In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

At about 4:30 in the afternoon at my house, you can feel the tension growing. Snack time has passed, but my children don’t remember that. They think I’ve never fed them. 

Pepper paces the kitchen floor, then opens the refrigerator and looks my way. “Can I have a cheese stick? Can I have a chocolate croissant? Can I have a popsicle?” We both know the answer to every question; but she asks anyway because Pepper is an intensely hopeful person and thinks maybe Mom will change her mind this time. Simeon just bites my leg.

Day after day after day, the same routine. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner punctuated by an obscene amount of clementines (which may just be my house). Sometimes it feels like all we humans do is eat or think about eating or worry about thinking about eating — which is ironic given the number of grocery stores and restaurants in this town. 

Not that long ago, our ancestors would have marveled at the abundance we enjoy. Fortified breakfast cereal. Vitamin D milk. Fifty-seven brands of tomato sauce. They were one bad storm or one late frost away from disaster. A failed crop meant less food in the winter meant less calories for the sick baby meant poor bone development and so on and so forth. For us, though, storms don’t register unless they knock out the power, and frosts melt away before we look up from our screens in the morning. Very few of us worry about going hungry because most of us haven’t ever felt what that really means. 

Humans are curious creatures. The everyday details of our lives, the stuff we take for granted — the eating, the drinking, the getting dressed, the going to sleep — these things teach us something true about the total reality of our existence. 

We will always need. We will always need more. And we will always be confronted and curtailed and sometimes controlled by that dependence, no matter what we do or who we are. Try as we might, we cannot escape the fact of our own insufficiency. Nor should we — because that is precisely where God meets us.

When Jesus sat down on a mountainside to the east of the Sea of Galilee, he knew exactly what the vast crowds were seeking as they followed him. They were hungry for salvation — salvation from sickness and sorrow. Almost everyone there that day had heard that if you just touched the fringe of Jesus’ robe, the shake in your fingers or the pain in your side would disappear. Instantaneously. Who wouldn’t walk a hundred miles to find that relief? 

But now the sun was about to set and the nearest town was miles away and dinner was on everyone’s mind. 

“Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Jesus asked, to the consternation of his disciples. No one had that kind of money. Not even half-a-year’s wages could feed the crowd gathered there that day. Besides, the question was moot because there was simply no food to be found — except for a kid’s lunch. “And what good is five barley loaves and two fish for so many people?” they asked. A question to which Jesus did not respond, though we know his answer in effect: It is enough.

And it was. It was more than enough. That evening more than 5,000 people ate their fill with plenty to spare. All because they had followed the path set down by their own neediness and formed by their own suffering and so had found God himself.

Surely, as Jesus walked among the men and women and children seated on the grass, the faithful among them would have been thinking, “The eyes of all wait upon you, O LORD, and you give them their food in due season.” 

That is not a truth we are accustomed to contemplating or even accepting nowadays. And why would we? We don’t wait for anything. Our food appears as if by magic on grocery store shelves. Every imaginable consumer good can be delivered to our doorstep in less than two days for the low price of $14.99/month. Modernity, in the West and especially in America, has done its best to eradicate human need and eliminate the minor and major suffering that goes along with it — which is a project that certainly has its place, but one that also has its dangers. 

People don’t look at each other any more when they meet in the grocery store or on the street. They don’t talk. They tweet. Somewhere in the mad rush to meet every physical need and satisfy every physical desire, we lost the other, more subtle essentials. It’s almost as though in this age of super-human intelligence and super-human abundance we’ve forgotten what it really means to be human. 

It’s a good thing we get hungry. 

It is a very good thing that we get hungry, that we get tired, that we feel the pain of not having what we need or what we want because those are signposts anchored in the present, pointing us toward the one who gives all, who makes all, who made us. 

We are his. We are not our own. And our limitations — our creatureliness — remind us of that in no uncertain terms. 

Every time we go to bed. Every time we get up. Every time we skip breakfast. Every time we eat lunch, God is there. The giver of every good gift is there because he designed us to find Him in all that we do and in all that we are. God designed us to live with Him and in Him, to taste of his love at dinner, to rest in his companionship at night, to wait on his arrival every time we wait in line. 

The great philosophers and sages, theologians and saints of history intuited this (some knew it): we are most ourselves not when we stay at home, but when we go out. When we look beyond ourselves for help of any kind, we meet the God who is near to those who call upon him. We meet him in the dimpled apple that is both tart and sweet. We meet him in the subtle word of a friend that soothes our fears. We meet him in that stillness that is peace beyond understanding. In the reality of our neediness, we meet God, a God who will heal us. A God who will feed us. 

