episcopal-church-of-the-good-shepherd

How to Be a Christian

Sun, 26 Apr 2026 19:41:49 GMT

Being a Christian isn’t just about being a “good person.”
The early Christians banded together to be the opposite of empire.

2026-28
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2026

Acts 2:42-47 ; Psalm 23 ; 1 Peter 2:19-25 ; John 10:1-10

Well, Christy and I have planned a vacation to Namibia. Our child Sarah arrived there at the end of January to spend the entire spring semester of her junior year of college. So I will be away for the next three Sundays visiting Sarah.

Filling in for me will be the Rev. Joseph Peters-Mathews, a colleague who is between calls and has Sunday mornings free. It won’t be like when I was on sabbatical, though: he’ll only be here on Sundays, to preside at the Eucharist and to preach. The rest of the work of the church is yours to keep carrying on without me. Pastoral emergencies should be directed to Carole Loudenback, who chairs our Pastoral Care Team, or to the Rev. Anna Lynn, your Deacon.

I saw Joseph briefly during Holy Week, and he told me he’s excited to meet you all. He also told me that he plans during those weeks to preach primarily on our readings from the Acts of the Apostles. So I thought, hey, that’s a great idea—I think I’ll do the same. And so I have been. So while this is the day traditionally known as Good Shepherd Sunday, and that makes this our patronal feast, I’ll give it a miss and preach on the Good Shepherd again next year.

Today’s passage from Acts is very short, but there is so much packed into it! For two thousand years it has been a pivotal text for the Church’s understanding of itself. The first sentence is this: “Those who had been baptized devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” What does this mean for us these days?

Yesterday at St. Mark’s Cathedral, alongside many others from all around Western Washington, our own Karen Dobbs was formally welcomed into the Episcopal Church. She was baptized at the age of two months at a Congregational church in West Seattle. But Karen has found a home at Good Shepherd, and after some time here, she decided she wanted to become an Episcopalian in a formal way. So I asked Maggie Monaghan to be Karen’s sponsor. Maggie was, herself, confirmed in the Episcopal Church just a year ago. Karen and Maggie have gotten to know each other over the past few months and went through a series of informative classes on Zoom that were offered by our diocese. Then, yesterday morning, as a group of us gathered around to lay hands on Karen, Bishop Melissa Skelton laid her hands on Karen’s head and prayed this:

Karen, we recognize you as a member of the one holy catholic and apostolic Church, and we receive you into the fellowship of this Communion. God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, bless, preserve, and keep you. Amen.

And now Karen is an Episcopalian.

But before all that, the entire congregation renewed our baptismal vows. One of our vows looks back to this very passage from the Acts of the Apostles:

Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers?

I will, with God’s help.

On the Day of Pentecost, after the Holy Spirit descended on the eleven apostles, and after Peter’s inspiring public speech led to 3000 more people being baptized, a little community was born that we now call the Church. At first, they were just called The Way. They were a group of Jews in and around Jerusalem who claimed boldly that the long-awaited Messiah had come … that he had, by all appearances, failed in his mission and been brutally executed … but that this had been God’s purpose all along. Instead of sending a flood to wipe everybody out, God had instead sent God’s own Son: a divine representative to take responsibility for everybody’s sins and to forgive them all. Now humanity could begin again.

Over the coming decades and centuries, Christians would begin to tell the story in a deeper way. They would claim that, in an eternal mystery, Jesus Christ is himself God, and so is the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus sent to give birth to the church and to guide it forever.

The first Christians, after being baptized into a new life, established new practices. They decided that if they were to love one another as Jesus had loved them, they must pool their resources so that nobody would be in need. They came to be known as fundamentally joyful and generous people, and more and more people decided they wanted to be a part of the Jesus movement.

This passage continues to hold out an ideal for us. Can you imagine, in present-day America, letting go of your right to own a house, understanding instead that your house and everything in it—shelter, food, a place to meet—belong to all Christians? Can you imagine the Church of the Good Shepherd never locking its doors, but always welcoming those in need to come in out of the rain and get warm, and to share a hot meal? Over the past 2000 years, some communities have tried to return to this ideal, but either it hasn’t lasted, or people have found a way to abuse it and ruin it.

And so we might feel nostalgic, like the early Christians “got it right” and we just don’t. But the earliest Christians were under the mistaken impression that since Jesus had died and risen, the end of the world was swiftly approaching, after which all the dead would be raised to life as Christ was, and heaven would come to earth, and the result would be God’s perfect paradise for all of us. This may be one reason that forgoing private ownership felt possible to them. Eventually, though, humans being humans, we continued to hoard and deprive one another. We see this change even within the Acts of the Apostles.

Yet at its best, the church still centers its identity on helping those in need, and not just those who are baptized. Ideally we give ourselves away to the surrounding community, steadfast in our belief that God will sustain congregations that do so. It’s never simple, but we know it’s right. And we still hang on to this persistent belief that somehow, in God’s good time, heaven will indeed come to earth, all the dead will be raised, and all shall be restored. We don’t have to know what this would look like to believe it. We simply trust that the Holy Spirit is guiding heaven and earth together into something perfect and permanent.

But being a Christian isn’t just about being a “good person.” The early Christians banded together to oppose the assumed norms of society. The way of empire is to exploit the many to benefit the few. Today we are residents of the United States of America, a republic that is also functionally an empire because our ideals have always far transcended our practices. More than ever before in our lifetimes, the many are being exploited to benefit the few. The church is to be the opposite of empire. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, in the words of Jesus’ mother Mary, we are to “knock down the mighty from their thrones and lift up the lowly.”

Christian ideals are a threat to those who hoard power, and the early Christians soon found themselves to be a persecuted people, no longer protected by the exceptions Rome had grudgingly carved out for Jews who toed the line. Before the Acts of the Apostles had even been written down, both Jews and Christians were without a temple, lying low, and in the case of Christians, meeting underground in catacombs so the authorities wouldn’t find them.

Theirs was a very different life from ours. Christians in America today are not persecuted. Instead, those in power lift up a false, disingenuous version of Christianity to be coddled by the empire, as long as it never embraces true Christian ideals. So the president can performatively read from the Bible, as long as nobody prosecutes him for his many crimes, and as long as nobody questions our nation’s right to stomp around the world exerting both military and economic dominance.

Ours is a different challenge, but the ways of empire remain the same. So … what might that mean for us?

Will you continue in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers?

I will, with God’s help.

To this day, those who are baptized commit to these three things. To continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship means to live our lives in community and keep learning, never growing stagnant in our understanding of God’s love. To break bread together is a sign of both ongoing fellowship and our understanding that Jesus is present among us every time we do. And we continue to pray together, and the way this is worded—“the prayers,” plural—suggests that already certain prayers were showing up as central, probably beginning with the prayer Jesus taught us, what we call the Lord’s Prayer.

When I’m preparing parents for the baptism of a child, I point to this vow and ask them what it means. Sometimes they think I’m looking for a theologically complicated answer, but I’m not. This vow literally means, “Come to church.” But even “come to church” makes it sound like “go to the gym,” like it’s an individual responsibility that you should do, for your own good. Think bigger: “Be the church.” Your baptism means that it’s time to reorient your entire life, not just your Sunday mornings. Be a part of what’s going on here, and then take it back out into the world wherever you go! With apologies to John F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your church can do for you. Ask what you, who are the church, are called to do to help the Holy Spirit heal the world.”

As I love to point out, Christianity is not an app on your phone. You can’t just close it and ignore it for a while. Baptism installs Christianity as the operating system on which all your other apps run. So planting yourself in a more or less healthy community of Christians is the duty of every baptized person. Otherwise it’s like thinking you can spend your life climbing mountains without ever returning to base camp!

That’s not meant as a guilt trip, but as an invitation. Don’t just have Christian identity; live as a Christian. Today we joyfully welcome Karen Dobbs into the Episcopal Church. And on my first Sunday back with you all—the Day of Pentecost itself—we will baptize Thomas Jowenson, age 2, welcoming him into the fold as the world’s newest Christian. I pray that all of you will let such occasions lead you to hearty, prayerful renewal of your own baptismal vows. You will … with God’s help. Amen.

Recalculating ...

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 20:08:09 GMT

To repent is to turn the wheel a different way ... to accept the detour that’s offered.

2026-27
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Third Sunday of Easter, April 19, 2026

Acts 2:14a,36-41 ; Psalm 116:1-3, 10-17 ; 1 Peter 1:17-23 ; Luke 24:13-35

When I drive, I use GPS. A lot. And now I wonder how I ever went without it. I’m always needing to find my way to some new address, often one of yours. And as I frequently visit four different hospitals in our region, I don’t trust myself to remember how to get to all of them—not when I’m trying to keep to a schedule. I’m a person who hates being late, too, so I love knowing exactly how long it will take me to get from one place to another.

Of course, it doesn’t always work like that. Sometimes, even when using GPS, I accidentally make a wrong turn. And then my phone uses a certain word … “recalculating.” This can happen when bad traffic crops up, too, possibly because of an accident up ahead. “Recalculating.” In other words, things did not go the way we expected. Perhaps now there is a better or faster way to get there.

Living a life of faith is about always being ready to recalculate. And I have examples for you. Exhibit A is the gospel reading we just heard. Exhibit B is the reaction of the crowd to Peter’s speech on the Day of Pentecost.

First, exhibit A. On a springtime Sunday afternoon, two devastated and demoralized disciples are beating a hasty retreat from Jerusalem. Their teacher Jesus is dead—executed by the Roman Empire for sedition, a charge arranged by their own Jewish Temple authorities. How could things get any worse? Now they’re heading for Emmaus, seven miles away, hometown of one of them, apparently, or one of their friends, so they can lie low for a while while they … recalculate. But these new calculations already look very, very unpromising.

As they walk, along comes a stranger. Where did he come from? They didn’t hear him approaching. You know that awkward moment when you find yourself walking on the same path as a stranger, in the same direction, at the same pace? Eventually you either have to adjust your pace to give them room, or break the ice. Well, the stranger breaks the ice. “Hey, what are you talking about?” Like it’s any of his business.

But Cleopas decides to trust him. “You’ve just come from Jerusalem, too. If you overhead any of what we’re saying, you must already know.”

“No,” says the stranger, “I don’t.”

“Oh, come on,” says The Other Disciple—we’ll call him Tod—“you know, Jesus of Nazareth! We … we were absolutely certain that he was the Messiah. Now all our hopes are dashed.”

“Yes,” says Cleopas, “and now this other weird thing has happened. Some of the women we know told us that angels had given them a message that Jesus is alive! But obviously that’s not believable. We saw the Roman soldiers nail him to the cross.”

A smile begins to break across the stranger’s face. Already he has made them feel comfortable enough with him that he knows he can rib them a little. “Oh, you guys are absolute fools, aren’t you? Come on, get with the program! You know your Bibles. This was the only way the story could possibly play out.”

I will forever be annoyed that the gospel writer does not tell us exactly what curriculum the stranger lays on these two disciples as they walk the remainder of the seven miles to Emmaus. But have you ever been on a long hike with people you absolutely adore, and shared a deep conversation with them? The time just flies by, doesn’t it? And before you know it, you’ve arrived at the summit, and then you’re back down the mountain and outside your cars in the parking lot. And you still don’t want this time to end.

“Please,” they say outside the door of the house. “Please come in and eat with us. You haven’t told us where you’re headed, but the sun is setting, and you’ll need a meal and a place to spend the night.”

“All right,” the stranger concedes. “It smells good in there! Freshly baked bread!”

Cleopas and Tod pass the bread to the stranger first. He takes it. He blesses it. He breaks it. He gives it to them.

WHOA. This is no stranger. This is Jesus! Alive! Right in front of them!

Or … well, he was. Now, somehow, they don’t see him anymore. Do they see a stranger again? Or is the man’s seat suddenly empty? The storyteller leaves that detail to our imaginations.

Did this really happen?

Well, something happened! Something took place that led someone to tell the story, and then it got told for decades, and then the author of Luke’s Gospel wrote it down. And we still have it.

And we don’t have any other story to substitute for this one, so … this is the one we have. Will we accept this story, or not?

Cleopas and Tod immediately get up and return to Jerusalem. After sundown. In the dark. They have to tell the other disciples that Jesus is alive! This is how certain they are about what just took place.

Can you imagine the recalculating they are doing in their souls all the way back?

I came across a quote this week from Margaret Aymer, who teaches at Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary: “Luke’s story reminds us that our relationship with the resurrected Christ is a relationship of long walks, risky conversations, reframed traumas, and quiet dinners—an intimate relationship between Christ and the church, of words shared and bread broken.”

Well then. Exhibit B, which takes place forty-nine days later, is written by the same author. Last week we heard Peter address a group of Jews who had made pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Festival of Shavuot. He told all these people, many of whom probably had never even heard of Jesus, that they themselves killed the man—with help from the Roman Empire. And that God then raised Jesus from the dead.

Today we hear the crowd’s reaction. Surprisingly, it’s not, “Hey, we didn’t kill Jesus! We never even knew him!”

No, it’s a very different reaction. We hear that they are “cut to the heart.” The crowd of Jewish pilgrims is recalculating furiously. And all they can say is … “What then are we to do?”

Peter is ready with a response, and it is very specific indeed. There are two tasks for them, followed by a promised task from God. “Repent. Be baptized. Receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

OK, let’s talk for a minute about this word “repent.” For most of us in this room, it is probably laden with unhelpful images. Maybe it’s street preachers with sandwich boards shouting that we’re headed for hell. Maybe it’s past mentors who knew us personally—clergy, or parents, or friends—urging us, in great anxiety, to pray for Jesus to enter our hearts before it’s too late!

Well, this may have been your path. But it’s not the only path. “Repent” is not a term that needs to be laden with shame. Because you know what “repent” really means?

That’s right. “Recalculating …”

To repent is to effect a course correction—to turn the wheel a different way—to accept the detour that’s offered—to shift onto a better road. And the reason it need not be laden with shame is that all your sins are already forgiven.

Repentance is always good news, even if the consequences that led to it don’t go away. You may still be stuck in traffic for a while. You may well be late to your appointment. But as Maya Angelou famously said, “When you know better, you do better.” The life of a Christian is a life of daily repentance. Free it from all this negative energy. If today’s repentance just means a minor course correction, well, why worry? Just do it. And if today’s repentance means no longer doing something harmful, that’s even better news! It means you’re open to changing and allowing God to make you a more loving person.

At least, I hope you allow that to happen. It might be hard work, honestly. You might not like having to recalculate. But it’s better if you do. God is in your repentance, even you have to accept for the time being that your behavior has broken other people’s trust in you. Hopefully, your repentance will help you begin to teach people something different about yourself. And if you need to repent from the worst thing you’ve ever done, know this and understand it well: You are far more than the worst thing you’ve ever done. You are a beloved, forgiven child of God, for whom Jesus destroyed death!

If you want to explore this with me further, let’s schedule a time to chat. But for now, let’s move on.

Peter’s second instruction is to be baptized. And according to the writer, THREE THOUSAND PEOPLE were baptized that day! How on earth is that even possible? And then what happened? We’ll hear more about that next week. But for today, let’s talk for a moment about Exhibit C.

Exhibit C is your own life. And if your life were the most pressing news item of the day, what would the headline be?

Dang, that’s a good icebreaker. I’ll have to use that.

If your life were the most pressing news item of the day, what would the headline be?

Is it happy news? Sad news? News that requires a response, a recalculation, a course correction?

Please take this knowledge away from your time here at Good Shepherd this morning. Peter’s recommended procedure of repentance, followed by baptism, is still both valid and helpful two thousand years later. And to this day, it still leads to a gift from God: the gift of the Holy Spirit pouring into you, energizing you to help with God’s work in the world.

It’s not always as obvious to others as it may be to you. But in conjunction with a worshiping community’s prayers and ongoing support, it can become incredibly clear.

Every Sunday when we pray the Nicene Creed, we say we believe in “one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.” Baptism is not repeatable. We consent to baptism to make public our process of recalculating. We consent to baptism to show everyone around us the new beginning that we are inviting the Holy Spirit to kickstart in us. Baptism is a public entry into a way of life marked by repentance, which is not shameful groveling, but constant course correction. Amen.

Acting as Apostles

Mon, 13 Apr 2026 00:17:00 GMT

Have you heard the good news?

2026-26
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Second Sunday of Easter, April 12, 2026

Acts 2:14a,22-32 ; Psalm 16 ; 1 Peter 1:3-9 ; John 20:19-31

Have you heard the good news? Our nation did NOT cause a nuclear holocaust last Tuesday!

Yeah, that was wrenchingly stressful and evil and totally unnecessary, and there are solutions to prevent that sort of nonsense from ever happening again, if only certain elected officials would get off their duffs, swallow hard, and do their jobs. But when we talk about “good news” in church, I don’t think that’s the sort of thing we mean. Let’s try something different.

Have you heard the good news? I was working on a really difficult algebra problem, and I was totally stumped for a while, but then I got my thinking straight, and you know what? You’re not going to believe this. X equals … seven point three!

A little underwhelming, isn’t it? It’s something I might be legitimately happy about for some reason, but if you wanted to catch that vibe from me, you’d have to indulge me as I explained to you slowly why this math problem was so important for me personally, and honestly, who cares? OK then, let’s try again.

Have you heard the good news? … Beethoven!

Hmmm, now we may be getting somewhere. And let’s say you’ve never heard Beethoven before. I could play for you the first movement of his Fifth Symphony, and you might say, “Oh yeah, I know this … dun-dun-dun-dunnnnn!” But you still might not see what the big deal was, so next I’d play the second movement of the Seventh Symphony, and you might go all quiet and say, “Oh, that’s so different from the other one, and it’s unbelievably beautiful.” And then I’d play you the first movement of the String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor, and you’d say, “This sounds so tragic it almost brings me to tears.” I would explain that Ludwig was pretty much deaf by that point but was still able to create like this, and then we’d sit together for a whole hour while I played you the great Ninth Symphony, and I’d explain that Beethoven never heard a single note of it, and after he conducted it at the premiere, someone had to tap him on the shoulder afterward to make him turn around to acknowledge the standing ovation. And by then your tears might be flowing as freely as Mary Magdalene’s were on Easter morning.

But all of that required some effort on your part. It wasn’t enough for me merely to tell you that the good news is Beethoven, and leave it at that. You might have gone and listened on your own and found your own way into this good news, but that would be a lot less meaningful than sharing it together.

The work of an apostle is to bring good news, yes, but it’s more than that. Apostles stick around to expound on that good news, and then to get off their own soap box and be with the hearers of the good news, and help them draw ever closer to it.

See, in this place, the good news we share is not of the “we’re not dead yet” variety. It’s not like X equals seven point three, either. It’s more like the good news of Beethoven—but even bigger. Much, much bigger.

And that’s why it usually takes longer to understand. It requires deep human interaction, and investment of time and energy, and honestly, a reorientation of our lives. It means that we, having not just heard but absorbed and begun to live this good news, start to act as apostles ourselves. So now we come to the Acts of the Apostles, a book in the Bible where we find many occasions of people bringing Good News to other people. Indulge me for a moment while I give some background on how we use this book in our worship.

On most Sundays, we read something from the Old Testament. The exception is the fifty days of Easter, when we replace the Old Testament reading with something specifically from the Acts of the Apostles. The first thing you need to know about Acts is that it is the sequel to the Gospel According to Luke. Clearly written by the same author, it’s the only book in the Bible that chronicles in narrative form the earliest days of the Church. Scholars love holding the Acts of the Apostles up against the letters of Paul and other letters in the New Testament to see what lines up and what doesn’t. And it turns out there’s plenty of both.

So the next thing to know about the Acts of the Apostles is that it was almost certainly written decades after the events it describes. Jesus was crucified around the year 30. We believe Luke’s gospel to have been written in the 80s, and Acts was written sometime shortly after that.

This means that the stories in the Acts of the Apostles come down to us through already established layers of tradition. They were oral tellings first, shared and propagated within worshiping communities of Christians in various places around the Mediterranean Sea. This also means that there are certain assumptions working in the background to affect the writer’s storytelling. For instance, the book was written after the year 70, which means that the Roman Empire had already destroyed the Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

Today’s passage comes from chapter 2—so, early in the book. The setting is Jerusalem, a mere ten days after the Risen Christ has ascended, leaving his apostles with instructions to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit. What we find here is Peter expounding on passages from the Old Testament. In other words, he’s talking to his fellow Jews and using examples from the holy scriptures they all know backward and forward.

We also skipped some verses. In the part we skipped (but that we’ll come back to in a couple months when we celebrate the Day of Pentecost), Peter was addressing his fellow Jews who were locals: Judeans of Jerusalem. Now he’s addressing a broader group: Jews who have made pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the festival of Shavuot. So none of the people he’s currently speaking to live in or around Jerusalem.

Now let’s look again at the passage we just heard, through the eyes of someone writing after the destruction of the Temple. Peter informs them about Jesus of Nazareth, a man most of them may never have heard of before they arrived in Jerusalem. This is Peter’s moment to capture a huge audience of Jews from all over the known world! It’s the closest the apostles will ever come to a means of mass communication. He proclaims: “This man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.”

Peter is blaming them for killing Jesus.

Now, this is a problem on all sorts of levels. All the way until 1965, the Roman Catholic Church taught that God continued to punish the Jewish people for killing Jesus, and that this could change for them if they would just convert! It’s horrific. It’s terrible theology. And it misrepresents what’s going on in this passage.

First, though, we do have to acknowledge something about the destruction of the temple. Early Christians did indeed view this as God’s punishment against those Jews who didn’t embrace the Good News of the Risen Christ. The Acts of the Apostles is written through that lens of frustration and division.

But let’s say for a moment that Peter really did say these words or something like them—that he did blame his fellow Jews for killing Jesus. Notice first that Peter might as well be putting himself in the same basket. The writer doesn’t frame it that way, but I believe Peter would have said more about his own role—about how when Jesus was arrested, he ran and hid. About how later that night, three times, he denied ever knowing Jesus. Peter really should be saying “We killed Jesus,” not “You killed Jesus.” Even then, he needs to be clear that he’s speaking theologically, not literally, to these people who weren’t even in town when it happened.

And then, notice what Peter says next: “But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.”

Peter turns very quickly from bad news to good news—news so good that there is no longer any reason to point fingers. He has even said that all this happened “according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God.” If that’s the case, why blame anyone at all? It doesn’t matter anymore.

So this is Peter’s entrée into the Good News, served up not to an antagonistic group, but to his fellow Jews. He’s saying, in essence: “No matter how evil we humans allow ourselves to become, God meets us there and raises us up.”

Next week we’ll hear how the crowd reacted to Peter. Of course, you can go home and read Acts chapter 2 yourself and get a preview. But I wonder … how would you react? Does this sound like Good News to you? Or would you need Peter to word it differently?

What Good News do you need to hear today?

Most importantly, what if this Good News is true? What if it is not possible for humans to sink to depths so low that God cannot reach us and lift us up again?

My hope, during this Easter season, is that we’ll all go on a journey together with Peter and the other apostles. Use Beethoven as a soundtrack if you like, to keep reminding you of the effort it takes to hear and absorb news as good as this! And keep asking yourself this question: What are some ways that I already may be acting as an apostle of Good News?

God, Sex, and Healing after Deconstruction

Tue, 07 Apr 2026 15:38:37 GMT

Three speakers address those who have been hurt by the church.

On March 21, 2026, the Church of the Good Shepherd welcomed three speakers for this special workshop:

Heal from Toxic Religion and Flourish Spiritually – Michael Camp

Faith deconstruction is liberating but leaves scars of spiritual abuse and church hurt. Learn how to heal from toxic faith and thrive using lifegiving tools and love-based practices.

Michael Camp is a Certified Spiritual Director living in Poulsbo, WA. Through his coaching practice, Faith Transitions, he helps people deconstruct, heal, and rebuild a healthier, more historically accurate way of following Jesus or a new philosophy of life. His most recent book, Faith Funk, is an exvangelical’s guide to freedom from religious trauma and the depression and anxiety that often stems from it.

View Michael Camp's talk .

The Joy of Sex After Deconstruction – Susan Cottrell

How to deconstruct the sexual shame put on us by religionists and find joy again (or for the first time). Step into a fully affirming safe space for the LGBTQ+ and straight community.

Based in Seattle, Susan Cottrell is the founder of FreedHearts, a community that deconstructs religious baggage and false teachings with laughter and love—for parents, LGBTQ+, educators, therapists, and the church. Susan, a 2019 TEDx speaker, and her husband, Rob, help people free their hearts to love and be loved through a variety of resources, including a podcast and videos.

View Susan Cottrell's talk .

8 Reasons and Responses to Faith Deconstruction – Tom Oord

Why people deconstruct their faith and how “open and relational theology” helps rebuild a more rational, healthier spirituality that aligns with our intuitions about love and freedom.

Thomas Jay Oord is a theologian, philosopher, and scholar of multi-disciplinary studies who directs the Center for Open and Relational Theology. He is known for his research and writing on love, open and relational theology, science and religion, evil and power, and the implications of freedom and relationships for transformation. He is the author of 30 books, including Faith After Deconstruction.

View Thomas Jay Oord's talk .

No More Parades

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:51:49 GMT

This death isn’t a stoppage. It’s a startage!

2026-25
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Day of Easter, April 5, 2026

Jeremiah 31:1-6 ; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24 ; Acts 10:34-43 ; John 20:1-18

Once upon a time, there was a woman named Mary—not the mother of Jesus, but a different Mary, possibly from a village called Magdala. We hear in Luke’s gospel that Jesus healed Mary of a powerful demonic affliction. After this she joined Jesus’ wandering group of disciples and helped provide for them, both financially and in daily service to their needs.

Mary Magdalene doesn’t appear in the Bible outside the four gospels. Only in Luke’s gospel is she mentioned at any time prior to the crucifixion, and then just in passing. What more do we know about Mary Magdalene? Honestly, not much. After Easter morning, she never appears in the Bible again.

Yet Mary is the only person named as the first witness to Christ’s Resurrection in all four gospels—and in all four, she is one of those who brings the news to the men. Before there were any deacons, bishops, or priests—in a time when the witness of women was not generally seen as reliable—Mary was ordained to share the Good News.

But the Day of Easter begins only with Mary’s grief. When she comes to the tomb, she brings no spices, no anointing oil. The usual funerary duties of women must seem so useless to her today. Jesus was all her hopes, and, she suspects, all of God’s hopes for the future of the Jewish people! So Mary just needs to be close to Jesus’ body for a while.

But Jesus’ body is gone!

At this point it may occur to Mary that if there are graverobbers nearby, she shouldn’t allow herself to be seen. She races back and tells Peter and Tod. Yeah, I call him Tod—T.O.D. “The Other Disciple.” Get it? So next there’s this relay race, and for some reason the author needs us to understand that Tod wins.

But I’m not focusing on the men today. Peter and Tod see the empty tomb and go home, but Mary stays. She looks into the tomb again—wait! Now there are two figures there in white, and they ask: “Why are you crying?”

“They’ve taken him away!” Mary replies in anguish. Then her tears flow freely, blinding her to everything else around her, even the man approaching from behind.

He also asks, “Why are you crying? Are you looking for someone?”

“Just tell me where he is!” she cries out. “Whatever you’ve done with him, give him back!” She assumes this man is the gardener. Who else would be hanging around the tombs early on a Sunday morning? And Mary is still trying to grasp that she just saw two angels. This makes no sense to her at all.

But the supposed gardener cuts through her confusion: “Mary!”

And then she knows who he is. “Teacher!”

Was Mary blinded by her tears, or just blinded by her grief? Can grief sometimes prevent us from seeing the hope standing right in front of us? At this point I can only imagine Mary rushing into Jesus’ arms.

“Wait,” Jesus warns. “Don’t hold on to me.” Why not? “I have not yet ascended to the Father.” What on earth could that mean? Maybe he’s saying, “Don’t get too attached to this moment. We’re not done yet. There’s fresh work to do.” Jesus meets Mary’s grief with a confusing imperative to let go. Yet he is also present with her—perhaps more so, even, than he ever was before his death!

We think of death as the moment when a person just stops. No more consuming food. No more spending money. No more keeping appointments. No more of any of the busy-ness they used to occupy themselves with. From now on we must always settle for memories of who they once were, and what they used to do. And this is why we rightly grieve.

But that’s not happening with Jesus. This death isn’t a stoppage. It’s a startage! What is starting? Mary has no way of knowing. All she knows is that her grief is not staying stuck. Everything must now change.

If you’re in grief today about something—anything—and wondering how on earth you made it to such a celebratory occasion with all these apparently happy people around you … let me assure you that you’re not alone. I know we’re all grieving something. The only thing that really helps with grief is for it to be witnessed and held by others.

At the very least, like me, you must also be feeling the constant grief of a world spinning out of control, leaderless but for those who exploit their privilege for corruption on a scale the world has never before seen. There are so many crucifixions that are going on today: the bombing of a girls’ school in Tehran … the starving of children in Gaza … local concentration camps filling up with our neighbors … the trauma of those victimized by powerful men who have not yet been brought down from their thrones. Significant chunks of future history books are being written right now, and those who study these times in the future will not look kindly on our nation. War: what is it good for? Well, if you’re the one running it and you’ve successfully eliminated all checks on your power, it’s excellent for your stock portfolio!

In the midst of all this atrocious chaos, I saw the other day that a church was advertising a huge “Jesus parade” for Easter. The invitation was to pour into the streets and let everybody know who their Lord and Savior is. And I thought, this may be well-meaning, but to me it just seems both forced and tacky. This is exactly the kind of performative nonsense that those same wealthy, corrupt people in power encourage. They gather at their political prayer breakfasts and pull one or two Bible verses out of context to assure that some minority of Christians will identify with them. Then they go back to their main work, which has precisely zero overlap with the work of Jesus Christ. If I sound disgusted, it’s because I am.

Easter is not about parades. That was Palm Sunday—last week. But that was the show before the storm, the subversive protest, when the people put Jesus on display and tried to crown him king. Jesus allowed them their misunderstanding. They couldn’t imagine that their king would swiftly be executed by the state. Or that Jesus’ public execution would be only the beginning. Not a stoppage, but a startage!

Because when Jesus returns on Easter morning, even those who loved him most don’t recognize him at first. There are no parades this time. Only a grieving woman confused yet hopeful, terrified yet leaning into the physical presence of her lost-and-found teacher. Even then, she will find only a moment of consolation before being sent back out into the world—not to conquer, but to serve. Because this isn’t your typical victory, and Jesus has no use for winners.

On the other side of the empty tomb, when we proclaim Jesus Christ to be our king, please understand that we are doing so ironically. No actual king is like him. Jesus proclaims an end to swords and guns and bombs. Jesus decided it was better to die than to kill, and when he went to the cross, he left his followers in danger. How naïve, we say! Yet here he stands, alive, in front of Mary. And his work still isn’t finished. Easter is fifty days long, so in this place we’re only beginning to tell stories of resurrection. So never settle for a king who crucifies others instead of going to the cross himself.

Y’all. What are you doing here today, if not entertaining the notion that all of this is true and real, and that it still matters? Admiring the teachings of Jesus—that’s one thing. Easter is quite another. And the news doesn’t arrive with a triumphal shout, and war horses, and trumpets, and parades. No! I don’t trust the kind of shallow, clingy certitude that leads only to parades and steely-eyed proclamations of greatness. Because that’s not how the story happened.

The news arrived in a mysterious whisper to Mary Magdalene, a woman in grief, and what reason do you have to believe her tale? If it’s just hearsay from 2000 years ago, it’s not believable. Not on its face, with no independent evidence. You won’t find proof of Christ’s resurrection in the text of the Bible, or in the earnest work of scholars and archaeologists. It’s just not there.

So why would any of us believe in resurrection? Wouldn’t it more sensible to let Jesus stay dead? To say, “What a shame—he said some good things”—and then get back to numbing out on our phones and waiting for the end of the world?

I can think of only two reasons to believe Mary’s story. One, you’ve experienced it yourself in some direct and mysterious way. Two, you are nurturing a simple conviction that no other solution will suffice. Believing this story requires your fervent desire for a world reborn.

But don’t stop there. If you never go back to the tomb, you will never discover that the body is missing. So keep returning to this empty tomb, as part of a believing community, again and again and again. Those who place the risen Christ at the center of our lives find that he’s still not done working. Honestly, he’s hard to keep up with. He’s always on the move, and he keeps sending us back out into his divine classroom.

See, here’s the actual Good News: when God became a victim of our hate, God endured it without ever seeking vengeance. So, please—no more militant coronation parades. No more retribution and revenge. No more talk of who has what coming to them. Jesus is bigger than all that, and he is insisting, “Don’t hold on to me! We still have work to do.” Christ will see our world through to real justice—the kind of justice that looks at first like unbearable mercy.

