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HOMILY: "Keeping the Sabbath"

Sunday, September 28, 2025
Isaiah 56 (The 4th Sunday in Creationtide)

1.

Now see if this sounds vaguely familiar. Or even a tad contemporary.

In the fragile community this prophet loves, in an environment of political extremism he abhors, in a cultural ecosystem where finger-wagging passes for spiritual insight and wisdom; there are moralists out and about who would blame every social ill on immigrants in the streets, or so-called sexual ‘deviants’ among them. (That would be their phrase, not mine.) Even in the name of religion, in the name of God, they invoke a thousand curses on bleeding hearts and open doors.

And the prophet hears all of this, around town, and in the temple precincts, around the edges of religious life, ripping through civic debate. Spreading like a plague. And it just breaks his heart. The immigrants are doing this to us. The foreigners have corrupted our way of life. The eunuchs pervert our purity and our faith.

Olive Harvest, Palestine

And their proposal, then, is to round up and deport the immigrants; and then to humiliate and permanently exclude the eunuchs from community life. As if all that, somehow all that, will Make Israel Great Again. Then and now, nationalism drives two sinister and related temptations: purity on the one hand (as if there is such a thing) and grievance on the other.

And by the way, let’s not be fooled. This reference to ‘eunuchs’ in Isaiah 56 is a stand-in for any gender identity or sexual orientation that doesn’t conform to the moralizing fundamentalism (or political opportunism) of the day. This prophet is fully aware that there are priests, pastors and pundits insisting that God would banish foreigners, immigrants, so-called ‘illegals’ from the community of faith, once and for all. And he’s equally aware that those same priests, pastors and pundits would permanently exclude queer folk from economies of care, networks of support, the body politic itself.

But this prophet—the third voice in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah—he’s onto them. And he stands in Israel’s tradition of radical freedom and human liberation and Godly interdependence. A covenantal commitment to shared prosperity in a land of plenty. An ethic of hospitality. The moralizers may be peddling deportation and humiliation as social policy, but he’ll have none if it!

“Thus says the Lord.” The four words that signal the most urgent messages, the most pressing poetry in the Hebrew prophetic tradition. “Thus says the Lord.” To the eunuchs who keep my sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give a monument better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off… This is one of these most radical, and one of these most beautiful, and (let’s be honest) one of the most often ignored biblical imperatives in all of scripture. What matters to God isn’t a particular sexual orientation or a particular gender identity—because there are many, and they’re all godly; what matters to God is keeping the sabbath, holding fast to the covenant of compassion, choosing the things that honor God and honor life. Queer, straight, nonbinary, transgender, nonconforming in gender, any gender at all: the point is keeping the sabbath, loving God and treating one another right.

And the immigrants who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to the Holy One, to love the name of the Lord, all who keep my sabbath, and hold fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer… “Thus says the Lord.” Not only are immigrants welcome in God’s beloved community, not only included: immigrants are essential to God’s vision of a holy mountain, an economy of grace, a joyful house of prayer.

But I don’t have to tell you all that. There is no beloved community with immigrants and eunuchs. There is no beloved community without an open and affirming spirit.

2.

And here’s the thing. The key instruction here is this defining injunction, this defining biblical commandment to keep the sabbath. To keep God’s sabbath. It sounds old, antique even, and maybe even woefully impractical in our 21st century environment. But ask your observant Jewish friends. It is central, critical, indispensable to the Godly practice of God’s people. Always has been and always will be. And here’s why.

Because all creation is conceived in grace, designed for abundance and offered in love, six gorgeous days of divine creativity, God rests on the seventh day and invites human communities to do the same. Because all is provided in those first six days, because the gift is complete, we rest on the seventh day to acknowledge God’s grace and revel in God’s promise. On the seventh day, we resist all craving and temptation and every human impulse to accumulate more than we need. The sabbath is Israel’s fundamental calling, Israel’s mandate, Israel’s vision of a kin-dom where human communities live sustainably, equitably and joyfully in ecosystems of divine blessing and abundance.

(And, yes, I know that the old Genesis story is a myth; but it’s a myth with a purpose. And we dismiss that purpose, I believe, at our own peril.) As God is satisfied with creation, and delighted in it; as God calls us simply to tend it, bless it, share it; so shall we keep the sabbath in remembrance of all that’s provided in grace. So shall we practice gratitude and restraint. As with Israel, so with the church. The heart and soul of biblical faith, you see, is the fertility of creation, the abundance of it all, and our grateful response. Which is economic justice. Which is generous sharing. Which is mutual aid. Which is the calling, the vocation of every beloved community.

