26th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28B

26th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 28B November 18, 2018 Those of you who are “friends” with my husband on Facebook will recognize this story that he shared two years ago and then again this past week. “In Crown Heights, there was a Jew, Yankel, who owned a bakery. He survived the camps. He once said, ‘You know why it is that I’m alive today? I was a kid, just a teenager at the time. We were on the train, in a boxcar, being taken to Auschwitz. Night came and it was freezing, deathly cold, in that boxcar. The Germans would leave the cars on the side of the tracks overnight, sometimes for days on end without any food, and of course, no blankets to keep us warm,’ he said. ‘Sitting next to me was an older Jew – this beloved elderly Jew - from my hometown I recognized, but I had never seen him like this. He was shivering from head to toe, and looked terrible. So I wrapped my arms around him and began rubbing him, to warm him up. I rubbed his arms, his legs, his face, his neck. I begged him to hang on. All night long; I kept the man warm this way. I was tired, I was freezing cold myself, my fingers were numb, but I didn’t stop rubbing the heat on to this man’s body. Hours and hours went by this way. Finally, night passed, morning came, and the sun began to shine. There was some warmth in the cabin, and then I looked around the car to see some of the other Jews in the car. To my horror, all I could see were frozen bodies, and all I could hear was a deathly silence. Nobody else in that cabin made it through the night – they died from the frost. Only two people survived: the old man and me… The old man survived because somebody kept him warm; I survived because I was warming somebody else…’ Let me tell you the secret of Judaism. When you warm other people’s hearts, you remain warm yourself. When you seek to support, encourage and inspire others; then you discover support, encouragement and inspiration in your own life as well. That, my friends, is ‘Judaism 101.’” In the letter to the Hebrews, we see a sermon to a discouraged congregation. The preacher is addressing a congregation that is suffering from decline; he is addressing a flock who is “tired and discouraged about the way evil seems to persist in the world. As a result the congregation has begun to question the value of being followers of Christ. Attendance at worship has begun to falter, zeal for mission has waned, and the kind of congregational life that is rich with love and compassion has begun to dissipate.”i He is addressing a people who are weary and longing for the not yet to be realized and fulfilled. The preacher continues to re-iterate the sacrifice that has already been made by Christ, and in the reading for today, we finally get to the part where we get the answer to the question: “so what?” So what if Christ is the once and future priest in God’s church, offering once and for all a sacrifice for the sins of all? What does that have to do with us? He writes, “Therefore, my friends… let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” Two things strike me about this today. First, as followers of Jesus, we are called to “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering” because we can trust in the never-failing goodness of God, even when it does not always seem so. Our annual giving campaign this year is titled Celebrate St. Thomas: Hope grows here. What does it look like for us as a community and for us as individuals to “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering”? This seems to me to be an essential component to hope growing here today, tomorrow, and many years into the future. Second, as followers of Jesus, we are called to “provoke one another to love and good deeds…encouraging one another.” The word for “provoke” here is literally translated as to agitate. Now, this may seem foreign to some of us. We don’t want to come to church to be agitated. But in true Christian community, we hold each other accountable; we are called to agitate each other toward being more loving and working more good deeds. We are called to encourage one another. But in no place does it say that we have to be so nice to each other that we don’t engage one another, especially when we are going astray. This doesn’t mean that we go spoiling for fights. But it does mean that we speak the truth in love when we see individuals disrupting the body of Christ that is the church and actively working against the hope of God’s faithfulness in which we have been called to live and to which we have been called to testify. In Yankel’s story about how he survived on the train car to Auschwitz, it was through Yankel’s work to agitate the old man, keeping him warm, that kept both men alive in the freezing box car. This work kindled the fire of Yankel’s faith, helping him hold on to hope, and it warmed both him and the old man, physically and spiritually. Who might you be called to warm, to agitate a bit this week, and in doing so warm and re-ignite your own hope? i. I had cited this passage in my sermon in 2012 on these propers. At that time, I was not able to identify the source, but it is not original to this sermon, nor was it original to me in 2012.