What we Christians have is this persistent belief, recorded in ancient story, lived in actual human history, that God will not allow our grief to stay stuck. That beyond the depths of our pain lies a resurrection we cannot see clearly, but only hope for. But that doesn’t mean forced cheeriness. Your grief and your joy belong side by side in the presence of the Risen Christ. Embrace him today, but don’t linger there. We have fresh, joyful work to do. Will you come along with us? We need to love this world back into wholeness. Amen.

The Easter Sermon of St. John Chrysostom

Sun, 05 Apr 2026 19:49:26 GMT

An ancient Easter sermon that feels fresh and shocking every year.

2026-24
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Great Vigil of Easter, April 4, 2026

This ancient sermon was first preached around the year 400. In many Christian communities around the world, especially in Eastern Orthodox churches, it is customary to hear it on this night.

Is there anyone here who is a devout lover of God?

Let them enjoy this bright and beautiful festival.

Is there anyone here who is a grateful servant?

Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!

Is there anyone here who is weary with fasting?

Let them now receive their wages!

If they have toiled from the first hour,

let them receive their due reward; If any have come after the third hour,

let them with gratitude join in the Feast!

And those who arrived after the sixth hour, let them not doubt;

for they shall have sustained no loss.

And if any have delayed until the ninth hour,

let them not hesitate; but let them come too.

And those who arrived only at the eleventh hour,

let them not be afraid because of their delay.

For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.

Our God gives rest to those who come at the eleventh hour, as well as to those who toiled from the first,

giving gifts to the one, and bestowing riches on the other.

God accepts the work, and greets the endeavor.

God honors the deed, and commends the intention.

Let us all enter into the joy of the Lord! First and last alike, receive your reward!

Rich and poor, rejoice together! Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!

You that have kept the fast, and you that have not, rejoice today,

for the Table is richly laden!

Feast royally, for the calf is fattened. Let no one go away hungry.

Partake, you all, of the cup of faith.

Enjoy, you all, the riches of God’s goodness!

Let no one grieve at their poverty,

for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn that they have fallen again and again;

for forgiveness has risen from the grave.

Let no one fear death; for the death of our Savior has set us free.

He has destroyed it by enduring it.

He destroyed Hades when he descended into it.

He put it into an uproar even as it tasted His flesh. Isaiah foretold this when he said,

You, O Hell, have been troubled by encountering Him below.

Hell is in an uproar, for it was abolished. It is in an uproar, for it was mocked.

It is in an uproar, for it was destroyed. It is in an uproar, for it is annihilated.

It is in an uproar, because it is now made captive.

Hell took a body, and found God. It took earth, and encountered Heaven.

It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.

O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory?

Christ is risen, and you, O Death, are annihilated! Christ is risen, and the evil ones are cast down!

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice! Christ is risen, and life is liberated!

Christ is risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead; for Christ, having risen from the dead,

has become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep. To Christ our Lord be glory and power forever and ever. Amen!

ALLELUIA! Christ is risen! (The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!)

God's Suffering

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 04:03:13 GMT

Did Jesus have to die?

2026-23
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Good Friday, April 3, 2026
Isaiah 52:13-53:12 ; Psalm 22 ; Hebrews 10:16-25 ; John 18:1-19:42

Fifty-eight years ago tomorrow, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in Memphis. In the aftermath, Senator Bobby Kennedy spoke, not knowing that he himself would be gunned down a mere two months later. In his speech he quoted this from Aeschylus’s play Agamemnon:

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

Aeschylus wrote these words five centuries before Jesus. A couple centuries before that, the Hebrew prophet Isaiah wrote about an unnamed, mysterious Suffering Servant:

Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases … he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.

Aeschylus, an ancient Greek. Isaiah, an ancient Hebrew. Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King. The history of the world is the history of human suffering. We know it all too well.

Allow me to place another perspective alongside these: a present-day fictional character by the name of Eleanor Shellstrop. In the TV show The Good Place, which I’ll probably never stop referencing in sermons, the main character Eleanor is consoling a distraught demon who is coming to understand the human experience. She tells him:

“Do you know what’s really happening right now? You’re learning what it is like to be human. All humans are aware of death. So … we’re all a little bit sad, all the time. That’s just the deal.”

The demon grumbles, “Sounds like a crappy deal.”

Eleanor goes on: “Well, yeah, it is, but we don’t get offered any other ones. And if you try to ignore your sadness, it just ends up leaking out of you anyway. I’ve been there—everybody’s been there. So don’t fight it. And in the words of a very wise Bed, Bath and Beyond employee I once knew, ‘Go ahead and cry all you want, but you’re going to have to pay for that toilet plunger.’” [1]

On Sunday I talked about belief and the many off-ramps from belief that Jesus keeps providing for us, should we want to take an exit from a life of faith. Judas took the off-ramp of shortsightedness leading to betrayal. Peter took an off-ramp when he was questioned by strangers about whether he even knew Jesus. And how about us?

The dilemma of sadness, suffering, and despair is absolutely, positively, the number one off-ramp from faith for people in our time, and maybe in every time and place. It’s such a glaring, inviting off-ramp that most people don’t even investigate it very deeply. If God exists and is good, then suffering could not be allowed! We run from pain, avoid suffering, seek contentment and relaxation and perhaps even altered states—anything to keep the inherent sadness of human life at bay. But there’s nothing we can do to escape it, not really. The history of the world is the history of human suffering.

Even so … the degree to which a given person suffers in life is no indicator of their likelihood to leave faith behind. There’s just no correlation there. Some of the most God-trusting people in the world—some of the most joyful even in the face of adversity—are those who have suffered more than most. I wonder how that can be?

Last week I picked up a book I’ve been meaning to read for years: The Trinity and the Kingdom by German theologian Jürgen Moltmann, who died only a couple years ago. In this book Moltmann writes, “The history of the world is the history of God’s suffering.” [2]

Not merely our suffering. God’s suffering. Because to live is to suffer, and we believe in the Living God. So what else could the history of the world be? Yet it’s unsettling, isn’t it?, to think that God could suffer. Indeed, some of the earliest Christian heresies were claims that God could not possibly experience suffering, because that would make God less than perfect. Therefore even Jesus could not have experienced pain—he only looked like he did.

Several schools of thought logicked their way in this direction to some degree, including Gnosticism, Docetism, and Theopaschitism. The early church decided they were all heretics. Jesus of Nazareth really, truly suffered, and Jesus of Nazareth was really, truly God.

Moltmann goes even further. He argues that if we look at Jesus on the cross and believe we see something of God there, we must then conclude that God is Trinitarian in nature: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. One sermon is too brief to explain his thesis clearly. But I’ve actually thought this way for a long time.

See, if Jesus is not God, but merely a man anointed and sent by God, then a holy man suffers and dies, but we can’t get a read on how God feels about that. Some strains of Christianity will insist that Jesus came to earth specifically to be killed for us, as a sacrificial substitute, taking our rightful place in the machine of divine justice, to pacify a God who is constantly enraged by our sins.

Well, I do agree that Jesus had to die. Why? Because he was born. Did you ever think of that? Jesus was always going to die in one way or another, no matter the circumstances of his life.

But I don’t believe Jesus had to die in agony on a cross. This was not a necessary component of God’s plan. It was just very, very predictable, because of how we humans are. We’re all a little bit sad all the time, and we don’t like that feeling, so we make little safety bubbles for ourselves, and some of those bubbles are thin indeed and always ready to pop and expose us to all the pain the world can throw at us. When our bubbles are threatened, then, it doesn’t take much to convince us to kill our fellow humans.

That’s how humans are. I don’t believe that’s how God is. If God is Love, God cannot be Hate.

But if God is love, then God must know what it is to suffer.

If God allows all of us to be born, and to experience our share of joy but also suffering in uncontrollable measure, then it may appear that the will of the Lord is to crush us with pain, just like we hear of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant. If this anonymous servant suffers on our behalf, but the servant cannot be identified with God who allowed it to happen, then what’s the point?

If Jesus is not himself God in the flesh, and God sends Jesus to be brutally murdered, then God is merely cruel and abusive.

Moltmann arrives at the same conclusion. If Jesus on the cross is not God, then our relationship with God is not repaired. It is only made worse.

But if Jesus is God, then we see God stepping right into our suffering alongside us. God says, “I know, I gave you a life with lots of pain in it. It would be unjust of me to do that if I weren’t willing to join you in it. So here I am, ready to share one short human life on your terms, and I have an urgent message for you: the only purpose of suffering is to ensure your freedom to love. It’s the only way it could ever work. That’s why mercy is the only justice I care about. Forgiveness is the only way to share abundance. And love is the very stuff I am made of.

“If, upon hearing this message, you welcome me and love me, great—we’ll all celebrate and party together. If you hate me—well, let me put it this way. I love you far more than you could ever hate me. I mean what I say about mercy and forgiveness and love, so I must willingly accept the suffering you inflict. If you kill me, you’ll just prove my point. And this, too, will be made right. You’ll see.”

God is not surprised by our hate. Hate is possible because we have choices, but habitual hate inevitably makes us miserable. When we use our freedom to hate, we cut ourselves off from the joy God has always intended for us. That joy can be possible even in a world of suffering and tragedy. The work of living is to stay tuned in to the joy and to share it with others instead of giving in to our worst fears. That’s some of the most difficult work there is.

But that which we cannot accomplish ourselves, God will ultimately see through to completion. How do we know this? Because even God became a victim of our hate … and endured it without ever seeking vengeance.

What we have, we Christians, is this persistent belief, recorded in ancient story, lived in actual human history, that all of this is going somewhere. That God is doing a new thing. That beyond the depths of our pain lies a resurrection we can only hope for. Do you hope for resurrection? Do you anticipate resurrection? Have you seen resurrection? Can you invite others into your belief? Can you allow others to help you believe?

There are always more off-ramps from a life of faith. You can leave anytime you like. But there are also more on-ramps, just around the corner, at the very next clover leaf. Our suffering need not lead us to an exit—most especially not if there are others to help carry it. Because a life of mercy, forgiveness, love … these are the only way to abundant joy, even alongside all that pain. And that’s exactly the life Jesus lived and showed us how to live. Amen.

[1] The Good Place, episode “Existential Crisis,” season 2, episode 4.

[2] Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), 4.

The Towel, the Basin, and the Love That Stays

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 03:41:17 GMT

When Jesus washes his disciples' feet, he's redefining power.

2026-22
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon

Maundy Thursday, April 2, 2026

Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14 ; Psalm 116:1, 10-17 ; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 ; John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Gifts of Faith: Belief

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 20:12:29 GMT

Jesus allows all sorts of off-ramps from a life of faith.

2026-21
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, March 29, 2026

Zechariah 9:9-10 ; Psalm 118:1-2, 19-29 ; Philippians 2:5-11 ; Matthew 21:1-11

The season of Lent is drawing to a close. We’ve gone from curiosity to thirst, from thirst to clarity, from clarity to hope. These are all gifts of faith—gifts given to us by our Creator to make our lives … what? I don’t know what to put in that blank, so I’ll just say, “to make our lives.” Just “to make our lives.” Yes. That’s right.

But there’s one more gift to talk about, and for four consecutive Sundays, it showed up on the sly. Did you notice?

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?”

The Samaritans said to the woman who met Jesus at the well: “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves.”

When Jesus heard that the man born blind had been driven out, he found him and asked, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.” He said, “Lord, I believe.”

And last week, Jesus said to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Well? Do you believe this? What does “believing” even mean?

We always need to be careful with the word “believe,” because usually in the Bible it means something very different than it does in popular culture and even in America’s dominant theologies.

Belief has taken a beating lately, and for good reason. People use it to refer to things that are a matter of fact or opinion, not belief. Or they use it to refer to things they’re clutching tightly with all the certainty they can muster! But when you believe something, by definition, it’s something you can’t be certain about. A healthy belief is more of a hope than it is a conviction. It’s like saying, “I don’t know for sure, but it had darn well better be this way, because I don’t see how the world could be OK otherwise!”

Now, for a lot of people, that just doesn’t feel like enough. They’ll say, “If you can’t be certain about it, it’s not worth believing in.” Yet everyone believes in things they aren’t certain about. None of us will ever have all the answers, but we all must make decisions every day based on the limited information we do have.

So how do we come to believe in anything in the first place? The answer is … over time, and not typically through logic. In reality, belief is a form of personal trust. When you tell me something I didn’t know, I get to decide whether I trust you as a source. And when you assure me of your love or your friendship, I get to decide how much I trust you just for being you. A relationship with God—as revealed to us through Jesus—is like this kind of belief, this kind of trust. It’s personal, it’s vulnerable, and it’s built by choice and in stages. Jesus invites us first to get curious about him, then to get thirsty, then to find clarity, then to embrace hope, and in doing all of this, to come to believe … to trust his Way of Love and to walk in it all our lives.

But there’s another thing about this lifelong Way of Love that we don’t talk about much in church, and it’s this: You are also free to walk away anytime you like. When belief becomes too difficult to sustain, no one will stop you from saying, “You know what? I don’t think this is working. I don’t believe it will ever work.” Better yet, we now live in a time in America when there will be fewer social consequences than ever before for taking an off-ramp from the church. Don’t want to bother with all this religion stuff? Just walk away. The less you were involved in the first place, of course, the easier this is. But it’s totally achievable.

And you know what? I think Jesus is actually OK with that. Because he provided off-ramps as well. Lots of them.

When a rich young man asked Jesus how he could obtain eternal life, Jesus said, “Get rid of all your money.” The young man walked away sadly, knowing he would never do that. Jesus didn’t chase after him.

When Jesus’ teachings got too difficult, too countercultural, and frankly too weird for some folks, a bunch of them walked away at once, leaving only the twelve disciples. Jesus didn’t stress over it. He just asked them, “Are you going to walk away, too?” But Peter said, “Where else would we go? You have the words of life! No matter how hard it gets, we’re with you all the way.” And Peter kept insisting that … probably a little more loudly than he meant it.

As we enter Holy Week, we get to the most obvious off-ramp of all, and that’s the one Judas took. Jesus rides into the city on a donkey, fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy about the proper humility of God’s anointed king. Even the children are shouting, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” You need to understand that “Son of David” is a political title, and a subversive one. The people are swearing allegiance to a new king—not to the emperor. This is terribly dangerous, but it just might work. Maybe the people are numerous enough now that they can crown Jesus as king in place of Herod—and even Caesar! Who knows how much bigger this thing might get?

But then Jesus goes right from this palm procession into the temple courtyard and overturns all the money-changing tables, making a public spectacle and upsetting everyone. Then Jesus spends the whole week trolling the chief priests and elders. By chapter 23, he’s going on an ALL-CAPS RANT against them. OK, well, he’s lost the powerful economic and religious people. But I suppose he never really had them in the first place.

Then a woman sneaks in and anoints Jesus’ feet with perfume—perfume worth a whole year’s wages! Imagine how much more the poor needed that money! For Judas, this is the last straw—and he takes his own off-ramp from belief into betrayal.

But Jesus just isn’t going to fulfill the people’s expectations. He’s not going to build himself up into a king. He’s going to stand there and say, “Look, God is right here among you, and you don’t even recognize it! If you did, you’d quit fighting among yourselves and love and care and give to one another. That’s all that matters. But since you’re not going to listen … well, you are free creatures. Do with me what you will.”

The snippet we heard from Paul’s letter to the Philippians was one of the earliest Christian hymns. We hear that Jesus was on the same level as God, but he knew that gave him no excuse to stomp around and fix things by force. Honestly, it made that kind of behavior impossible for him. Because Love doesn’t work that way. Love is humble and patient and kind. Love refuses even to break the eggs necessary to make an omelet. Love doesn’t force anything! And love also knows when to let others walk away.

Just because you think every knee should bend to Jesus doesn’t mean it’s going to happen. That would mean getting over our obsession with power and control. It didn’t happen in Jesus’ time. It’s not going to happen in our time. So then, if we’re going to follow Jesus, we have a choice. Will we cling tightly to power and control, or will we let go? Will we eat, or be eaten?

We know Jesus’ answer to that question: “OK, if those are my options, I’ll be eaten. Then I can nourish you.”

Is this belief too hard? Will you also walk away?

Or will you come to this table and just be nourished, and let go of your need for certainty about how this could ever work?

Will you stay just a little bit longer after that, to hear the story that follows—the story of the great unraveling that propels us into Holy Week? We tell too much of the story today, to be honest. But we do it so that we can go back over it in greater detail and from different perspectives.

On Thursday night we won’t just say what we believe. We’ll literally wash one another’s feet.

On Friday night we won’t just say we’re sorry Jesus died. We’ll touch the Cross ourselves.

On Saturday night we’ll gather around a bonfire in hope, because how could we not? From the depths of Holy Saturday we’ll watch the sun go down, and we’ll tell stories in the dark. We’ll hang in there together, holding our fragile little belief like a candle dripping wax onto our hands, trying to keep that flame going just a little bit longer.

And then … and then … ? From there in the tomb, with darkness all around us … what will we discover?

Oh, buckle your belief belts, everyone!

Gifts of Faith: Hope

Sun, 22 Mar 2026 22:03:37 GMT

Faith does not spare us from grief. It gives us language for it.

2026-20
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon

The Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 22, 2026

Ezekiel 37:1-14 ; Psalm 130 ; Romans 8:6-11 ; John 11:1-45

Mutual Ministry Goals 2026

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 16:14:41 GMT

These are the goals of the leadership of Good Shepherd for 2026.

Theological Basis for Mutual Ministry

Observing and bearing witness to the activity of God and giving account of our actions to God are fundamental aspects of the Christian life. Ministry belongs to the people of God and not just one person. Saint Paul uses the image of the one body with many parts and functions to convey the need for the Christian community to work together.

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ.” 1 Corinthians 12:12

Therefore, the focus of the “Mutual Ministry” is not on any individual’s responsibility but on the community’s responsibility to observe and review our ministries within our commitment to follow Christ and be God’s people.

Our Mutual Ministry Goals for 2026

1. To increase the level of partnership between Church of the Good Shepherd and Emmanuel All Nations by including members of both congregations in key committee work ... as well as planning joint services and celebrations throughout the coming year’s church calendar and developing optimal building space and joint program arrangements.

2. To implement focused communications with the Parish regarding property redevelopment, including opportunities for parishioner questions and concerns, as well as between the Vestry and Property Redevelopment Task Force; and to develop and maintain a timeline of project progress, shared with the Parish, focusing on the accessibility and property sale projects.

3. To raise public awareness within the Federal Way community, sharing Good Shepherd’s mission, resources, and activities, utilizing multiple strategic, focused communication streams to more broadly recognize Good Shepherd as a valuable, sought-after community partner, centered around our mission to practice inclusion, inspire healing, and promote justice as we journey with Christ in love.

How did we arrive at these goals?

First, here is a review of Good Shepherd's goals for 2025:

1. To form a Faith in Action Team to be in relationship with persons currently being persecuted or marginalized. These would include but not be limited to communities such as migrants, the LGBTQIA community, persons of color, those in war-torn countries, and the unhoused. This will be done in cooperation with the Faith Formation and Outreach Teams. Actions will be only nonviolent in manner.

This goal was met. The Faith in Action Team meets frequently and publishes opportunities for the congregation to be involved in many ways, from prayer to political advocacy to nonviolent direct action. The Faith in Action Team now reports to the vestry monthly.

2. To facilitate the development of a new mission statement that better represents and speaks to who we are as a faith community in understandable language. This would include involving parishioners' input through group discussions of our purpose at Good Shepherd.

This goal was met. At the annual meeting in January 2026, the congregation chose to adopt the following mission statement: “The Church of the Good Shepherd practices inclusion, inspires healing, and promotes justice as we journey with Christ in love.”

3. To form a project team to pick up the work of the Buildings & Grounds Task Force and begin the building project as soon as possible.

4. To empower the Finance Committee to gather congregational input on their wishes for the woods; to contact and listen to the perspectives of the wider community; and to outline a long-range plan for the congregation’s land.

At a June 2025 meeting, the congregation approved a rough vision for these third and fourth goals. At the next all-parish meeting in August 2025, the congregation approved the formation of a Property Redevelopment Task Force. The Task Force began meeting in September with twelve members, chaired by the Rector. This group now meets monthly and reports directly to the vestry, and its progress toward the next steps in these goals has been steady.

In short, these goals were also met, in the sense that they represented the first steps toward larger goals that will be realized over a number of years.

Important Developments in 2025

During 2025, Good Shepherd began sharing space with the Kenyan congregation of Emmanuel All Nations. From the start, we have envisioned this as an intentional partnership, not merely “collecting rent.” But a simple space use agreement became the first step.

We also came to realize that in order to maintain not only our operating budget, but the capital demands on our property, we will need to generate more annual income. Our congregation has not been growing; we consider it a victory not to have shrunk drastically during the pandemic. But we know that we are still a rather well-kept secret in our city. Potential parishioners will not find us if they don’t know we exist.

We do know that once we sell the property, that nest egg will be able to produce significant ongoing funding from our diocesan investment funds—enough to put deficit operating budgets to rest for sure, and also to go a long way toward maintaining ongoing solvency.

These developments, in conjunction with the previously realized goals for 2025, worked together to lead us to our goals for 2026.

Gifts of Faith: Clarity

Sun, 15 Mar 2026 23:35:38 GMT

New forms of clarity can alienate us from the communities we’d always depended on before.

2026-19
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 15, 2026

1 Samuel 16:1-13 ; Psalm 23 ; Ephesians 5:8-14 ; John 9:1-41

“Hmmm, I wonder something … ooh, I don’t quite understand it, but I want to learn more … ohhhh, now I see! … Hey, this opens up a whole new world to me!”

Curiosity leads to thirst. Thirst leads to clarity. Clarity leads to hope. These are all gifts of faith—gifts from the Holy Spirit, who animates us and gives us direction for going about our lives. Those gifts may lead you to get curious about science or psychology or the study of communication. People choose both hobbies and college majors because their God-given curiosity makes them thirsty for clarity.

The Holy Spirit also makes us curious about … the Holy Spirit. About the nature of God. About the life and work and salvation of Jesus. What is all this? Can we understand it on a deeper level than the American cultural osmosis that honestly has never done it justice?

Yes, we can. And in this place, that happens the way it has in every culture the world over: through storytelling.

Two weeks ago we heard about Jesus through the lens of Nicodemus’s curiosity, and last week through the lens of the thirst of the Samaritan woman at the well. So this week is all about clarity—you know, seeing in new ways. Because you know what? Today’s Gospel passage is not about literal blindness … nor is it about the healing of literal blindness.

Now, in numerous healing stories throughout the gospels, the main point is not the miracle of the cure, but the miracle of restoring people to their communities. Yet this story isn’t even about that. It’s about the ways that new forms of clarity can actually alienate us from the communities we’d always depended on before. And it’s about how while that might be painful, ultimately it is a very good thing.

We just heard nearly five percent of John’s gospel—itself only part of a longer scene. We meet a man who has had a place in his culture and his society all his life. Then Jesus comes along, and suddenly the man becomes unmoored. Unlike in other stories, Jesus doesn’t ask this man whether he wants to be healed. He intends to make an example out of him, in a good way, if in a troublesome way. Jesus applies the cure, in the form of mud, then sends him to wash it off … and to see again.

Once the man’s sight is unwittingly restored—or, rather, granted for the first time, since he was blind from birth—he is rejected by those he thought had mattered to him. But he is embraced and accepted by a new family—a found family—centered on Jesus of Nazareth and, therefore, on God’s greatest hopes for him.

The way of Jesus is not the way of smooth sailing, of security, of power and privilege and a life of ease. When Jesus shows up in our lives, he yanks all of our crutches away, and you never know what the consequences of that will be. Chances are we will become familiar with chaos and uncertainty. Yet we will also come to know a form of clarity that no certainty can ever do justice to.

Who has been this blind man’s community? In the largest sense, the Jewish community. He was born and raised in a specific culture: Judaism is this man’s core identity. And because he was born blind, he has always relied on Jewish laws to protect him. Since he cannot work, he needs to beg for alms, and it is understood that he will be sustained in this way for the length of his life. So he is a Jew, and a blind man, and a beggar. He is also a son; his parents do come into this story.

But don’t fall into thinking that this is a story of Jews versus Christians. Nothing could be further from the truth. It’s an easy mistake to make, and many people have done so throughout the centuries. Chances are the story was first circulated in the context of a specific Christian community near the year 100 after they had been told by those in their synagogue, “We no longer accept you as Jews.” Contrary to the way the story tells it today, that didn’t happen before then. Followers of Jesus customarily participated in synagogue and temple life all the way until its destruction in the year … what year was it again? (That’s right! 70!)

Only in the decades that followed did the breach between Jews and Christians become permanent. We see it most clearly in Matthew’s gospel, probably written in the 80s, and then in John’s gospel, probably written in the 90s. The pages drip with both heartbreak and anger that Christianity did not manage to reform all of Judaism, but wound up splintering from it. Subsequent violence against Jews has always been a part of Christianity’s shameful legacy.

Accept that the gospel writers were human, and don’t allow their heartbreak to make you hate anyone. See, our focus does not need to be on the communities we leave behind. That’s a waste of energy. When we cannot continue in the direction we’ve always gone, we can strike out in a new and hopeful direction, based on the clarity we’ve attained. Our own clarity does not need to nullify the clarity of others, but only lead us more deeply into loving the world back into wholeness.

For God sees the world differently than we do … and God even sees us differently than we do. Like the man who can now see, when we are rejected and cast out, God finds us and asks, “Do you believe?” And really, that means, “Do you trust me not to abandon you, no matter what else may happen?” This is the clarity we seek—not your garden variety safety and security, but the kind of eternal insurance that can make us as bold as this formerly blind man suddenly becomes.

Did you notice the change? He goes from being blind to seeing, yes, but more importantly, he goes from object to a subject, from lost to found, from uncertain to clear. “Who is the Son of Man,” he asks, “that I may believe in him?” He knows the Source of his healing. He just doesn’t know where specifically to fall down in worship. So Jesus tells him.

The Pharisees are still stuck not believing that anything like this could ever happen, despite all the evidence being shoved right in their faces. They insist on their own certainty. When things turn out in a way that doesn’t allow for that particular certainty, they don’t go looking for clarity. They double down on their self-assurance, and that means casting around for alternative facts. It’s nothing to do with being Jewish or Christian. It’s about insisting that we already know it all—that there is nothing left to learn—nothing to get curious about or thirsty for.

Don’t be like the Pharisees are portrayed in this story. Be like the man who was born blind, thinking he could never see, who is suddenly granted the ability to see in ways that put all his old mentors to shame. It was never about sin and repentance. It was always about welcome, and new community, and joy.

I’ll say it again: Behind everything in the universe is a constant, fundamental, life-giving, mysterious Revealing—clarity where all had been confusion. I want to spend all of my brief life on Earth learning to see that more clearly! How about you?

We’re past the middle of Lent … two weeks until Holy Week. In this place, we find our way from curiosity to thirst to clarity to hope the way it has happened in every culture the world over: through storytelling. Take these stories deeply into your soul. Reread them on your own. Chew on them. Let them go to work on you from the inside. They are all part of the much grander story that we tell in this place every year—the story that I see with greater and greater clarity with every passing year of my life. Amen.

Gifts of Faith: Thirst

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:08:17 GMT

Even when we must endure, can we develop a thirst for what endurance is teaching us?

2026-18
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Third Sunday in Lent, March 8, 2026

Exodus 17:1-7 ; Psalm 95 ; Romans 5:1-11 ; John 4:5-42

When I began imagining this year’s sermons for Lent, I noticed a pattern in the gospel readings for each Sunday. From the curious Nicodemus to the thirsty woman at the well to the blind man seeking clarity to two grieving sisters finding a surprising source of hope … this looked to me like a pattern of gifts from God, gifts that build on each other as we mature.

Curiosity leads to thirst, and thirst leads to clarity, and clarity leads to hope.

That far in advance, I was just looking at the gospel readings. It probably would have been a good idea to look also at the sequence of readings from Paul’s Letter to the Romans. If I had, I’d have noticed a similar cadence in today’s reading: “Suffering leads to endurance, and endurance leads to character, and character leads to hope … and hope does not disappoint us.”

Hey, why didn’t I preach on that sequence instead? Because I didn’t plan far enough ahead. But I do think the one I came up with myself lines up pretty well.

Even as we suffer, can we maintain our curiosity?

Even when we must endure, can we develop a thirst for what endurance is teaching us?

And as we develop stronger character, might this demonstrate to others a clarity of purpose?

Both sequences lead to hope—hope that does not disappoint us, because even when we’re not feeling that hope, the hope of others can help carry us through.

Well, today is the day I’ve been thinking of as “Thirst Sunday.” We have thirsty Hebrews in the wilderness who are ready to mutiny against Moses because he didn’t plan for every single eventuality before the Red Sea parted. But then, did they expect him to lug vats of drinking water this deep into the desert? When we place too much faith in our leaders to “just fix it,” we’re looking for trouble. Moses demonstrates that it is not himself but only God who can quench our thirst.

We also hear of Jesus being thirsty. We will hear about his thirst again on Good Friday. But today Jesus just needs someone with a bucket to come along and help him out. And the banter that follows, between two people who nobody would ever imagine speaking to each other, will reveal that the Samaritan woman with the bucket is far thirstier than Jesus is.

How about you? What are you thirsty for today?

We all get thirsty in the literal sense, it’s also a common expression. We can be thirsty for knowledge, thirsty for justice, thirsty for power, thirsty for new leadership … even bloodthirsty! Honestly, if you look at the whole history of written English, I imagine that we are thirsty for abstract concepts more often than we are for a mere drink of water.

Last week I referenced my own thirst. I said that I became a priest because I recognized that I would never lose my thirst for the knowledge of God—nor would I ever want to! Well, there is indeed something wonderful about being thirsty, as long as we know that our thirst can be quenched. C.S. Lewis once observed that humans get thirsty, and lo and behold, there is water. Humans get hungry, and there is food. Humans get tired, and there is sleep. Humans feel sexy, and that urge also has a natural solution in God’s world.

Alongside all these desires, we feel a deep, deep longing for that which is transcendent—whatever it is that’s behind and beyond this being-alive stuff. Lewis observed that all our other longings point to something specific that can relieve them. Surely this more profound longing must be able to be relieved as well! Behind everything in the universe is a constant, fundamental, life-giving, mysterious Source—a deep, deep well. I want to spend all of my brief life on Earth thirsty for that.

Have you ever found yourself in a late-night conversation with a new friend—the kind of talk that just goes on and on, and that you never want to stop, even though you both have to work in the morning? Have you ever fallen in love and wanted to spend all your time with that one fascinating person? Have you ever become a parent, knowing that you would give your life for the new little human you’re cuddling in your arms? There’s a kind of thirst to these situations, isn’t there?

I see something like this happening between Jesus and the woman at the well. Their conversation has an electrical charge—and the living water Jesus offers her is conducting that charge back and forth between them. The Samaritan woman will never be the same after today. She has suffered, and she learns at the well that her suffering can be relieved. She has endured, and her endurance has solidified her character such that Jesus is genuinely enjoying her company. Jesus sees how curious she is, how thirsty she is, and he guides her toward clarity. The end result, of course, is hope.

Let’s contrast the scene at the well with the scenes we’ve had to endure in the world the past couple weeks. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has been speaking freely and with apparent glee about the violence he is raining down on Iran. Hegseth is firmly rooted in the specifically American belief that when enough violence happens in the Middle East, that will cause Jesus to say, “I guess it’s time now for me to return.” And when he does show up, most likely he’ll be lugging an M-16.

Someone is whispering in Pete Hegseth’s ear, “All these will be yours if you will just fall down and worship me.” I don’t think that’s the kind of thing Jesus promises. In fact, I can identify no connection between the Jesus I meet every day in the gospels and the muscular, vengeful, bloodthirsty little deity that Hegseth worships.

But don’t allow yourself to hate Pete Hegseth. Rather, I think we should pity him. Somehow he has missed out on the most crucial plank in all Christian theology, and that is God’s love. Paul’s Letter to the Romans is long and complicated and worthy of a lifetime of study, but let’s approach a few of the basics of God’s love with care. What does it mean when Paul says “Christ died for us”? What does it mean to be “justified by his blood”? Even more crucially, what does it mean to be “saved through him from the wrath of God”?

When this language is misused, it literally kills people, even by the thousands.

Let’s look at an example. If you grew up with a father who was frequently petty and irritable, ready to lash out at you for any perceived slight, your image of God might still be rather like him. He might demand that someone suffer to quell his anger. His wrath may be so omnipresent that you just assume it’s normal for all parents to hurt their children.

Well, our parents are our first models of God, and that’s just a part of being human. As we grow, though, we’re not supposed to cling to these models. We should transcend them. If we don’t, we may learn from a violent father’s example that it’s OK to treat others the same way—or even that living this way is somehow holy. That’s just one example of how we might come to worship someone other than the actual Creator of the universe.

Paul offers a far worthier understanding: we don’t have to do anything for God to rescue us from ourselves. Jesus is not just sent by God—Jesus is the very presence of God drawing close to us, holding his arms open to embrace us instead of flinging lightning bolts from above. Paul’s word “justified” means being in right relationship with God. The relationship is repaired, though we ourselves were unable to do the repairing. No matter what, God always loves us and wants to quench our thirst.