We are not so far removed from that mountainside where the Bread of Heaven gave himself for the life of the world. God can do miracles. He still does. AMEN.

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​ 
     I’m a Star Trek fan.  I’ve seen all of the original series several times and some of the movies. One of my goals is to watch all of the Star Trek episodes in every one of the 11 different spin-off TV series – Star Trek The Next Generation, Star Trek Voyager, Discovery, and so on.  You may remember the mission statement at the beginning of the original series: “Space – the final frontier… These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.”
 
     One of my favorite episodes is actually one of the oldest. Captain Kirk has ended up somehow in a dark, empty room. He’s unconscious and injured. There is one other person in the room, who, we gradually discover, is from another world. She is in perfect condition when the captain first appears, she goes over to Kirk and begins to touch his wounds, which begin then to heal. But an even more amazing thing happens. As Kirk’s wounds disappear, the woman begins to be in pain, and then she becomes bruised herself. After Kirk is healed, then she begins to heal.
 
     As Kirk gains consciousness and strength, some unknown, unseen assailant, strikes him again, and the process begins all over. Their captors apparently are intrigued by this woman who is able literally to take on the suffering of others. In fact, not only is she able to take on that suffering, but she also appears to have a compulsion to do so.
 
     From my perspective, this episode of Star Trek is one of the most striking of all, because it’s a kind of parable or allegory. It’s a vivid portrayal of the meaning of compassion.  True compassion is so much more than simply feeling sorry for someone who is hurting. Compassion is an entering into the suffering of someone else. The word compassion comes from two Latin words, cum, which is the preposition with, and passio, which means to suffer — to suffer with.  Of course, compassion means even more than suffering with. It means to suffer with for the purpose of comforting and easing the pain of another person.
 
     St. Mark in today’s Gospel tells us that the disciples had returned from the mission on which Jesus had sent them. They had been on a mission of compassion, and upon hearing about all that they had done and taught, Jesus perceives that they all needed a little R and R.  So he took them off to a quiet place to rest, but the crowds followed them.  St. Mark tells us that when Jesus saw the crowds he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.  He saw people who were sick, people who were having marital problems, people who were having financial difficulties, people who were out of work, people who were facing difficult decisions, people in need of God’s love and forgiveness.  Mark doesn’t tell us this about the crowd, but in any crowd of people, these are the kinds of things that are going on.  And so, as tired as they all were, Jesus felt that he could not turn his back on them.  So he taught them.
 
     Jesus had compassion on the crowds.  Just as he would one day take their sins and the sins of all on himself, he took upon himself their needs, and the needs of his disciples, their suffering and pain, ignoring his own needs, that he might bring to them the word of life. That’s one way we could describe his earthly ministry, isn’t it?   A ministry of compassion: the ministry of taking upon himself the suffering of humanity.
 
     The scriptures tell us that Jesus’ compassion in this instance issued in his teaching the people. What did he teach them?  We’re not told specifically, but we may suppose one thing he taught them was to be compassionate themselves. This might have been the time when he told the parable of the Good Samaritan, or of the Shepherd who left 99 sheep to go after the one lost sheep, or the saying about turning the other cheek. One thing is SURE. He showed by example what true compassion is. Not only did he ignore his own needs in order to teach them, but also, when they were hungry, he fed them, giving us the miracle known as the feeding of the 5000.
 
     There’s something deep within us that urges us to reach out to those who are hurting, much like the woman in Star Trek, but much more important, just like our Lord continually reached out to those around him. Some people are trained and actually get paid to be compassionate.  All of those in the healing professions come to mind.  You give your clergy a living wage so that we can devote ourselves full time to a ministry of compassion.  The Secret Service men who threw themselves over former President Trump when the first shot was fired last week, are trained literally to take the suffering of the person they’re protecting on themselves.  They’re trained to take the bullet instead of the actual targeted person.
 
     David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher and historian, said, “There is some benevolence, however small, infused into our bosom, some spark of friendship for humankind, some particle of the dove kneaded into our frame, along with the elements of the wolf and serpent.”
 
     It’s that spark of compassion that’s part of what it means to have been created in the image of God. But when we were created, it was a flame, not just a spark. Human sin directed our gaze inward, blocking that connectedness with the whole human family, blinding us to our role in the process of healing and wholeness.  One way to put the purpose of the incarnation is that Jesus came in order to lead us back to being fully compassionate people. He came to fan that spark back into a flame, to give us a passion for compassion.
 