Keeping the sabbath, you see, is not just a quaint way to rest a little so that we can gear up for another frenzied work week. In fact, it is exactly not that. Keeping the sabbath is instead about radical trust, grateful faith and a life deeply planted in the rhythms of creation and provisions of God. In a creation abundant and resplendent and designed for tending and sharing. “All will be well,” said the medieval mystic Julian of Norwich, “and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Keeping the sabbath is a practice of economic restraint, disciplined by valleys and watersheds that provide more than we need, but require our care and devotion; it’s a practice of endless gratitude for the Creator whose loving hand is always reaching for ours in stewardship and partnership. “All will be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Keeping the sabbath—and not some sort of twisted purity code—is the essential practice of biblical faith and ethics.

FROM AN ISRAELI PROPHET: "A Call to Tranformation"

 

LINK HERE

HOMILY: "First Love First"

Sunday, September 21, 2025
Community Church of Durham
I John 4

1.

“We love because God / has first loved us.” Eight words. “We love because God / has first loved us.” What the writer of this letter is saying, perhaps, is that all our loving, all of it, is an expression of that first love that brings all of us, and all creation, into being. “We love because God / has first loved us.” Loving is your birthright, your vocation and your heart’s desire. Yours, mine, ours! Which isn’t to say we all love in the same ways, or according to the same scripts. Of course not. So many differences among us, so much diversity in the human experience. But so it must be with God: as unpredictable as we are, and radically free to love in a bazillion different ways. And so it is. “We love because God / has first loved us.” So make no mistake: Loving is your birthright, my friend, and your vocation and your heart’s desire.

So when you tend to the bees in your beehives at home all summer long, tenderly hoping that your tending is part of God’s mending: that’s the first love birthing your love and making the whole world new. And when you sit with a friend watching a bright yellow sun turn orange and red as it sets over the hills in the west, your heart afire with gratitude: that’s the first love birthing your love and making the whole world new.

And when you commit to a shift that keeps another friend safe in a season of intimidation and cruelty, when you put your body in a place between him and harm: that’s the first love birthing your love and making the whole world new. Loving is your birthright!

And what this means, of course, is that we don’t have to think our way to God. And we don’t have to rationalize God’s existence, according to other intellectual traditions or theories. And we most certainly don’t have to wait for some headstrong evangelist to explain God to us, or even threaten us into belief and salvation. We simply and only yield to the most human instinct of them all, the most human that is also the most divine: we love, and we love, and we love. In the fields out back and your beehives. On a bench with a beloved and that sunset. In a quiet hall, keeping watch for a friend. (And you know the friend that I’m talking about.) All of that loving—because God has first loved us, because God has first loved everything, because God has first loved the world. And we’re a part of it all. Loving. Our birthright. Our vocation. Our heart’s desire.

And the writer of this letter goes on, as you’ve heard, and puts a fairly fine point on all of this. So that his friends in beloved community are clear around their own vocation, their ministry, in the here and now: “If someone claims, ‘I love God,’ but hates a brother or sister, then they’re a liar,” he says. “Anyone who does not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot possibly love God, whom they have never seen.” Again, the heart, the soul of Christian vocation. And then just to be sure those first Christians don’t miss his point: “Jesus gave us a clear command, that all who love God must also love their brothers and sisters.”

2.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned here a lively conversation I’d had on campus with two graduate students, Christian graduate students, who worried about the rainbow flag out front, the message it sent, and the kind of Christianity that distorts what they claim to be the urgent truth of biblical faith. Well, two of the three returned last week, visiting me here in the office, and (in the end) sadly announcing to my face that I was a “false teacher” of a misguided gospel. To be honest, I wonder if they came up with that on their own; or if some preacher somewhere put them up to it. But there they were.

Now while I had to admire the chutzpah of a 23 year old who would presume to sit down with a 63 year old pastor and say such a thing, I have to confess the whole thing also breaks my heart. That there are churches out there, and presumably preachers out there, directing their 23 year olds to scour the streets looking for “false teachers;” that there are Christians out there with such a sad and narrow definition of “loving” that it leaves little room for anything other than their own bland and tired and (frankly) misogynist versions of the same; and that these same believers have reduced the bible to its most outdated and damaging verses, without grasping the radically liberating texts in the same book that argue against such judgment and cruelty. Texts like this First Letter of John. Which doesn’t threaten or constrain or limit our loving—but dignifies it, celebrates it, even consecrates it.