Now, the Jesus we meet in the gospels does indeed get angry—we could even say wrathful! But his wrath comes from his desire to defend those who are suffering—those who are under the thumb of people who brag of “death and destruction all day long”—whether they be Roman emperors or European colonizers or bloodthirsty American theofascists. But though he gets angry, Jesus is never vengeful. He’s always ready to meet us at the well, where the true life-giving water never runs dry.

Jesus does not need to be defended from unbelievers, and if you kill others for him, you’ll find that you were actually killing for someone else. There is no such thing as Christian violence.

The point of Christianity is that if you’ve ever felt lost, well … your rescue is already complete! It’s true for all of us. Now we get to live in the joy of our eternal rescue, encouraging one another by sharing love freely. The process of recognizing our inherent, God-given holiness and making it more and more real continues through the living of our lives. This is what we call salvation: it is already assured, but it comes into focus in real time.

Like it or not, sometimes suffering plays a role in that development. Suffering can lead to the skill of endurance, though not always—far too often, it only leads to lasting damage. Yet where there is suffering, we do find opportunities to act in the name of God’s merciful love. Sharing a cup of water with the thirsty also quenches our own thirst. We are to follow the Lord of mercy. We are not to follow insecure bullies who make “no mercy” their battle cry.

Does all this make you thirsty for more? I hope so! Does it lead to a little more clarity? I hope so. But more about that next week. Amen.

Gifts of Faith: Curiosity

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 21:05:29 GMT

What will you do about the things you don’t yet understand?

2026-17
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Second Sunday in Lent, March 1, 2026

Genesis 12:1-4a ; Psalm 121 ; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 ; John 3:1-17

My spiritual director’s refrigerator is plastered with little nuggets of wisdom on magnets. My favorite one is this: “When life throws you a crisis, just shout, ‘Plot twist!’”

This wisdom came to my aid a few weeks ago when our child Sarah, currently studying in Namibia, found out that the geology classes she’d hoped to take are only offered at the other campus, 500 kilometers away. “Plot twist!”

Well, after some stressful conversations with professors and administrators, Sarah now gets to do an independent study of Namibian geology and take some other classes she wouldn’t have thought to take, and the university is working with her to make sure she still gets to graduate next year. What seemed at first like a tragedy has become a unique opportunity. But that couldn’t have happened without Sarah—and Christy and me—first processing our fears, distancing ourselves from our anger, and then getting curious about what might become possible.

So now put yourself in the shoes of Abram and Sarai. They’ve lived good long lives, but not entirely without regret: they were never able to have children. Now very old, they figure it’s about time to sleep with their ancestors. But no—here comes a new call from an unexpected deity: “Time to pack up and leave for a new country. We’re just getting started, and your descendants will be numbered as the stars in the sky, and your family will be a blessing to everyone on earth.”

“Plot twist!”

God changes their names from Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah. They will never be able to go back to the way things were before.

You know, I think the main reason I became a priest is that I recognized that I would never lose my thirst for the knowledge of God—nor would I ever want to! I want to keep drinking from the deep, deep well of divinity that I encounter all over God’s world, and I want to keep helping other people do the same! I see God in places of comfort and joy, but also in places of desolation and despair. In other words, I see God in every plot twist, if not in the moment, then at least with hindsight—and always bringing more love.

But my thirst for the knowledge of God would never have developed if I hadn’t gotten curious first. My parents put me in places that encouraged my curiosity. My home life and the churches of my childhood were places where questions were always encouraged. Hypothetical answers were to be tested, not assumed. There was ample space and time in which I could have a child’s limited perspective. I could be flat-out wrong about something, and the adults in my life would still be patient with me. They understood that we are all works in progress.

Was curiosity encouraged in your childhood? I hope so. And if not, I hope that you’ve found ways to encourage it later in life.

I believe that curiosity is a gift from God, and that the church’s job is to cradle that curiosity and help it grow. Children are naturally curious. If we want the church to be a place children are excited to be a part of, the adults must be always curious, always asking questions, always learning new things, and always staying in genuine relationship with the children of the congregation. The minute a church becomes stuck in old assumptions is the minute it becomes irrelevant to the next generation.

Adults may prefer that things stay the same. Children generally do not. Maybe that’s one reason Jesus encouraged adults to become like children: so that adults could also welcome God’s gift of curiosity and always follow where it leads.

In the gospel reading for today, we find one of the most self-assured Jewish scholars of Jesus’ day becoming … not as sure of himself anymore. The force that shakes him out of complacency is God’s gift of curiosity. Nicodemus rightly assesses that there’s something special about Jesus, something that can’t be explained away by calling him a crazy heretic.

By this time in John’s telling, Jesus has turned water into wine—though Nicodemus couldn’t know this, because only the servants learn the source of that miracle! Jesus has also stormed into the temple and driven out the money-changers, shouting that if the temple were to be destroyed, he would raise it up in three days. Nicodemus certainly knows about this notorious incident, but Jesus doesn’t seem like a mere criminal to him. Presumably Jesus has performed other “signs” as well—and John always calls them signs rather than miracles. Miracles could just be magic tricks. Signs point toward something greater—the very presence of God, the creator of the universe.

Well, a man with Nicodemus’s reputation and responsibilities can’t be caught visiting Jesus in broad daylight, so he sneaks in at night with his curious questions. Instead of writing Jesus off as a crackpot, Nicodemus decides to enter with Jesus into this odd, poetic world of signs and miracles and mystical talk about water and Spirit and flesh. A wind from God has blown Jesus into Nicodemus’s life, and he can never go back to the way things were before. He will return at the end of Jesus’ life. He will be a character in the story of Jesus’ death and burial, which we will share together on Good Friday.

But it all begins with Nicodemus entertaining his own God-given curiosity. He can’t just look away. He needs to allow this plot twist to upset his otherwise comfortable life.

You know, we have entered a fascinating new phase in Christianity. In Western nations, even just a few decades ago, it was assumed that most people were Christians, baptized as children and raised up in the faith. We were surrounded by a culture predominantly steeped in Christianity, and that brought with it all sorts of social pressures, both helpful and unhelpful.

When I was a child, it was harder not to belong to a church. This is so recent that in my whole time at Good Shepherd, despite lots of membership turnover, I have yet to baptize anyone more than eight years old. But now, quite suddenly, we’ve been thrust into a time when a life of faith is entirely optional. And our church communities are surrounded by neighbors who aren’t even curious about Christianity, or who have good reasons to be openly antagonistic toward churches.

What happened? Well, all sorts of things: economic prosperity, postmodernity, global travel and trade, the internet, reactionary fundamentalism, and on and on. It has been a perfect storm of rapid change the likes of which we haven’t seen in 500 years, or maybe ever. Some people think that these plot twists reveal the future irrelevance of religion. I disagree! I think they only conspire to hide the mysteries we can never fully plumb the depths of. I may get curious enough about something to read about it on Wikipedia or even write a doctoral thesis on it. But that doesn’t mean I fully understand it. Behind everything in the universe is a constant, fundamental, life-giving mystery. I want to spend the whole span of my brief life on Earth curious about that.

Experience has shown me that when I open myself to God, God showers me with gifts. I’m not just saying this. I’ve also seen happen to others. It could be happening to you right now. When you feel curious about God, follow that path. Don’t let go. Let the journey unsettle you, change your routines, change your mind about things. Keep exploring.

Curiosity leads to genuine thirst. But the kind of thirst I’ve been talking about doesn’t feel like being parched. It feels like the opposite of that: the kind of thirst that gets better the more of this divine drink you manage to gulp down. More about that next week.

Engaging your curiosity and thirst can lead to clarity about things in your life that had only been confusing before. But it’s not the kind of clarity that feels like, “Well, of course it’s that way. Only logical.” Clarity is not the same thing as certainty. This is not a clarity of having things resolved, but rather a clarity of trust. It prevents me from immediately condeming people and situations I don’t yet understand. It encourages me to believe that everything really is going to be OK—even if it’s a total mess right now, or a total mess all my life! Clarity is yet another gift from God, and it helps us hang in there.

To all these gifts, add the God-given gift of hope. Hope springs from curiosity, thirst, and clarity. Hope is the gift that keeps giving all our lives, and again, it’s not based on certainty. If anything, it’s just the opposite. Hope comes through the slow, patient process of learning to trust in God—to trust that all this is truly going somewhere. The kind of hope God gives means that even the dead can be raised to life.

From curiosity to thirst, from thirst to clarity, from clarity to hope … how can these things be? Jesus chuckles at the wonderment we share with Nicodemus. He says, “My friend, you take great pride in what you do know! What will you do about the things you don’t yet understand? I give to you a mystery: I am here not to settle all your uncertainties, but to invite you more deeply into them! You think you know what’s to come? What you are? You haven’t even begun. Come on, my friend: aren’t you curious? Let’s get started.” Amen.

The Power of Myth

Mon, 23 Feb 2026 15:25:15 GMT

The myth of Eden is to be believed in ... not taken literally.

2026-16
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The First Sunday in Lent, February 22, 2026

Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7 ; Psalm 32 ; Romans 5:12-19 ; Matthew 4:1-11

If you were here last week on Ash Wednesday, you heard me say this:

In the Garden of Eden, we made the ill-advised decision to try to be like God. And God said, “Well, if you insist. This is going to be harder than you think, so let’s get started. But you can’t stay in this safe little garden. Out you go!”

You may not have heard the story told that way before. A far more common Christian understanding of “the Fall” is that Adam and Eve disobeyed God and were rightly punished. But this has never been the only understanding of the Adam and Eve myth.

And yes, I said myth, because we are indeed talking about myth.

Last week we heard from the Second Letter of Peter that Peter didn’t follow “cleverly devised myths” when he shared the news of Jesus’ Transfiguration on the mountaintop. It may have been a slap against competing schools of thought like Epicureanism or Stoicism. But this week we hear a story that is very clearly a myth. Is the Garden of Eden a “cleverly devised myth”?

Well, it’s certainly clever, in that it ties together multiple threads of human anxiety to explain a core dilemma. Is it “devised”? A better word might be “developed.” We don’t know who first began telling the story of Adam, Eve, and the serpent—or exactly when. We only know that it was handed down to us out of the mists of ancient Jewish lore.

Nothing about the story suggests that we should treat it as history. But it would be an error to assume that just because it’s a myth, that makes it useless.

The story of the Garden of Eden addresses several core questions. Why do we so often do the wrong thing even when we know the right thing? Why is God so seemingly hidden from us that we can deny God’s very existence, or at least deny God’s power to act? Why is humanity never in sync with God’s hopes for our world?

Along the way, the story addresses a few other points, like: Why are humans afraid of snakes? Why do we wear clothes? And more importantly … why do we die?

I see yet another question addressed here: Would God ever lie to us? Maybe for a good reason? God tells Adam and Eve that if they eat the fruit, they will die on that very day. The serpent says, “Nonsense! The fruit isn’t poison. It’s powerful, and it will change the way you see the world.” Who turns out to be telling the truth?

In the Letter to the Romans, Paul presents a full-fledged theology about the effect of that fruit. “Sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned.” For Paul, the death that did come was more complicated than immediately face-planting in the grass. Adam and Eve weren’t in the garden long enough to learn whether they would ever die from natural causes. But as Genesis goes on, they do indeed die.

Paul uses the Eden myth to set up his theology of Christ’s death and resurrection. For him, Adam and Jesus are bookends on the human experience. Adam created the problem, and Jesus undoes it. In medieval times, the story came to be told another way as well: Eve created the problem; she was the first to taste the fruit. But another woman undoes the problem, and that’s Mary—by being willing to become the mother of Jesus.

The myth of Eden is not to be taken literally, but to be unpacked and looked at from lots of different angles—internalized and utilized and only then, in a more complex way, to be believed in.

So let’s turn now to the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. Is this also a myth? I bet I’m making you nervous here. Many of us raised in non-fundamentalist churches are quite comfortable understanding the earliest stories in the Bible as myth. The stories of Jesus are quite another thing. If there is indeed myth in the gospels, who’s to say the whole thing isn’t made up? It’s a slippery slope, right?

Well, I’ll remind you here that the “slippery slope” is a common logical fallacy. When we hide behind the fear of it, it protects us from having to address it. In this case, though, I think the slippery slope is well worth dancing on.

When it comes to the devil tempting Jesus in the wilderness, we have a choice. We can imagine that Jesus later told the story to his disciples. Or we can imagine that somebody later created the story as a myth to get across something deeper.

Now, personally, I have a hard time imagining Jesus saying, “And then the devil said … and then I said …” In the synoptic gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—Jesus doesn’t talk about his personal experiences all that much. And to talk about how you resisted temptation sounds to me like bragging. I think Jesus would have preferred to keep his temptations to himself.

So let’s look at a few other options. If someone other than Jesus is the originator of the story, we may imagine that the Holy Spirit spoke it into their mind, relating in exact detail what actually happened to Jesus in the wilderness. Or we can allow for some measure of freedom in the creator’s imagination. The inspiration of the Holy Spirit that lies behind Scripture is not an exact science!

Either way, regardless of how important it is to you that the temptation of Jesus in the desert literally happened, the truth that springs from the story is far bigger. It shows that Jesus was both human and divine: human because he was tempted to compromise his principles, and divine because he didn’t.

It is also the story of all of us. Every one of us has, at some point, failed to resist the temptation to do something harmful. But the devil is subtle. Far more commonly, we have been tempted to do something good in completely the wrong way.

The devil reminds Jesus that he has the power to turn stones into bread. Why stay hungry if you don’t have to? Why suffer at all? We can even connect this to the later story of Jesus feeding thousands of people. Why didn’t he do this more often? Why didn’t Jesus just manufacture enough bread to feed everybody in the world, and then keep doing it? If Jesus had that power, why should anyone ever go hungry?

Yet Jesus resists, not because he denies this power, but because he’s fasting on purpose. The temptation is to see the surface problem and immediately fix it by any means necessary. But what if there are deeper problems that this solution would only make worse?

The second temptation is for Jesus to throw himself from the pinnacle of the temple, for certainly angels could swoop down and catch him before he hits the ground. This is the temptation to make a show of our talents. It’s saying to God, “If you really love me, you’ll let me succeed at whatever I attempt.” The corollary, of course, is that if we don’t succeed—if we splatter on the rocks below in our arrogant efforts—we can blame God for it rather than our own stupidity or shortsightedness.

Finally, the devil invites Jesus to take control of all the kingdoms of the world. A man who can produce endless bread and command angels to keep saving him from death certainly has the power to do anything he wants.

But there’s an interesting assumption here. The devil claims that all the kingdoms of the world actually belong to him, and that he is the only one with the power to give them to others. Is the devil confused or deceiving himself about who’s really in charge? Well, let’s play devil’s advocate. How often are we tempted to take the kind of power that only the devil offers?

I need to share here a couple of funny memes I’ve seen on social media. One is a photo of a page-a-day calendar of inspirational Bible quotes. On this particular day, the quote is, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” – Matthew 4:9. The caption says, “Less inspirational when you know who said it.”

A more recent meme shows a classic image of the devil facing off with Jesus in the desert. The caption says, “Christian Nationalism: When Christians accept the offer that Jesus turned down.” It’s the most spot-on meme I’ve seen in years! Ultimate power and control—the kind easily taken up by billionaires and people connected with them—can only be ours if we worship the Evil One. Christian Nationalism is Exhibit A. I would also submit to you Exhibit B: the Epstein files.

Now, we each have our own temptations in life, depending on our circumstances and the complications of our own personalities, traumas, and disorders. What is easy for one person to say no to is difficult for another. Resisting these temptations is exhausting. But when we do, and when we collapse afterward from the effort, we can expect the very angels of God to attend to our needs.

At least, that’s how I apply this myth. If it is a myth. Or maybe it’s a myth that also literally happened? I am not especially concerned about the distinction.

In the Garden of Eden, the serpent tempted Eve and Adam to become like God. But Jesus shows us that to be like God is not to do showy, godlike things. To be like God is to resist the temptation to control, to overpower, to exploit—to prevent others from growing in their own way and in their own time. To let go of such temptations is much harder than we think it should be.

So here we are on the First Sunday in Lent. The next time you find yourself with a little more power than you expected … what will you do with it? And how are you using the power of myth to resist temptation?

The Rubble or Our Sins

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 16:11:28 GMT

We live in a beautiful world, but we’ve made a mess of it. So how do we fix it?

2026-15
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

Ash Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Joel 2:1-2,12-17 ; Psalm 103 ; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10 ; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

“Oh, where do we begin: the rubble, or our sins?” This is a lyric from one of my very favorite popular songs: “Pompeii” by the band Bastille. “Oh, where do we begin: the rubble, or our sins?” It’s an excellent question at the beginning of Lent. We live in a beautiful world, but we’ve made a mess of it. So how do we fix it? Do we start by sifting through the rubble and making repairs? Or do we first need to fix ourselves so we don’t cause further damage?

This question—“Where do we begin?”—is behind most of the big theological and political divides in our nation today. Is it up to our governments, businesses, religions, schools, and other organizations to clear away the rubble and start constructing a better world? Certainly large groups of people are capable of effecting good change if they can act somewhat in tandem—God help us! Or must we depend on each individual to reform and to stop sinning? Again, God help us, because individuals will always mess things up. So how will we ever make any progress towards a healthier, less self-destructive society?

Let’s ask the prophet Joel, who begins by describing a plague of locusts ravaging the land. Joel is unlike most of the other ancient prophets, because his focus isn’t so much on the nation’s bad behavior, but on the terrifying things that just happen in our world, from plagues of locusts to plagues of invading armies. He recognizes the powerlessness we feel to prevent such things from happening.

To project Joel forward into our own day, he might say, “You see that the powerful are cruel to the vulnerable—immigrants … the poor … children being used and abused. You see careless dictators carving up the nations of the globe with no concern for those who live in them. You see the cruelest and most insecure bullies building concentration camps all over our country, including a potential one right over in Tukwila. You see that the wealthy have decided to ignore climate change completely, burning as much coal as possible and building gigantic, water-sucking AI data centers. It’s as if they want to burn the whole world down. What can you possibly do against these monstrous forces?”

Well, Joel does have a prescription for our moment, practices that any individual can do on any day: gather the community to pray and to fast. Oh, where does Joel begin: the rubble, or our sins? Joel makes no distinction. Keep returning to the LORD your God, preaches Joel: “for [God] is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.” But the call is for all the people to do this together—not to rely merely on our own pious acts of penitence.

Joel makes no distinction between individual and communal behavior because our modern concept of individual rights and responsibilities developed long after his time. Not nearly as many people today would affirm that God punishes nations for corporate sins, or relents from punishing only after communal repentance. Laying aside the question of what is sinful in the first place, we’re more likely to say that individuals sin, and that those sins working together cause bigger and bigger problems, and so we bring our doom upon ourselves.

If that’s the case, then how exactly does God relate to nations on the world stage? When we turn to the Gospels, we find that Jesus doesn’t seem to care much one way or the other about the Roman Empire. It is his context, but it need not stand in the way of us loving God and loving each other. Borders and governments are human constructions, and they will continue to change, but God’s concerns are always broader and deeper. Oh, where does Jesus begin: the rubble, or our sins? Jesus’ answer to us today is quiet and patient. We are to choose carefully where to put our attention and our energy. We are to be God’s people wherever we are, and in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.

We are to keep doing the next right thing, simply out of love. Do good things, says Jesus, but see if you can get away with doing them secretly. Don’t do good things in the hope of a reward. Jesus also rails against hypocrites who make a show of doing something religious—maybe wearing a sandwich board on a street corner and screaming at sinners, or maybe making angry, all-caps social media posts against the ungodly—as if we could strong-arm God into dispensing some sort of vending machine blessing.

I can’t tell whether Jesus is being tongue-in-cheek, or sincere, when he tells us that those hypocrites who make a show of their good deeds will receive their reward. He may be saying that even their misguided efforts are not futile. Or he may be saying that we can only ever receive the kind of blessing we sought. But Jesus calls his followers to a higher standard. Feasts can be public, but we feel the effects of fasting in private. Worship can be corporate, but our deepest prayerful longings are personal. Our faith proceeds from our one-on-one relationship with God and spreads outward to our community and the world.

Above all, says Jesus, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” What do we value most, and why do we value it? We need look no further than our credit card statements to find our hearts. (A priest I knew once commented, “I guess my heart is in lunch.” I can relate!) If Lent is a time for self-examination, then we could do worse than to examine our finances, whether we are individuals, churches, or nations! How much do we insist on maintaining control of our material wealth? When we give a gift, do we really give a gift, or is it more like a contract? If even in giving gifts we want to control what happens to next, that may suggest that our possessions own us.

Instead, says Jesus, “store up for yourselves treasure in heaven.” Do good deeds because they’re good. And every day, above all, stay in relationship with God.

One year when I was a youth group leader, I told the high school kids, “You know, Lent is a great time to work on things about yourself that need to change.”

“Or,” added a 14-year-old named Adam, “you could let God work on changing you.”

I was completely undone, and I told the kids that right then and there. Adam schooled me that day, and I will always be grateful. “Oh, where do we begin: the rubble, or our sins?” Maybe that turns out to be a false dichotomy. Maybe it wasn’t that great a sermon illustration! We see the rubble of our world all around us. We see the rubble within us as we examine ourselves and find ourselves to be sinful people. These things are painfully real. “Where do we begin”? We don’t. God does. God already has. We only choose whether to be open to God’s slow, patient work in ourselves and in the world.

So here we are, about to receive the mark of ashes on our foreheads. “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Our lives and our world are rubble and dust, yet God looks at it all and sees beauty. God sees us healthy and whole, and God holds out Jesus to us—an image of what we may yet become. In the Garden of Eden, we made the ill-advised decision to try to be like God. And God said, “Well, if you insist. This is going to be harder than you think, so let’s get started. But you can’t stay in this safe little garden. Out you go!”

Last week I shared in the Shepherd’s Crook newsletter the fast that I intend to take on this Lent. I’ve tried to create a plan that is somewhat realistic but that will also rely on God’s work within me:

• Every morning, I will pray Morning Prayer before doing anything else. (The Venite website and app is great for this, as the vestry members can attest from our retreat weekend.)

• On Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, I will skip lunch but drink plenty of water.

• During Lent, I will not eat out at restaurants during the day, but pack a simple lunch. (I will make an exception if I have an appointment to share lunch with someone else.)

• Sundays are not included as part of the 40 days of Lent. Aside from my lifelong practice of Sunday worship, I will take a break from these practices.

That’s my fast. What’s yours?

Whatever you take on, if and when your willpower fails, don’t believe for a second that you have failed God. God loves you infinitely. Do you believe that? As Paul wrote to the Philippians, “God has begun a good work in you.” And no matter how much rubble piles up in us or in the world around us, God will see that work through to completion. This is the Christian story: that God has acted in the world and will continue to act in the world. It’s not all up to us to get it right, because Jesus took care of that part. Now our job is simply to relax into Jesus, to be grateful for the gift of eternal life, and in response to it, to love more and more freely. Amen.

Up the Mountain Together

Sun, 15 Feb 2026 21:25:09 GMT

Over time, these stories will become your own stories. So keep coming back to them.

2026-14
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany, February 15, 2026

Exodus 24:12-18 ; Psalm 2 ; 2 Peter 1:16-21 ; Matthew 17:1-9

The Second Letter of Peter was likely the final piece of the Bible to be written, probably in the early second century. So it was not written by Peter himself, but by a later community that sought to revere him by attending to his teachings.

How do we know this? For one thing, the author speaks of the letters of Paul as if they were holy Scripture—something Peter could not have said in his own lifetime. For another, the letter responds to anxiety that long after Jesus’ death and resurrection, the world went on as always. The author of this letter, using Peter’s voice, counsels the community to hang in there and wait patiently for Jesus to return and renew the entire world.

In today’s passage, he urges his community to keep coming back to the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountaintop. He writes, “You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.” In other words: “Look! Here is just enough light to carry you through the night until the sun returns. Though you were not yourself an eyewitness, you can trust the stories of those who were. Over time they will become your own stories—your own direct experience.”

Every year on this particular Sunday, the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, we hear one of the three versions of the Transfiguration. If we show up to church on this day, it is the story that is presented to us—and we can spot resonances in the other chosen readings, from Moses on the mountaintop receiving the Law many centuries before Jesus, to the Second Letter of Peter, reflecting on the Transfiguration a century later. Scripture is talking to Scripture. Here are high mountaintops and amazing shows of light and ancient role models returning to guide us onward!

You know, if you grew up as a Christian, someone probably advised you when you were young to read your Bible. Yet most Christians have never read more than bits and pieces of it, because much of it is rather difficult to relate to without lots of context. But let’s say you have read the entire Bible once, straight though. Haven’t you “got it” now? Isn’t it like reading a really long, challenging novel and then setting it aside to start a new one?

Well, the Bible isn’t that kind of book. First, it’s not a single book, but an entire library. It’s not intended to be read from cover to cover like a novel—though certain portions of it are quite novelistic. It’s not intended to be read randomly, like flipping through a book of poetry—though much of it is indeed poetic and can be approached in this way.

The Bible isn’t even supposed to be read silently to yourself! There are many benefits to doing so, and of course I encourage the practice. I’m just saying that it wasn’t written with silent reading in mind. Throughout the centuries in which it was being compiled, most of the people who were to make use of it were illiterate.

Instead, the Bible is intended to be proclaimed in community, out loud—and then unpacked and applied in the living of our lives, both in community and as individuals. If you hadn’t been here today, the Transfiguration of Jesus would not have been presented to you. You might have happened to choose to read it in the privacy of your home, but how likely is that? And how could you have drawn the obvious connections to these other passages?

Look at the Exodus passage: “The glory of the LORD settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days; on the seventh day [the LORD] called to Moses out of the cloud.”

Compare this to the gospel reading: “Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain …”

What’s going on here? Is this a literary device? Or did Jesus literally take them up the mountain “six days later”? Six days after what? In Matthew and Mark, the Transfiguration happens six days after Peter says out loud that he believes Jesus to be the Messiah. In Luke, however, it’s “about eight days” later.

Would you have noticed this if you were reading the passage to yourself at home? Or would you have blown through “six days later” without paying any attention to it? What is the significance of it? What could it possibly have to do with my life, as I come to be with this community on the first day of the seven-day week? And why does Luke tell it differently? Let’s wonder about this together.

Do you see? It’s one thing to control our own reading of the Bible. It is quite another to hear it read out loud on a regular schedule, and not to be able to control which stories are placed into our ears today.

In short, the Bible is best approached on many occasions, over time, with other people. And everything in it was carefully selected not necessarily because it was journalistically factual, but because for ancient Jews and for early Christian communities, it was useful. It was doing something noticeable. It was changing the way people lived.

Now, you all know that I’m big on the ideal of people making it to church every single week. Hopefully I don’t shame anyone for not doing so, but only keep encouraging it based on my own experience. If I have to miss church one week, I really, really feel it. It means I’ve missed out on whatever slices of this divine proclamation were served up for us today. I have missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear the Bible in this way, at this time, with these people.

The other piece that’s really important, of course, is that the Bible is so, so contextual. We can read the words and believe we understand them. But coming together in community to share these words gives us far more opportunities for better understanding.

Here’s another example. What do you know about the Epicureans? They were an ancient Greek school of materialist philosophy with a shockingly advanced understanding of physics. But when they applied their theories to the question, “How should we live our lives?”, they arrived at a conclusion summarized in a poem by Philodemos in the 1 ^st century BCE:

Don't fear God,
Don't worry about death;
What is good is easy to get;
What is terrible is easy to endure. [1]

To summarize, the Epicureans believed that the gods don’t really interact with human beings—that there is no afterlife—that the main point is to live a life of pleasure—and that all suffering is bearable because we know it will eventually end.

Now, by the time of the Second Letter of Peter, Christianity was an established movement, though it still thrived largely outside the public eye. Epicureanism was one philosophy competing with Christianity by promoting a life of easy, individualistic pleasure instead of sacrificial commitment. (That’s an oversimplification, but this is a sermon, not an academic paper.)

My point is that the Second Letter of Peter may be written in opposition to the Epicureans—and maybe also against other competing groups, like the Stoics and the Gnostics and the Antinomians, and you can learn more about them on Wikipedia. All these schools of thought were popular because, each in their own way, they made sense to people.

But this author writes them off as those who follow “cleverly devised myths.” By contrast, he tells his community, “You know that we’ve got the right story here, because Peter saw the Transfiguration of Jesus with his own eyes, and we’ve preserved his story for all future generations. We know that Jesus was speaking directly with Moses and Elijah, who had died centuries before. We know that the Voice of God spoke to us on the mountain and urged us to listen to Jesus. We know that Jesus went from here down the mountain toward Jerusalem to his death. And we know what happened after—that he returned to us again! These stories that were Peter’s stories have been transmitted to you, and now they are your stories as well.”

If that doesn’t satisfy you, I totally get it. The author seems to assume that no other school of thought is based on anyone’s personal experience, but is a mere deception based on some sort of plausible fabrication. It’s not a fair way to argue, and his detractors aren’t even in the same room with him. Who’s to say he’s not doing the same thing? These questions need not threaten your faith. If you’re asking them, you’re wrestling well.

All the same, life is long, difficult, and confusing, and annoyingly, it keeps changing. Trying to hold onto a good situation is like trying to hold onto running water. We never know what’s coming next, and we never feel prepared to meet it. Sometimes all we have to guide us through the confusion are other people’s experiences, handed down to us—the wisdom of our elders. It’s up to us to decide which elders we trust.

That’s what the author of the letter is doing here. He says, “Don’t listen to know-it-alls who gather all sorts of facts but have no wisdom to apply them. Allow that you don’t know it all. Allow that life is confusing. Allow that you can’t do this on your own. Hold onto these ancient words, and keep coming back to them. They will help you deal with the future—no matter where it leads!”

Eventually, to all of us comes a time to share our own wisdom with the next generations. Our life experiences are real because they are our own. Can we trust them to give us insight into the huge questions of life—insight that will also help those who follow us? To some degree, yes, because personal experiences are real data. But we always do well to hold them up against the experiences of those whose lives have been very different from ours. Diversity of belief is a strength, because together we arrive at a deeper understanding of truth than we do all on our own.

When we gather here on Sunday mornings, on what early Christians called the eighth day, we are going up the mountain together to experience the holiness of God—the fundamental truth of the personality behind the entire universe. Isn’t the view spectacular?

But if you don’t see it yet, hang in there. Keep journeying up the mountain with us. And keep setting your stories alongside our stories and alongside all the ancient, sacred stories. Amen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_Doctrines , retrieved 12 February 2026

The Light at the End of the Lava Tube

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 05:35:26 GMT

We are the light of the world, Jesus tells us. And we are salt ... and salt melts ice!

2026-13
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 8, 2026

Isaiah 58:1-12 ; Psalm 112:1-10 ; 1 Corinthians 2:1-16 ; Matthew 5:13-20

Our Mission

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 21:09:36 GMT

Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.

2026-12
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 1, 2026

Micah 6:1-8 ; Psalm 15 ; 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 ; Matthew 5:1-12

The prophets of ancient Israel used a lot of different literary devices to get their message across. They framed their words in dramatic monologues, oracles, poems, love songs, and even … lawsuits.

Today we hear from Micah that God is bringing a lawsuit against the people, not to punish them, but to sternly remind them of their purpose. God’s lawsuit is replete with exasperation and sarcasm. The core accusation is that the people’s temple sacrifices have become hypocritical.

I talked a couple weeks ago about the purpose of sacrifices in Ancient Israel. Pardon me while I quote myself:

The Lamb is the sacrificial substitute for a human being. It demonstrates our devotion and trust to the powers that hold sway over our fortunes. Understood benevolently, it’s part of a covenant of trust: I give away to God a resource I need, trusting that God will provide enough for me even after I sacrifice it. It’s a prayer and a promise. We don’t sacrifice people to calm the mysterious forces, to make the community safe from divine harm again. We don’t go in for scapegoats.

I thought later about that last sentence and realized, well, we kinda do go in for scapegoats, if you go by the original definition. Or … well, not really, because I don’t want any of you to urge me to sacrifice literal goats on this altar! The point is that if we feel the need to sacrifice something to God, it should be done out of love, not out of fear, and it should never victimize others. This is because our purpose is not to pacify an angry deity.

God makes that perfectly clear in this lawsuit against the people. “I was so good to you—and the point was that you would learn from that! Why can’t you be good to one another? Why do you abuse one another and then show up to worship as if you had done nothing wrong? Knock it off! I’ve already told you what I really want. So make a sacrifice not of one another, but of praise and thanksgiving. Do justice in your society. Love kindness for its own sake. Walk humbly through this life I have given you, with me right at your side.”

Micah 6:8 isn’t quite as popular a Bible verse as John 3:16, but it’s right up there. Many people have told me it’s their favorite verse, because it’s so darn clear. In the Hebrew Bible, it’s probably the closest thing you’ll find to a mission statement: “Do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with your God.”

