature and of our place in God’s universe. And the ashes go on the foreheads of all - wealthy and destitute, educated and ignorant, compassionate and cruel. All of us, without distinction. So how do we live into this holy season? What are we to ‘give up’ or ‘take on’?

There are three lines in our readings today that seem to inform us, our lives of faith, at tis juncture. ‘Whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret,’ from Matthew’s gospel. ‘He redeems your life from the grave and crowns you with mercy and loving-kindness,’ from the Psalm. And ‘Let all the inhabitants of the land tremble, for the day of the Lord is coming, it is near — a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness!’ from the prophet Joel.

Our lives seem pretty good. But there is a lot of evil stuff going on in the world right now. ISIS is out there and has declared Christianity as one of their major targets. They seem to be attacking a major European capital every week. They have declared the fall of Christian Rome by the end of the year. And are very likely in America in full force soon. A fulfillment of the prophecy of Joel?

Maybe. But there has always been evil in the world. There have always been times of difficulty, of tension. We, in our life times, and especially here in America, have lived in a time of particular, peculiar, and privileged security. Almost everyone has enough to eat, while half the world goes to bed hungry every night. Our cities are secure, we don’t have rockets and IPG’s and suicide bombings going off every day in every market places and villages. And life expectancy is incredibly high. Until AIDS, almost all infectious disease were wiped out — smallpox, polio, TB. And the transient ones that killed, diphtheria, strep throat, meningitis, Neisseria, and others were treatable with antibiotics, discovered in the 20th century. We are privileged. We are fortunate. But it may not always be that way. Perhaps we have been lulled into a false sense of security. America is so much better than almost every other place in the world. By our world standards.

But do we know our need for God? Do we realize our transitory nature? And how are we to explore that during Lent, our appointed religious season for such exercise? Most of us will say, ‘Give something up!’ And that has been the traditional wisdom. Indeed I was with someone just a couple of days ago who said, ‘what is that old stuff about giving up for Lent? Aren’t we supposed to take something on? Giving up seems so wrong!’ Lent is not about giving up, or taking on. Lent is about knowing our need for God. About remembering that indeed ‘days of darkness and gloom…clouds and thick darkness’ are part of our earthly experience. While we might be lulled into a sense of false security, especially here in America, that is not guaranteed. Travail may come. And Lent is also about remembering that ‘we are dust and to dust we shall return…’ But the Psalm reminds us, ‘He redeems our life from the grave and crowns us with mercy and loving-kindness.’ But only if we know God. Which is why that first line is important. ‘Whenever you pray, go into your room, and shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret.’ If we don’t know God, we don’t know God’s salvation.

Which is why Lent is so important. Lent symbolizes Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness when he fasted and the angels tended to him. It reminds us of the forty years in the desert of the Israelites. And it is our yearly time to stop, slow down, consider our relationship with God, and work to improve it. It is not about giving up or taking on, but rather, about a time to get to know God better and to contemplate the mystery of the Incarnation and what Jesus did on the Cross for our salvation.
Brother Ronald Rolheiser writes, ‘Lent invites us to stop eating, so to speak, whatever protects us from having to face the desert that is inside of us. It invites us to feel our smallness, to feel our vulnerability, to feel our fears, and to open ourselves to the chaos of the desert so that we can finally give the angels a chance to feed us.’

So how do we do that? What do we do? It depends on you and on what you discern in prayer to be your Lenten discipline. Last week I gave a couple of tips for finding ways to pray in small snatches throughout the day. Perhaps that is your Lenten path this year. Certainly that is about knowing God better. Possibly Lent is indeed giving something up: tobacco, or alcohol, or chocolate, or meat, or lunch. But any giving up is to be combined with prayer, and with giving. As I was instructed years ago by a great priest and mentor, fasting is always accompanied by prayer! When I learned that, fasting became a very different experience for me. That little prayer when hunger pains strike, ‘Lord, fill up my emptiness with your presence’ (praying in little snatches through the day!) is an amazing salve to hunger pains, and a true spiritual lift. And giving up, likewise should be accompanied by giving. if you fast a meal, perhaps that money should go to feed someone hungrier than you. Last year I endeavored to, everyday in Lent, call a friend that I had not been in touch with in some time. It was wonderful and uplifting out of the blue to talk and catch up. It was uplifting to me and to them. I gave up some of my time to others. But I was the one fed. I have to confess that I missed a lot of days. And endeavor to do it again this year, more consistently, and to combine prayer for those I am calling, after I learn their life situations.