25th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 27B

25th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 27B November 11, 2018 At first glance, our gospel reading for today seems like a preacher’s dream come true. Here we find ourselves at week three of our annual giving campaign: Celebrate St. Thomas: Hope Grows Here; and what does the lectionary give me to preach on but the story of the poor widow who gives absolutely everything she had to support her church. But unfortunately for me, there are more layers to this story that complicate its application in our annual giving campaign season. Jesus is clearly condemning “the church” or the institution of the temple and those who benefit from the ways in which it is corrupt. The Hebrew Scriptures are pretty clear that God expects God’s people to take care of those who are vulnerable, to take care of the very widow who is dropping her last two coins into the treasury. So, it is hard to tell if Jesus is using the story to commend her faith or to condemn the very institution that she supports. This past week, I listened to the Jesuit podcast Pray As You Go for today’s gospel reading. And, as usual, the Jesuits had a more thoughtful twist on this gospel. Here is what they said. “In the unremarkable action of a nobody, a poor widow without even a name, Jesus sees a great mystery: the mystery of God. Take a moment now to look back over the last month or so, to call to mind some small, unspectacular act of self-giving which you may have seen without fully registering it… in your family life, at work, in the street, or something you heard about on the news.” “Now let that person be present to you in your memory. Look at their face. Hear their voice. Allow the reality they represent into your heart – to touch you deep down, to move you, perhaps to invite you…” “When we open our hearts to the best side of human nature, strong feelings are often stirred – maybe a desire to be generous ourselves, or maybe quite the opposite, feelings of fear or doubt about ourselves. Whatever has been stirred within you in the last few minutes, take it to God now, speaking as you would to a friend about what you feel, what you desire…”i There are two different ways to think about the action of the widow in the gospel reading. One way is to see her “small unspectacular act” as an act of sacrifice—of giving away something that she would surely miss. The other is to see her “small unspectacular act” as an offering of herself, a way of giving that helps her to live out her faith within the community. When we talk about stewardship, we are talking about the latter option. We are talking about examining our lives and asking in what ways can we give offerings of ourselves to God and each other in thanksgiving and in joy and in hope that God’s future will be brought to fulfillment in this place through our small unspectacular acts of self-giving. Do y’all remember the definition of stewardship that I have talked about off and on in my year and a half here? “Stewardship is all that I do with all that I have after I say ‘I believe.’” Stewardship is small, unremarkable acts of self-giving that well up from our faith and our hope, from our gratitude and our joy. So this week, I invite you to prayerfully consider what those small, unspectacular acts of self-giving will look like in your own faith life in connection with how you give money away. I invite you to consider moving deeper into faithfulness in your giving, which will look different for every different person or family. One concrete way to do this is to consider where your pledge or giving to your faith community fits into your budget. I once had a parishioner who told me his life and his faith were changed when we looked at his bank account during the annual giving campaign one year and he realized that he gave more to his two golf club memberships than he did to his faith community. And it doesn’t have to be golf—it could be eating out, going on vacations or weekends away. I invite you as an exercise in your faith to spend some time imagining what small, unspectacular act of self-giving might you make in your giving to God through the mission and ministry of St. Thomas in the coming year. For some it may mean being more intentional in how and when you give, either through a pledge or through some sort of regularity. For some it may mean examining how you spend money and asking yourself if that truly reflects your faith priorities. For some, it may mean encountering and offering to God strong feelings that this raises in us—both the desire to be more generous and the fear and doubt about how we will do that. As you engage prayerfully in what may be challenging work, may you rest in the awareness and the assurance that the mystery of God can be found in small, unspectacular acts of self-giving; and that God loves you; God has created you good; and God blesses you. Always. i. https://www.pray-as-you-go.org/home/ November 10/11, 2018