Because—and this right here in this morning’s reading—“God is love.” “God is love. And anyone who lives faithfully in love also lives faithfully in God, and God lives in them.” I mean this is the point of it all, am I right? This is our vocation, am I right? Loving as mutual recognition and joyful trust. Loving as prayerful discernment and courageous service. Loving as relationships that shine with respect and commitment and kindness. “Anyone who lives in love also lives faithfully in God, and God lives in them.” And then these words, among the most important and emancipating words in all of scripture: “Love will never invoke fear.” Again. “Love will never invoke fear.” Because “perfect love expels fear, particularly the fear of punishment. And the one who fears punishment has not been completed through love.”

When my fundamentalist friends insist that God’s wrath is upon those who do not conform to their reading of scripture, they have perverted both the essence of God’s presence in the world—as if God’s wrath is the motivating force at the heart of the universe itself; and they have missed the entire point of Jesus’ ministry in the fields of Galilee and the streets of Palestine. Jesus emerges within his own little beloved community in Nazareth not to proclaim God’s wrath, and certainly not to threaten and bully his way to a dynamic new kingdom of justice and peace; Jesus steps out, comes out in fact, to release all of us (and that’s A-L-L, all of us) from fear and punishment and the very threat of punishment. God’s wrath is exactly the thing Jesus comes to abolish once and for all: no more violence, no more punishment, no more fear. Because, he says over and over and over again, “love will never invoke fear.” And “perfect love expels fear.” Once and for all.

I mean, I get it. Getting back to my two young friends in the office. I understand that fundamentalists are all vexed about our rainbow flag, and the loving spirit of our expanding ministry with queer kids, and the spirited weddings we do in this place for all kinds of couples. I get it.

(By the way, I officiated at a wedding in this very space several years ago, in which two women celebrated their vows; and I have not—in 36 years of ministry—celebrated a more joyous, more Christ-like, or more loving marriage; nor a wedding with deeper spiritual values and wisdom; nor a community of such grace, enthusiasm and resilient hope in one another. Some of you were here that day. I imagine it still shines in your soul. As it does in mine. God is love. God is love. God is love.)

So let’s be clear. As this wonderful letter is clear. Jesus comes with a message of love and grace: and that good news diagnoses our fearfulness and then liberates us with a love so big, so sweet, so creative and so “perfect,” that it frees us from those devastating, soul-crushing fears once and for all. “We love because God / has first loved us.” Not because we’re afraid of going to hell. Not because God’s wrath is waiting out there, somewhere, for the unconverted. “We love because God / has first loved us.”

HOMILY: "The Pelicans of God"

Sunday, September 14, 2025

Genesis 1, according to "The Voice"

1.

If “the heavens are telling the glory of God” as the psalmist says, then it often seems to me, on the cliffs of the California coast at least, that pelicans are God’s holy handwriting.  God’s holy handwriting.  The way they soar across the bay in what seems like effortless perfection; the way they skim the tips of waves in perfect formation.  So often, on that particular coastline, I have to stop and wonder: How can it be that God blesses us, over and over and over again, with these particular companions, these soaring siblings—whose every lift and every dip, whose every journey reveals the glory of God?  Right there in front of me?  It’s beyond miraculous.  And it activates something ancient, something big within me.  How can it be that a creation so diverse, a creation so precious, is gifted to us to love, and to bless, and to care for in faith?

And on sabbatical in August, I took just a little extra time to watch those pelicans in California, to stop and observe their flight, to cherish their ways and wonders.  What a gift, and maybe even responsibility, it is—to watch, observe and cherish!  This, perhaps, is the great invitation of Creationtide: our vocation, our practice, even.  These three verbs.  To watch, observe and cherish in creation!  Notice: not to speculate, purchase and own—but to watch, observe and cherish!

And what I think I observed out there, on the rim of the Pacific, on the shimmering surface of Monterey Bay, is a kind of sweet and holy intimacy.  Not just a flock of 20 great birds winging across the bay, but a community (maybe even a communion) of pelicans in deep and persevering relationship with one another, in deep and dependent relationship with the thermals and gusts and the air itself, in deep and playful relationship with the ocean as well.  I noticed at times that these flocks of pelicans, great wings outstretched, flying in V-formation, were skimming the surface of the bay so closely, so intimately, that I could imagine love as their motivation, love as their flight plan, love as their purpose.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I understand that they’re looking for dinner, foraging for fish.  And that’s cool, right?  But it’s all so, so intimate—birds at sea, fish below, wind gusts above, a communion of pelicans relying on instinct and ancient history and (yes) one another to live and thrive and declare the glory of God.  So, yeah, I imagine love as their flight plan!  Intimacy and communion and love.