     The Church is the result of the incarnation, and by Church, I don’t mean an institution, I mean Christ living in each one of us.   Like Jesus Christ, in Christ we are to be passionate about compassion. Think about your relationships at home, at work, at church, wherever you spend your time, and seek by the grace of God to be compassionate.
 
 

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. 

King Herod heard of Jesus and his disciples, for Jesus’ name had become known; and like everyone else in Jerusalem and Galilee and all of Israel, Herod had to decide who this man was. For him, though, there was only one answer: “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.”

What a change of pace we experience in our Gospel text today. Normally, we expect to hear the words of Jesus. We expect to be encouraged, convicted, or questioned by Christ himself. But this morning is different. Instead of the usual, we hear the grisly conclusion of the life of the Forerunner, St. John the Baptist. Just a short time ago, just a few pages in the course of the narrative, John wandered in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming a baptism of repentance in preparation for the advent of the Lord. “One more powerful than I am is coming after me; I am not worthy to bend down and untie the strap of his sandals. I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” The Kingdom of God was at hand. “Repent and be baptized, you brood of vipers!”

John the Baptist was never one to mince words. It didn’t matter if you were a Pharisee or a fisherman, a Roman soldier or a king — John had something to say to you about what must change in light of the coming Messiah. And, in the case of Herod, his message was uncompromisingly personal. Herod had married his brother’s wife, which was forbidden by Jewish law in the strongest of terms — and Herod knew that, and John knew that. John told Herod the truth, so of course he threw John in prison, though for what end we don’t immediately know. Herod admired John. He liked to listen to John even as he was perplexed by him. Still, the pronouncement of the Forerunner rankled, especially with Herod’s wife, who made good use of her circumstances to accomplish her end. “Give me the head of John the baptizer on a plate,” and it was done.

The Gospel of the Lord? 

What gospel is there in that story? What triumph? What resurrection? On the face of it, not much. Another innocent man declared guilty. Another prophet killed. Another ruler doing something terribly wrong and getting away with it. In Herod’s court, the world goes on as it always has — or so it can seem. And yet the Truth is different. 

If we were to flip back a few pages or cast our minds to the Gospel lesson from a few weeks ago, we would see a study in opposites. Immediately preceding the story of John’s death, we hear Jesus telling his disciples about the true nature of God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom is not like this world, he says. In God’s kingdom, the poor are treasured, the sick are healed, and wrong is made right — because God’s rule is one of love, of self-sacrificial love, a love that will not tire or rest or stop loving until everyone has encountered Him. That is the kingdom Christ proclaims, the kingdom he sent his disciples to announce on his behalf. 

What a contrast between God’s reign and Herod’s. Side-by-side they stand, one seemingly poor and powerless, the other dominant and in demand. But to the one who knows, who has seen and heard, the rightful king and his righteous kingdom are impossible to miss. 

They call to the heart. 

They call to everyone’s heart. Even Herod liked to listen to John and his message of repentance because some part of him knew it was true. Some part of him recognized and resonated with the restorative breeze that accompanies the Spirit as he blows down the crumbling facades and crooked altars we build inside of us. Repentance can be painful; but it is the path to freedom.

We know that, just like we know that we shouldn’t eat three cheeseburgers for dinner every day or check our phone in the middle of the night. But just because we know doesn’t mean we’ll always listen. We’re so often so happy in our sin that letting it go or turning around seems impossible. Like Herod, the idea of repentance may be attractive. We might catch a glimpse of the wide-open space on the other side, but then we decide to stay right where we shouldn’t be. Which is what Herod did. Herod hardened his heart. He surrounded himself with so much luxury and pleasure, that when the moment to choose repentance came, Herod felt like he had no choice at all — and the results were disastrous. “Who is this Jesus of Nazareth but the man I killed, returned from the grave to punish me?” 

Of course he would think that. In Herod’s world, in our world, that is precisely what happens. Bloodshed and vengeance. The nightmare of guilt and the multiplicity of sorrow that follows. 

But that is a story written according to an older testament; we live in the light of a New. And in that light, what do we know to be true? What did John know to be true? What did Jesus do? God came into this world not to condemn it, but to save it — to die saving it — which has been his glory all along.

When we were citizens of this world, dead in our sins, enslaved to our own desires, God came down to save us. He saw how weak we were and how lost, and he said, “I will never again pass them by.”

He will never again pass us by because he is right here. God is with us. Christ Jesus is with us, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, humbling himself even to the point of death on a cross that we might be saved. 

For God loves us, each of us. And he abides with us: no matter how often we misunderstand him or misrepresent him, no matter whether our hearts are more akin to the ascetic of the desert or the king in his court, God longs for us. He longs to pour out his blessings upon us, longs to show us his salvation, so that we might be free to enjoy him, this God who made each of us for his very own.