I don’t know what your Lenten discipline might be this year. But I urge you to adopt one that is a combination of giving up and taking on. But more importantly, to make Lent a time of knowing God better in prayer. Go into your room and shut the door and pray to our Father in secret. These admonitions and disciplines in Lent are only tools to shift our focus from our earthly lives to our relationship with God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A day of darkness and gloom may indeed be coming, but He, Jesus the Christ, redeems our life from the grave. That is the message of Easter, but it is difficult to see if we haven’t been in the desert of Lent. I wish you a blessed Lent.

Amen.

"Calling out the spirits" - A sermon for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

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Preached by the Very Rev. Mike Kinman at Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday, February 1, 2015

Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God." But Jesus rebuked him, saying, "Be silent, and come out of him!"

It begins with calling out the spirits. So it was with Jesus. So it is with us.

Jesus always put first things first. And in Mark’s Gospel, this morning’s story of Jesus casting out the unclean spirit in the synagogue at Capernaum is the very first thing he did after calling the disciples.

Jesus doesn’t start by going out into the world. Jesus starts at home with his community of faith. Jesus, a Jew, looks in the mirror first – looks at the synagogue – and names its own uncleanness, its own dysfunction, its own evil, before going out into the world to name it there.

Naming unclean spirits is not about creating one more us vs. them, not about dividing a community into good people and evil people or picking a few scapegoats to self-righteously cast out. For Jesus and for us, naming unclean spirits is about calling out behavior and ways of being that hold us captive. About naming the ways we act and the systems in which we participate that keep us fully from becoming the Body of Christ.

Naming and casting out unclean spirits is about renouncing ways of life that divide, corrupt and destroy, and instead, putting our whole trust in Jesus and following his example in living lives of bold truth-telling, deep integrity, and radical hospitality and love.

What Jesus tells us by putting first things first and marching right into the synagogue and calling out the spirits is that unless we first name and cast out the spirits in our own community, we will never be able to be the church in the world in ways that will bring in the realm of God on earth as it is in heaven.

This work is Job One. And like everything about following Jesus, we never do it alone. Like everything else about following Jesus, we name the unclean spirits and cast them out together, looking each other deeply in the eyes all the way.

That’s why even though we Episcopalians don’t like to talk about evil and darkness because it sounds so superstitious, we do talk about it in one of the most important places – in our baptismal service.

Everyone pick up the red prayer books and turn to the bottom of page 302. This is a part of our baptismal service we don’t spend a lot of time on, and yet it’s one of the most ancient and important pieces of becoming part of the Body of Christ.

It’s called the renunciations and the adhesions. Six questions we answer before we are baptized: Three ways of life we reject and three sacred vows we make. It is the liturgical embodiment of what Jesus did in the synagogue at Capernaum. It is us gathering as the community of the faithful, naming the unclean spirits in our lives and in our life and saying “we are not going to be about this” … and then turning to Jesus and saying “we belong to you.”

Now take a deep breath. And let it out. And let’s answer these questions together:

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?
I renounce them.

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?
I renounce them.

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?
I renounce them.

Do you turn to Jesus Christ and accept him as your Savior?
I do.

Do you put your whole trust in his grace and love?
I do.

Do you promise to follow and obey him as your Lord?
I do.

I asked us to take a deep breath before answering these questions, because if these renunciations and adhesions don’t make us tremble, then we simply aren’t paying attention. In making these promises, we are staring the worst of the world right in the face and rejecting it. Even more, we are putting our whole trust in the grace and love of one who has shown us that his grace and love leads directly to the cross.

If you want to know who we are as a Christian community, it doesn’t get any plainer than this. We are a community that openly names and calls out the forces of evil, the powers which corrupt and destroy and the temptations that draw us from the love of God. And we do not do it in fear but trusting that because of the surpassing grace and love of Jesus Christ those powers which for years have silenced us in fear will they themselves be silenced and driven out.