The Sunday after All Saints' Day--2018

The Sunday after All Saints’ Day November 4, 2018 Last month, when I came back from traveling to Mississippi for my grandmother’s funeral, I returned to Savannah with a treasure. While I was home, I found a number of old savings bonds that I had received as a teenager from my great-aunt, who we called Retsie. Retsie, whose given name was Margaret (where I got the Margaret in Melanie Margaret Dickson Lemburg and also Mary Margaret Lemburg) was my father’s mother’s sister. She was a retired school teacher who never married, and she was a close to me as a third grandmother. (When my middle brother Jonathan was born, I stayed with Retsie, who lived right across the street from us.) I spent many hours of my childhood with Retsie. She never did drive, so we would walk to the Krystal down from her house and visit the Woolworth’s. Retsie lived frugally, and she had a very structured routine into which she would fold me when I came to visit. But she would also take trips around the world with her girl friends, and she would bring me back souvenirs from distant lands. With her I learned about order and also about a different kind of feminine independence. In my teenage years, Retsie began giving me savings bonds for special occasions. I learned to set them aside, and then I forgot about them for 20 years. Just recently I heard that the Government is going to discontinue savings bonds, and I remember I had these. So I retrieved them, and I took them down to the bank to see if they were still valid. Well, it was quite an ordeal to get these bonds cashed, and as I stood there while the teller worked, I thought about Retsie, about how much I missed her, even though she’s been dead 16 years. I thought about all I had learned from her, and I realized I knew exactly how I was going to use the money from those bonds she gave me so long ago. I was going to use it to help fund my trip to the Holy Land early next year. Today we celebrate the Sunday after All Saints’ Day, one of the 7 major feasts in the church year when it is especially appropriate to have baptisms. Our readings for today name the ever-present reality of death, and the acknowledgement that when those who we love die then we are left to mourn. (I once planned a funeral with a son who was burying a parent who chose today’s gospel reading for the funeral because it was important for him that Jesus, too, mourned when those he loved had died). Grief is not unchristian, our prayer book reminds us. Rather it is a part of the way that we love in this life, and it is an acknowledgement that when we lose those we love we are forever changed. This past week, I read a meditation by the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr that was talking about divine love. And in that meditation Rohr writes, “all human loves are an increasingly demanding school preparing us for an infinite divine love.” He continues, “Today we recognize this school as the only real training ground for “All the Saints,” and it can never be limited to those who have fully graduated. As the entire New Testament does, we must apply the word “saints” to all of us who are in kindergarten, primary school, middle school, high school, college, and doing graduate studies. Love is one shared reality, and our common name for that one shared reality is “God.”i The New Testament talks about “saints” 20 times, and it’s not talking about stained-glass people living perfect lives of faithfulness that we could only dream about. Saints, in the New Testament, refer to “God-lovers.” One of our old, beloved hymns puts it, “they loved their Lord so dear, so dear, and his love made them strong.” Saints are those God-lovers, both in our own lives and in the life of the body of Christ who walk with us a ways in the school for divine love, who teach us about God through the way that they love God and the way that they love us. So, in the light of our human loves being a school for the divine love for each and every one of us, our baptismal vows give us the frame-work within which to learn, over and over again through the course of our entire lives. As we renew our baptismal vows today and maybe even spend some time with them in reflection over the coming week, we can ask ourselves the following questions. “How are we loving God and others in our lives?” “How can we love God and others even more?” “When do we fail to love God and others?”ii Now, after the sermon ends, I invite you to come forward and light a candle for the saint or the saints that you remember in your life today. Remember them for how they helped you learn to love God and to love others through their love for you; and as you light your candle from the Paschal candle, may you hold fast to the hope that death is not the end but a change, that we are all knit together in the communion of the saints, even now, and that we will all feast together again at God’s table, where we will dwell forever in the light of the undying, unending, unyielding love of God. i.Richard Rohr’s meditation for November 1, 2018: https://cac.org/self-giving-2018-11-01/ ii. These questions came from the article Learning to Love God and Love Others Well on All Saints Day by Emily Watkins on November 1, 2018 at http://www.growchristians.org/2018/11/01/learning-to-love-god-and-love-others-well-on-all-saints-day/