Last week at the annual meeting, we approved a new mission statement for Good Shepherd. Honestly, we could have done worse than to just use Micah 6:8! But we didn’t do that. Many of you participated in a survey last year, talking about your experiences at Good Shepherd and how this congregation helps you practice your faith. A number of folks then went through the surveys carefully and lovingly, pulling out words and phrases and trying out different combinations of them to try to express the overall thrust of people’s understanding of what God is up to at Good Shepherd. Then, last Sunday, those who assembled for the annual meeting voted between two nominated statements. Here’s the one you chose:

The Church of the Good Shepherd practices inclusion, inspires healing, and promotes justice as we journey with Christ in love.

Would you look at that? I want to suggest that perhaps we did use Micah 6:8 after all, but in reverse.

The Church of the Good Shepherd practices inclusion. This means walking humbly—welcoming people as they are and recognizing that even when we don’t yet understand one another, we can get curious in our desire to do so, loving first and establishing trusting relationships.

The Church of the Good Shepherd inspires healing. Healing comes not through correction or punishment, but through kindness and prayer. Humility plays a role here as well. A pompous church hurts people. A humble church helps people heal.

The Church of the Good Shepherd promotes justice. The term “justice” can be a loaded one. Politicians talk blithely about “bringing people to justice” when sometimes they just mean killing them. In its theological sense, justice does not mean mere punishment, but making things right, even if that takes time and patience.

All of this is part of an ongoing journey with Christ, in love. As we mature spiritually, we fall more deeply in love with God’s world, God’s people, and God’s hopes for us. And we trust that Christ is with us every step of the way.

[God] has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

The Church of the Good Shepherd practices inclusion, inspires healing, and promotes justice as we journey with Christ in love.

Our new mission statement expresses an ideal. We don’t always succeed, but with this statement in front of us, we have a small encapsulation of what we expect of one another.

And you know, our other readings today are also about our mission. Psalm 15 lays out minimum standards of morality, in summary … Do the right thing. Speak truth from the depths of your heart. Don’t lie or misrepresent. Don’t be contemptuous of others. Do hold evildoers accountable and expect God to help them change and grow! Honor others who do good. Keep the oaths you swear. Give money away without expecting anything back. Don’t take bribes. God promises to uphold those who live like this.

But then, our passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians shows that these behaviors make for a paradoxical life. While God promises to uphold those who keep to this mission, God doesn’t prevent us from suffering for it! For Paul, this is the truth that Jesus came to reveal. If you insist on never suffering, you will be completely unable to keep to the mission God gives you.

This is something that many people simply won’t accept. Doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly may well lead directly to the Cross. We are to live like this anyway. Or as I love to put it—and you can see it as a bumper sticker on my car—“Since all else fails, love.”

Because all else does indeed fail: only the difficult work of love lives up to God’s dreams for humankind. And so we proclaim “Christ crucified.” Paul says this is “a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,” which is a shorthand way of saying that nobody on earth really likes this message. It’s uncomfortable. It’s inconvenient. It’s the truth. Why? Because “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”

Those who appear foolish and weak according to conventional wisdom are often the ones walking most closely with God. Those who insist on being winners are completely missing the point.

Which brings us to the Beatitudes, as our passage from Matthew is commonly known. “Beatitudes” is Latin for “the Blesseds.” For Matthew, this is the beginning of Jesus’ teaching. It is his manifesto and mission statement—the key to everything else that follows. What makes you blessed? Not your behavior so much as your situation. When you are poor in spirit—cast down, depressed, rejected—God is with you. When you find yourself grieving, God will draw close and comfort you. When you are outright persecuted for your dedication to God’s priorities, you are living as a citizen of God’s realm.

Other Beatitudes are about the best ways to go about in the world: with meekness, mercy, and purity of heart, making peace among people, and always hungering and thirsting to be in close relationship with the God who created you and loves you eternally. I’ve known many people who live like this, and I’m always in awe of them. They show me how often I fail to emulate them, but simultaneously, they encourage me to keep trying.

And that brings us to the corollary: how we know when we’re not living by the Beatitudes. If you deny that you need God’s help, you will never accept it when it’s given. If you refuse to mourn, you will never be invested enough in people to receive God’s truest gifts. If you insist on stomping around the world seeking immediate gratification and always getting your own way, God’s world will actually be snatched out of your hands. And so on. If you spend all your life avoiding suffering, avoiding persecution, avoiding the hard work of being in relationship with people who are very different from you … you’ll simply never come to know God.

The sacrifices God asks of us, then, form the backbone of our mission, because the work of Christians is indeed actual work. It takes commitment and energy to seek good for others. It takes all the imagination and curiosity God has given us to live fully into the gifts with which God showers us every day. It also requires participation in and devotion to Christian community, because none of us lives in a vacuum. We get to carry each other.

The Church of the Good Shepherd practices inclusion, inspires healing, and promotes justice as we journey with Christ in love. What is your part in this mission? What have you been doing, and can you relate to others the rewards that have come from it? Or maybe the specific work you’ve been doing has become ill-fitting—sapping energy from you without much positive effect on others. Or maybe you’ve found that you can’t keep doing what you were doing and must now change your expectations for yourself. God is still with you, and you still have love to give. The most mature Christians I know are the ones who listen closely for God’s voice and then take risks to try new things—new ways of loving.

Well, if you’re hearing this, you’ve gone to the trouble of showing up today—or, at the very least, hitting “play” on a page on the Good Shepherd website! So today, make a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to God. And in the silence of your heart, ask humbly, “God, how shall I take on my part of this mission? What would you have me do next for the sake of others?” Amen.

Turning and Following

Sun, 25 Jan 2026 22:41:34 GMT

Christians must stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.

2026-11
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 25, 2026

Isaiah 9:1-4 ; Matthew 4:12-23

Today I think we need to begin with a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from his book The Cost of Discipleship —a book I would like all of you to read.

As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German Lutheran pastor. In the spring of 1945 he was hanged for the crime of smuggling fourteen Jews across the border into Switzerland. And while Bonhoeffer may not personally have taken part in a failed assassination attempt on Hitler, he certainly knew about that plot and was deeply involved in the anti-fascist resistance. Indeed, he began working against the Nazis from the moment they came to power in 1933.

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

Bonhoeffer died trying to reveal a great light to people who had been forced to walk in darkness—for trying to remove the yoke of oppression from their shoulders. If he had lived just a month longer, he would have been rescued by the Allied liberators.

Recall the words of Anne Frank, from her diary:

Terrible things are happening outside. At any time of night and day, poor helpless people are being dragged out of their homes ... Families are torn apart; men, women, and children are separated. Children come home from school to find that their parents have disappeared.

If you were paying attention to the news this week, you couldn’t help but hear of Liam Ramos, the five-year-old with a bunny hat and a Spider-Man backpack, whom ICE agents used as bait to draw out and arrest his father. [1] This is inexcusable in any situation. but note this: the Ramos family are asylum seekers from Ecuador. They are here legally, and they were following all the appropriate steps laid out in U.S. law in the hope of being able to stay.

We also learned this week that FBI agent Tracee Mergen resigned from the force after having been pressured to discontinue a civil rights inquiry into Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who killed Renee Good. [2] Minnesota state authorities are not being allowed to investigate her murder either. Instead, the Department of “Justice” is investigating Renee Good’s widow. [3]

ICE is a rogue agency that is not following the law. A leaked memo this week instructs ICE to abandon the Fourth Amendment completely so they can smash into people’s houses without a warrant and just take them away. Vice President Vance claims that ICE agents have “absolute immunity.” Well, the vice president is a liar. And these as-yet-unrepentant thugs may be operating with impunity for now. But there will come a time when they must answer for all their crimes. Then I will pray for their salvation and their sanctification.

Dozens of clergy were arrested this week while protesting at the Minneapolis airport. In fact, hundreds of clergy have descended on Minneapolis to join in the resistance to ICE. Among them are at least two of my friends: Anna Rieke, a Lutheran pastor from Arizona, and Amy Johnson, a United Church of Christ pastor from Federal Way.

Another pastor, Dan Hannaher from Fargo, North Dakota, wrote on Facebook: “Tonight an ICE agent took a photo of me next to my car, looked me in the eye and told me, ‘We’ll be seeing you soon.’” [4]

Episcopal bishop Rob Hirschfeld says:

I have told the clergy of the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire … to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us, with our bodies, to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable. [5]

When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.

I want all Christians to understand that Jesus has a paradoxical effect on our lives.

Jesus makes no demand on us for salvation—that is a free and utter gift. Christians are those who claim that in some mysterious way, because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, our lives are held eternally in God’s embrace. Our souls are both indelible and holy—no matter what. Our very existence is forever beloved by God, and there is nothing we can do to prevent it. This is what we call the Good News.

At the same time, Jesus makes every demand on us for continuing growth in love—what we call in the church “sanctification.” The paradox of justification and sanctification is a key piece of Christian theology, and not all Christians understand it the same way.

If you want to lean into justification—the claim of universal salvation—you can quote Jesus from John’s gospel: “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” [6]

If you want to lean into sanctification—the demand Jesus places on us to make our salvation real and effective in this life—you can quote him from Matthew’s gospel: “Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.” [7]

Either way, it is clear that if there is any condition placed on us entering into a joyful afterlife, it hangs on how we treat the vulnerable in this life. Because indeed, our lives are indelible, from our noblest actions to our worst sins.

I didn’t want to preach this today. I wanted to talk about today’s annual meeting, which is going to seem so ordinary by comparison! Martyrdom should never be intentionally pursued, but it is not to be retreated from, either. Whatever the work we do on behalf of the vulnerable, it may still feel like dying. It may mean surrendering comforts we always assumed we had a lifelong right to. It may mean changing our minds about assumptions we had always held. It may mean looking deep inside ourselves and reevaluating how we go about in the world.

Every time I’ve had to do intentional work to change my ways—and that’s happened a lot—it has brought with it a kind of grief that has felt akin to death.

Yet outwardly, our work as Christians may not look all that impressive. Sometimes it just means showing up when I don’t feel like it, so that I can be present and available to those who may need me today. If you’ve served the church on an altar guild or a tech team or an usher crew or in the work of pastoral care, you know that this steady, faithful work can look so, so ordinary and safe.

But you never know when you’ll be called upon to be there for someone in a moment of crisis. That’s when the interruption turns out to be the work itself—a deep conversation, a visit to the hospital, an inconvenient demand that throws us off our assumed course—or even standing “between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”

On Friday I swelled with joy and hope when I saw the aerial photos of thousands upon thousands closing their businesses, closing their schools, taking to the streets to shout, “No more of this!”

Then yesterday morning, when I thought this sermon was finished, ICU nurse Alex Pretti was executed in broad daylight for the crime of coming to the aid of a woman ICE agents had shoved to the ground. [8] They held Pretti down. They took from him the gun he had a legal right to carry but had never drawn. Then they pistol-whipped him and shot him at least ten times.

And the administration’s response? No sorrow. No promise of fact-finding or an investigation. No, they called Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and blamed him for his own execution. They told blatant lies that are easily contradicted by one viewing of available cell phone video. [9]

Anytime I catch myself feeling fearful about the future, I know I need a corrective. I need to stop everything and sit down and pray. The Holy Spirit is leading us onward and will never abandon us.

“The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light.” This is in the present perfect tense. It refers to God’s ongoing action—not just then, but also now. We need always to draw closer to those who need more light. This is what it means to walk the way of Jesus, and it’s non-negotiable. It also necessarily involves repentance—a life of constant turning and following, turning and following.

And so Jesus calls us away from the safe work of fishing, to serve those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death. Turning and following … this is the Christian life. Amen.

[1] https://www.fox9.com/news/columbia-heights-child-ice-detained

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/23/us/fbi-agent-ice-shooting-renee-good.html

[3] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2026/01/13/no-basis-for-investigation-into-ice-shooting-of-minn-woman-doj/88035610007/

[4] https://www.facebook.com/dhannaher , post dated 23 January 2026

[5] https://apnews.com/article/bishop-ice-martyrdom-new-hampshire-b58050770e7d40e3247d0aa3b91fe0d2

[6] John 12:32

[7] Matthew 25:45-46

[8] https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/cp372pqq2rlo

[9] https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c20zjyxep99o

Have You Met the Lamb?

Sun, 18 Jan 2026 21:13:19 GMT

We don’t sacrifice our children to an angry god.

2026-10
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany, January 18, 2026

Isaiah 49:1-7 ; Psalm 40:1-12 ; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 ; John 1:29-42

Way back in the mid-’90s at St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle, I met a young woman named Christy Ummel. (Spoiler alert: I married her.) We began dating. Then one summer day she decided it was time. She dropped her voice slyly and asked me, “Have you met The Man?”

I’m sure I looked puzzled. “What?”

A knowing look came into Christy’s eye. “Ah! You need to meet The Man.”

So Christy took me to her hometown of Bellevue, and we went, curiously enough, to a place called Dixie’s BBQ and Porter’s Automotive.

We ordered some sandwiches and sat down in this curious little room next door to where these guys were fixing cars. Then a server came over to me and asked, “Have you met The Man?”

I was even more puzzled. Then I saw the tiny pot in his hand. It contained barbecue sauce.

“Is this The Man?” I asked. Yes. The server gave me a toothpick. I dabbed a tiny bit of The Man onto the toothpick and transferred it to my barbecue sandwich. I took a bite.

It was like a party exploded in my mouth: a college fraternity party, with lots of dishonorable things going on. It hurt. It was delicious. My eyes just about popped out of my head. I needed as much water as I could slurp down.

I had officially met The Man.

Sadly, Dixie’s BBQ eventually closed. But for 25 years, it was an Eastside institution; it still has its own Wikipedia page. And I remember seeing the bumper stickers all over the place: “Have you met The Man?”

“Hey,” says John the Baptist one day, softly, to a couple of his disciples. “Have you met The Lamb?”

“What?” they puzzle at him.

“I said, have you met The Lamb? That’s him, over there—that’s the guy. Jesus of Nazareth. He’s The Lamb of God. He takes away the sins of the world.”

Andrew looks. “Wait, you mean him? I’ve never seen him before.”

“Neither had I,” John replies. “Then he showed up to be baptized.”

“But John,” says the other disciple, Tod.

(The other disciple isn’t named. ‘Tod’ stands for ‘The Other Disciple.’ John is constantly referring to ‘The Other Disciple’ … so let’s call him Tod.)

“But John,” says Tod, “hundreds of people have shown up for you to baptize them. You’ve become an Eastside Judea institution. You’re the man.”

“Well, yeah,” says John, “That’s kind of how it went. When Jesus came to be baptized, I realized right away, in that moment, who he was. I said, ‘You da man.’ And he said, ‘No, you da man. Baptize me.’” But really, guys? He was just being modest. In reality, He da man. He’s The Lamb of God. And it’s time for you to stop following me around and find out where he wants to lead you.”

“Hang on,” Andrew protests. “We’ve heard you preach all this time about overturning the social order—about the need for the rich and powerful to repent and change their ways, and for the wicked to confess and be baptized all that. So, isn’t that going to happen?”

“Yes,” says John, rolling his eyes, “and if you’d been paying attention, you’d remember that I said again and again that I’m not the Messiah—so I’m not handling those details. I’ll keep doing that thing I do. But then I’m sending everyone I baptize to that guy, right over there. I didn’t know him until just the other day. But that’s him—the Messiah, the Anointed One. You’re about the meet The Lamb. Go.” And John heads back down to the riverbank to baptize some more lost souls.

Well, what about you? Have you met The Lamb?

The Lamb isn’t wandering around Federal Way in flesh and blood calling, teaching, and healing people. Not in the same way, anyway. So how do we answer the tricky question, “Have you met The Lamb?” It’s not the kind of question you want to ask in polite company, is it? You might not get asked back to that party. Too many people have already asked the question in off-putting ways that are replete with unspoken assumptions, expectations, and demands—and rather short on self-giving love.

Can I tell you something? I think I’ve met The Lamb.

But before I go there: why a lamb? Why does John use this term?

Today’s gospel reading is the backbone of the Agnus Dei, one of the oldest prayers used in Christian worship. It’s the one that goes like this:

O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
Have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
Have mercy upon us.
O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world,
Grant us thy peace.

The metaphor of Jesus as a lamb is so rich and lush that it’s hard to know what to do with it all.

When God told Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a burnt-offering, and then stayed his knife hand, what did God provide for Abraham to sacrifice instead? A ram—a male sheep. If it was young, it was a lamb. The message? We don’t sacrifice our children to an angry god.

What did the Hebrews slaughter for their first Passover feast? A lamb. They put the blood on their doorposts to mark their houses so the Angel of Death would pass over their firstborn sons. The message? We don’t sacrifice our children to an angry god.

When the temple was built to hold the Ark of the Covenant, what sort of animal might you expect to find being slaughtered there as a propitiation for sin? A lamb without blemish—the choicest of the flock. The message? We don’t sacrifice our children to an angry god.

Jesus knew this, and John described him as The Lamb of God—the substitute for all the sick systems we use to shore up power and oppress one another. Jesus’ mission as The Lamb will be to call us away from being fearful victims who lash out at one another. He will call us back instead to making thoughtful sacrifices out of love for one another.

But how do we meet The Lamb?

I said earlier that I have met The Lamb. And it happened before I was a priest, before I was a lay leader in the church, before I was a young adult in love at St. Mark’s Cathedral, before I was enjoying diocesan youth retreats in Michigan, and before I was even identified as the child of a priest. Because before I was born, The Lamb knew me. And then I was baptized as an infant, and a worldwide community of Christians became responsible for helping me meet The Lamb again and again, at every opportunity.

Meeting The Lamb is ultimately about coming home.

You might have met The Lamb when you feel overwhelmed with reassurance that all will be well. But reassurance isn’t required.

You might have met The Lamb when you find yourself unexpectedly curious about Jesus—who he was and is, and what the point is of all the stories about him. But curiosity isn't required.

You might have met The Lamb when you experience a clarity of purpose and direction that you couldn’t have achieved all by yourself, even if that clarity leaves you troubled. But clarity isn’t required.

When a community rallies around you to carry you through the most difficult times in your life and loves you in spite of your frailties and mistakes, you have definitely met The Lamb. Even if you still feel muddled. Even if you don’t believe things will work out well. When, like Isaiah, you say, “I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity” … When you allow others to carry you, like a bleeding Samaritan on the back of a donkey, you have met The Lamb.

And when you have been rejected by the community that used to support you, rejected by the people you used to trust? Well, that’s about the worst thing in the world. But when that happens, you’ve really met The Lamb.

Because The Lamb suffered and died just like we do. The Lamb knows what that’s like. And The Lamb isn’t finished with you yet. You’re just in the middle of your story. You’re just rounding a corner. The Lamb is gathering people, followers, disciples who will become leaders, apostles—people who have met The Lamb and are coming to understand what he’s up to—people who decide to remain with The Lamb even as the situation becomes fraught, even as the angry powers-that-be demand a sacrifice.

That’s when the defiant Lamb proclaims, “These angry powers are not what God is like. I am what God is like!” And then The Lamb submits to a wasteful, unnecessary death. When he dies, The Lamb destroys the whole destructive understanding of sacrifice. No more scapegoats. No more pacifying an angry god. The Lamb demonstrates that it’s not about rules and our failure to follow them. It’s about love and an eternal invitation to fall more deeply into that love—the kind of love that is Resurrection from death.

This is what overturns the social order. This is the moment for the rich and powerful to quit hoarding money and power. This is the moment for all of us to repent and change our ways, so that we’re no longer blocking Love from flowing freely in the world. This is the explosive party of scandalous flavor that we won’t be able to stop tasting.

We are the Church. We’re the people who rally around The Lamb and walk with him to the slaughter. We give ourselves to The Lamb’s project to save the world.

Have you met The Lamb? Do you still want to? That’s what we’re learning to do here.

O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world … grant us thy peace. Amen.

That Thing You Do!

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 22:57:59 GMT

Do these difficult times call us to do new and different things? Well, maybe not ...

2026-09
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Canon Carla Robinson

The Baptism of Our Lord: First Sunday after the Epiphany, January 11, 2026

Isaiah 42:1-9 ; Psalm 29 ; Acts 10:34-43 ; Matthew 3:13-17

By Another Road

Wed, 07 Jan 2026 19:56:11 GMT

This newborn child threatens our security. What will we do?

2026-08
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Eve of the Epiphany (Twelfth Night), January 5, 2026

Isaiah 60:1-6 ; Psalm 72:1-7,10-14 ; Ephesians 3:1-12 ; Matthew 2:1-12

Tonight, Isaiah cries out, “arise and shine, for your light has come”! He is addressing the former Jewish exiles returning from Babylon to rebuild Jerusalem.

Isaiah does not deny that there is darkness all around, but he assures his hearers that the darkness never has the final word. The chosen people, scattered across the face of the earth, will now be gathered home, gently, lovingly, definitively. And all those who are not of the chosen people of God will be blessed, too, by this gathering in. They will express their joy and appreciation, bringing gifts to Jerusalem from the very ends of the earth—royal gifts like gold, and holy gifts like frankincense.

Paired with the Isaiah reading tonight is Psalm 72, which may date all the way back to King Solomon or may simply recall the glory days of Solomon, when the kingdom of Israel was as powerful and influential as it would ever become. The psalm imagines the kings of faraway lands coming to bring gifts.

Can you imagine a situation in which not only is your own nation truly the greatest on earth, but all the other nations also recognize its greatness and freely offer gifts to support it? It sounds like a fantasy, doesn’t it? How could this ever be?

Clearly this situation could not arise through the rule of some ordinary king. The monarch of such a nation would have to be a servant first—a shepherd who would provide and care for everyone, whether they’re citizens of that land or not, and wherever in the world they may live. Such a king would have to follow a different road from that of typical kings—a path marked by giving and generosity, not by fearful hoarding.

In short, if this were ever going to happen, it would have to be by God’s design and God’s action. And most of all, it couldn’t be forced. God is no dictator. The way of love must be freely chosen. How could even God begin a project so audacious, so ambitious, so seemingly impossible?

Well, we talked about this on Christmas Eve. God doesn’t fling down lightning bolts to straighten us out. God rises up to us from below, from inside, from the depths of our very humanity. God comes to us as a zygote, and then a fetus, and then a newborn child.

The story of the Bible is the story of God choosing people and giving them holy tasks to carry out—first one person, then a family, then a tribe and an ethnic group. But the choosing doesn’t stop there. God declares, “I choose this people … and this people, and this people, and this people!” Suddenly distinctions are erased, but uniqueness is not. There is no superior race; to claim so is hateful heresy. And there are none who are excluded, for God has made us all.

Imagine, then, a world in which the life of every human being is respected and honored. This is what Paul calls “the wisdom of God in its rich variety.” God obviously loves variety and diversity—just look around at God’s creation! And so God arrives among us to offer to be the unifying king in a world utterly lacking in uniformity. How will we greet this newborn king?

Matthew tells us how the wise would do so. They would come even from very far away and bring gifts, just like the kings in Psalm 72. The Wise Men Matthew describes aren’t kings … nor are there necessarily three of them. If you don’t believe me, look again at our gospel reading! We have Psalm 72 to thank for recasting the Magi as kings, over the course of centuries of services of Holy Eucharist pairing that psalm with this gospel. But “we unspecified number of Zoroastrian astrologers” doesn’t scan very well, so let’s just acknowledge the disconnect and let it be.

Anyway, these Magi—however many of them there are—come from faraway lands that have nothing to do with Judaism. They come to offer tribute to a new kind of king who is taking the world by quiet storm. They bring that royal gift of gold, and that holy gift of frankincense. They also bring a third gift: myrrh, a dark resin that is used in royal burials. Now there’s some foreshadowing!

But there’s yet another king we haven’t talked about, and that’s Herod, the illegitimate puppet king of the Jews, installed by the Romans specifically because he’ll eagerly collude with them. Herod’s legacy is to build up the tax-collecting apparatus for the Romans and to keep the peace by rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. Now, if you’re a one-issue citizen and you’re glad for the temple, maybe you’ll happily pay exorbitant taxes and look the other way when Herod orders the execution of several of his own troublesome family members.

Oh yes, Herod is the worst kind of king: for him, it’s all about money, power, and fear. Keep the people in line, keep Rome at bay, and clear out a space to live in luxury. So visiting him first may not be the Wise Men’s wisest move. “Greetings, your majesty! Hey, can you tell us where we can find the newborn baby who is supposed to dethrone you?”

“Why, thank you for letting me know, gents! I have no idea where he is, but when you find him, could you please stop by here on your way home and let me know so I can also bring him … a gift?”

It takes a divine dream to warn the Magi that they must not tell Herod where the child is. They go home by another road, probably kicking themselves for not understanding the problem sooner.

And then Herod follows the usual road of kings like himself. When there’s a problem that threatens your precarious position … just fix it. By any means necessary. We didn’t read this part tonight, but next, Herod orders the killing of all the children under the age of two in the entire region of Bethlehem.

Biblical scholars agree that the Massacre of the Innocents is a fiction, a literary device created by Matthew to call to mind Pharaoh’s massacre of the baby boys of the Hebrews in Moses’ time, and also to set up the Holy Family to flee to Egypt, so that Jesus can then emerge from Egypt like Moses did. Matthew uses imaginative fiction to help us understand that Herod is indeed the worst kind of leader, while Jesus is the greatest. And historians like Josephus give us enough context to see that Herod really would have done something like this—it’s not just a political caricature!

You know, over the centuries, wise teachers have often described wisdom as a narrow path, so choosing it necessarily means rejecting the wide, well-traveled path. We read in the Book of Proverbs: “There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.” [1] Also, “The simple believe everything, but the clever consider their steps.” [2]

Tonight, I hear a call to us as Christians to spend our lives figuring out how to go by another road … how to follow this unusual king. We choose the path we walk, whether or not we realize the choice when we make it. We get to decide whether and how to expand our welcome, our honor, our respect for the dignity of other human beings. Will we bring gifts to the newborn child who threatens our security, or will we seek to eliminate him?

For indeed, this newborn child does threaten our security, even if we’re not kings in royal palaces. This child will force us to rethink everything about the way we live our lives. He comes to us in pure vulnerability, and he will need to be cared for and nurtured if he is to thrive and grow. That’s our job: honor the baby who invites us to walk the way of wisdom. And don’t get stuck merely fortifying our own little palaces—our financial security, our immediate families, our nations, or our churches. The baby Jesus insists that we leave the comfort and safety of that which we can control and get out there to serve the many who find their lives to be out of control.

Recently I saw a social media post from an organization called Liberated Together. [3] It was an analysis of how the Magi show up simply to worship without becoming a colonizing force.

First, though they come to Bethlehem, they don’t try to manage, oversee, or control the newborn King of the Jews. They don’t say, “We’re going to run this now.” They go home.

Second, they don’t take wealth away with them—no gold, no oil, no stock options. They bring wealth instead, and they leave it behind: gifts with no strings attached.

Third, they build no legacy from their encounter—no monuments, no buildings, no plaques. They accept the joy of seeing the baby Jesus, and that’s it.

Fourth, they go home by another road. They will not make a deal with King Herod or any other imperial force.

Finally, they lead with curiosity, not certainty. They come only to observe a holy mystery. The Magi are humble rather than entitled.

The post concludes: “To practice the spirituality of the Magi is to practice attention. It is learning how to stay awake in the dark—to notice where the Creator is shining light, disrupting certainty, and inviting refusal—to follow stars and dreams instead of tyrants.”

Friends, let’s be more like the Magi. In 2026, let’s walk this other road, not living in fear of what might be taken from us, but instead expressing joy in one another’s diverse gifts and hopeful anticipation of all the plot twists in our lives that we cannot predict. When we walk the road of wisdom together, along with the Magi, we’ll find that God is truly our leader, and even where there is pain and uncertainty, we will have everything we need. Amen.

[1] Proverbs 14:12

[2] Proverbs 14:15

[3] Instagram post https://www.instagram.com/p/DSVo5M7E_Ck/ , retrieved 5 January 2026.

Deep in My Bag

Sun, 04 Jan 2026 21:21:56 GMT

We meet God in the holy place where the stories are kept.

2026-07
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The Second Sunday after Christmas Day, January 4, 2026

Jeremiah 31:7-14 ; Psalm 84 ; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a ; Luke 2:41-52

Do you know the expression “deep in my bag”? It means being singularly focused—working on something so intently and being so much in the flow that you don’t notice anything else going on around you. Today in the temple, Jesus is “deep in his bag.”

A couple years ago I heard a wonderful Black American extension of this expression: “I’m so deep in my bag, like a Grandma with a peppermint!” Well, when I write sermons, I usually get “deep in my bag, like a Grandma with a peppermint.” And having done so, I’m excited to share some thoughts with you this morning.

Now, today we are jumping around a bit. I hope to see as many of you here tomorrow night as possible for our Eve of the Epiphany celebration—the moment when the Magi finally come straggling into Bethlehem after their long journey. We’ll share some very old Epiphany traditions together, including the Chalking of the Door and the Proclamation of the Date of Easter.

Meanwhile, the story we heard just now is of Jesus at twelve years old. Why are we rushing ahead? Because next Sunday, Jesus will already be an adult coming to John for baptism.

See, the calendar of the church year is always moving on multiple timelines simultaneously. January 1 was the Feast of the Circumcision of Christ—the eighth day of Christmas, naturally—and February 2 will be the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus at the temple in Jerusalem when he is 40 days old. All of that makes sense on a daily timeline.

Our Sundays, though, will now move quickly into Jesus’ adult life and ministry, because we have a lot of stories to tell about that before Lent arrives. That means we can’t always tell the stories in the right order, or we might have to skip some important ones. So even before the Magi arrive, because we don’t want to miss it, today we hear of a twelve-year-old Jesus giving his parents quite a scare in Jerusalem.

One year when I was staffing at Camp Huston, a group of high schoolers created a skit based on this gospel reading. Upon losing Jesus for three days and then finding him in the temple, the girl playing Mary screeched, “How could you ditch us like this? We were worried sick!” The boy who played Joseph yelled and screamed and looked ready to give his son a good whoopin’.

But the boy playing Jesus shot back: “You can’t talk to me that way! You’re not my real dad!”

To which Joseph could only reply, “Oh yeah … I guess you’re right … but He won’t be paying your college tuition, young man!”

So Jesus, at age twelve, felt drawn to the temple. He couldn’t stay away. And he was so deep in his bag that he couldn’t even be bothered to tell his parents they could find him there. Anyway, in his mind, it should have been obvious to them. The temple was the place where Jesus could meet God … his real dad. And it was the place where all the stories are kept—like this worship space is for us.

Today, I find myself wondering at the realization that Jesus, like all the rest of us, went through stages not only of physical and emotional development, but of spiritual development. If he hadn’t, he would not have been human. But Jesus was also divine, so he must have felt close to God much of the time. The primary task of his growing-up years was to understand the nature of his relationship with God.

Whatever else that looked like, we have only this one canonical story of that development. On the brink of puberty, Jesus was too busy with his own priorities to be thoughtful to his parents. So really, how was Jesus different from any other 12-year-old?

The temple was the place Jesus most wanted to be. Jesus already knew the stories of his people. He knew that when the boy Samuel slept in the holy place, he heard God call to him. And Jesus knew the psalms of longing and the psalms of ascent, up the hill to Jerusalem for all the important festivals. “How dear to me is your dwelling, O Lord of hosts! … One day in your courts is better than a thousand in my own room!” If you want to hear God’s voice, then, it stands to reason that you would go to the temple. Jesus’ closeness to God the Father drove him to seek conversation with others who should know. He had questions—lots and lots of questions, as any 12-year-old should.

Jesus knew that Jeremiah had written so many centuries before, “Save, O Lord, your people, the remnant of Israel.” He knew the ancient promise that God would once again gather the people from the places to which they had been scattered. He knew that this would specifically include people who were the most disadvantaged—those with physical disabilities, those without wealth or resources, those who had been cast out. Jesus knew that everyone matters to God—that literally nobody is left out.

Jesus knew that Jeremiah had also written, “With weeping they shall come, and with consolations I will lead them back.” He knew that when the true shepherd of God’s people gathered the people, they would still have tears streaming down their faces—just as they were, in all their grief and despair. He knew that this shepherd would minister to them, refresh them, and give them hope. He also knew that God was called “father to Israel.” The notion of God as Father was not something Jesus made up. He had heard that title all his life. But he began using it in new and more personal ways.

So by the age of 12, Jesus didn’t only have questions; he had answers, and they were answers that impressed the rabbis. Eventually, Jesus would fully apprehend that he was God’s appointed shepherd—the Good Shepherd, not the hired hand—the shepherd who would lead God’s people to new hope. But Jesus would also realize that being the Good Shepherd meant restoring and upholding the dignity of every human being … and of human nature itself.

That point is really, really crucial for us in our times. Beyond any sense of theological correctness lies the far more important work of human dignity. You know, I looked back at my old sermons and found that another time I preached on this text—six years ago—our Jewish siblings had just experienced a frequency of violence that we had not seen in a long time. There were attacks on Jews in New York nearly every day of Chanukah.