And this morning, Jesus reminds us that first things are indeed first. That it begins with calling out the spirits. With letting them know they cannot hide from us. With naming them without fear. With trusting in the power of Jesus Christ to strip them of their power and cast them out.

This morning, Jesus reminds us it begins with calling out the spirits. And that means it begins with us. Right here. Right now. That is the challenge before us. And it means even as we go out into the world to transform the world’s ills, we cannot neglect the work we have to do right here in our community.

And so, together, with Jesus by our side, we have some hard looks to give ourselves and some hard questions to ask ourselves.

As we offer space for AA meetings and as we lobby for greater services for people struggling with addiction and mental illness in the St. Louis region, do we look at our own history of alcoholism and addiction both in this Cathedral community and in our diocese? Do we see the ways we still live into the addictive family system model of “Don’t talk. Don’t trust. Don’t feel.” Do we renounce that spirit and call it out with a renewed commitment to health in our relationships and in our communication with one another?

As we go out into the streets and proclaim that Black Lives Matter, as we demand justice and equality of opportunity for all regardless of race or class, do we look at the unwritten rules of the Nave of Christ Church Cathedral? The customs of where we sit when we’re in this room that perpetuate division in this community. That those of us of color tend to sit toward the back and those of us struggling with homelessness tend to sit on the margins? Do we renounce that spirit and call it out with a renewed commitment to dismantling our own “us vs. them” thinking and deepening our relationships with those who are most different from us?

As we go into the courtrooms and lobby our legislators to strike down laws that treat those of us who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender as less than full members of society, do we look at how welcoming we truly are of people who are new and different to this Cathedral community once we get beyond the handshake and smile at the door. Do we hear that often the experience of people new to this Cathedral community is that we are initially warm and welcoming but then only talk to the people we already know? Do we renounce that spirit and call it out with a renewed commitment to treating the stranger as Christ and incorporating all people into the life of this community?

Addiction. Segregation. Inhospitality. These are powerful spirits to name. And undoubtably there are others. They are certainly not unique to Christ Church Cathedral but we can be unique in our resolve to face them head-on just as Jesus did that day in Capernaum.

And just as with this morning’s Gospel, we can be sure they will not go quietly. Like the man in the synagogue in Capernaum, they have been living among us for so long they have become our familiar friend. We will be tempted to deny that these spirits are among us because their existence does not fit with the image we have of ourselves. And as a body, we will convulse and cry out as we allow Jesus to name these spirits and drive them from us, so accustomed and even dependent have we become on them in our life together.

But that’s not all. There’s one thing more. For, just as with this morning’s Gospel, as we do this. As we with courage show ourselves and the world that we are not afraid to name the spirits in our community that corrupt, destroy and draw us from the love of God. As we with courage name them, look them full in the face and renounce them and instead embrace the bold truth-telling, deep integrity and radical hospitality of Jesus Christ. As we do this just as in Capernaum and the surrounding region of Galilee, the people will look at us with amazement. They will look at us and see Jesus. And there is no greater purpose for us than that.

And the good news is, with God’s help, we can do it. We can do it in here and we can do it out there. The spirits of addiction, segregation and inhospitality are strong. We have grown accustomed to living with them to the point where it is easy for us to deny they are even there. But they are nothing compared to the goodness of this Cathedral community. They are nothing compared to the past and present history of love in this Cathedral community. And most of all, they are nothing compared to the power of Jesus Christ.

The people marveled at Jesus because Jesus spoke with authority. And Jesus gives that authority to us. We have authority when, turning to Jesus and accepting him as our savior, we don’t just talk the talk but walk the walk. We have authority when, putting our whole trust in Christ’s grace and love, our integrity is beyond question and our motives are beyond reproach. We have authority when following and obeying Jesus as our Lord, in deep love for one another we simply name what we see, confess our own sin and proclaim our trust in the healing power of Christ to amend our lives.

And as it did with Jesus, it begins with calling out the spirits. With letting them know they cannot hide from us. With naming them without fear. With trusting in the power of Jesus Christ to strip them of their power and cast them out.

First things first. It begins with calling out the spirits. And that means it begins with us. AMEN.