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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