23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25B

23rd Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 25B October 28, 2018 I want to start with a quick Q&A today. What is the worst, most unhelpful thing someone has said to you when you were suffering? How about one of these… “I know just how you feel.” “It’s for the best.” “Keep a stiff upper lip.” “At least...” “You should or shouldn’t” “God doesn’t give you more than you can handle” “It’s God’s will.” “Suffering is good for you. It builds character.” (That’s what they used to say to us in seminary…) How many of you have had someone say one of these things to you? I won’t ask you how many of you have been the well-meaning friend who said one of these to someone else who was suffering, but I suspect none of us is immune from having done this either. In light of all this, the book of Job may have been written for us. Now, I know what you’re thinking because I’ve thought it too: “Ugh, Job! I hate that book! Why on earth would anyone want to preach on that?” Well, friends, I don’t really know the answer to that. All I know is that I (and the other two preachers who have been in this pulpit over the last three weeks) had managed to successfully avoid engaging the book of Job for the last month, but today that success has come to an end. So let’s talk about Job. We’ve heard four different passages from this book over the last four Sundays. It’s a book of the bible whose time setting is deliberately ambiguous beginning with the line: “There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job.” The beginning goes on to tell us that “Job was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” But of course, don’t you know, there has to be drama. At the heavenly convocation, the adversary engages in a bet with God saying: “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Have you not protected him and everything he has and have you not blessed all the work of his hands so that his possessions increased? “But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” And God takes the bet, and tells the adversary that Job is now in his power but he can do anything except to stretch out his hand against Job and harm him physically. So the adversary wreaks all kind of disaster on Job: his oxen and donkeys are stolen by the Sabeans; the fire of God falls from heaven upon all his sheep and burns them up; the Chaldeans make a raid and carry off all his camels; a great wind blows upon the house where all Job’s children are eating together and all of them are killed; and all of his servants (except three messengers) are killed in all these simultaneous disasters. Job responds by tearing his robe, shaving his head, falling on the ground and saying: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” So the adversary goes back to God and says that’s all fine and good, but I bet if you let me harm his body, he will still curse you to your face, and God says, ok, give it a try. So the adversary inflicts loathsome sores all over Job, from his head to his foot. Job’s wife encourages him to curse God and die, but Job responds to her: “You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” (And that’s just the first two chapters of the book!) The next 29 chapters of the book consist of round after round of debate and rants between Job and his “friends.” They are debating the notion that is prominent in scripture of retributive justice: “that God so orders the world that everyone receives reward or punishment commensurate with his or her behavior, thus maintaining a morally coherent environment that encourages ethical responsibility.”i In other words: good things will happen to good people and bad things will happen to bad people. In our world view, we refer to this as “karma.” Finally, after Job has questioned and ranted about God’s justice and demanded an audience with God, God shows up in a whirlwind and instead has some questions for Job: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?” This goes on for a while, and then Job, having received the audience requested from God answers God meekly with our reading from today: he tells God that he had heard of God but now he has encountered God directly, and he seems to be transformed by this encounter. God tells Job he needs to pray for his awful friends, and after he does, God restores everything to Job in even greater abundance, including giving him 10 more children. I don’t know about y’all, but part of the reason that I have always struggled with Job is because this happy ending rings hollow for me. And maybe that is the point. When we experience great suffering, it changes us, and no matter how hard we might try, we can’t just wish our way back to the way we were before. The lesson that this difficult book has taught me in the wrestling with it this week is that when we try to explain or even understand suffering in our world and God’s part in it, we fail. God is good and the mystery of God’s fullness as well as the way that our actions (both good and bad) affect us and each other will always be unfathomable to us in this life. Sometimes things happen and there is just no explanation, just no reason. But Job and Jesus show us that God does not abandon us, even when it feels like it, even when we are at our lowest. God is present and suffers with those who suffer. The Facebook “On This Day” feature revealed to me a post I shared three years ago titled When the Going Gets Tough… by Katrina Kenison. It gets to the very heart of what we are called to when the going gets tough, either when we are suffering or when we are called to sit with someone else who is suffering. Rather than offering one of those easy, empty sayings that none of us appreciate hearing, here is a different way: “When the going gets tough may I resist my first impulse to wade in, fix, explain, resolve, and restore. May I sit down instead. When the going gets tough may I be quiet. May I steep for a while in stillness. When the going gets tough may I have faith that things are unfolding as they are meant to. May I remember that my life is what it is, not what I ask for. May I find the strength to bear it, the grace to accept it, the faith to embrace it. When the going gets tough may I practice with what I’m given, rather than wish for something else. When the going gets tough may I assume nothing. May I not take it personally. May I opt for trust over doubt, compassion over suspicion, vulnerability over vengeance. When the going gets tough may I open my heart before I open my mouth. When the going gets tough may I be the first to apologize. May I leave it at that. May I bend with all my being toward forgiveness. When the going gets tough may I look for a door to step through rather than a wall to hide behind. When the going gets tough may I turn my gaze up to the sky above my head, rather than down to the mess at my feet. May I count my blessings. When the going gets tough may I pause, reach out a hand, and make the way easier for someone else. When the going gets tough may I remember that I’m not alone. May I be kind. When the going gets tough may I choose love over fear. Every time.”ii When the going gets tough, may God be with you, and may you know the strength of God’s presence. Amen. Throntveit, Mark. Exegetical Perspective for Proper 24 from Feasting on the Word Year B Vol 4: WJK, 2009, p. 175 https://onbeing.org/blog/when-the-going-gets-tough/