I confess that I had totally forgotten about those events of 2019, because they were swallowed up quickly by the coming of COVID. But even then I was warning that anti-Semitic forces were on the rise, not only in America, but throughout the world.

It’s only gotten worse. Sometimes anti-Semitism looks like people blaming all Jews for the actions of the Israeli government. Sometimes anti-Semitism looks like fundamentalist Christians using Jews as a prop for their own terrible end-times theologies. And sometimes it looks like yet another shooting, like the one in Australia a few weeks ago. As Christians, it’s easy enough for us just to say, “Oh, that’s a shame,” and get back to the twelve days of Christmas. We can turn off the news anytime we like. But if we were Jewish, we would not have that luxury.

The historic relationship between Judaism and its offshoot, Christianity, is fraught with horror, and because of the way power dynamics have worked for two thousand years, all the horror comes from our side of the divide. Yes, all of it. We need to learn and understand and own that. We understand Jesus to be the Jewish Messiah, and we have every reason to believe in and follow him. But every time there is violence against somebody in the Jewish community, Jesus weeps. And the one who committed the violence becomes one of the wolves Jesus must bring to heel.

I’m focusing today on anti-Semitic violence as an example of the shape of our necessary work. But of course I’m also talking about Israeli violence against Palestinians, Russian violence against Ukrainians, and American violence against Venezuelans … and against those who have migrated to America. When we fail to respect the dignity of every human being, we make ourselves adversaries of Jesus.

See, the way we choose to live our lives teaches other people who we are. Are we trustworthy? Do we live what we purport to believe? Many people are leaving Christianity because of the church’s hypocrisy, and I can’t blame them. But we are those who choose to remain and work for change from the inside.

There is much work to do … so it’s a good thing that the Good Shepherd is at work in our community. The one who was once a boy asking questions and forming answers in the temple is teaching us every day, both inside and outside the church. As Richard Rohr writes, “God comes to us disguised as our life.” Figuring out what that means for us, as individuals and as a church community, takes focus, from week to week and year to year, all our lives.

I want to invite you to get deep in your bag at Good Shepherd, whether you’re a baby, a child, 12, 15, 30, 53, 65, or 97. This intergenerational community is where young people learn from the elders and elders learn from the young. But together, no matter our age, we are all on a reconciling journey with Jesus. Amen.

Specificity

Mon, 29 Dec 2025 20:53:48 GMT

Let the words wash over you, and then hold them up against your own super-specific life.

2026-06
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

The First Sunday after Christmas Day, December 28, 2025

Isaiah 61:10-62:3 ; Psalm 147:13-21 ; Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7 ; John 1:1-18

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Oh, the joy of ancient Greek! The beauty of these words: “En archen en ho Logos, kai ho Logos en pros ton Theon, kai Theos en ho Logos.” And while not all biblical scholars agree on how to interpret that phrase—“and the Word was God”—the proximity of Jesus to divinity is super clear.

He was in the beginning with God.

Did you hear that? Christ has always been—even from the first verse of Genesis.

All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

And Christ is a creator. It’s not just God the Father who creates the world. Christ is an intimate master-worker alongside with the Father.

What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.

What does Christ create? Life! Awareness. That which animates everything, and without which the universe would be merely a cold, dead, unknowable process of physics.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.

It’s all metaphor, isn’t it? There is literal light and darkness in the cosmos, yes. But in this sentence they are opposed to one another. Light good, darkness bad. Light victorious, darkness defeated. The light is still shining; the darkness has failed. You don’t have to tell it that way every time … but this author tells it specifically that way, this time.

There was a man sent from God whose name was John.

Well, that deescalated quickly! We were talking about literally everything, and now we’re just talking about … one guy? Who is this John? Did he write this gospel?

He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.

Ah! No, he didn’t write this gospel. That’s a different John and may not even have been named John. This John you can see in icons, a wild man dressed in camel hair, holding a staff, and always pointing upward with one bony finger. What’s up there? we ask. The light. The light comes to us from above, does it not? Both literally and figuratively.

He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

John isn’t pointing to himself. He’s pointing to the light. Look! He’s pointing away from himself. Don’t look at his finger. Keep following the geometric ray that it traces, all the way to the very rays of the sun and beyond, into the uncreated Light.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

“Wake up!” John cries. “The night is ending, and the long-awaited morning is here!”

He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him.

John is frustrated. “Why won’t you listen to me?” Some do. Many don’t. Most never know he existed—not before he is brutally murdered by the state.

But in reality, this verse isn’t about John … it’s about Christ. Through Christ comes the world, created by God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We’ve snapped right back to the cosmic things. Those who are created do not recognize their Creator. And this presents a problem for the writer.

He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.

The gospel writer’s bias is showing! He’s frustrated, too. He’s writing decades after the crucifixion, after the resurrection, after the Romans destroy the temple, and after both Jews and Christians begin, out of necessity, to reinvent themselves. The writer is referring to the Jewish people, and he’s angry. The Jews say, “You are no longer our people, and you have taken in a whole bunch of folks who never were our people. We don’t believe the things you’re saying.” There is heartbreak and anguish. Why doesn’t everyone just get on board with the Christian program? Can’t God just fix this?

But for nineteen centuries afterward, followers of Jesus will keep departing from the way of Jesus and persecute God’s Chosen People instead. We have the benefit of hindsight. It was never about making sure everyone’s right. Did the gospel writer forget how cosmic this all was? Everyone is safely delivered into the Creator’s loving arms. You said so yourself. None of us ever has permission to take out our frustrations through violence.

But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

Who are the “children of God”? That’s you. You have the power to become children of God through a birth that doesn’t involve the bursting out from a woman’s womb. You have the power not through your own will, not because you decided for Christ, but because Christ has implanted this power in you. It is inescapable, and one way or another, it will out! This solution is indeed cosmic.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth.

The world has witnessed these things, and the writer now shares them with all of us in his own way, a way that’s different from that of Mary Magdalene, Paul, Peter, James, Mark, Matthew, Luke. They have all left the stage. Here is a new generation of people, both Jews and Gentiles, who want to know how any of this could possibly be. What is this “glory”—this bright majestic splendor? How can we see it and touch it and taste it and know it? Teach us, please! We want to become children of God!

(John testified to him and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'")

And so we are yanked back once again to the super-specific John the Baptizer. He’s speaking in paxadoxes, in riddles. Do you get it? Don’t try too hard. Just let the words wash over you, and then hold them up against your own super-specific life! That specificity is the point. We love to tease people and say, “It’s not about you.” This is about you! The only-begotten, the Christ, the one who is also God, has arrived in the world, and thus also in your life and mine.

From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.

All of us. Not just as a worldwide group, but as individuals as well. Grace upon grace. Gift upon gift. Twelve days of Christmas means twelve times as many gifts. Twelve is a much bigger number! Keep the gifts coming. Multiply by twelve and by twelve again, and then by a thousand. Receive 144,000 gifts! Receive forgiveness seventy times seven times! You are being showered with God’s glory, with God’s grace. Could it ever really end?

The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

No child should be raised without rules. But there comes a time when we have practiced the rules so well that they have become a part of who we are. We still break them—frequently—but at least now we know them, and we know what is expected of the chosen people of God—of the children of God, grafted onto the vine. We need that law in our souls. We need grace and truth to reconcile us beyond the mere rules, so that we can always be assured of the repentance and forgiveness that together help us grow.

No one has ever seen God.

Have you never seen God? Really? I hear the writer’s claim, and I understand, but still I quibble. Had I never seen God, I wouldn’t be standing with you here now. I see God all the time!

It is God the only Son, himself God, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.

And now we receive the deepest depth of gifts. If we ever thought before that we had never seen God, we can see God now. Look at Christ. Look at the super-specific Jesus of Nazareth. Look at the baby lying in a feeding trough. Look at the wonder in the shepherds’ eyes. Look to the distant east, from which numerous Zoroastrian astrologers are processing in solemn joy. Look at the hard-bitten hands of the carpenter stepfather. Look at the youthful face of Mary the mother, beads of sweat dripping down her forehead as she cries out in pain and then is relieved of that pain and delivered into a mother’s joy.

They all see it. They share that knowledge with us today. They see a specific newborn infant in a specific place and time. They will come to know him better. We all will.

My friends, a very merry fourth day of Christmas to you this day. Amen.

Can't You Just Fix It?

Thu, 25 Dec 2025 15:45:54 GMT

The Bible is chock full of stories of God taking drastic measures. So why this ... baby?

2026-05
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

Christmas Eve, December 24, 2025

Isaiah 9:2-7 ; Psalm 96 ; Titus 2:11-14 ; Luke 2:1-14(15-20)

They say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But they don’t say what to do if it is broke. Maybe that’s because the answer is supposed to be obvious. If it is broke … just fix it, right?

I guess that’s fine if we’re talking about a broken door handle, or a broken zipper, or a broken vacuum cleaner, depending on your level of skill at fixing such things, or your available budget to have someone else fix it for you.

Now, if we’re talking about a broken arm, it gets a little more complicated. You have to get an expert involved for sure, and you have to take special measures to allow your arm to heal. Usually it will just fix itself, if you don’t get in its way. But it’ll take time, and painkillers—and prayers for healing sure can’t hurt.

All well and good. But what if we’re talking about a broken heart? A broken trust? A broken nation? A broken … humanity? We know we can’t “just fix” these things.

One morning many years ago, I came out of St. Mark’s Cathedral after the Sunday morning service and found that my car window had been smashed and my stereo stolen. My friend Amy burst out, “Ooooh, God’s going to get them!” I said I don’t think it works like that.

Nevertheless, our gut reaction is to want God to punish our enemies—and the sooner the better. “Can’t you just fix it? When will you give people what they deserve? Don’t you have that power? And if so, why don’t you use it?”

After all, the Bible is chock full of stories of God taking drastic measures to “just fix it.” When the whole world is evil, God drowns all but eight people and starts over. British comedian Eddie Izzard called that “the Etch-a-Sketch end of the world.”

When the people of Israel begin worshiping a golden calf, God threatens to destroy them all … until Moses appeals to God’s reputation and sense of honor. But later, when some of them rebel in the desert outside the Promised Land, we hear that God zaps fifteen thousand of them with a deadly plague … and this time Moses is good with it.

Then there’s the time when God allows the Assyrian armies to destroy the northern kingdom of Israel, but stops them just short of Jerusalem and zaps them with another plague. As the sun rises, eighty-five thousand soldiers lie dead!

It’s not an Old Testament/New Testament distinction, either. In the Christian scriptures, too, God occasionally zaps people dead, like the couple who lie to the apostles about how much of their wealth they’re sharing with the church. Zot!

Is that the kind of thing we want God to do? Smite our enemies with fire and disease? We may sometimes feel this way, but deep down we know it’s not actually going to make anything better. And if even we know that, then wouldn’t God know that?

Now, God isn’t always violent in the Bible. In other places, God is patient, generous, affectionate, and longsuffering. God aches for us to love one another instead of killing one another. God hangs in there with us and sends prophets to remind us that our violent actions also hurt ourselves.

So which of these stories more accurately reflects what God is like? Does God really fling down punishment like lightning bolts from above? Does God then apologize for flying off the handle and make like everything will be all right from now on? What kind of cycle of abuse is this?

Or could it be that we tell these stories simply because they reflect our worst fears about God? … And because they give us some explanation for the seemingly random events that do take human lives in great numbers?

You can feel free to disagree with me, but I don’t believe the stories of God’s violence. Not literally. I believe they are “what if?” stories that help us frame our questions about what God might really be like. Maybe for humans, the stories of God’s violence are like … watching horror movies. Or making up revenge fantasies. They help us process our feelings of fear, anger, and uncertainty.

Personally, I don’t find these stories helpful anymore. I want to know what God is really like—not like what God would be like in a worst-case scenario.

Now, to be clear, this isn’t about wishful thinking. I don’t want God to bug off and let us do whatever we want. But isn’t it evident that this is how God behaves in the world most of the time? Look around! If God is indeed good and loving and powerful, well, what is God actually doing? And how would we even know?

I don’t want a hands-off God. I’d much rather God to go about fixing everything that’s broken. Wouldn’t you? But what do Christians really believe about that?

If you harbor a strong need for certainty, the “just fix it” mentality feels great. But is it true?

No. In human relationships, there’s no such thing as “just fix it.” When we fight with friends or family, it’s not healthy to pretend like nothing’s wrong; we need to work through the pain and betrayal to arrive at forgiveness. When violent criminals go to prison, it doesn’t erase the harm they caused. When nations sign a peace treaty, it doesn’t magically solve the problems that led them into war.

And this is why I don’t believe the stories of God’s violence. To learn what God is really like, I need to look to all the other stories in the Bible—the ones that don’t promise any sort of quick fix, but instead, a slow, patient fix. A long-term rescue operation that happens in a very unexpected way.

When I shift my focus away from the stories of God’s violence, I choose to prioritize our many, sometimes contradictory, sacred stories differently. Just when I have come to the conclusion that there’s no possible solution to broken human nature, out of nowhere on a night in Judea, a baby is born, a baby just like any other. Eventually, this baby will be known by a term Isaiah used centuries before: the Prince of Peace. Not the King of Dominance. Not the Generalissimo of Terror. Not the President of Amoral Grift and Entitlement. No … the Prince of Peace.

The story of Christmas tells us, above all else, that God has not given up on us. God is actually setting about fixing our world. It turns out that the life of Jesus is a change no less drastic than the Great Flood! It just happens to be change of a fundamentally different quality. God sneaks in through the back door and leaves a gift for us under the tree—God’s very self.

Jesus has rebooted the world.

It just doesn’t fully look like it yet.

And this is where we find ourselves when we stop trying to “just fix it.” When we stop insisting on easy certainty, we are left only with the stark vulnerability of a newborn infant. What will become of this child? Somebody’s going to need to care for him—to feed this hope, to nurture this hope, to hold out a space for him to grow into.

God doesn’t come charging down to conquer us. God bubbles up from within Mary’s very body—on our own human terms, for one little human lifetime.

You know, I learned a valuable lesson by becoming a parent. I might feel frustrated, fed up, enraged … but in those cases, the worst thing I can do is fling down pronouncements from above, like divine fire, upon my own child. What could that possibly accomplish? It can only make her afraid of me. Is that an acceptable situation? No, the frustrated, angry parent needs to hear a different call and practice a different pattern. When God is fed up, what does God really do?

God gets down on one knee, looks us in the eyes, and reminds us, “I love you.”

It might not be what we want to hear right then. But it may well stop us in our tracks long enough to notice that God, at eye level with us, can actually see things from our perspective.

And then we are no longer mere victims of a cruel existence we didn’t ask to be born into. We discover that we are God’s beloved children, traveling together through the valley of the shadow of death, and beyond, into eternal joy.

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.” Did you hear that? All! All humans, all creatures, all creation. Salvation is reconciliation. It is healing. It is growth. It is joy. If we ever felt distant from God, judged with angry disapproval, we need no longer fear that distance, because it was always an illusion. We need not fear God’s judgment, because God will help us heal, not harm us. God is among us, Emmanuel, God-with-us, right here and now.

The Christian message is nothing more and nothing less than this good news: By coming among us as Jesus of Nazareth, God has “just fixed it.” It’s done.

If that sounds too good to be true, I want you to notice something. You don’t need to have certainty about all this. It’s not about certainty; it’s about hope. Tonight, choose to receive hopeful reassurance.

If we’re going to tell stories to one another about what God might be like, will we choose to lean on the stories of God’s violence? Or the story of God being far more loving than any of us possibly could be? You always have that choice, you know. Because we can’t “just fix it”—and because none of us can—well, which sacred stories will you place at the center of your life? And what will you do about them?

May all the hope and joy of Christmas be yours—tonight, throughout the season, and throughout the coming year—with the gift of unrelenting hope—no matter how uncertain or fearful things may become. As long as we get to love one another as God loves us, this life is well worth living. Merry Christmas.

Seeing Joseph in Bill

Mon, 22 Dec 2025 00:36:48 GMT

God took an ordinary "Fonzie-man" and guided him to become an extraordinary father.

2026-04
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon
The Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year A), December 21, 2025

Isaiah 7:10-16 ; Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18 ; Romans 1:1-7 ; Matthew 1:18-25

Advent Peonies

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 01:10:55 GMT

Resurrection comes after waiting—and sometimes after disappointment.

2026-03
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. DJ del Rosario, Guest Preacher
The Third Sunday of Advent (Year A), December 14, 2025

Isaiah 35:1-10 ; Psalm 146:4-9 ; James 5:7-10 ; Matthew 11:2-11

Good morning, Good Shepherd Episcopal Church. It truly is a gift to be with you today. Thank you for welcoming me—longtime members, first-time visitors, those joining online, neurodivergent and neurotypical siblings, LGBTQ+ family, those who came hopeful and those who came weary. Thank you for being a community that makes room for the full truth of people’s lives.

Before anything else, I want to offer my thanks to Rev. Josh—for the invitation to be here, for his friendship, and for the spirit of shared ministry he embodies. One of the quiet gifts of the Church is discovering that we don’t all worship the same way, organize the same way, or speak the same liturgical language—but we are drawn by the same Christ and sent by the same God.

Different traditions. One gospel. Shared work.

That shared work shows up in very tangible ways. One example is Fusion Adventure Camp, which some of you support alongside Federal Way UMC and other partner churches. It’s a summer camp for children and families experiencing homelessness—kids who deserve safety, belonging, and joy just like any other child. It’s faith lived out not just in words, but in sunscreen, snack tables, listening ears, and adults who keep showing up.

My family and I moved here about nine years ago. We live about a mile and a half away, and our girls attend Decatur High School—and yes, we are Gators. On fall evenings and winter weekends, we often drive right past this church on our way to football games, wrestling matches, band events—heading over to Federal Way High School. So when I say this place matters to us, I mean it quite literally. You’re part of the landscape of our lives. This is home. We love living here—the people, the neighborhoods, the way community shows up for one another.

And one thing I’ve learned about living here is that life doesn’t always follow the rules. At our house, we still have peonies blooming.

Now, if you know anything about peonies, you know this isn’t how it’s supposed to work. Peonies bloom in late spring. Every gardening book would tell you something is off. And yet—there they are. Still blooming. At the wrong time. And somehow, the right time for us. That’s Advent. Not tidy. Not predictable. But faithful.

Our scriptures today meet us right there—in the space between what we expected and what we’re actually living. Our Gospel begins not on a mountaintop, not with clarity or celebration, but in a prison. John the Baptist—the fiery preacher, the one who prepared the way—is locked up by Herod Antipas. His truth-telling had become inconvenient. His voice was silenced. His future interrupted. And from that cell, John sends word to Jesus: “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

This is the same John who baptized Jesus. The same John who proclaimed, “Behold, the Lamb of God.” And now he’s wondering, Did I misunderstand? Is this really what God’s reign looks like? John expected the kingdom to arrive with force and clarity. Instead, he finds himself waiting—confined, uncertain, disappointed.

One of the reasons I love the Bible is that the Holy Spirit continues to speak through it—to the human condition then and to the human condition now. Scripture is not frozen in the past. It tells the truth about faith as it is actually lived. If John the Baptist can ask, “Jesus, where are you in all of this?” then we’re allowed to ask too.

And Jesus does not shame him. Jesus doesn’t argue. He doesn’t lecture. He simply says, “Go and tell John what you hear and see.” Tell him the blind are seeing. Tell him the lame are walking. Tell him the poor hear good news. Tell him life is breaking through where no one expected it. Jesus is pointing John back to Isaiah 35—a promise that deserts would bloom, weak bodies would be strengthened, and sorrow would not have the final word. Not immediately.

Not all at once. But truly.

The kingdom of God, Isaiah tells us, grows like flowers in a desert—like peonies blooming out of season.

James Cone, the founder of Black liberation theology, once wrote that if you want to know where God is, look where dignity is being restored. Look where healing interrupts injustice. Look where life pushes back against death. That’s what Jesus is saying to John: Pay attention to where life is already breaking through.

Across centuries and denominations, Christians have learned this same spiritual practice in different accents. We sing different hymns. We pray different prayers. We gather around different tables. And yet, we are all learning to look for the same signs of life. That shared attentiveness is itself holy. And we don’t practice it in a vacuum.

This Advent, the world continues to bear wounds that make waiting feel unbearable. On the first night of Hanukkah, a mass shooting at a Jewish celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney turned a festival of light into a moment of terror and grief. Here in the United States, a shooting at Brown University shook a campus during final exams—another reminder that violence intrudes even into places meant for learning and growth.

These are not distant headlines. They make John’s question our own: “Are you the one who is to come?” And Jesus does not dismiss the pain. He points us—again—to where life is growing anyway. Sometimes that growth is quiet.

So let me ask you—do you remember what happened on December 6th at 11 a.m. here in Federal Way? After years of waiting… after cones and detours and shifting timelines… the light rail finally opened. Some of us celebrated. Some of us barely noticed. Some of us thought, I’ll believe it when I ride it. But there it was. Trains running. Doors opening. People boarding. A long-promised future finally arriving.

For years, people wondered if it would ever actually happen. And then—almost without ceremony—it did. Advent is like that. God’s kingdom is under construction right in front of us—sometimes slowly, sometimes frustratingly—but always moving toward God’s promised future. John couldn’t see the whole picture from prison. We often can’t see it from where we stand either. But God is still building. And hope often arrives quietly. Like a train pulling into a station. Like peonies blooming in December.

James gives us another image: a farmer waiting for rain. “Be patient,” he writes. “Strengthen your hearts.” Faith is not certainty. Faith is trust. Faith is choosing to believe that God is at work underground, even when nothing looks ready to bloom. John expected a Messiah with fire and force. But Jesus brings mercy. Jesus heals. Jesus eats with outcasts. Jesus restores dignity.

As theologian Willie James Jennings reminds us, God’s kingdom always moves toward belonging—toward knitting communities back together. It may not look how John imagined. But it is deeper. It is slower. And it is real.

After answering John, Jesus turns to the crowd and honors him. John’s questions do not cancel his faith. His doubt does not undo his calling.

We live on this side of the story. We know that God’s work often unfolds slowly. We know that healing doesn’t always arrive with spectacle. We know that resurrection comes after waiting—and sometimes after disappointment. John wanted certainty. Jesus offered signs of life. That’s Advent faith. It’s trusting that God is still at work when things bloom out of season, when progress takes longer than promised, when hope shows up quietly.

Those peonies blooming in December remind us that life doesn’t always follow the schedule we expect. That light rail finally running reminds us that delay is not the same as abandonment. So this Advent, Jesus invites us to do what he invited John to do: Look again. Look for where life is breaking through. Look for where healing is quietly taking root. Look for signs that God has not given up on this world—or on you.

Maybe it’s blooming at the wrong time. Maybe it arrived later than you hoped. Maybe it looks different than you imagined. But it’s real. And if life can bloom in winter, if long-awaited trains can finally run, then maybe—just maybe—God is still working in your waiting too.

So bring your questions. Bring your weariness. Bring your hope. Trust the slow work of God. Because even now, even here, even when it feels like the wrong time—Christ is near. God is faithful. And new life is already growing. Amen.

Body and Soul

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 01:53:22 GMT

Have you ever felt that your body and your soul were acting in opposition to each other?

Back in the 90s, there was a writer named Flavius Josephus. Oh, sorry—I don’t mean the 1990s. I mean the literal 90s!

Josephus was a Jewish military leader during the uprising against the Romans in the 60s. In the year 67 he was captured in battle and made a slave to the Roman emperor Vespasian, and then as an advisor to the emperor’s son Titus. Josephus fully defected and was granted Roman citizenship; he even served as translator when Titus was laying siege to Jerusalem. That siege led to the destruction of the Jewish temple in the year 70.

Say what you will about Josephus’s choice to preserve his own life by working against his fellow Jews, but we do have reason to be grateful to him. Outside of the Bible, his writings are the only surviving source for our present-day knowledge of first-century Judaism. Josephus wrote two great works: The Jewish War in 75, and Antiquities of the Jews around the year 94. Because of these works, we have references beyond the Bible to such figures as Herod the Great, Pontius Pilate, Jesus of Nazareth, James the brother of Jesus … and even John the Baptist.

Josephus was born a few years after Jesus’ crucifixion, so we don’t know his sources for these early references. But he does write briefly about the relationship between John the Baptist and King Herod. Here’s what he writes:

Now some of the Jews thought that the destruction of Herod’s army came from God, and that very justly, as a punishment of what he did against John, [who] was called the Baptist. For Herod killed this good man who was telling the Jews to practice virtue, and behave righteously towards each other and devoutly towards God and so to come to baptism. This would make the washing acceptable to [God], if it were used not for the putting away of some sins, but for the purification of the body, since the soul was already purified by righteousness. [1]

I think even that little paragraph could use some unpacking, don’t you?

The military effort Josephus references here is Herod’s war against the King of Arabia, which Herod lost; that geopolitical intrigue is covered in the previous section. Here, though, I find myself zeroing in on the words “body” and “soul,” because I’ve never heard baptism spoken of in this way before. Let’s break it down.

“Body and soul” is such a common phrase that I bet we don’t think very often about the binary it represents. Some things happen to your body, and other things to your soul. Jesus also expresses this binary later in Matthew’s gospel: “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” [2]

John taught his fellow Jews to love God and to love their neighbors. He urged them to be baptized in water—not to purify their souls, which were already purified, but to purify their bodies. Interesting! So according to Josephus’s take on John’s ministry, if you are acting with virtue, this cleanses your soul. All that’s left, then, is to cleanse your body.

The thing is, the assumption that body and soul are separate from one another is not an inherently Jewish idea. It’s Greek—it comes from Socrates and Plato. This makes sense, because it’s logical to imagine body and soul separately. When a person dies, we still see their body, but to whatever degree we could have claimed to “see” their souls, we don’t now. Plato believed in reincarnation—that the soul, once it has left the body, is reborn in another body. Plato also thought the soul had three parts: our logic center, our emotion center, and our appetite center.

But the ancient Hebrews didn’t think this way. For them, the body and soul are at one, such that none of us can survive once the body dies. Now, we do hear of Sheol as the Jewish land of the dead. We may imagine it to be full of souls separated from their bodies. This may sound like splitting hairs, but my understanding of the difference is that in earlier Jewish thought, a soul without a body is ineffective and cannot be considered “alive” in any way. The soul dies along with the body.

This began to change when Judaism came under the influence of Greek culture. Plato’s ideas began to infuse Jewish theology, and by the time of Jesus, Judaism had adopted a hybrid idea: not bodily reincarnation in Plato’s sense, but the anticipation of a day in the future when all the dead will be raised to life again—with both body and soul intact! This was the philosophy of the Pharisees. Other Jews, like the group called the Sadducees, thought this was nonsense; they stuck to earlier Jewish philosophy. And so we see the Greco-Roman world and the Jewish world interacting in a way that was ripe to produce Christianity.

Now, you all know that sometimes I preach from a heart space and sometimes from a head space. So far this has been a heady sermon, I know. I want to make a shift by asking you this question: Have you ever felt that your body and your soul were acting in opposition to each other?

Just last week I talked about the urge to hit the snooze alarm. Why does my body not want to get out of bed in the morning? Why does it seem sometimes that I cannot will my body to do what my soul most wants? This can make us suspicious not of our body, which we think we should be able to control easily, but of our soul, which seems to hold divided intentions. There’s a reason that the phrase “just do it” has been effective at selling shoes. If you’re going to “just do it,” your soul and your body have to work together to put those shoes on.

It is to the divided intentions of our souls that John preaches—even when he calls the Pharisees and Sadducees a “brood of vipers.” He doesn’t trust them, because he hasn’t seen them produce actions that indicate sincerity. And sincerity is the thing John most fervently calls out of people. Without sincerity, there’s no point in getting baptized.

Josephus wrote that John’s baptism was a cleansing of the body, not the soul. I don’t know whether that accurately captures John’s own theology, but I like the idea. It reinforces that no matter what we do, we cannot purify our own souls. That’s God’s job. Since we cannot see our souls, the best we can do is demonstrate God’s cleansing of our souls by the washing of our bodies. Hopefully, before and after our baptism, our virtuous actions will show others an undivided nature, with body and soul working in tandem—or at least our sincerity in working toward this reality.

This is the theology that Jesus taught. Both John and Jesus urge us to “repent”—and that may mean changing our ways, but first it means changing what our bodies do. It means putting our souls and bodies into alignment as best we can by growing in sincerity. Love one another … don’t abuse one another. Show your sincerity through your actions. You may not want to do the right thing, but … well, “just do it.” That’s when you’ll find things beginning to change for you. That’s how we begin to develop habits that, in the long run, will become virtues. It becomes a feedback loop: the more we develop habits of love, the more loving we will become.

But it all starts with repentance. You may have some baggage around that word; far too often in present-day Christianity it calls up images of beating ourselves up with guilt. That’s not what it’s for. To repent just means to say, “I’m going to do things differently now.” Honestly, it starts with changing our minds, so that we can change what our bodies do. To paraphrase Funkadelic, “Free your mind” … and your, er, body will follow. That’s from back in the year 70. Sorry … NINETEEN-seventy.

But hang on. Now I’ve introduced the word “mind” alongside “body” and “soul.” And it gets even more complicated. Accoring to Mark, Jesus tells us, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.” But according to Matthew, Jesus says, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” And Luke puts it like this: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind.” Dang, how many different parts are we responsible for?

Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to think that the more ancient Jews had it right all along. Maybe our body, soul, mind, heart, and strength aren’t so separate after all. Maybe getting our bodies wet in baptism also affects our souls, because maybe they cannot be truly separated. Maybe when our bodies die, our souls die, too—at least for now. After all, when Jesus returns to his friends after his death, so all the gospels writers agree, he returns bodily—with the scars of his killing still imprinted on him. He’s not a disembodied soul, but a new kind of corporeal being—and still exactly the same person he was before.

It seems to me, then, that our primary work is to cultivate sincerity. This is a project we can never do alone—we need God to help us, and we also need one another to practice with. Nobody becomes a fully formed person all at once. And so today Paul calls us to steadfastness and encouragement. He urges us to welcome one another, and thus to spread love more and more broadly throughout the world.

If you want to become part of that project, the way to do that is to be baptized—to join this worldwide community that stands with Jesus as a signal to the peoples of the world. Then, as Christians together, we can help invite more and more people to get curious about Jesus’ Way of Love. Amen.

[1] Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews 116-117

[2] Matthew 10:28

Waking Up from Numbness

Mon, 01 Dec 2025 19:16:40 GMT

We’re swimming in mystery each and every day, simply by being alive.

2026-01
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The First Sunday of Advent (Year A), November 30, 2025

Isaiah 2:1-5 ; Psalm 122 ; Romans 13:11-14 ; Matthew 24:36-44

Happy New Year! But … well, it is kind of a tough time of year. A few mornings ago I lay awake in bed knowing that it was time to get up and go to the gym. But I didn’t do that. I turned over and luxuriated for another ten minutes, and then another ten. Most of us have had the experience of not wanting to wake up. And as I lay there, very much awake but unwilling yet to move, I thought about the word “woke.”

The word “woke” has taken a beating since I first heard it nearly ten years ago. I’m referring, of course, to “woke” as an adjective, not a past-tense verb. Coming out of Black American pop culture as early as the 1930s, it meant being aware and vigilant of potential dangers in racist white America. In the mid-2010s, “Stay woke” became a rallying cry in the nascent Black Lives Matter movement.

Well, the term was effective enough that, as you all know, there was a big propagandistic backlash against it, beginning near the end of the 2010s. Those who benefit from systemic injustice would really rather we not even notice it! So if “woke” sounds like a dirty word to you, just know that this is because influential people arranged for those negative connotations. Being “woke” isn’t an ideology at all, let alone a destructive one. It simply means, “Oh, I didn’t see that problem before … but now I’m awake to it and can address it with my thirst for justice and compassion.”

As a Christian constantly steeped in the Bible, I look at the word “woke” through another lens as well. Jesus keeps urging us to stay awake, and today Paul does the same. But what if we didn’t stay awake? What is the opposite of woke? You could make a case for the unwitting sleep of ignorance, but then, there’s a difference between willful ignorance and the kind that just means you haven’t learned something yet. I think a fairer opposite of wokeness might be numbness—a passive sense that waking up would be too painful to endure, so I’ll just get back to scrolling through cat videos on my phone, thank you very much.

Well, I want to ask for your help. Will you help me not roll over and go back to sleep? Will you help me “stay woke” to the world’s injustices so that we can address them together, according to the mandates Jesus lays on us as Christians? Being a Christian means nothing if it doesn’t demand change in our lives—change that benefits more people than just ourselves.

Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the first day of a new church year, the time when once again the church begins to tell the story of Jesus. It’s a big, high-stakes story, and it unfolds week by week. So if it were up to you to tell that story, where would you begin? In Bethlehem, right?