This is the God we worship. This is the God who reigns. This is the God who holds all that is in his hand — who holds even John, even Herod, even us in his hand — and who will lose nothing of what he has made but bring everything into his Kingdom, where righteousness and peace kiss each other. Where every wrong is made right. Where we are made holy and whole through the blood of the Lamb. AMEN.

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​     Ethan Allen, leader of the Green Mountain Boys during the Revolutionary War, was with a group of fellow patriots at a Sunday service led by a stern Calvinist preacher.  The preacher took as his text, “Many shall strive to enter in, but shall not be able.”   In typical predestinarian fashion, the preacher observed that God’s grace was sufficient to include one person in 10, but not one in 20 would endeavor to avail himself of the offered salvation.  Furthermore, not one man in 50 was really the object of God’s favor, and not one in 80…
 
      At this point, before the preacher was able to utter another depressing divine statistic, Allen seized his hat and left the pew saying, “I’m off, boys. Anyone of you can take my chance.”

     I don’t blame Ethan Allen for walking out on that, but most people wouldn’t have taken that liberty.  Obviously, Allen was a free thinker as well as a fighter for freedom.

     Last Thursday marked the 248th anniversary of the adoption by the continental Congress of the Declaration of Independence. The declaration was the work of a committee of five: John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert R. Livingston, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin. That day on which this committee presented the Declaration of Independence must have been an intensely exciting one, for they knew that this declaration would lead the colonies to war against the most powerful nation on earth. 

     The declaration makes it clear that this move toward revolution was based on universal principles concerning the rights of the individual and the responsibility of government: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”  That declaration did indeed lead to war, to the shedding of much blood, as well as countless other sacrifices, and ultimately to the establishment of this great nation.”

     Throughout my life, I have occasionally fantasized about one of the founding fathers, for example, George Washington, coming back to earth and seeing what he helped to set into motion. What would he think about what the United States has become? Our boundaries extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific. What would Washington think about airplanes, subways, railroads, and automobiles; electric lights, hot tapwater, and indoor bathrooms; about buildings that reach as high as the clouds, microwave ovens, fast food, the Internet, cell phones, Facebook, and Twitter?

     After I fantasize for a while about what Washington would think about all of the wonders of our high-tech world, my imagination turns toward the more negative aspects of modern life. What would he think about the thousands of homeless people in every major city in this land, of our huge crime rate, the many lives destroyed by drug addiction, and our high rate of illiteracy in spite of the fact that education is available to every child in this country?  What would he think of our current candidates for President? 

      Washington was an Episcopalian. What would he think about the fact that there are beautiful Episcopal churches all over this country and yet we had an average Sunday attendance in 2022, the last year for which we have figures, of 372, 952 — fewer than 400,000 people in church in the Episcopal Church and dwindling every year?

     My fantasy always ends with Washington having very mixed feelings about our condition. How can a nation with so much wealth, so much power, and capable of doing so much good have so many overwhelmingly sad problems?

     And then I come back to the present, and I realize that my fantasy wasn’t about George Washington at all, but was a way of helping me to reflect on our society. We all have a tendency, I think, to be rather schizophrenic when it comes to thinking about our country. On one hand, we can get caught up in singing patriotic songs and celebrating so much that is good about this land, and on the other hand, we can look at all of the problems and become very pessimistic and despairing.

     Neither view taken by itself, is realistic or helpful, but put the two together and add to them God’s love for us and our love for God and his Church, and we have all that we need to do our part in dealing with the problems that face this nation.  As people who love our country, and who love God, most of all, the only part of the world that we’re responsible for changing is that part in which we live. We cannot alleviate world hunger, but we can and must help to feed the hungry in this community, and we’re doing that on a daily basis with our lunch program. We haven’t been able to do away with crime, but we can and must teach our children right from wrong.  We can’t alleviate the problem of literacy, but we can and must work toward making our schools the best they can be.

     It’s important for the Church to celebrate Independence Day.  The Episcopal Church has made Independence Day a Major Feast, so that we can remember and give thanks for those who gave their lives that we might be free.  It’s important to give thanks for the many blessings we enjoy as citizens of this country, and to use that thankfulness to stir within us the will to be sacrificial in serving the common good.  That’s where our faith and patriotism come together, and it is that point where we are ready for our Lord to send us out, as he sent his disciples, to proclaim the Gospel. 

     Adam Smith, whose economic and philosophic ideas helped to shape our constitution, said that “to feel much for others, and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfish, and exercise our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.”  It is when we become this kind of patriot that patriotism will serve its proper end, and be altogether consistent with our calling as Christians.