Rebecca and Jason's Wedding Homily

Rebecca and Jason’s wedding October 13, 2018 I was struck by a common theme weaving through the readings that Rebecca and Jason have chosen for this holy day. It’s the theme of blessing. In the reading for Tobit, Tobit and Sarah pray together to bless God and then to ask God’s blessing to be upon their union. The Ephesians reading offers God’s blessing to its reader/listener. And of course the Beatitudes are the quintessential passage of blessing in the gospels. This common theme shouldn’t be surprising, perhaps, because, after all, isn’t that what we are gathering together to do today? (It even says it on the front of the bulletin. It is the “celebration and blessing of a marriage.” But there is something surprising about all of this. That is the unexpected nature of the blessings that these scriptures talk about. Tobit talks about the blessing in marriage of finding a helper. He also asks God that they “may find mercy and grow old together.” The unexpected blessings in Ephesians are that the readers/listeners may be “rooted and grounded in love” and that they may be “filled with the fullness of God.” And then the gospel reading is all about unexpected blessings—how those whom the world would scorn for their suffering or their littleness are actually the ones who will be blessed by God. Jesus teaches that God’s unexpected blessings will be found in times of mourning, persecution, and peacemaking. Today, Rebecca and Jason, you will make your vows to one another before your gathered community of faith and your family and friends. And you will kneel before God to receive God’s blessing upon you both and upon your marriage. We will ask that God will pour out the abundance of God’s blessing upon y’all—defending you from every enemy, leading you into all peace. We will ask that your love for each other may be a seal upon your hearts, a mantle about your shoulders, and a crown upon your foreheads. We will ask God to bless you in your work and companionship; in your waking and sleeping; in your joys and your sorrows; in your life together and in your deaths because your marriage will encompass all of those things and more. But the thing that I want you to remember today, and especially in all the days to come, is that I invite you every day to look for the unexpected blessings that marriage brings you. Look for the ways that the other is a helper to you and for the ways that you can be a helper to the other. Pay attention to the ways that you both find mercy together. Seek out the blessing of your love in times when each of you individually and both of you together mourn. And listen for the ways that God blesses you in your peacemaking-out in the world and in your life together. What a joy it is for us to share this day with you. In the days and years to come, may you find God’s mercy and much joy and may you grow old together. Amen. Amen.