Not so fast. If we began with Christmas, we might be able to believe it’s just a nice story about a baby being born in unusual circumstances. Like it’s something that happened once upon a time, and that the story need not affect our lives in any significant way. So much for high stakes.

That’s why we don’t start with Christmas. We start with the reason we need Christmas in the first place. In the church, we begin our story every year by saying, “There’s a bad situation here that needs to be reconciled.” We drop into the middle of the story of Jesus and hear him call to us: “Wake up!”

Sometimes I don’t mind leaping out of bed—if it’s a Saturday and I don’t have any big commitments. And I don’t mind waking up super early if I’m on my way to the airport for an exciting getaway. But Jesus is specifically urging us not to sleep in and not to try to escape. There’s something we need to face, and we can’t do it without dragging ourselves out of bed. Jesus is our alarm clock.

Wake up. Look at the world around you, and don’t look away just because it’s unsettling or even horrible. We need to engage with the world as it is. It may look hopeless. It may look beyond repair. That will make you want to run away or crawl back under the covers, but you must not do that! You are a part of the world.

We need to wake up so we can be ready to engage the world honestly and bravely. God knows perfectly well what we’re facing and will never abandon us. Better yet, as Jesus, the Christ, the second person of the Trinity, God is on the way. And God is here. And God has already come.

When you become a Christian, you have to be prepared for mysteries like that, because here we acknowledge that we’re swimming in mystery each and every day, simply by being alive. We’re not just fooling ourselves with nice stories. We gather here because we have a burning hunch that these stories will guide us into far more meaningful life. We get to decide whether to embrace and proclaim these mysteries with our eyes wide open. And we believe that if we do, the rewards will be great.

Along with that joy, though, we may also find a bite taken out of our feelings of security and contentment. This is because we have chosen not to hide ourselves away anymore. Fear not. We are not alone.

We are never alone, because first of all, we have each other. We are never alone, because all of us together, in procession, are moving inexorably toward the coming Day of the Lord. This, too, is a mystery—even Jesus claims not to know the timeline of it, and I certainly don’t know what it means. I only know that it is justice, and mercy, and fear, yes, but even getting out of bed can be fearful. This fear will give way to joy!

Twentieth-century theologian Karl Barth said that we live “between the times”—between the beginning of all things and the end of all things. To hear him talk, it sounds as if the universe is happening in one straight line. But then we come around to the beginning of another year and observe that it’s not just a line. The church has put the two ends together and found it creates a circle.

Yet every time we walk this circle and find ourselves in the same place, it’s not quite the same place. We’re different this time. We’re older, more experienced, with new skills gained in our apprenticeship to Jesus. Our procession is not just from point A to point B. We are all moving in a spiral, ever inward, ever upward.

Even so, the spiral isn’t limitless. Things do begin and end. Life is a series of closing doors. For all of us, there comes a time when it’s too late. Did you finish your paper before the due date? Did you climb Mount Rainier before your body would no longer allow it? Did you say the difficult but heartfelt thing you needed to tell someone? Did you inspire wisdom and joy in those around you?

Every day, we hear the alarm clock: “Sleepers, wake!” So get woke! Wake up and shower in remembrance of your baptism. Get dressed in your Jesus outfit and eat the breakfast of bread and fish and that Jesus serves on the beach so you’ll be well fueled for his lifelong, worldwide mission of justice and mercy. Salvation is nearer now than it was before—not only because we all have one less day remaining, but also because the Holy Spirit keeps setting us up with new opportunities to love. We can put aside the urge merely to satisfy what our bodies demand of us and get out there and share. We can make intentional connections with people we love, people we fear, people we don’t yet know or understand. We can call to Jesus, “I’m awake! I’m ready! Don’t leave me alone in the field with my everyday tasks. Take me for this greater, higher-stakes task!”

Wake up, and don’t hit the snooze button. Stay awake! Not to prevent something bad from happening to you, but so you can participate fully in something good happening to everyone. What if we woke up from numbness? All of us, together? What might the world come to look like? Could this be God’s ultimate hope—that every one of us will stream into a mysterious new Jerusalem and learn to walk the Way of Love?

The King Who Is No King

Mon, 24 Nov 2025 00:47:20 GMT

The one who holds all things together has infiltrated hell.

2025-57
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Last Sunday after Pentecost (Christ the King), November 23, 2025

Jeremiah 23:1-6 ; Canticle 16 ; Colossians 1:11-20 ; Luke 23:33-43

What makes a king a king?

If you’re looking in the dictionary, you’ll probably see a king defined as a male ruler of a large territory who rules by dint of heredity and remains in that position for life. That definition says nothing of the job description, though. What does it mean to “rule”? It can mean a lot of different things, of course.

On this final Sunday of the church year—and our final week spotlighting the Gospel of Luke until Year C comes around again—we find ourselves at the foot of the Cross. We are at the opposite end of the year from Good Friday, yet here Jesus is, enduring horrific suffering and being mocked with the title “king.”

Throughout history, many kings have been defeated in battle, and that typically means the end of their rule, if not their very lives. The two tend to go together. I read an editorial this week that contained this gripping sentence: “When the king becomes more expensive to protect than to destroy … the system removes him with the cold efficiency of a butcher slicing into a side of beef.” [1] All kings are dethroned, eventually—by popular uprising, by coup, and/or by death.

Well, we just heard a piece of Luke’s account of Jesus hanging on the cross under an inscription that reads, “The King of the Jews.” Of course, that’s intended to be both ironic and cruel. As this so-called king hangs on the cross, he can hardly be said to be ruling anymore … right?

I always find it instructive to compare the four gospel writers’ accounts, especially when I find that all four of them are on the same page about something. And this king business is one of those. In John’s gospel, before he is nailed to the cross, Jesus stands before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate. Pilate says, “Your people tell me you’re a king.”

Jesus replies, “My kingdom isn’t the kind you’re thinking of.”

“Oh!” says the governor. “You have a kingdom! So you are a king after all?”

“Sure, if you like,” Jesus replies. “But those are your words, not mine.”

Indeed, they are literally Pilate’s words. While all four gospels note the inscription “The King of the Jews,” only in John’s gospel does Pilate write the words himself. And when the Jewish leaders demand that he edit the words to make them less cruel and ironic, Pilate says, “What I have written, I have written.”

(On a side note, I have often quoted Pilate’s words to myself early on a Sunday morning when I need to leave for church but I’m not fully satisfied with the text of my sermon. “What I have written, I have written!”)

Anyway, in all four gospels, the ones with all the power and privilege in the world feel free to mock Jesus and, by extension, all the Jews in the world: “You thought you had a king? Ha! Look at him now. Does he still look like a king to you? We’ll teach you to challenge our emperor.”

We see that this was especially cruel when we recognize that for the ancient Jews, the issue of the power and validity of kings had long been a sensitive subject. King David was deposed by his own son and had to fight to regain his throne. He succeeded, but that’s a rare case. There are reasons that David came to be known among Jews as synonymous with “righteous ruler.” Yet even he lost the flower of youth and fell from the pinnacle, and though he died warm in his bed, we sense that the kingdom had been ready to move on from David for some time.

Most of the other kings listed in the books of Samuel and Kings were, we are told, incompetent, evil kings who angered God. There are only a few exceptions. It’s like the authors never want us to forget that even allowing Israel to crown a king was God’s concession to a truly difficult chosen people—a chosen people who wrote in great detail about their own shortcomings and failures, time and time again. If they had been a perfect people, they would have recognized that they didn’t need a king. They just needed to trust God.

The last few kings of Judah weren’t great kings, either, but their circumstances were pretty terrible. In their time, the mighty Babylonian invaders laid siege to Jerusalem and began to cart off the elites into exile. The final Jewish king was Zedekiah, who reigned from 597 to 586 B.C.E.

This is also the time in which the Prophet Jeremiah was writing: just before and during the Babylonian exile, which lasted about fifty years. In Babylon, the Jews struggled to retain their ethnic identity and earnestly began to write down their sacred stories for safekeeping. The Bible began to take shape. Jeremiah even had a sly way of making sure they didn’t forget the name of their final king. Notice Jeremiah’s words today:

I will raise up for David a righteous Branch, and he shall reign as king and deal wisely, and shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. And this is the name by which he will be called: "The Lord is our righteousness."

King Zedekiah’s name meant “My righteousness is the Lord.” My righteousness. In later times, “the Lord will be our righteousness.” And there will be no more terrible kings, no more lousy shepherds. In the ancient Middle and Near East, the metaphor of the “shepherd” was common royal propaganda. “I’m your shepherd! I take care of you! I’ll send a fully armed batallion to remind you of my love!” [2]

No, says Jeremiah. We’ve had enough bad shepherds. God promises that a descendant of David will once again sit on the throne and will rule as the righteous king—indeed, the legitimate king.

And this is why it’s so important for us to know … what makes a king a king?

One of the criminals hanging next to Jesus on the cross knows exactly how a king could be useful to him right now. “Call your armies! Drive out the Romans! Get us down from here and we might yet survive! If you are a king, save us!”

Kings have the power to save lives … and to take lives. Kings can do all this without any checks or balances. That doesn’t make it right … this is just the kind of power kings have, for as long s they can keep their throne.

But what if a king gave up his throne?

What if, instead of leading the people’s armies out to war, the king went to death on their behalf—defeated by the very forces the people had thought he was supposed to protect them from?

The other criminal gets it. As he hangs on the other side of Jesus, he sees that all this mocking, all this ironic cruelty—this is the actual enemy! Not the soldiers who just drove nails into their wrists and ankles. Not the governor who ordered their executions. Not Caesar Tiberius. No, all of these are just human beings, people like any other. Some have power and abuse it to gain more. Others have no power, and even what little power they have is taken away from them. They are all victims of the forces of evil running rampant on this hill just outside Jerusalem on a Friday afternoon.

They are all sheep without a shepherd. Every last blessed one of them.

"The days are surely coming," God proclaims through the voice of Jeremiah. And then, centuries later …

"Truly I tell you,” says Jesus, gently, lovingly, though he grits his teeth against the agony racking his body … “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise."

This is the Day the prophets spoke of. And what does The Day look like? A king executed by the state. And in this act of allowing, of relinquishing, of falling back into the abyss, Jesus saves absolutely everyone.

Alongside Jesus, two criminals transition beyond all deserving into utter grace and joy. Nobody deserves crucifixion anyway—nobody. The time of conflict ends on this cross, once and for all. Peace comes, not through strength, but through weakness—a weakness that proves to be the greatest strength. A strength poured out in blood from a broken body.

And all the supernatural forces cry out in shock. They were just going along processing human souls, like they always do, running the cosmic machine of Sheol. But one of those souls has turned out to be all the fullness of God, dwelling in disguise! The one who holds all things together has infiltrated hell, an ironic ransom paid in person by the king who is no king, but far above such human concepts. Indeed, “all things have been created through him and for him.” And the demonic construct of hell cannot handle that, so it simply falls to pieces.

“This was the oath he swore to our father Abraham, to set us free from the hands of our enemies.” Not our enemies the Romans, the Seleucids, the Greeks, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Assyrians, the Canaanites, or the Egyptians! None of those peoples were enemies after all. It turns out we were all in it together, all along.

And now, indeed, we have knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of our sins. The answer was not God’s wrath, but God’s tender compassion coming with the Easter dawn, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

And I could just go on quoting little bits of all the scripture passages we’ve heard and sung today. But there’s nothing more to say. The Christian year is drawing to a close. Next week the story begins again—the story of God’s world, and the story of God’s rescue of this world through a king who is no king. Amen.

[1] Jack Hopkins, “The GOP Is About to Devour Its Own King,” from https://www.jackhopkinsnow.com/p/the-gop-is-about-to-devour-its-own . Retrieved 19 November 2025.

[2] With apologies to Lin-Manuel Miranda.

These Aren't the Signs You're Looking For

Mon, 17 Nov 2025 01:26:57 GMT

Hey, Jesus, is the world about to end? It sure feels like it ...

“Even if I knew the world was going to end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree today.” This quote was attributed to Martin Luther about 400 years after his death. So … epic fail on the attribution, but I still think it’s a neat saying.

We’ll come back to the apple tree in a few minutes. First I want to ask: do you ever stop to wonder about the origins of yourself? I don’t mean something as simple as “God made me,” or “my parents made me.” I’m talking about the very molecules—and even the very atoms—in your body. Where were they before they became you?

The molecules that make up your body today are not the same ones you were born with … not at all. There are a few exceptions, like neurons in your cerebral cortex: you get to keep those for life. But your skin cells? You had a totally different set of those just a month ago! So it’s natural to wonder whether molecules in your body today may have once coursed through the veins of Buddy Holly, or Mary Shelley, or Genghis Khan … or Jesus of Nazareth! Why wonder about this stuff if we’ll never be able to know? Well, maybe that wonder is worthwhile just for its own sake.

Scientists tell us that nothing in the universe has popped into existence out of nowhere … all the stuff was there at the instant of the Big Bang. From there it formed atoms, and then molecules, and then everything that still is. It just keeps … changing around. Old things fall apart, and new things form. The same goes for living beings like you and me.

So really, then … should Jesus’ words in today’s gospel passage surprise us in any way? “As for these things that you see, the days will come when not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.”

It’s kind of obvious, right? Of course the Temple in Jerusalem wasn’t going to last forever. It only made it another forty years, and then most of its individual pieces became … other things. I’m put in mind of the time I visited Salisbury Cathedral in England. Walk a few hundred feet from that glorious structure and you’ll find what little remains of the second-century Roman wall that they raided for building stones!

The disciples, nevertheless, are alarmed. “Teacher, when will this be, and what will be the sign that this is about to take place?” I want to paraphrase Jesus’ response to their query in a way that may make more sense to our 21 ^st -century ears.

“Look, guys: I get that for you, this Temple is so important that it must seem like it can never stop being here. But it’s only been here for 500 years. What are you so afraid of? War? You know that invasions and occupations and exiles have always happened and always will. So if you’re looking for a sign of the end of the world, well … that’s not it.

“What about natural disasters? Earthquakes, famines, plagues, tsunamis … and weird things in the sky, like solar and lunar eclipses? Again, this kind of thing happens all the time—always has, always will. These aren’t the signs you’re looking for.

“While all of that keeps happening, I can tell you this much: life will not always go well for you. When the powers-that-be discover that you’re one of those who follow in the Way of the Cross like I am about to do, they’ll find you awfully inconvenient. When you speak truth to power and refuse to bow to the emperor and his conquering ways, they’ll detain you and arrest you and level false charges against you.

“One day they’ll even figure out how to lull you into a false sense of security. If you’re well-fed, you won’t want to rock the boat. If you’re hungry, they’ll tell you they’re the ones keeping other hungry people from stealing your food, all the while enriching themselves to an obscene degree. That’s a lot easier than trying to keep you oppressed. They’ll give you just enough that you won’t want to risk sharing what little you have.

“But some of you will see through the charade, and if you do, it’ll be because you learned empathy from my example. If you’re not caring for one another, you’re in league with the Enemy—it’s the same thing the prophets have always urged you not to forget. When you defend the vulnerable, you just might wind up dead. And even this won’t be the sign you were hoping for, because this kind of thing has always happened and will keep happening as long as human beings exist.

“But here’s the big secret good news: even if they kill you, they won’t be able to kill you. They don’t hold the power of life and death: I do. And you will all die a mortal death like I will … every last one of you. And then you will all, every last one of you, be raised to new life. Just hang in there and you’ll see. You’ll see! I will suffer and die, and you will too, and it’s all going somewhere new and exciting and joyous. Just … not quite yet.”

Do you find this Jesus’ words reassuring? I do and I don’t. I mean, it’s exactly what we need to be assured of, right? And I see clearly that the ancients were real people, and we’re real people, and nobody knows what they’re doing, and everybody’s afraid an uncomfortable amount of the time. Sometimes a reality check is exactly what I need, but it’s not the reassurance I hope for. I want someone to tell me how to just fix it, but I can’t, and you can’t, and none of us can.

Well, whenever we want a kind of reassurance that’s a little less dire, we can turn to Isaiah for that. Isaiah is all about poetic promises. His metaphors transcended his own time and culture so well that we’re still sharing them with one another 2500 years later. Imagine, if you will, a new universe with different rules! Imagine that we don’t even think about the old world anymore. Wolves and lambs living together … lions are now vegetarians … everyone is in a better situation.

Well, except for the serpent, who had a strong metaphorical hand in messing it all up to begin with. Eat dust, serpent!

OK, Isaiah, but how do we get there? Centuries pass. OK, Jesus, but how do we get there? Four times as many centuries pass again, and here we are, the Church of the Good Shepherd and all our families and friends, watching our nation crumble around our ears, or at least the false sense of security we had labored under all our lives! It’s all falling apart, like the Temple in Jerusalem. We have no idea what the future holds.

How do we get there? Jesus tells us the answer: endurance. “By your endurance you will gain your souls.”

You know, endurance is an odd thing. People can endure an awful lot. Those of us who have lived more privileged lives may find this quite troubling. I heard it in a song once: “Never had to knock on wood/ But I know someone who has/ Which makes me wonder if I could.” [1] Well, it turns out that we can. Because while endurance may be a skill one can improve at, it also shows up as a gift from God. We look back at all that we went through and wonder, “How did I ever endure that?”

The concept of endurance connects with today’s passage from the Second Letter to the Thessalonians. This is one of those letters that Paul probably didn’t write; most likely it comes from a later time, when a community of believers was beginning to wonder whether the end of the world that Paul was so certain was coming would ever arrive.

The people’s anxiety has led to problems. Our text says some of them are “living in idleness,” but a better translation is probably “living irresponsibly.” Hey, if the world hasn’t ended yet, will it ever? Or will everything just keep on going in the same way? My whole sermon up to this point could make you believe that. And if that’s the case, why not just eat, drink, and be merry?

Remember back in May, when someone confronted a certain Iowa senator about the pending cuts to Medicaid by saying, “People are going to die”? Do you remember her response? “Well, we are all going to die. For heaven’s sake, folks!”

Why even try to help one another if we’re all going to die anyway? Because true endurance doesn’t mean giving up and allowing whatever happens to happen. It means living responsibly, in service to one another. As long as we’re all here, is there anything more worthwhile than being good to one another?

So note this well. When the author of this letter writes, “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat,” he’s not aligning himself with the government officials of today who are actively trying to starve children. This verse is not about refusing to help the poor, as if they somehow deserve to go hungry! Rather, it’s about the core expectation of life in community—that we will give in whatever ways we can to sustain one another. To those who have been given much, much is expected. And we don’t get to stop supporting one another just because the future is uncertain.

See, it’s never been about whether the world is going to end tomorrow. It’s about whether we’re going to keep planting trees. No, I can’t eat today from a tree I haven’t planted yet. But if I never plant it, nobody ever will.

We are always in the process of becoming what we have never been before. With Isaiah, we dream of a new world built out of the rubble of all that is falling apart around us even now. With Jesus, we stare down an uncertain future and dare to believe and proclaim that all of this is actually going somewhere—through suffering, through death, and beyond. And like the first-century Thessalonians, we live in community with one another, and it’s appropriate to expect that we will all contribute to the degree we are able to, and in the specific ways we are able to.

So if you wanted signs of the end of the world, well, knock it off! The world isn’t about to end, and that was never the point—because the world is always ending. Every day an old world ends and a new one rises from its ashes. And while we don’t know what the next world will look like, we all get to be a part of this world today. Amen.

[1] The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, “The Impression That I Get” (1997)

Riddle Me This, Jesus!

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 19:09:58 GMT

Jesus tells us that death is a turning point.

2025-55
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon
The Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 27C-Tr1), November 9, 2025

Haggai 1:15b-2:9 ; Psalm 145:1-5, 18-22 ; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 ; Luke 20:27-38

I feel like the Gospel reading today includes a riddle from the Riddler! (You know the character from Batman?) But instead of “Riddle me this, Batman”—it’s “Riddle me this, Jesus!” It is a religious riddle.

As we just heard, the Sadducees’ question for Jesus: “Moses wrote for us: if a man’s brother dies, leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married, and died childless, then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally, the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.”

Do you know the answer to this riddle? Well, neither do I! And that is okay, because this elaborate hypothetical question asked of Jesus was a trap. And we know it was a trap because it was asked by the Sadducees, who do not believe in the resurrection—therefore, they were trying to ask the most preposterous question, to Jesus, to make him look foolish and the resurrection to seem unbelievable.

To put this reading in context, this exchange takes place during Jesus’ final week in Jerusalem, days prior to his crucifixion, following his pubic ministry, but prior to his arrest, death, and resurrection.

This passage is significant, as it is a specific theological teaching by Jesus about the nature of the afterlife and the resurrection, rather than just a chronological account of his life. N.T. Wright, the great biblical scholar and bishop in the Anglican Church, stated, “Far and away the most important passage about resurrection in the whole Gospel tradition, is the answer Jesus gives to the Sadducees’ question.”

So, a little more about the Sadducees: They were a group of aristocratic elites in their day, consisting largely of priests, and they were closely linked with Temple leadership. And unlike the Pharisees who were much more aligned with Jesus in everything that is relevant to this passage, the Sadducees seemed to accept only the Torah—the Books of Moses—the first five books of the bible, as authoritative—as scripture.

Therefore, they did not feel bound by anything else in the Hebrew Bible except those first five books. And so, because there is no explicit, straightforward mention of resurrection in those texts, they did not adopt that idea. And likewise in the Acts of the Apostles, it says that they did not believe in angels or in the afterlife. Considering that the Sadducees do not believe in the resurrection, they have a remarkably conventional notion of it in their question. They assumed the next age would be a simple, continuous extension of their current life, complete with their elevated status and marriage customs. Do you think they would have wanted it any other way?

But Jesus throws convention right out the window and radically reframes the nature of the life to come, shifting the focus from our earthly structures of power, inheritance, and status to being “children of God.” Jesus responds: “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage; but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry, nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.”

Andrew McGowan, Dean and President of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, notes: “Regarding the matter of the Sadducees’ comfort by virtue of their power and privilege in the world, they speak of the woman in this scenario, this imaginary scenario, and to them she is just a prop – right? As a person, she does not really matter; she is merely a vessel for the continuation of this patriarchal line and household.” So, as it says in the Deuteronomy passage, this practice is based on making sure that the name of the first man who dies may not be blotted out of Israel. It was all out of concern for the man’s lineage; women had no agency.

I appreciate the way that Jesus took his time in this part of the passage to allow for not just the woman married to the Sadducees to be liberated, but for the liberation of all women through resurrection.

This is a good example of how Jesus and his vision of the resurrection completely overturn these ways of relating: man to woman and several differing power dynamics! And the key element, I think, is in the last verse: “that for God, all of them [he’s talking about the patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob] are alive. And McGowan notes “that this can also be translated as ‘all live for God,’ and that in the resurrected life, our life is precisely a life that is referred to God, with reference to God, it’s not just a life for ourselves to do what we want and have fun. It is a life for God and from God, and because God is love, and God is justice, and God is peace. All the ways we currently mistreat one another will not stand. They will be cancelled out and transformed in the resurrection.”

There used to be a show on television called “Inside the Actor’s Studio,” and the host, James Lipton, would interview famous actors. At the end of each interview, he would ask a series of questions’ and the last question was always, “If heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the pearly gates?” You can imagine the answers!

I wonder how each of you would answer that question. And I wonder how often you think about your own death or maybe the death of a loved one, and if you find comfort in the knowledge of the resurrected life? Or maybe you find that it causes you anxiety?

Personally, I have the sense of God as a presence. Jesus mentions Moses at the burning bush – in that scene God says, “I am who I am” – it is a present tense being. And to be in relationship with God—to be in God and for God and of God—death is just an event. I do not think it changes our grounding in this divine presence.

So, if folks are anxious about what happens when they die or when their loved one dies, I try to remind them that God is the God of the living and they are all living. We are all in communion. There is a spiritual transcendence to everything physical and temporary about our lives. I consider death to be a turning point where we continue in some other way—maybe like a rebirth.

So, I do not have anxiety per se, but I think the anxiety around death is what Jesus is always trying to quell. That his presence on earth was to reveal our participation or our preoccupation with death that keeps us from life. Living in the joy of being in God now—right here where we are—I think that is the hard work that Jesus challenges us to do.

So, as we go forth, let us not be bound by the fears and limitations of this world, but by the joyful hope of the world to come. Let us live as children of the resurrection, not in fear of what lies beyond, but in anticipation of the day when we will be in God’s presence. For when this life ends, our story will have only just begun. It is the beginning of the chapter that is more beautiful, fuller of love, and more real than we can ever imagine. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Pastor Josh's Remarks to the Federal Way City Council

Thu, 06 Nov 2025 17:43:13 GMT

On the resolution to remove culturally celebratory flags from city property

NOTE from Pastor Josh: I'm not used to preaching three-minute sermons. I ran out of time to finish what I had prepared, but if I'd had more time, this is the entirety of what I would have said.

I am Josh Hosler, and my pronouns are “he/him.” I am the priest at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd on 312 ^th . I’m here tonight to express my disappointment with the City Council’s resolution to stop flying on city property any flag other than the nation, state, city, and POW/MIA flags.

In my work as a parish priest, there’s always a list of folks I’m paying more attention to than others. We’re a medium-sized church, I’d say, with about 150 people on our rolls. I care about all of my parishioners. But some people have more needs at any given time than others do, so they’re the ones I focus on. And that list is always shifting and changing.

Life in the church would be a lot easier, of course, if everyone came to me with equal needs. But that will never be the case. A lot of people come to Good Shepherd because they’ve been badly hurt in other churches: excluded or even reviled simply because of who they are. Or they’ve been told that their gay child is not welcome.

I have a big heart for these folks, because emotionally, it’s difficult to internalize the fact that rejection by a church does not mean rejection by Jesus. It’s quite the opposite, in fact, because in the Beatitudes, Jesus lifts up those who have been excluded and reviled and proclaims that they are the holiest people in the room. So these are the people I most need to welcome and care for right now. And not once have I said to myself, “By going out of my way to include this person, I’m excluding others.”

Yet I hear from Councilmember McDaniel: “That flag supports one group, not other groups. It’s not inclusive.” Whom, may I ask, does the Pride flag exclude? I’m straight, cisgender, married with an adult child, a posterboy for what others (not me) might call “conservative family values.” Yet I know that the Pride flag includes me, too. And more importantly, it includes a host of people I love.

How about the Juneteenth flag? I’m white, but more accurately, I appear white to others, based on some nebulous idea of “whiteness.” Because you know what? Whiteness is only a thing because a bunch of people decided they wanted to be white so that others could not be. Since I understand this, I see clearly that there is nothing about the Juneteenth flag that excludes me. The whole point is to include those who have been excluded for so many centuries.

You can’t change the range of your sexual orientation or the color of your skin. And gender identity is deeply personal and not at all objective; some of us take a lifetime to figure out how to define it for ourselves, let alone figure out how to express it safely to the rest of the world. But you can always change your level of intolerance. It’s as simple as learning and growing from others, and then deciding to change your mind.

Councilmember McDaniel said of the practice of flying various flags, “We are allowing the government to choose winners and losers.” Are we really? Who loses when we fly these flags? Bigots? OK, let them feel uncomfortable, then. When it comes to the fundamental dignity of every human being, we don’t get to “agree to disagree.” Not when the flag of the United States flies to remind us that “all … are created equal … endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights … life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

I suppose the City Council’s intent with this vote was to clean up what you saw as a clutter of flags. Well, diversity can indeed feel like clutter … until we truly see people and not just flags. Removing these flags at this specific moment in American history brings a detrimental impact you did not realize. The message you are sending is something like this: “We said for a while that you were included because people twisted our arms. Now that there’s a new king at the top, we don’t have to do keep up that charade anymore.”

I don’t believe for a moment that this was your intent. But it is most definitely the impact.

Councilmember McDaniel introduced the resolution with these words: “There is a massive battle going on in our country.” He’s right. There is a massive battle going on over who gets to be in the United States, and under what circumstances. There’s a massive battle over who gets to have appropriate and adequate medical care … over who gets to feed their families … and who gets a custom Qatari jet, a Great Gatsby-style ballroom, and total legal immunity.

And there’s a massive battle over whether the United States will even continue as a representative democracy—in other words, whether the flag Councilman McDaniel most wants to preserve will continue to stand for the ideals we’ve fought for 250 years to establish. We have yet to establish these supposedly American ideals, but I haven’t given up yet.

As I just said in my sermon last Sunday, “All are welcome at [the communion] table except those who would unseat others from the table.” There is indeed a massive battle going on in our country right now, and I choose to stand with the vulnerable. Thank you.

Sharing in the Feast

Mon, 03 Nov 2025 01:10:33 GMT

"This table is big enough for the whole world!"

2025-54
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
All Saints Sunday (Year C), November 2, 2025

Daniel 7:1-3,15-18 ; Psalm 149 ; Ephesians 1:11-23 ; Luke 6:20-31

Many years ago at St. Thomas Church in Medina I led a workshop for children about baptism and communion. I invited a group of about 16 kids to come stand around the altar, a much larger altar than ours. They were feeling a bit chatty and rambunctious, so I took a moment to get their attention. I said, “What a big table this is! Some of you can’t even see over the top! I wonder how many people can fit around this table? Fifteen? Twenty?”

And a little first-grade girl replied with hushed awe, “This table is big enough for the whole world.”

This, my friends, is why we are here. This table is big enough for the whole world, and so we set the table every week. And we invite others to the table by baptizing them.

Baptism is what makes you a Christian—a member of Christ’s Body. You might have been a believer first, but baptism is the public ritual that fully incorporates you into a community whose work is to keep making the table bigger. We baptize infants because we want to give them the gift of this table right away. We baptize teenagers and adults who choose intentionally to follow in the Way of Jesus. Those who are baptized make vows, and then we all help each other uphold them. To be a Christian is to be a part of a community in which you can be planted and grow throughout your life.

Once you are baptized, God has work for you to do. The purpose of the work is not to “save souls”—that’s Jesus’ work, and it’s already finished. Rather, our work is simply to share the Good News with everyone. Author Madeleine L’Engle, who was an Episcopalian, put it this way: “We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”

Lately I’ve been asking you all for good news. The word Gospel means exactly that, “good news.” To share the Gospel is to share Good News with the whole world—not to convince them, not to convert them, but to burst with joy at what we have experienced God doing. So, then:

The Good News is the hope that rises in the midst of despair.

The Good News is the life that bursts through the brutality of death.

The Good News is the healing that leads to gratitude.

The Good News is the justice that comes swiftly enough to be strong, but gently enough to last forever.

The Good News is the mercy that destroys all shame and equalizes us before God.

If you have experienced any of these things and believe them to have originated with the Creator of the Universe, then you have good reason to seek baptism. You have good reason to root yourself in Christian community. And you have Good News to share. Your Good News is the Way of Jesus.

Today we observe the Feast of All Saints. This is a day we set aside to remember all those who have gone before us in the Christian faith. Usually when we talk about the saints, we mean the Saints with a capital S, from Peter and Paul to Francis and Clare of Assisi, from Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King, Jr. to Florence Nightingale and Cesar Chavez and Dorothy Day.

But then there are all the rest of us, lowercase saints. We hear today of Christ’s “glorious inheritance among the saints”—that is, the holy ones. We are not less valued than capital-S Saints … just less famous. God honors our efforts, too. On another occasion I gathered a group of children around a baptismal font and asked if they wanted to see what a saint looks like. Then I invited them to hoist themselves up and look into the water. There they saw their own reflections!

In a few minutes we will renew our baptismal vows, as we do several times each year. As we do so, I invite you to call to mind the ones you love but see no longer—people from your life, your forerunners in the faith. Know that they are here with us, and when you come to this table—this table that is big enough for the whole world—know that it’s far bigger even than that little girl could have imagined. For God is the God of the living and the dead, all of whom are alive in God eternally.

The full tapestry of God’s universe simply cannot be imagined; we only ever see a tiny part of it. The Church is not God’s only project. Yet we Christians understand Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection to have made the difference for absolutely everybody, whether they know it or not. Jesus uses the one thing we all share—death—to conquer death and invite everybody in. At least, that’s how we Christians understand it. And so we are to work for justice, practice mercy, and share in the feast. The table is certainly big enough. Our job is to make sure we always have a bunch of extra chairs lying around, so that others can more easily share in the feast.

I know you’re used to me speaking metaphorically, but for a moment I’m going to be quite literal. When we gather for coffee after the service, do you sit at a table with others? Does the table fill up? Grab two extra chairs and add them to the table. Better yet, keep your eyes peeled for the person who looks the most unfamiliar and uncertain, and gently invite that person in. And be sure to wear your nametag!

When you meet someone who has come to Good Shepherd for the first time, ask open-ended questions and invite deeper conversation. You can start with the weather and the Seahawks and “what do you do for a living?” But don’t get stuck there. Listen for their feelings, and share your own. Ever so gently, get past the small talk.