     God bless our native land; firm may she ever stand through storm and night: when the wild tempests rave, ruler of wind and wave, do thou our country save by thy great might.

     For her, our prayers shall rise to God, above the skies; on him we wait; thou who art ever nigh, guarding with watchful eye, to thee aloud we cry, God save the state!
 
 

​     Let me tell you about myself.  My name is Jairus.  Our family lives in Palestine.  It’s a difficult time for us as a people, for we’re part of the Roman Empire, which is polytheistic, very cosmopolitan, and very immoral.
 
     I’m a religious man, in fact, I’m a leader in my synagogue, and I’ll tell you, it’s difficult for us not to give in to some of the pagan influences that are everywhere.  That’s probably my most important role as a religious leader—to model what it means to hold to the faith when the culture around us is so against what we believe and how we’re to conduct ourselves morally.  I take my role very seriously and as a result people look up to me.
 
     There was an itinerant preacher who was making the rounds.  Many of the people of our synagogue went out to hear him teach and preach.  There were amazing stories about this man, Jesus.  In fact, I went out to hear him myself.  He’s an amazing teacher.  His parables are wonderful stories about the nature of God and man.  But I have to say that more than anything he says, there’s something about him that draws a person to him.  It’s hard to describe, but suffice it to say he has a great deal of charisma. 
 
     And then there are the healings.  He cured a leper.  One moment that leper was diseased, and the next he was clean!  And there are stories about his curing a man with an unclean spirit.  And a huge crowd witnessed his healing of a paralytic.  Amazing stories!  One can’t help but recall the words of Isaiah: “The blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.”
​
     But I have to say that there were problems about Jesus.  He healed a person with a withered hand on the Sabbath, when he could have waited a day.  It wasn’t an emergency.  Why didn’t he honor the Sabbath?  In explanation, he said things like, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”  And he associated with people whose reputations weren’t stellar, to put it mildly.  And he and his disciples didn’t fast at the appropriate times.  That’s very difficult to understand in someone who’s supposed to be leading people to God.  And so, while some were heralding him as the Messiah, most of my friends, certainly most of the religious leaders in Israel, thought he was more of a problem than a solution to our difficulties.
 
     I was keeping fairly neutral, when something happened in our family that changed everything.  My beloved daughter of twelve years of age became quite ill.  We called in all of the doctors, but they couldn’t do anything for her.  The whole synagogue was praying for her, yet she continued to decline.  In fact, one day it was almost certain that my dear daughter would die.  I had to do something.  I couldn’t just watch my daughter die.  I knew it would be controversial, but I just had to give it a chance, so I went to Jesus and I begged him to come to our home and lay his hands on her and heal her.  He had healed others; he could heal her.
 
     The tragic news came while Jesus and I were on the way to see her.  My daughter died.  We were too late.  Jesus insisted on continuing to the house, telling me not to lose hope.  When we got to the house, we saw that the mourners and musicians had already arrived; the required rites of mourning were being done.  Jesus told the crowd who were gathered, “The child is not dead, but sleeping.”  Everyone was dumbfounded that he would say that.  He told them to leave and then he took my wife and me and Peter, James, and John to where our daughter was, and he said, “Talitha Cumi” (“Little girl, I say to you, arise.”).  And she got up and walked.  Jesus told us then to fix something for her to eat.  He told us not to tell anybody, but I can’t help but tell you, because he can help you, too.
 
     You see, I now know that Jesus truly is the Messiah.  He’s the one whom scripture foretold would come and save the world.  This wonderful miracle is a sign of that salvation.  I’d been skeptical before, and then just neutral about him.  It was only when I was in a true crisis, when I had exhausted all other avenues for help, that I turned to him.  One might think that he might’ve been a little upset that I went to him only as a last resort, but he didn’t chastise me.  He welcomed me, he calmed my fear; then he gave my daughter new life. 
 
     It’s now several years after my daughter was brought to life.  I, Jairus, want you to know this because Jesus, who is now crucified and risen, can give you new life as well.  It’s an even better life than what he gave to my daughter and he gives it to all who desire it.  It’s life through him and in him and with him.  It’s life right now and even death cannot conquer it.  To avail yourself of it, though, you must go beyond a simple knowledge of Jesus to complete trust in his grace and love—the kind of trust I had when I finally went to Jesus to heal my daughter.  He gave this life to you at your baptism, yet each day you and I must decide anew if we’ll really put our trust in him. 
 
     When we come up to this altar rail to receive the body and blood of Christ, may it truly be a time of renewing our trust in Jesus and receiving him anew.