2.

And this morning, deep into this Season of Creationtide, I wonder if this isn’t the very intention of the first Genesis story, the ancient poetry of the Hebrews?  Isn’t the poet most interested in wonder, and awe, and respect?  And isn’t the purpose of this poetry to cultivate in our human community a dynamic and intimate practice of creation-care and creation-delight and (yes) holy communion?  

What I hear in this morning’s translation—the version Gretchen and Mattea have read—is hardly a scientific treatise or a play-by-play explanation of how it all happened.  What I hear is a celebration of divine creativity, a glad and grateful “AMEN” to the community of creation God speaks into being—waters down below to receive waters from above; seed-bearing plants, fruit-bearing trees and a vast variety of living creatures to roam together and soar together and care together; lights to mark days and nights, seasons and years, patterns of life for whole communities.  Intimacy and communion!

You see, we are not birthed into this earth-bound family of beings to simply or passively waste time on rage or bet on football games like it matters.  We are not conceived in divine love and sacred sweat simply or passively to shop online or amass a great fortune in the stock market.  We are born for communion: intimacy and communion.  And together, we are gathered as the church to nurture among us creation-care and creation-delight.  To watch, observe and cherish in creation!  Broken as we humans can be, sadly addicted to violence and consumption—that’s not all we are.  We are also gathered up of the holy dust, the good earth.  We are also delightfully complex and wired for wonder and praise.  So praise be to the Breath of Life, the Ruah of All Beginnings, the Evolving Genius of God, the One Abiding in Many; praise be to the God who continues to imagine all of this: the pelicans dipping wings in the sea’s surface as they whip across the sea, the schools of tasty fish shimmying through tidal streams below; and the glorious (if befuddling) human community ashore.  For all this, says the poet, you and I are always open, always open to the fresh winds of repair, repentance and renewal that find us and name us and call us to partnership and praise.  To be human is not to lord it over creation, and certainly not to dominate and destroy creation.  To be human is to love creation with all our being, even as God loves.  Even as God loves.  For we are made in the image of God.

“It happened,” says the poet.  “It happened just as God said.  God made earth-creatures in a vast variety of species: wild animals, domesticated animals of all sizes, and small creeping creatures, each able to reproduce its own kind.  And God saw that Her new creation was beautiful and good.  Beautiful and good.  Beautiful and good.”

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HOMILY: "On Destabilizing the Church"

Sunday, September 7, 2025

Matthew 25:31-46

1.

There’s an assumption we’ve been living with—in mainline denominations at least—that good religion is stable religion; that true Christianity is balanced and balancing; that stability and balance are the desired outcomes of a steady Christian life.  Christianity is an avenue to respectability.

But returning to Jesus’ parable of the peoples this morning, I’m moved to suggest that his core commitment, his “plumbline” commitment to feeding the hungry sister, and welcoming the immigrant brother, and clothing the naked neighbor—that Jesus is so much less interested in stability and balance than he is in shelter and communion and compassion.  Stability and balance are critical if you’re up high on a ropes course, of if you’re working three dishes in the kitchen before a big crowd comes.  Don’t want to drop anything.  But not so much for Jesus.  To be honest, it’s more likely the case that the Way of Jesus, the Path of Jesus, the Practice he offers us, will more often than not shake us loose from steady habits and de-stabilize the church.  For gospel ministry.  “You shall know the truth,” wrote Flannery O’Connor years ago, “and the truth shall set you free.  But first, it’ll make you flinch.”  It’ll make you flinch.

And maybe, maybe, what the world needs most, what this fragile nation needs most is an unstable church, or maybe better yet, a de-stabilizing church!  “I was starving and you gave me food to eat.  I was thirsty and you gave me a drink.  I was a refugee and you welcomed me.  I was naked and cold and you gave me clothes to wear.  I was locked away in detention and you visited me, you emboldened me, you showed me love.”  To stand in this tradition and take these words to heart is to be shaken by the unsettling intimacy of God’s love: for every human being, for every vulnerable one of us; and for the poor, for the crushed, for the wandering stranger most of all.  And that love, my friends, is going to rock our worlds, and shake our hearts, and de-stabilize the church over and over and over again.

But you know this.

2.

It’s early June.  And I’m sitting at lunch with my dear friends and beloved Palestinian colleagues at the Wi’am Center in Bethlehem, in the West Bank.  And that staff of eight, they do lunch right; every day they prioritize that hour as relational time, as conversational time, even as communion time.  Noone rushes through it.  Rarely does any one of them miss it.  It is sacred and dear to them.  As important as anything else they do.