The goal is not to add more people to an ever-growing list, just for the sake of a longer list. The goal is human relationship. It is just as worthwhile to know people who are passing through as it is to know people who might sign up for a class or turn in a pledge card. We are all included in God’s embrace. If that were not the case, how could it truly be Good News?

We hear today of “the hope to which [God] has called us.” As we mature in faith, we become ever more comfortable sharing in words the shape of that hope, through the stories of our lives, through the content of our prayers, through our deepest reflections on what the events in our lives might really mean. The more we share our hope authentically, the more people will hear and want to participate. We will let our light shine, a light so lovely that others simply must learn its source.

Now, we know that sometimes we fail; that’s why we confess our sins and look forward to a fresh start. Many of the folks whose lives we touch will not want to join us, either because we failed to meet them where they are, or for some reason beyond our control. It’s good to be gentle with ourselves about this, because while the Church may lose people, God won’t. In the meantime, many people will want to join us. And so we will keep adding more chairs to the table, because a congregation with an outward focus is most useful to the Holy Spirit.

Sharing in the feast is hard work, of course. We might feel shy about sharing our story with others. We might feel we don’t know how to include without seeming presumptuous, to share our faith without sounding condescending. We may find that it’s tough to dedicate ourselves to building community without sacrificing more of our independence than we’d like.

But those are just minor hurdles. Did you hear Jesus’ words today? Jesus tells us the poor are blessed, but woe to the rich—the hungry are blessed, but woe to the well-fed. He tells us that when we are persecuted, we are blessed, but that when all speak well of us, we’re in trouble. These sayings run contrary to our common-sense observations of the world. And to embrace these standards fully may even invite danger on ourselves and those we love.

So we should not be surprised that often we find we cannot just turn the other cheek, even when we know that’s the goal. We cannot love our enemies and pray for our abusers, even when we know that’s what’s been asked of us. We know the gold standard—we just don’t do it. What are we to do, then? How do we include those whose actions are hostile to the possibility of community?

There is much work we can do in this area, too, but hear me well when I say this: We are not required to share the feast with those who exclude and harm others. If you invite in both sheep and wolves, then in the end you’ll only have wolves. A former mentor of mine put it this way: “All are welcome at this table except those who would unseat others from the table.” This table is a sign and a symbol of God’s eternal table. It is not, itself, the full realization of what God wants for us, because w cannot complete that work all by ourselves … and God cannot complete that work hurriedly or carelessly.

That larger table is what our Christian hope is always straining toward. It is the focus of the trust we strive to build all our lives. In some mysterious way, someday, all pain and trauma will be healed, and all people will be reconciled to one another. God’s love will triumph. But God insists on sharing that triumph with us, inviting us to succeed and to fail and to learn and grow through it all.

Until then, we work and we pray—and when people are hungry, we provide for them their daily bread. But on that great Day, we will all join around that heavenly banquet table to share in the eternal feast … the table that really is big enough for the whole world. Amen.

The Good News Is Justice

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 17:12:40 GMT

We humans don't know how to do justice to justice.

2025-52
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24C-Tr1), October 19, 2025

Jeremiah 31:27-34 ; Psalm 119:97-104 ; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 ; Luke 18:1-8

Last week I asked you all for some good news. Let’s do that again! Does anybody have some good news for me? […]

This is all good news. But again I’ll ask, what is The Good News? And I have another formulation of The Good News for you today: “The Good News is the justice that comes swiftly enough to be strong, but gently enough to last forever.”

We hear throughout the Bible that “the days are surely coming” when everything will be repaired … but we’re not the ones who will make the reparations.

Jeremiah prophesies that the people of Judah and Israel are still precious to God, despite both of their countries having been destroyed. The Chosen People are so precious that God promises a future in which there will be no need for a written lawbook, because everyone will love as naturally as they breathe. They will have no need to learn about God, because intimacy with God will be the water they swim in all the time.

When it comes to visions of a hopeful future, God doesn’t skimp. God doesn’t say, “I will make all things good enough for now, in the next few weeks,” no! Yet so often that’s what we wish for most—a little relief, just for now, just to get us to the next mile marker, even if someone else has to suffer to make it happen. Our imaginations can be woefully inadequate.

This week I was remembering the day Osama bin Laden was killed. It was May 2, 2011, and President Obama and his officials had dispatched Navy SEALs to surprise bin Laden at his compound in Pakistan and take him out. All over the world that day, people rejoiced. President Obama said, “To those families who have lost loved ones to al-Qaeda's terror, justice has been done.”

But the killing of Osama bin Laden was not justice. It was vengeance. There’s a big difference.

Now, you may think I’m overstating my point a bit, and maybe I am, because the definitions of concepts like “justice” are pretty squishy. To be fair, I learned in seminary about four types of justice. Distributive justice is about making sure everybody has the things they need to survive and thrive. Commutative justice is about sharing and exchanging our common resources fairly. Retributive justice is the kind Obama was talking about: why do we punish lawbreakers, and to what end? Then there’s restorative justice, which is about seeking healing, wholeness, and reconciliation for everyone in society.

I am convinced that if the word of God were truly written on our hearts, we could only see the killing of Osama bin Laden as yet another tragic casualty in the legacy of Cain and Abel. God’s concerns are far deeper and longer-term than the immediate relief that comes when a murderer is himself murdered. We humans don’t know how to do justice to justice.

God’s kind of justice is the restorative kind—the kind that puts people back into loving relationship with one other. The thing about restorative justice, though, is that it cannot be forced on anyone. People have to really want it. And maybe that’s why we don’t tend to codify it in law. Honestly, restorative justice might be most possible outside the realm of human law—in the world where God’s law is truly written on our hearts.

Maybe sometimes the best we can do in this world is to violently eliminate immediate threats to people’s lives. But I wish everybody would understand that this is not a worthy definition of justice. Restorative justice is literally the mission of the Church.

We move toward restorative justice by sharing stories with one another—stories about what Jesus calls the Kingdom of God. The author of the Second Letter to Timothy writes that the Hebrew Bible is breathed on by God—infused with inspiratory power to make it useful in the living of our lives. It’s something of a training manual for life in the Kingdom of God. It is a collection of stories, histories, fables, poetry, wisdom … all intended to keep us aware of God’s presence and action in the world.

But as you’re learning how to live in God’s Kingdom, don’t settle for teachers who promise a quick fix. To be a follower of Jesus will be both joyful and difficult, because you will have to keep growing in patience and endurance. You have to train for a marathon or a winning baseball season. You have to study for a degree. You have to practice a language or a musical instrument. Naturally, then, learning how to love the way Jesus loves also requires a lifetime of ongoing training, and that means frequently finding out we were wrong and then learning something truer.

But why do we do all this? The world is a dangerous place, and it’s full of injustice. Is God helping us or not? And so we come to the gospel.

In Jesus’ parable about the widow who just won’t stop pestering a certain lazy judge, the Greek word ἐκδικήσω implies that she is seeking retributive justice: punishment of someone who has wronged her. The language also implies that the judge is afraid of the widow physically harming him! That Greek word is ὑπωπιάζῃ, and it doesn’t mean wearing someone out. It means giving someone a black eye or even beating them up. The judge could be using it figuratively, of course … or maybe not.

At any rate, the judge does eventually hear her case and gives her the result she wants, not to give her justice, but to make her go away. A comedian once observed that when the children are fighting, the parent doesn’t want justice—only quiet! Well, if he’s such an unjust judge, how do we even know the widow was in the right? We don’t.

As I hear the parable this time around, it strikes me that it may be about our desire for God to say clearly, “I will make all things good enough for now, in the next few weeks.” The widow wants an immediate fix, and she’ll stop at nothing to get it. Now, I’m not saying we shouldn’t pursue justice doggedly. Sometimes someone needs to get arrested to stop them from hurting other people! But I’m not sure that Jesus’ parable is giving us an example of that kind of situation.

Rather, Jesus shows us the stance we need to take in relation to God. We are to approach God like people starving for justice and not let go until real, restorative justice arrives. Jesus asks, “Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.” Well, Jesus, where’s the justice? What’s taking you so long? You told this story 2000 years ago!

At that time, Jesus’ followers certainly wondered: What would justice look like for the Jews living under occupation? Would it look like a violent uprising that would send the legions of soldiers fleeing back to Rome?

For us today, we may well wonder … what could justice look like in Gaza? Total submission of the Palestinians to apartheid status? Nope, not good enough. More violence? I think you can count on that. If you’re at a total loss on how anything in the Holy Land gets resolved … well, so am I.

And maybe that’s Jesus’ point. There’s still no quick fix for this. What if God is also starving for justice? What if God is impatient for our pain to end? For those who suffer to find relief? But what if God needs to guide this process slowly and gently so as not to lose anybody along the way? What if true, divine justice just takes this long? Because nobody is a lost cause. God will not throw anyone under the bus. God will not settle for “collateral damage”—not when it comes to the eternal nature of people’s souls.

“The Good News is the justice that comes swiftly enough to be strong, but gently enough to last forever.”

And that’s why Luke advises us to persevere in prayer and not to lose heart. We’re not pestering an uncaring judge who flings down pronouncements and condemnations from on high … as much as we might wish God would do this to other people! No we’re encountering the one who loves us all more deeply than we could ever love ourselves—but who needs us to figure this out in our own way.

God loves the pastor who was pepper-balled, and God loves the ICE agent who pepper-balled him. What does justice look like for each of them?

God loves Charlie Kirk, and God loves the young man who killed him. What does justice look like for each of them?

God loves the queer kid just trying to survive high school, and God loves the bully who just beat them up. What does justice look like for each of them?

God loves the elderly widow whose health care costs have forced her out of her home, and God loves the insurance CEO whose top priority is to buy a personal ski lodge in Vale. What does justice look like for each of them?

Does it mean making some people suffer, simply because they deserve it? Is retributive justice good enough for God?

Well, we know that there is still good news in this world. Sometimes justice does happen in ways that are helpful to everybody concerned. Every occasion of justice is an opportunity to notice situations of injustice … and to engage the powers-that-be with strong, patient love.

Here, then, is the Church of the Good Shepherd, a training ground for a life of faith. And if you’re going to train, you’ll need to stay hungry! Every week we lay a feast here and invite you to share in it. The church is here to help you encounter the justice of Jesus in as many ways as possible.

So if you’re starving for justice today, know this: God is in your hunger. God is in your impatience. God is not ignoring you, and God is not punishing you. God is inviting you to grow, to be good and just in all the ways you engage with the world. And the most effective justice usually takes a long time, because every human being matters to God. That includes you.

OK, a little more good news? Let’s be thankful together! […]

The Good News Is Mercy

Sun, 26 Oct 2025 21:34:33 GMT

God’s love is not something we can deserve.

2025-53
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25C-Tr1), October 26, 2025

Joel 2:23-32 ; Psalm 65 ; 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18 ; Luke 18:9-14

Lately I’ve been asking y’all for good news. I’m not done yet. Does anybody have some good news for me today? […]

This is all good news. But yet again I’ll ask, what is The Good News? And yet again this week, I have another new way to put it: “The Good News is the mercy that destroys all shame and equalizes us before God.”

So having just heard this parable from Jesus, let’s begin here … are you more like the Pharisee, or the tax collector? Be honest now. Do you try hard to do your best? Are you a good person? An upstanding citizen? Do you show up when there is thankless work to be done? Do you get involved on committees both inside and outside the church? Do you make an annual pledge to Good Shepherd?

I do all of these things. I love checking off boxes and doing things well. I love being with people, even when they are hurting. I enjoy doing the dishes. And I tithe to Good Shepherd. My salary shows up publicly in our annual budget, and when we add Christy’s income and divide by ten, that means our pledge for 2026 will be … $18,200.

I bet you wish I’d stop talking about this. Right now, aren’t you mentally comparing your pledge to mine? If it’s less than mine, is that bringing you down, as if it were a measure of your worth? If it’s more than mine, then are you justifying why you don’t give 10%?

Well, I’ll let you off the hook. We first began giving 10% when Bishop Greg informed us that he expected it from all clergy, no matter what! And that lifted a huge burden from my shoulders. I don’t even have to think about it, and 10% is super easy to calculate. Still, I have just thrown decorum out the window by talking about how much money I make.

I don’t fast twice a week, though. I’ve tried fasting from food, and it’s not pretty. I don’t even fast on Good Friday because I have to be “on” in my duties as a priest. I know that some of you make a practice of fasting in the course of your prayer life, but it’s not my gift. The best I’ve done is that I once gave up Facebook for Lent.

Now, Jewish law required only one day of fasting per year, not two per week—so the Pharisee in our parable is a hardcore overachiever. Good for him, because we need more people like him to set us an example. But we don’t know how easy it is for the Pharisee to accomplish this. He may have been born with a great deal of privilege.

Many of us have grown accustomed to imagining that the Pharisee is bragging when he prays. But this is not a good assumption. It all comes down to tone of voice and emphasis: “I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” Let’s try it a different way … “I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” Depending on how you hear it, the Pharisee’s prayer could just be the equivalent of one of your own prayers, for instance: “Thank you, God, for granting me so many blessings, which have enabled me to be generous with what I have. I see others who are less fortunate, and there but for the grace of you go I.”

The Pharisee is certainly righteous, but there’s no reason to assume he’s self-righteous. Just grateful. Have you ever been this Pharisee?

Now let’s talk about the tax collector. In Jesus’ day, the work of Jewish tax collectors was to collude with the Roman occupiers. They might arrange for money to be extorted violently, as long as it got collected. And nobody prevented them from taking more than their prescribed cut. The tax collectors could use their built-in tip jar to establish financial security, while most of their own people didn’t have this option. So it’s no surprise that the Pharisees didn’t like them. You know what a modern-day equivalent might be? An ICE agent.

So which of the two men in Jesus’ parable deserves God’s favor? Clearly the Pharisee—he lives an upstanding, respectable, moral life. But who did Jesus say is justified? The immoral tax collector. According to Jesus, God’s love is not something we can deserve.

Let me say it again: God’s love is not something we can deserve.

Say it with me! “God’s love is not something we can deserve!”

The tax collector could try playing the Pharisee’s game. He could pray, “At least I’m not like that self-righteous Pharisee in his ivory tower of morality! He doesn’t know what it’s like to be Joe Taxman. What other job could feed my family well enough? If I didn’t collect taxes, somebody else would. And is it so wrong to want the best for my children?”

But that’s not what happens. The tax collector skulks into the temple, creeps into a far corner, and openly sobs. He crumples in a heap as he ponders what his career is doing to his people—to God’s chosen people! In the marketplace, he may well shrug off the people’s hostility. But he can’t keep up that façade in God’s temple. He is worthless scum and he knows it.

The Pharisee wants to ensure that he’s doing everything right. The tax collector just wants God not to give up on him.

What happens to the Pharisee and the tax collector after they leave the temple today? Let’s imagine. The Pharisee keeps doing lots of good things … feeding the poor … housing the homeless … defending widows and orphans … hey, these are all great things! Give him a commendation from the City Council.

And the tax collector? Will he quit his job? Will he stop bilking his own people, sacrifice his kids’ college education, and embark on a new career washing dishes instead? I doubt it. But Jesus tells us that God exalts the tax collector anyway, simply because of his earnest repentance in the temple.

And this presents us with a problem. We all want the tax collector to change, to become a better person, to do the right thing. We want Jesus to say that God will only give this guy so many chances to shape up. We expect him to chronicle some improvement before he shows his face in the temple next week. But as author Robert Farrar Capon writes of this parable: “Why are you so bent on destroying the story by sending the [tax collector] back … with the Pharisee’s speech in his pocket?” [1]

But wait! you cry. Haven’t we already established that the Good News is healing, and that the Good News is justice? Well, where’s the evidence of the tax collector’s healing? And where’s the justice for those he victimizes?

I did say two weeks ago that the Good News is the healing that leads to gratitude. I also said last week that the Good News is the justice that comes swiftly enough to be strong, but gently enough to last forever. God knows that punishing rulebreakers doesn’t make them improve themselves. Instead, God lavishes mercy on tax collectors and their ilk, over and over again, because it’s not like God is going to run out of mercy. People might not improve at a pace that will satisfy us, but that’s not God’s primary concern. God just wants us, in any old way—good, bad, or indifferent.

Once this realization finally penetrates our thick walls of selfishness and fear, we might improve ourselves simply out of joy. But we don’t come to church because we’re good people. We come to church because we need mercy, and mercy, by definition, can never be earned. In fact, you know what? We are all—all of us—tax collectors. Even those of us who think we are Pharisees.

There’s one more thing to mention here, and it rests on a finer point of Greek grammar. If you’ve grown up hearing this parable, you’ve probably heard it as a zero-sum game: the tax collector goes home justified, while the Pharisee does not. It sounds like a binary: you’re either with God or you’re apart from God. That leaves all of us fumbling in the dark for how to get into a certain box and stay there, and then to try to get others into the box. Our current Zoom class, “What Even IS Christianity?,” will talk about this very phenomenon tomorrow night.

But that’s not how real relationships work. The ways we love one another are not all or nothing, so how could it be that way with God? And so we take a deeper look at one Greek word in this parable, the preposition translated “rather than.” The word is παρά. But prepositions are fiddly things, especially when you’re trying to translate them from one language to another. παρά doesn’t have to imply opposition. Its most basic definition is less like “rather than” and more like “alongside.”

What if we’ve been reading this parable wrong? “I tell you, this man went down to his home justified alongside the other.”

The tax collector is not taking the Pharisee’s place in a heavenly mansion without enough rooms. God makes both of them righteous by bringing their separate paths together! The crown of righteousness is not a reward given for brownie points. It is a gift given out of love. What if God’s justice always looks like mercy … and God’s mercy always leads to healing, if not fully in this life, then at least in some way beyond the grave?

“The Good News is the mercy that destroys all shame and equalizes us before God.”

Here, then, is the Church of the Good Shepherd, a hospital for sinners, a haven for mercy. Here our separate paths come alongside each other and we share a feast. So when you make your pledge to Good Shepherd for 2026, don’t agonize over it. Don’t compare yourself to others. We’ve had pledges of tens of thousands of dollars a year, and we’ve had pledges of ten dollars a year. Just calculate the percentage you intend to give, and write that down in dollars. Drop it in the plate or use the online pledge card. In God’s eyes, all pledges are equal exercises in faith, so give something, anything. With the help of the Holy Spirit, your contribution to the feast will become fuel for healing, justice, and mercy.

OK, a little more good news? Let’s be thankful together! […]

[1] Robert Farrar Capon, Kingdom, Grace, Judgment: Paradox, Outrage, and Vindication in the Parables of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2002), 343.

The Good News Is Healing

Sun, 12 Oct 2025 23:10:27 GMT

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2025-51
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 23C-Tr1), October 12, 2025

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 ; Psalm 66:1-11 ; 2 Timothy 2:8-15 ; Luke 17:11-19

What is the Good News?

I mean, this is what Christianity is supposed to be all about, right? Sharing Good News. But what is that Good News? I could give you a formulaic, theologically informed answer, but honestly, it can be expressed in far more relatable ways. Here’s one version of the Good News I once came across:

“The Good News is one beggar telling another where the bread is.”

We could rephrase this version of the Good News in several ways to match each of our readings from Scripture today:

“The Good News is the hope that rises in the midst of despair.”

“The Good News is the life that bursts through the brutality of death.”

“The Good News is the healing that leads to gratitude.”

Based on these expressions of Good News, we can also deduce what the Good News is not:

“The Good News is NOT that if we’re really, really good, we get to go to heaven.”

“The Good News is NOT that if we keep focused on Jesus, we’ll never experience hardship or suffering.”

“The Good News is NOT that it’s more important to be dedicated to God than to be dedicated to other people.”

Yet all of these are ways that I constantly see Christians trying to be.

Last Monday night we began a four-part Zoom series called “What Even IS Christianity?” The idea for this came from one person without much experience of the church asking me whether we could just start from the beginning. So on Monday night we began by gathering stereotypes of Christianity. Let me share with you a few that our group identified:

“Christians focus on the afterlife instead of this life.”

Does that sound like Good News? I don’t think so. If the whole point of life is to escape it for something better, why did God do such a lousy job creating a world for us in the first place?

Here’s another one: “My infirmities should be inversely proportional to my faith.”

That one’s a little heady, but I think I get it. The stereotype is that if I have enough faith, my life will go well. If I lack for faith, I will suffer more. Does that sound like Good News?

Here’s one more: “All Christians believe the same thing. If you don’t believe the same thing, you’re wrong and you’re going to hell.”

Ouch. So much for “They’ll know we are Christians by our love.”

The people gathered in the Zoom room were able to rattle off these stereotypes very quickly. Such is the way people imagine us. We know it to be true.

We see it all around us in our nation today. Observe our president’s recent, rather bizarre, and certainly telling pronouncements about hoping he can be good enough to get into heaven. Or those who are eager to punish millions of people they perceive, rightly or wrongly, to be living outside of a rigid understanding of the law—while ignoring those in power who routinely break it. Or the Christian nationalists like Russell Vought, Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth—you know, the people who actually run our country now—declaring that if you’re not Christian enough, in the ways they define it, you are a domestic terrorist and will be dealt with accordingly.

I’m just barely scratching the surface of the horrors we’re now witnessing. I pray that we the people will not put up with this nonsense for much longer. Yet I also believe—because of the actual Good News—that it’s folly to try to go back to some golden era of the way things used to be. Let’s look a little more deeply about why I believe that.

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been following the saga of the Babylonian invasion of Judah, as reported by the Prophet Jeremiah. As the people suffer in sorrow, the prophet gives them perhaps his most unwelcome message of all:

There’s no quick fix for this.

“Like it or not,” Jeremiah is saying, “you are now Babylonians. Welcome your new overlords. Then live your lives as you would have otherwise. Don’t listen to the false prophets with their sunnier forecast; I give our situation 70 years! Maybe your kids will get to see their homeland someday. Maybe your grandkids. In the meantime, pray for the Babylonians to be able to maintain a stable society, because now it is your society.”

Wow! What a traitor, huh? Where’s Jeremiah’s patriotism? But Jeremiah knows that it’s now too late to get out of this. If the people keep nursing grudges, it will only lead to more bloodshed. Remember last week when we sang Psalm 137, about wishing our enemies’ babies would be dashed against rocks? Jeremiah’s call is a rebuke to all of our revenge fantasies. I daresay it’s even a preview of Jesus’ call to love our enemies.

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.” When people say, “God has a plan for me,” more often than not they don’t know the context. This is the context! It’s not a promise to individuals, but to the Chosen People of God. Whatever happens to us, God can work with it. And there’s no point saying, “Well, at least you’ll get to go to heaven.” In Jeremiah’s time, the idea of heaven hadn’t yet developed.

So next time you hear someone say, “God has a plan for your life,” remember this context. It necessarily involves walking as a people through the valley of the shadow of death—which is exactly where so many find themselves today. Promising a quick fix is false prophecy. You don’t have to be a Christian to hear the Good News that the true prophets preached: “The Good News is the hope that rises in the midst of despair.”

Next, in the Second Letter to Timothy, we hear: “If we have died with him, we will also live with him.” Yes, but that does mean dying! “If we deny him, he will also deny us”—oof, that doesn’t sound like Good News. When we deny the force of love that Jesus represents, choosing instead to scorn and to punish, Jesus may rightly look at us and say, “I no longer see myself in you.”

But then comes the kicker: “If we are faithless, he remains faithful.” Even when we hide ourselves away from Jesus, the relationship is never broken. Don’t wrangle over the words. Don’t insist first on being set free of whatever chains you. Just show up to the work of loving that you find to be at hand. Why?

Because “the Good News is the life that bursts through the brutality of death.”

When we love, the chains fall away. That is very Good News.

Finally, we come to the story of Jesus healing ten lepers. Notice what’s happening here. Ten men with leprosy stand at a distance and cry out to Jesus for mercy. Jesus does show them mercy: he says, “Go show yourselves to the priests.”

Now, going to the priests was standard procedure. The priests were the ones who certified that a disease had abated, which meant that these men could be fully restored to life in their communities. The ten lepers head toward the priests and, on the way, find themselves healed. But only one of the ten turns around, goes back to Jesus, falls at his feet, and thanks him. And, whaddaya know?, he’s the only one of the ten who is a Samaritan.

Anna preached about Samaritans back in July when we heard the parable of the Good Samaritan. But a quick review is always helpful. The Samaritans were an ethnic group closely related to the Jews, but not closely enough. The two groups were hostile to one another for a variety of reasons.

At first, the presenting problem is that these ten men have leprosy. Well, Jesus works a quick fix on that. But one of the ten former lepers is still … a Samaritan. Why would a Samaritan go the priests? They’re not his priests. You might as well ask a Wiccan to step into a confessional booth, or a Jew to renew her baptismal covenant, or a Christian to go on an aboriginal walkabout. It’s inappropriate. It’s a category error.

So where does this Samaritan go when he finds himself healed? Straight back to the one who healed him, of course. Because Jesus is the only refuge he now knows.

“The Good News is the healing that leads to gratitude.” Recently I got stuck in a loop thinking about the various things at Good Shepherd that aren’t going smoothly—at 3:00 a.m., of course. And then I realized there was no point to this. Do I expect everything to go well all the time? Every community faces challenges. But we are also blessed with many joys to celebrate.

Remember the formulation of the Good News that I began with: “The Good News is one beggar telling another where the bread is.” Today, Jesus shows us the stance we need to take in relation to him. We are to approach him like lepers in need of healing—and then to give thanks to God for whatever is good in our lives.

This may sound undignified, but only to those who expect never to have to suffer. Those who have been through the wringer know what it’s like to stumble upon an unexpected spot of relief. When this happens—as with this tenth leper—we have a choice. We can go on our way saying, “Well, it’s about time I was healed! It’s no less than I deserve.”

Or we can stop, turn around, and say, “Thank you, thank you, thank you. I needed this so badly!”

Better yet, every occasion of healing is an opportunity to notice that lots of other people are also in need of healing. Because to love others is to love God. When we fail to love others, we fail to love God. But when we ourselves have known failure, loss, weakness … then we can understand. We are to come near to Jesus not like self-confident winners, but like the losers we actually are. Then we can give thanks to God for whatever good may happen in our lives.

Here, then, is the Church of the Good Shepherd, a community for you to plant yourself in and grow. Every week we lay a feast here and invite all those present to share in it. We don’t ask you to change who you are. We’re all going to keep changing anyway, all the time. The church doesn’t need to manage your change for you. The church is here to help you encounter Jesus the healer in as many ways as possible.

So if you’re living in exile today, know this: God is in your desolation. God is in your suffering. God is in your healing. And sometimes the most effective healing looks like gratitude. God is in our thanksgiving, which is what we observe every week at this table. Come share in the feast.

Running on Empty

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 22:39:47 GMT

Don’t take the good news that we are saved by faith and turn it into the bad news of having to muster something that cannot be mustered.

2025-50
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22C-Tr1), October 5, 2025

Lamentations 1:1-6 ; Psalm 137 ; 2 Timothy 1:1-14 ; Luke 17:5-10

Have you ever looked at your supply of faith and found that you were running on empty? Faith can be awfully hard to come by, especially when bad things happen to us and to those we love. Especially when we had always expected the good things in our lives to just … continue forever.

But you know, faith is a feeling. It’s not an objective condition. And it’s certainly not based on data. I noticed this when I got onto an anti-depressant a few years ago. It was just as Russia invaded Ukraine—you know, when the world went very suddenly from bad to worse. (How little we had yet experienced then!) Yet I noticed right away that I felt better. More functional. More patient. More faithful.

Now, while a little help from medication may be crucial for our day-to-day functioning, it doesn’t solve our actual problems. I can still succumb to false cheeriness or find myself numbing out on my phone. To move forward from a loss of faith, we first have to be direct and honest about our situation. And sometimes we’re straight-up running on empty.

Last week we heard about the Babylonians besieging the gates of Jerusalem. This week, in a poem from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, we hear of the aftermath of that invasion. “How lonely sits the city that was once full of people!” Jerusalem is personified here as a widow grieving deeply. We hear that Jerusalem “lives now among the nations”—outside of her own land, among all the other peoples of the world. This is a poem about becoming the Jewish diaspora.

Our psalm today also comes from that period. “By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept.” It escalates from displacement to grief to indignation to rage: “O Daughter of Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy the one who pays you back for what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your little ones, and dashes them against the rock!” Those who are truly oppressed might well cry out to God, “We want not only our enemies dead, but their babies as well!” They lack the power to take revenge, so they vent in musical form. It sounds horrible to us—and it should. That’s the point. The feelings of the people are raw and unfiltered before God, because they are running on empty.

Now, most Bible scholars agree that little to none of the Bible was written down until the Babylonian Exile. It was only once the nations of Israel and Judah were utterly destroyed that the Jews sought to preserve their traditions in written form. When they returned home in the Persian period and began to rebuild, they developed traditions that continued into Jesus’ time. But the Babylonian Exile lived on as corporate trauma. The Jews came to speak of it as the consequence of faithlessness: of failing to care for the poor and the stranger among them, and for relying on military power instead of God’s power.

But in today’s reading, the story is still in the middle of the original trauma. How does one find faith in the midst of despair? Where does faith come from?

In the Second Letter to Timothy, it seems that the recipient may be experiencing some sort of faith crisis. Paul urges him, “Rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands.” Though the letter comes to us in Paul’s name, we know it to have been written long after Paul and Timothy’s generation, so maybe this is figurative. Each of us can hear, from our own generation, “Paul, our forerunner in the faith, has spiritually anointed you for service as he did Timothy, and you need to get back to work now.” This letter has become for us sacred Scripture, because so often we, too, need a dose of courage, power, love, and self-discipline.

This is important, because rekindling God’s gift of faith in us is not accomplished by navel-gazing. I remember Brene Brown saying once, “I have a yoga attitude!” Her point, of course, was that no matter how helpful you think yoga is, it will do you no good until you actually do it. We should do our inner work, to be sure, but at some point, no matter how out of kilter we may feel, we will need to get back out there again.

When I went on my medication, I became someone who addresses his depression. When I started going to the gym this summer, I finally started becoming someone who goes to the gym. Our faith works in much the same way. C.S. Lewis pointed out once that if you want to become a Christian, start by faking it. Act like you think a Christian would, and eventually, you’ll find that you’re really doing it! And that’s a whole lot better than remaining a part of the Jesus fan club, sitting on the sidelines but never getting into the game.

Now, I know that my words may ring hollow for you today if you are one of the many, many people who deal with depression. I have not been into the depths as much as lots of people I know. And the challenge of getting up off the couch isn’t necessarily about “being productive.” More important first is to be in relationship. Sometimes we need a lot of help to get back to functioning, and this comes best in the form of loving friends and family and a caring community—people who go out of their way to remember you and reach out. Even so, I remember once in a former church asking a depressed friend, “What if someone came around on Sunday morning to roust you out of your apartment?” No, came the reply. No, that would make it much worse.

It's so easy to beat ourselves up for getting bogged down. My feelings of faith are inextricable from my feelings of worthiness. But all of these are merely feelings—they come and go and shift and change with little or no warning. And so we turn to today’s gospel reading. We can read it in an unhelpful way, or in a very helpful way.

“Increase our faith!” the disciples implore Jesus. “Give us more of the stuff we need to motivate ourselves to follow you!” For once, the disciples are on the right track. They recognize that faith is a gift that comes from God, and that Jesus has the ability to bestow it. But they still don’t see the whole picture. And most of the time, neither do we.

Jesus replies, “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could make a tree uproot itself and throw itself in the lake.”

“Well then, how about giving us a whole bottle of mustard, then? We don’t see the value of replanting trees, necessarily, but if we could do that, imagine all the good we could do in the world where it really matters! We could do those miracles you told us we would do! We want more faith, so that we can decide how best to use it!”

Ay, there’s the rub. If we had all the faith in the world and treated it as a source of fuel, who’s to say we would use it to make good decisions?

When Jesus’ disciples beg him to increase their faith, right now!, I think Jesus smiles and chuckles. “You silly friends, that’s not what you need! More faith might make you feel good about how you’re living your life. Faith is indeed the fuel for wondrous events. But you don’t provide the fuel here. It's not about you! Don’t try to fill your own tank. Just keep siphoning from mine.”

Friends, don’t take the good news that we are saved by faith and turn it into the bad news of having to muster something that cannot be mustered. Well, I guess faith can be “mustard” in that it’s a spicy little seed that will grow into something huge. Jesus just means that you can’t manufacture faith, and you’re not in charge of regulating its flow.

OK, this is beginning to make sense. But then Jesus says something that makes us even less comfortable: “What’s the job of a slave?”

Our 21 ^st -century response of shock is totally justified: “Really, Jesus? Slavery? That’s your metaphor?” Well, to be fair, Jesus also used this metaphor five chapters ago, but he flipped it so that the master was seating the slave at a table and serving him a feast. Not this time. This time Jesus reminds his disciples of the way things are in their society. The slave eats only after the master has eaten. And the master doesn’t owe the slave thanks for that, because it’s in the assumed job description.