20th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 22B

20th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 22B October 7, 2018 “Sometimes the issue isn’t the issue.”i I was reminded of the truth of these words this past week, as I gathered with colleagues from around the diocese to learn about conflict management. In fact, I would go so far as to say that most of the time, in conflict situations, the issue isn’t really the issue. Those of you who are familiar with organizational development theory will remember the diagram of the iceberg. And those of you who know the story of the Titanic will remember that it wasn’t the part of the iceberg that they saw above the water that did the damage to the Titanic. What they saw wasn’t the issue. It was what was under the water that sunk the Titanic. The Lutheran pastor David Lose starts his blog post this week with that line: “Sometimes the issue isn’t the issue.” And he’s talking about the gospel passage for this Sunday. Our gospel for today is one passage in a series of passages where Jesus has been specifically teaching his disciples about discipleship. Then, Mark tells us that the Pharisees come to where Jesus is teaching in public and they seek to test him by asking him about divorce. Jesus answers them with a question, and then responds that the law was written “because of [their] hardness of heart.” When they are alone, Jesus’s disciples question him further about what he has said, and he elaborates further. And then we see him become indignant with his disciples when they try to keep people from bringing children to Jesus for his blessing. Now there is much that has been written about Jesus’s stance on divorce in this passage. It is certainly difficult to hear in our modern context, where I doubt there is anyone here in this church who has been untouched by divorce in some form or fashion. And I will remind you that in Jesus’s time, women and children were property, and the Jewish law said that a man could divorce a woman “if she does not please him because he finds something objectionable about her…” (Deuteronomy 24:1-4) And in Palestine, women were not even allowed to sue for divorce at all. (If you struggle with this scripture, and want to talk to me more about it, then I hope you will call me.) But I want us to remember that “sometimes the issue isn’t really the issue.” The issue here isn’t really about divorce. Sure, that’s what the Pharisees bring up to try to trap Jesus. But the issue here, Jesus is saying, is really hardness of heart. The Pharisees have it. The disciples have it. We have it. And we can see the opposite of hardness of heart in the open-heartedness of the children and the people who bring them to Jesus for his blessing. It is our hardness of heart that leads to our sin and our broken relationships with each other. It is for our hardness of heart-to protect us from ourselves-that God gave us the law. And it is for our hardness of heart that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead, transforming all of creation and us through the power of God’s love. We are saved, over and over again, from our hardness of heart through the grace of God in the Holy Spirit working in and among us, in our lives, in our world. This past week, one of my colleagues and I were talking about how we had seen God this past week in our conflict management training. He observed that we were all asked to bring a conflict to talk about, so we all came with these conflicts, some of which were clearly very painful situations for the individuals involved and the churches. We learned some tools to use to assess them, and we prayed about them together, and we talked about them together, and we created action plans. Then we laid our conflicts and our action plans on the altar at the closing Eucharist where they were --all of them--blessed. Where we came with these messes that we were feeling frustrated about, and probably a fair amount of hardness of heart, we left finding both ourselves and the situations transformed by the Holy Spirit’s gift of new ways of seeing and a good dose of hope. Sometimes the issue isn’t really the issue. If you find yourself in conflict with someone else, I invite you to take a step back and to consider if there might be more to the matter than first meets the eye. Then, I invite you to remember that the only person you can control is yourself. I invite you to ask the Holy Spirit to remove from you your hardness of heart and to help you be more open-hearted. And then pray for the person with whom you are in conflict, or pray for the one you consider to be your enemy. Ask God for that person to receive all the good things that you would want for yourself. God wants us to be in relationship with God and with each other; God’s grace can and will transform us if we will have it. i. http://www.davidlose.net/2018/10/pentecost-20-b-the-issue/