On occasion one will spend all morning in the kitchen, at the stove, cooking up some traditional Palestinian soup.  Other days, one will dash out for shawarma and hummus and local olives and fresh baked pita.  And then they’ll sit together at a couple of long tables, they’ll eat and talk, and laugh and sometimes one will weep.  And it happens that way every single day.  

It struck me after a couple of weeks that this is one of the ways these dear advocates, teachers, social workers survive apartheid, occupation, daily violence and now (just an hour away) genocide.  Eating together. Risking intimacy together.  Breaking bread for one another.  

On this particular June day, I’m asked about all of you, about the church I’ve left behind for a few months to visit Bethlehem and work by their side.  What makes my home church tick?  And as so often happens, I find myself talking about Antony, and our Immigration Ministry, and the many, many, many of you who step up to advocate for Antony’s freedom; to create a sense of shelter and safety for him in a scary time; to love him and pray for him; and to build an even larger network of compassion and resistance around the seacoast and across the state.  I talk about how Matthew 25 comes alive in this place, through you and your ministries.

And over warm pita and olives that tasted of the Palestinian soil, I weep a little myself as I tell them about you, about your extraordinary (and de-stabilizing) commitment to Antony; and my tears fall freely when Antony’s face flashes in my mind.  You know…that face!  There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him.  There’s nothing you wouldn’t do for him.  And that, my friends, that’s the gospel that rocks our worlds, shakes us down to the bone, and destabilizes the calloused world around us.  Fills you and me with a love that surpasses reason.  And liberates us from anxiety and despair for service, for solidarity, and for faith.  Love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  And that kind of love shakes us down.  To the core.  To what matters most.  

And of course, I know that over the summer it has asked even more of all of you, even more of your hearts, even more of your time, even more of your steadfastness.  And you have risen to the moment.  For Antony.  For faith.  For one another.  And for life.

3.

Well, that June day in Bethlehem, I’m overwhelmed by all of this as I look across the table and see a gentle soul, a gardener there at the center, with tears running down his own Palestinian cheeks.  Big tears.  And he’s feverishly wiping them away.  And when he looks up at last, makes eye contact with me, he waves his hand around the room, at his colleagues there, and he says: “That’s what they do for me.”  He doesn’t know a lot of English: so he says just this and then says it again.  “That’s what they do for me.”

It turns out that Nasser—that’s the gardener’s name—Nasser fled Gaza just a few years ago, slipping out of the besieged Strip just before the conflagration of 2023, and seeking protection, companionship, wherever he could find it.  Separated for years now from his brother, his wife and his children.  Watching from afar as Gaza is razed to the ground and his people starved.  And Nasser was taken in, welcomed, sheltered, kept safe by the eight colleagues right there at the table, noshing on pita and shawarma and watching him cry.  “That’s what they do for me.”  He has no idea when he’ll see his kids again, his wife.  In mid-July, Israel bombed the church in Gaza City where his brother was sleeping, and his brother was killed, assassinated, by unimaginably sophisticated weapons designed to traumatize and demoralize a whole people.  The staff at Wi’am held him close, all summer long, physically, spiritually; they grieved with him.  And they gathered friends for a memorial service in his brother’s memory.  “That’s what they do for me.”

Zoughbi Zoughbi and Nasser at Wi'am in Bethlehem
 

Every night now, before he goes to sleep, Nasser sends me a message—usually on his What’s App account—with some kind of prayer, some kind of blessing, some word of encouragement.  And I can’t explain what this means to me—so tender is his care for me, for some reason I can hardly comprehend.  The way that time zones work, it means I wake up most mornings to that message, to his blessing, to Nasser’s prayer.  It’s the way my days begin now.  A band of prayer connecting us in faith—over thousands and thousands of miles.

But maybe I do have an idea.  Maybe what draws Nasser to me, and that wonderful community in Bethlehem to ours in Durham, is the faith we share in Jesus and our practice of solidarity and de-stabilizing hospitality.  Like that community in Bethlehem, we see Christ’s face in the one who comes to us seeking love and shelter.  Like that community, we risk stability and balance in order to embody in this place and moment compassion and mercy.  Like Nasser’s hosts at Wi’am, we believe that faith is not a possession to be guarded, but a gift to be shared, a feast to be cherished together, a vocation of courage in a season of fear.   It’s not a walk in the park; no doubt about that.  But it is God’s grace.  In every sense.  It is God’s grace.

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