18th Sunday after Pentecost-Proper 20B

18th Sunday after Pentecost- Proper 20B September 23, 2018 What does it mean to be the greatest? This question resonates across the centuries from the disciples’ quarreling to our own day. From a pop song called The Greatest (which I threatened some of our youth that I would rap in the sermon today), to the popular movie The Greatest Showman to the political slogan “Make America Great Again,” our culture seems to be obsessed with greatness. So, this gospel reading for today is really difficult for us because we know, deep down in our hearts, that just like the disciples, we don’t really get it either. Jesus has, for the second out of three times in Mark, taken himself and his disciples away from the crowds, so that he can tell them about his impending death and try to help prepare them for when he’s gone. But they just can’t get it. We see they are so confused and afraid that they cannot even formulate questions for him about what he is trying to teach him. They try to fill that void of confusion and fear by arguing over who is greatest. Instead of the self-sacrifice and service and courage that Jesus is trying to teach them about, they become fearful, close-minded, and self-absorbed. So Jesus sits down with them (which is the posture that Rabbis would take when teaching), and he tells them: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” And then he brings in a child, the lowest of the low in that society, and tells them this is what they must be: vulnerable, powerless, and dependent. Jesus is telling his disciples and us that as his followers, we must look out for the nobodies; we must be the nobodies. This is the counter-cultural definition, both then and now, of true greatness. It’s interesting because I think that a desire for greatness is often a reaction to our being in a position of vulnerability, of insecurity, of suffering. (All the examples from above came out of this place—the song The Greatest comes out of failure in love; the movie The Greatest Showman comes out of childhood poverty and insecurity; MAGA…a desire for employment, stability, and working together to meet the American dream…) It seems to be our default as humans to seek to be the greatest, especially when we are feeling vulnerable. Last week, I read an older blog post by the Quaker teacher and writer Parker Palmer titled Heartbreak, Violence, and Hope for New Life. Palmer starts his blog post by sharing the following Hasidic story: “A disciple asks the rabbi: “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon your hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?” The rabbi answers: “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.” Palmer goes on to talk about how violence is what happens when we do not allow ourselves to feel suffering. When we try to avoid pain, we fall into practices that do violence to ourselves and to each other. Palmer writes, “Sometimes we try to numb the pain of suffering in ways that dishonor our souls. We turn to noise and frenzy, nonstop work, or substance abuse as anesthetics that only deepen our suffering. Sometimes we visit violence upon others, as if causing them pain would mitigate our own. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and contempt for the poor are among the cruel outcomes of this demented strategy.”i We see this happening in the gospel reading for today. The disciples are anxious and confused and upset as Jesus is trying to tell them about his impending death. And rather than dealing with their own pain, they turn to arguing about which one of them is the greatest. And we do the same thing, don’t we? But it isn’t as easy to identify in our own lives, in our church, in our greater common life, even in our country. A few years ago, I had an encounter that helped me identify some of these issues in my own life. It’s an important reminder for me today. I was driving home from Wednesday night programming one evening with the kids when I discovered that my van’s gas tank was completely empty. Since I had already passed the gas station, I dropped the kids off at home and went back out for gas. This was around 7:30 at the end of a long day. When I got to the gas station, all the pumps had people at them, and there were more people waiting. I got more and more frustrated as I watched people maneuver and cut in front of others to get to the open pumps, and so finally, I went to one of the pumps on the back of the lot and pulled up behind a woman to wait until she was done. As I waited with my window rolled down to enjoy the beautiful night, I watched this woman be completely engrossed in her cell phone as she pumped her gas. The truck in front of her left, and she was still pumping, but I couldn’t get around her car to get to the open pump. So I waited. Finally, the woman’s gas was finished, and she slowly close up her gas tank, never taking her eyes off her phone screen. I waited a couple of more minutes as she stood there looking at her phone, and she realized that she had to push the button if she wanted a receipt. (“Please, don’t want a receipt,” I said to myself, but alas it was not to be.) She continued to be consumed with what was on her phone as her receipt printed, and she slowly pulled it and made her way into her car, maneuvering herself into the driver’s seat while not taking her eyes off her phone. (At last, I thought, I will get my gas and get home to eat supper and put my children to bed! I put my car into drive with eager anticipation.) But it was still not to be. The woman turned on her car, and sat there looking at her phone. At this point, my curiosity about this woman and her obsession with her phone had turned into acute irritation. But what to do? I didn’t want to be rude (because I had just talked at church that night about how I try not to drive like a jerk because I have a church sticker on my van), but this woman had been obliviously blocking two pumps for a while now, and I didn’t want to wait any longer. So I hung my head out my open window and yelled nicely, “Would you please pull your car forward?” I got nothing except curious and startled glances from the people at the other pumps. (Who is this crazy woman in the van trying to talk to other people at the gas pump?!) So finally, I just couldn’t stand it any longer, and I did it. I honked my horn. And what do you think happened? The woman jumped-startled when I honked, and then she put her phone down so that she could have both hands free to make rude gestures at me in her rear view mirror. Then, FINALLY, she drove off. Well, I was livid! How dare she make rude gestures at me when she had been so self-absorbed that she had been blocking not just one but two pumps while a bunch of other people waited?! I pulled down the row to the first open pump where the gas attendant was walking over to empty the trash can. I said to her, full of my righteous anger, “did you see that woman blocking two pumps while she was on her phone?!” and the gas attendant said to me tiredly with her bag full of trash, “Honey, they all be like that. Every day.” As I stood there in my collar and pumped my gas, I thought about the gas attendant, what she said, what her life must be like having to deal with that level of self-absorption day in and day out. And I realized that, even though she didn’t mean it this way, when she said “They all be like that. Every day.” Her “they” also meant me. And I knew, in that woman I had encountered someone that Jesus meant when he said we are called to see the nobodies and to care for them, and I was simultaneously chastened and hopeful that I could be better, could do better. I had been so full of my own self-importance that I hadn’t even really seen this gas attendant who had to deal with people puffed up on our own greatness, people like me and the cell-phone obsessed woman day in and day out.ii How are you called to see the nobodies in your life and world? How are you called to care for them? How are we, as followers of Jesus, called to be nobodies in a culture obsessed with greatness? i. Palmer, Parker. Heartbreak, Violence, and Hope for New Life. April 15, 2015 https://onbeing.org/blog/heartbreak-violence-and-hope-for-new-life/ ii. This story was first used in my Proper 20B 2015 sermon.