I don’t like this. Does God want us to mope around miserably, doing things because we have to, as if we were captive to some other Babylonian empire? Surely not! And Jesus doesn’t question the institution of slavery here—or really ever—though we sure wish he had. It sounds harsh to us to hear Jesus call his friends “worthless slaves.”

Well, since this is sacred Scripture, we as Christians have decided that we don’t get to throw it away. We need to wrestle with it and not let it go until it blesses us with Good News. So today, when you hear Jesus call his disciples “worthless slaves,” I recommend two things. First, don’t miss that smirk on Jesus’ face as he banters with his friends. Second, hear Jesus saying to you, “You are not being asked to write your own job description. I’ll show you what work needs to be done. And I’ll even equip you for the job.”

Also, don’t forget the words of love that Jesus speaks to his friends on nearly every other occasion, and the fact that he will wash their feet like a slave the night before he is murdered. Jesus isn’t really calling them worthless—no more than you might do when joking around with buddies and saying, “Quitcherbellyachin’, ya jerks. What, do you want a cookie?”

We do get to choose how to live our lives. We get to decide what gifts to give, and what to do with the gifts we receive. Faith builds up in us through habitual practices of trust. But faith is not a prerequisite for any of this. Your tank may read “E,” but nevertheless, just start going out of your way to love people. Then see what happens. See what miracles may result. Amen.

Is It Too Late?

Sun, 28 Sep 2025 20:31:03 GMT

At what point will change just become too difficult for our souls to bear?

2025-49
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 21C-Tr1), September 28, 2025

Jeremiah 32:1-3a, 6-15 ; Psalm 91:1-6, 14-16 ; 1 Timothy 6:6-19 ; Luke 16:19-31

Have you heard the one about the Episcopal priest who dies and finds himself waiting in line at the Pearly Gates? Well, ahead of him is a guy who’s dressed in sunglasses, a loud shirt, a leather jacket, and jeans.

St. Peter asks, “Who are you, so that I may know whether or not to admit you into heaven?” The guy replies, “I’m Joe Mangione, taxi driver, of Noo Yawk City.” St. Peter consults his list. He smiles and says, “Take this silken robe and golden staff and enter into eternal joy.” The cabbie goes through the gates with his robe and staff, and it’s the priest’s turn.

The priest pulls himself up straight and announces with confidence, “I am Joseph Snow, rector of St. James for the last forty-three years.” St. Peter consults his list, his brow furrowed. Then he says to the priest, “Yeah, OK, whatever—take this cotton robe and wooden staff and go on in.”

“Just a minute,” says the priest. “That man was a taxi driver, and he gets a silken robe and golden staff. But you’ve given me a cotton robe and wooden staff. How can this be?!”

“Up here, we work by results,” says St. Peter. “While you preached, people slept; but while he drove, people prayed!”

I open with this joke because, first of all, there’s a time-honored tradition of opening a sermon with a joke—note that I didn’t say a good joke. But I told this joke for another reason—because I think Jesus is doing something similar in today’s gospel reading. Only in his case, it’s not supposed to be funny, but deadly serious.

In the gripping parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, Jesus gives us much of the imagery we still attribute to an imagined afterlife: a heaven of joy and comfort above, a burning fire of Hades beneath, and a giant chasm between them. Doubtless Dante drew on these images and expanded on them when he created Inferno and The Divine Comedy.

But we must remember that this is a parable, not a divine description of a metaphysical reality. Jesus is using a stock setting—the ancient equivalent of a “St. Peter at the gate” story. Except, in this case, St. Peter is actually there with Jesus, listening to the story! Whoa—mind blown.

So in this parable, Jesus illustrates a total reversal of fortune for these two men on the other side of death. From the underworld where he is no longer privileged but tormented, the rich man instructs Abraham first to send Lazarus to him with just a drop of water, and barring that possibility, then as a messenger to warn his family of their potential fate … as if Lazarus were still some poor lackey to be ordered around.

It strikes me that maybe the rich man has fixed that giant chasm himself. Now it is too late. He may have mastered the art of the deal, but he has never attempted the art of generosity. What if he had noticed Lazarus at the gate and befriended him? What if he had started giving early on, before he became a self-made man, when he didn’t have two dimes to scrape together, but when he could have given one of his two nickels away? How might things have gone differently? Would he ever have become so rich? And if not, what would have been wrong with that?

The purpose of the parable is not to condemn anyone to everlasting suffering, but to increase our own sense of urgency. Many of Jesus’ later parables, especially, implore us not to wait to change our lives, and they imply a continuity between our lives now and our afterlives then. We can’t assume that death will suddenly make us infinitely wise or abundantly giving enough to enjoy whatever heaven might turn out to mean. At what point will change just become too difficult for our souls to bear? And is this moment, right now, too soon to begin really living?

For we know that even on this side of the grave, there is such a thing as “too late.” We heard from Jeremiah today on this very problem. Despite the dire warnings of all the prophets, who saw it coming for years and years and consistently urged the people to prevent it by treating the poor with decency for a change, the Babylonians have overrun Judah and are carting off the elites into exile. God’s holy temple is profaned and destroyed. It is the end of the world as the people of God know it. And Jeremiah has every right to say, “I told you so.”

But Jeremiah does something different instead. It sounds at first like a boring business deal explained in excruciating detail. You may have been sitting here wondering, “Why on earth is this in the Bible? And why are we reading it today?” But let me explain its significance by telling a modern-day story.

Imagine that it’s the year 2050. The oceans have swallowed up Miami and many other coastal cities. Imagine that people around the world are dying from sunstroke and lack of clean water. The worldwide economy has crashed—oh, and it’s far worse than 1929. Desperate waves of migrants stream across the globe. Most if not all democracies have devolved into dictatorships warring against each other and hoarding resources. All the stable systems we used to take for granted lie in shambles at our feet.

Now imagine that a haggard-looking, half-starved, middle-aged Greta Thunberg goes on international TV and ceremoniously takes out a mortgage on a large mansion on what has suddenly become coastline property. She tells the reporters, “I’m going to hang onto the deed to this land until I can invite my children and grandchildren to live in this mansion with me and hold a celebratory housewarming party.”

This is what is happening in today’s reading from Jeremiah. Jeremiah says, “I’m buying some land, because there will come a time when I’ll be able to sell it again. God will not abandon us.” This is a prophetic demonstration of hope in the midst of despair.

In the meantime, for those of us back in 2025, it’s not too late to change. Not yet. But almost.

I’ve long felt that the biggest challenge in our world today is “enoughness.” The writer to Timothy suggests that if our community has any wealth beyond that which meets our immediate needs for food and shelter, we can choose to be content. And we have the privilege of deciding what to do with what remains. None of our wealth really belongs to us; everything in our lives is a gift from God, and the gift of material resources is particular to our earthly lives. To whatever degree we do not share our resources with those in need, we are implicated in their suffering, because we are not a planet full of isolated individuals. Make no mistake: failure to consider the needs of others is the root cause of our climate crisis and most other world crises besides.

I know, this is a tough pill to swallow. You didn’t come here to be preached at.

But theologian Walter Brueggemann writes that “the prophetic tasks of the church are to tell the truth in a society that lives in illusion, grieve in a society that practices denial, and express hope in a society that lives in despair.” This is right. We were made to love each other. We were made to give each other reason to hope. And the Holy Spirit places the Church at the center of that project. Because of God’s prophets, the Church knows how to puncture illusions of security, illusions of isolationism, illusions that God does not care what we do. And when we do this, people often accuse us of being “too political.”

But because of Jesus Christ, the Church also knows about something others in our society may not: death and resurrection. Christians don’t have the luxury of being cynical. The world is full of people who know that death is real. But have they experienced resurrection? In the Church, we don’t believe in death without resurrection. We know that faith is for things we hope for but cannot yet see. We trust that God is in this with us for the long haul.

And we don’t just hope for pearly gates and Peter welcoming us in—that’s fine, but it’s not our focus. We Christians see death and resurrection all around us even in this life. Shouldn’t Christianity be uniquely qualified to handle times like these?

My job as a priest is not to preach you into slumber, but to invite you to join me and to continue with me in the Church’s work of truth-telling, grief-assisting, and hope-inspiring. No matter how bad things get, God does not abandon us. We are to demonstrate that hope through the living of our lives. And if we are unusually positioned to have lots of cash constantly flowing toward us, then unlike the rich man in today’s parable, we can send it right back out again. So … what are you willing to give up in order to give our great-great-great-grandchildren a life that really is life?

Well, in the interest of the kind of hope the Church holds out for the world, we need a joke right about now. A man dies and goes to heaven. St. Peter meets him at the pearly gates.

Peter says, “Welcome to the Good Place! Here’s how it works. You need 1000 points to make it into heaven. You tell me all the good things you’ve done, and I give you a certain number of points for each good deed. When you reach 1000 points, you get in.”

“Okay,” the man says, “I attended church every Sunday.”

“Great!” says St. Peter. “That’s worth one point.”

“One point?” he says. “Well, I gave 10% of all my earnings to the church.”

“All right,” answers Peter, “that’s worth another point. Did you do anything else?”

“Hmmm. How about this: I served a meal at my church every Saturday and worked in a shelter for homeless veterans.”

“Fantastic! That’s certainly worth a point,” Peter says.

The man starts to sweat. “Well … I called my congresspeople regularly to demand sweeping and immediate action against climate change, and I marched in the streets as well to safeguard democratic systems.”

“That’s wonderful!” says Peter. “That’s worth one point.”

“One point?!” the man cries. “But it’s only by the grace of God that I’m standing here at all!”

“Exactly,” says St. Peter, and the gate swings open. “Come on in.” Amen.

Shady Dealings

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 20:30:08 GMT

If there’s a loser in this story, it’s not any real people, but the power of money itself.

2025-48
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20C-Tr1), September 21, 2025

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1 ; Psalm 79:1-9 ; 1 Timothy 2:1-7 ; Luke 16:1-13

Money. Can money buy happiness? (No!) This is what we’ve always been told.

But let’s try it from another angle. Can poverty prevent happiness? (Yes!)

Hmmm. Here are lyrics from a song by the ’90s band Everclear: “I hate those people who love to tell you money is the root of all that kills/ They have never been poor/ They have never known the joy of a welfare Christmas.” The song is called “I Will Buy You a New Life.”

I see here a law of diminishing returns: A little bit of money can indeed make you happier, because it will reduce the stress associated with your very existence being under threat. But the more money you have, the less happiness it can give you, and eventually it can even send you in the opposite direction.

Other than the Kingdom of God, money is Jesus’ favorite topic of conversation, and he’s always calling rich people up short and urging them to change their ways. But is today’s parable really all about money? Or is there something deeper going on here?

A rich man has a manager, but rumor has it that this manager is misusing resources. I’m not sure why the rich man fires the manager before getting the ledger back from him, but the plot depends on it. The manager has just enough time to contact his master’s debtors and work with them to cook the books. By engaging in shady dealings, he hopes to curry favor with them, so that maybe they will help him in return.

We might assume the rich man would be hopping mad about this, but every parable comes with a twist. The rich man commends his former employee for his shrewdness. What?

Now, there’s a host of popular theories about the cultural assumptions behind this parable. Some suggest that the portion of the bill the manager canceled was just his own commission, meaning that none of the rich man’s money was lost. Some suggest that only the interest was canceled, and according to the Law of Moses, charging interest was sinful anyway. But these theories don’t hold water. Jesus himself tells us the manager has acted dishonestly, and that his dishonesty is commended. We don’t like this. We want our heroes to be straight shooters.

Yet what assumptions do we bring to the story? For starters, we tend to assume that the rich man has come by his wealth honestly. But why should we give him the benefit of the doubt? Because he’s rich? We know that’s a dangerous assumption. We also need to understand that the rich man’s debtors were not middle class, because there was no such thing. They were just trying to eke out a meager living.

With that context established, let’s look at this parable again and see who benefits from the manager’s dishonesty. Do the debtors benefit? Undoubtedly. They will go away rejoicing because it’ll be easier to feed their children tonight. Does the rich man benefit? Undoubtedly. He is pleased to discover that giving up some potential income has made him a little more popular with his debtors. And he can honestly say, “It’s just money. I’ll make more.”

Does the dishonest manager benefit? Potentially. And that’s all he can hope for in this situation. He’s still out of a job. He just hopes that the debtors will remember how he “stuck it to the man.”

As for the lost money itself, think about it: technically, in this story no money changes hands at all—only numbers on a page. Money is an idea, not an actual thing. If there’s a loser in this story, it’s not any real people, but the power of money itself.

So does the end justify the means? I guess it depends on what matters to us. If what we want most is a balanced ledger, we’re going to be disappointed. The books are all messed up now—and I can imagine our new bookkeeper Hilary squirming!—but everybody’s a little bit happier. And all because this manager went and committed the crime he’d been accused of in the first place.

“Life is messy,” we hear Jesus telling us. “Make friends among the mess. You can follow the temporal rules of the here and now, or you can follow the rules of eternity. And money most definitely doesn’t belong to eternity.”

It’s at this point that I start to question whether this parable was ever about money at all. It seems to be more about human relationships, and that’s a relief. But there may be yet another layer here. Let’s take a quick glance at today’s reading from the First Letter to Timothy, where we find a snippet of one of the earliest Christian hymns:

There is one God;

There is also one mediator between God and humankind,

Christ Jesus, himself human,

Who gave himself a ransom for all.

The hymn may be an inventive parody of the classic Jewish prayer, the Sh’ma: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God; the Lord is one.” Yes, there is one God, Christians maintain, and Christ Jesus is God’s mediator for us. It’s pre-trinitarian theology.

But I want to focus on the word “ransom,” because that’s money talk. And it’s the earliest theological understanding of what Jesus accomplished in his death. Satan demands human souls. Jesus says, “Take me instead.” There is a prisoner exchange, and now the rest of us are set free. But then Jesus engages in his own shady dealings. He cheats on the ransom deal. He surprises everyone by breaking out of hell and destroying it. This was the dominant theology of Jesus’ death and resurrection for hundreds of years.

It wasn’t until the eleventh century that Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, replaced this narrative with his own. Anselm argued that God couldn’t possibly owe Satan anything, so how could Jesus be a ransom? That wouldn’t recognize the crucial importance of God’s royal honor. Rather, Anselm argued, human sin puts humankind in God’s debt, and Jesus, the only person who was ever both human and divine, steps in to pay a blood sacrifice to God and have the debt paid for all of us. In the second millennium, Anselm’s narrative became the dominant narrative. But I think Anselm caused far more problems than he set out to solve. In this third millennium, I pray that Christians the world over will come to an even better understanding.

That’s for another time. Let’s get back to Luke’s gospel, because the theology of Jesus as ransom payment may be at work here. But even a ransom is an economic, transactional exchange. Today’s parable is wilder than that. As a footnote to the parable, Jesus says, “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth.” I think he’s saying that money is itself both dishonest and useful. It will not love you. It will most certainly leave you. But instead of serving money, we can make money serve others.

Let’s throw into this mix a story from popular culture: The Music Man. The year is 1912, and Harold Hill is a grifter. He travels from one midwestern town to another, and everywhere he goes he establishes a boys’ marching band with himself as the teacher and conductor. He collects money for instruments and uniforms, taking a big cut for himself. And then, because he doesn’t know the first thing about music, he cuts town, leaving behind a bunch of instruments that the kids have no idea how to play and uniforms that will never be used. Along the way Harold leaves a trail of brokenhearted music teachers he has wooed into submission.

But in River City, Iowa, something different happens. Harold’s God-given gifts shine through. His motives haven’t improved. But in spite of this, somehow, a deep sense of community sprouts in River City. As Marian the music teacher puts it, every promise this shyster makes comes true in the excitement of the kids singing all over town, in the camaraderie of the women creating a dance troupe together, in the way the feuding School Board members have suddenly become a skilled barbershop quartet. And Marian’s own little brother, Winthrop, transforms from a distraught, grieving lad to an energetic and gregarious little boy. Harold didn’t mean to do good things. He didn’t even believe himself capable of good things. But somehow, as it turns out, God’s grace requires no purity of motive. Marian falls in love with Harold, and instead of fleeing, Harold allows himself to be arrested. “For the first time,” he says, “I got my foot caught in the door.” And then, gloriously, gracefully, miraculously … at the end of it all, there really is a band, and Harold is exonerated.

That’s the parable not of the dishonest marching band salesman, but of the dishonest music teacher. Marian is shrewd enough to see the human relationships blooming in her town, so she forgives Harold’s debt unconditionally and stands in the way of legal justice to promote the higher justice of love.

And so the good news comes to us today through shady dealings. The dishonest manager escapes the grip of transactional and legal affairs to enter the realm of relationship and reciprocity. Somewhere down the line, someone who is grateful to him will return the favor. He doesn’t ask for help in advance. He doesn’t make them sign a contract. He just gives them a break and makes their lives a little easier.

This is how life is, and you never quite know where God will show up. But the obvious places are not the best places to look, because God is a shady character, too.

Our love, our mercy, our compassion are the true riches God entrusts to us. We can be faithful to these riches only by sharing them—and when we’re shrewd, money can help, too. When money serves money, the law of diminishing returns sinks us into despair. But when money serves love, happiness can only grow. Love will not lie to us, but only ever make more of us. Love is sneaky and shady. And love will use any means at its disposal to set us free. Amen.

Breathing Room

Sun, 14 Sep 2025 22:08:58 GMT

How bad can it get and still get better?

2025-47
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 19C-Tr1), September 14, 2025

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28 ; Psalm 14 ; 1 Timothy 1:12-17 ; Luke 15:1-10

Every day we hear terrible news. A boat blown up in international waters in a summary execution. A Fox News host suggesting a solution to homelessness: “Involuntary lethal injection. Or something. Just kill them.” An extremist with an effective facade shot and killed in front of thousands of people by an even more extreme extremist groomed by a culture of guns and revenge fantasies. A whole federal government trying to make darn sure that no matter what else happened this week, you came away with a terrifying feeling of “us versus them.”

There’s no point debating people’s relative guilt or innocence. It’s all too much right now. It’s like the walls are closing in.

Stop for a moment and breathe.

Breathe? But the air is hot and stale … like we’ve been stuck in a tight, enclosed space for a very long time. How can we find breathing room?

Well, let’s talk about breathing room for a moment. I want to pull back as far as I possibly can from all this horror and tell you a story of the creation of the universe. Is that roomy enough for you?

God sits down to paint. Got gets out the watercolors, a palette, a cup of water, paper towels. When you sit down to paint you have to make sure there’s lots of room, because it can get messy.

But where will God paint? Because at first, there’s no space for it. There is only God.

When Bishop Phil met with the vestry last week, he told us about the Jewish concept of zimzum. It’s a mystical, philosophical idea proceeding from the realization that God cannot be God’s own canvas. So to create the universe, God has to make a space—a space where God is not.

Any space where God is not is necessarily chaotic and scary. So God pulls back the very material of godself and observes the chaos—in Hebrew, it’s called tohu v’bohu. We read about it in Genesis, chapter 1, at the beginning of the whole Bible: “When God began to create the heavens and the earth, the earth was complete chaos”: tohu v’bohu.

So God creates a space in the midst of the chaos. Then God says, “Let there be light.” God turns the dark chaos into brightened order … and so we have creation.

These are the images the Prophet Jeremiah draws on today, though you might miss it if you’re not reading him in Hebrew. He writes just as the Babylonian armies are about to sweep into Judah, and he views this invasion as God’s rightful punishment for the people’s sins. Like all prophets, he speaks with God’s voice:

For my people are foolish,

they do not know me;

they are stupid children,

they have no understanding.

They are skilled in doing evil,

but do not know how to do good.

What will God do about it? What will be the consequence? Jeremiah has a vision:

I looked on the earth, and lo, it was waste and void;
and to the heavens, and they had no light.

Look at that language in Hebrew! Waste and void? That’s tohu v’bohu … total chaos in the space that God had once cleared out for creation. What if God chose to undo all that—to allow the canvas to be destroyed? What would it look like? Nothing short of chaos … and the extinguishing of all the light that is light.

I looked on the mountains, and lo, they were quaking,
and all the hills moved to and fro.

No more stability! The ground is shifting. I believe I preached about that a few weeks ago.

I looked, and lo, there was no one at all,

and all the birds of the air had fled.

I find that last image absolutely terrifying. Notice that the prophet is reflecting on what would happen if God systematically dismantled each and every day of creation: the heavens, the light, the earth, the animals, the people.

I looked, and lo, the fruitful land was a desert,

and all its cities were laid in ruins

before the Lord, before his fierce anger.

We have made such a mess of this world. How do we not deserve to have it all taken away from us?

And this is where we get to one of the real puzzles of faith. For God to be relatable to us, God must have emotions, right? So what happens when God gets angry? We have lots of Bible stories about this, and they’re always scary. But how much of this is simply our perception? How much is actual? When we speak of God’s anger, does the metaphor limit our understanding? Do we really believe that God wants us to cower in terror, like a child whose drunken father has just stumbled through the door?

When horrible things happen in the world, we might well wonder whether this is God’s doing—God’s punishment for the ways we treat each other. That’s a normal, very human feeling—it means we are able feel empathy and remorse on a large scale.

For Jeremiah, the Babylonian invasion feels like the end of the world. We know the feeling. We feel like we’re in a collapsed mine from which there is no escape. We need room to breathe. So God sends wind. Then we take a big gulp of it—and find that we have to cough to get it out of our lungs! Jeremiah proclaims that because the nation of Judah has abused its own vulnerable people, it will now be destroyed by foreign invaders.

Does God do that—intervene on such a scale, causing such disaster and suffering and death, for some higher purpose? Without our knowledge or understanding, that feels … oppressive. And so we are left with a theological question for all times and places: How bad can it get and still get better? Will we ever see all this chaos as … worth it? Will we ever be able to breathe freely?

We’re still in the middle of the story of God’s universe, so we don’t have definitive answers. But alongside these tales of terror, we do have some significant promises. We have Isaiah’s story of turning swords into plowshares. We have Ezekiel’s story of dry bones springing back to life. We have Jonah’s story of the full repentance of our enemies, and Malachi’s story of the sun of righteousness rising with healing in its wings!

And today we hear from the First Letter to Timothy, written in Paul’s name. This is a profile of a forgiven sinner, a man who was cruel and shortsighted but eventually was shown a new way to live: “I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief.”

Listen also to Jesus’ parables. A lost sheep. What does a lost sheep have to do to get saved? And a lost coin. How does a lost coin get saved? What are its qualifications? Does it … believe really hard that it can be saved? How can a coin or a sheep even do that?

So, then, what about the “tax collectors and sinners” that Jesus hangs out with? The tax collectors are traitors to their people. They extort money for the brutal oppressors and enrich themselves in the process. People still do such things, you know. Sometimes they get elected. Sometimes they wear masks so they can’t be identified. Sometimes they stockpile guns and prepare for war. What if they don’t change? What will they do to get saved?

You want them to change, don’t you? To repent. To turn around. But the sheep never turned around. The coin didn’t bounce back out from under the dresser. Somehow the sheep and the coin got found anyway—rescued!

Do “tax collectors and sinners” deserve mercy?

Well, why did Paul receive mercy? Was it because Paul deserved mercy? Of course not. Nobody ever deserves mercy—that’s the point. Paul received mercy because he needed it. Because it was the only way to pierce the ignorance of his cruelty and finally give him some breathing room! Doubtless that revelation felt at first like a blast of Death Valley air. (Or Valley of the Shadow of Death!) But that’s exactly the place where the Good Shepherd finds us. He leads us out of the enclosed space and into green pastures, so that we may lie down beside still waters.

When you become a Christian, you have to expect to find horrible people being rescued from their dead-end lives. Indeed, without this possibility, our faith is useless. When you become a Christian, you have to be ready to see mercy in action—and to grant mercy yourself. If you can’t stomach undeserving people getting good things, there’s not much point checking out the Jesus movement. Don’t bother. You won’t find moral purity in the church, no matter how hard you look.

Now, that’s not to say we don’t pursue and pray for justice. We do! But justice for one person might not look the same as justice for another. Human beings tend to be terrible at doing justice to justice. We think that everybody we oppose should get what we think they deserve. Then, when we learn of our own ignorance, we believe that we ourselves should be shown mercy.

For God, justice first means giving people breathing room. The wind may blow hot at first, in the form of the consequences of our actions. But at least we are no longer trapped. There is a future on on the other side of drastic change. There is even a future on the other side of death! Ultimately, God folds justice and mercy together into a single reality.

Are you having trouble breathing today … like someone is kneeling on your neck? Here in the church, I pray you will find space to breathe—even if that breath comes at first like a hot wind, sweeping across the desert of your soul. Here, together, we follow the Good Shepherd out of enclosed spaces.

I pray today that the Church of the Good Shepherd can live up to its name—that those of us who find shelter here may no longer be in want, but find that we have been given everything we need. Including a whole pasture full of mercy, given by God and distributed by all of us to one another. Amen.

What Possesses Me?

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 16:26:19 GMT

Did Jesus really say we have to give up all our possessions?

2025-46
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rt. Rev. Phil LaBelle, Bishop of the Diocese of Olympia
The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 18C-Tr1), September 7, 2025

Jeremiah 18:1-11 ; Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17 ; Philemon 1-21 ; Luke 14:25-33

Humility

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 21:02:53 GMT

Jesus calls for a radical reordering of the social table.

2025-45
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon
The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17C-Tr1), August 31, 2025
Jeremiah 2:4-13 ; Psalm 81:1, 10-16 ; Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 ; Luke 14:1, 7-14

The Ground Is Shifting

Sun, 24 Aug 2025 21:24:31 GMT

Stopping up our ears does nothing to prevent change ... and will absolutely make us less ready to endure it.

2025-44
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 16C-Tr1), August 24, 2025
Jeremiah 1:4-10 ; Psalm 71:1-6 ; Hebrews 12:18-29 ; Luke 13:10-17

Last week I said some things about the understandable human desire to just burn it all to the ground and start over. Jesus felt this urge just like we do. What would it take to finally fix the problems of humanity? Can they even be fixed?

Jesus and his contemporaries, of course, already knew the story of Noah in Genesis, which shows us that far more ancient Hebrews also wondered, “What if God just decided we’re not worth the trouble? What might that look like?” Yet even the mythical story of a worldwide flood concludes with a fresh beginning for humanity, and God promising, “I’ll never do that again.”

The Bible is a sprawling metanarrative about what it means to be human, and what God has to do with us. It is full of sudden, shocking endings and surprising, graceful beginnings—from the plagues in Egypt to liberation at the Red Sea—from the Babylonian exile to liberation under the Persian King Cyrus.

So when we hear God’s call to the Prophet Jeremiah today, our ears should prick up. The young Jeremiah feels totally inadequate to the call—and anyway, a call from God always means trouble! Well, God first reassures Jeremiah and then gets real about what this call will mean: “See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

When God calls a prophet, the prophet must be ready to proclaim drastic change. Most people won’t want to hear it. But stopping up our ears does nothing to prevent change and will absolutely make us less ready to endure it.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews makes the same point. This anonymous New Testament writer has given us not so much a letter as a long sermon about what Christ accomplished through his life, death, and resurrection. And the author has just turned from presenting his argument to advising his hearers on what they must do in response. Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot in here about being good to one another and hanging in there—living humbly and allowing ourselves to be called up short so we can change and grow—defending the weak and pursuing peace with everyone.

Having said all this, he then explains in today’s passage why we must approach the world in this way: “We’re no longer in a situation where God is only mysterious and potentially deadly, like Moses experienced at Mount Sinai. The new, figurative Jerusalem that has now been inaugurated as Christ’s Kingdom is the nexus of all that is good in the universe. There is only good news here!

“Even so,” the author goes on, and of course I’m paraphrasing, “this is not the time to pursue safety and security, because that’s not what Christ’s Kingdom is about. Change is still inevitable, and sometimes it will still be sudden and drastic. The way to be prepared for change is to do the work every day to remain in right relationship with one another and with the wider world. Hiding from change will do you no good. The ground under your feet will keep shifting, and you will experience pain and discomfort, but you will never be destroyed. No matter what happens in this world, Christ’s Kingdom is unshakeable.”

The author concludes by referring to God as “a consuming fire.” Centuries of images from Dante’s Inferno do not help us understand what this means. We’re not talking about angry punishment, but clearing the brush—like the “controlled burn” we talked about last week. Everything is in transition, because Christ reigns from the cross that has become a throne. All things are moving toward the good, but on the way, we must go through the valley of the shadow of death.

Well, look around our world today. Look around our nation today. You know what I see? Plucking up and pulling down … destruction and overthrow … clearing the way for a future of building and planting. The evidence of this includes incidents of true evil—and people standing up to it.

Look at the videos that are popping up all over social media. Strangers in masks appear, seemingly out of nowhere. They are quickly surrounded by neighbors with cell phone cameras. The neighbors are crying out, “ La migra! La migra! Don’t open your doors!”

The neighbors question the strangers: “Why are you wearing masks? What is your badge number? Do you have a warrant signed by a judge?” The questions are deflected or ignored. The masked strangers have guns, and they are obeying the orders of a lawless federal government. Their purpose is to grab people, stuff them into unmarked vans, and disappear. Through our tax dollars, they are paid obscenely high salaries to snatch people away, in clear violation of the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment.

Hopefully, those who are seized will know the script they are to use: “Am I free to leave?” “I want to speak to a lawyer.” No other spoken words can be helpful to them.

Did you know that for less than $100, you can order from Amazon all the gear you need to dress up as one of these masked strangers? You see what this makes possible, right?

This is what the United States of America has suddenly become. We have transformed from a country that was merely confused and conflicted about immigration … into a country where it is not safe to appear to be undocumented. How does one appear to be undocumented? Yet this vague quality is all that stands between anyone on American soil and the masked strangers—and more and more concentration camps with cute names, funded extravagantly by Congress.

But sometimes the neighbors manage to appear in such great numbers, with so many phones livestreaming to the internet, that they prevent the masked strangers from carrying out their scheme! Sometimes they have educated one another in advance: You have constitutional rights. DO NOT OPEN THE DOOR … DO NOT ANSWER ANY QUESTIONS … DO NOT SIGN ANYTHING! Videos are appearing all over the place that show the masked ones overwhelmed by the crowd. They back up, get into their unmarked van, and drive away.

Our neighbors are being persecuted. And most of us have a choice. We can engage the situation out of love and concern for one another, at the risk of making more trouble for ourselves. Or we can keep ourselves safe. We only get that choice if we happen not to “appear undocumented.”

We are indeed living in a time of great change. The ground is shifting under our feet. But be not afraid. We cannot be destroyed. Our nation can be destroyed and may still be, but that is not our focus. Those who are afraid of inevitable change will go to great and violent lengths to keep themselves in power—but they are the few, and we are the many.

Such has it always been. Those who are afraid of losing power will use it until it’s gone—like the synagogue leader in today’s gospel, who looks at Holy Scripture and sees only rules to follow, even where there are none. There is nothing in the law to prevent Jesus from healing on the Sabbath. That’s this one man’s interpretation, and he arrives at this interpretation by deciding in advance that the Sabbath is more important than the healing. Later, in the rabbinic era, the Mishnah would chronicle what constitutes work on the Sabbath. Healing would not be on the list.

But Jesus has also decided something in advance: liberation from pain can happen anytime, anywhere. Finally freed from bondage, the woman begins praising God. It’s like being given her citizenship after many years of hiding in the shadows. Yet all the synagogue leader can say is, “Why doesn’t she do it the RIGHT way?”

Of course, there is no “right way” that will satisfy him—not if he has to surrender some of his authority to Jesus. Freedom delayed is freedom denied.

“See, today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.”

Who gets to do these things? Not the traditional leaders, and certainly not the ones who swagger and bully. The work of deconstruction and reconstruction belongs not to them, but to you.

“Who, me? But I don’t know anything!”

Not yet, you don’t. But you don’t need any advance qualifications. You just need God with you. And God is absolutely with you every single day. Nothing will stop the healing God brings—even through the valley of the shadow of death.

Today, my heroes are those courageous neighbors who see injustice happening and gather in great numbers to swarm the offenders and chase them away. It’s happening all over our country. Any one of us can be a part of that—if we’ve decided in advance that healing is the priority.

Are you ready for this inexorable divine healing? Will you stand in its way because you have already decided who should and should not be healed? Have you already decided how to interpret the things you thought were rules? Or have you already decided that healing can be allowed to surprise you, to reveal situations and relationships that are better than you could have imagined?

The ground is shifting. How will you shift to meet this moment? How will the Church of the Good Shepherd shift? We all get to be a part of that. And I don’t know what that shift will look like. But we can decide in advance that any changes to which we commit will be good for our neighbors, good for those who are persecuted, good for God’s Kingdom.

To prepare for great change, for sudden change, we need to develop a habit of prayer, of listening, of discernment. We need decide in advance that healing is the priority, and then the Holy Spirit work out the details. Personally, I think that’s pretty exciting. Let’s commit to dance on this shifting ground together! Amen.

The Controlled Burn

Sun, 17 Aug 2025 20:39:36 GMT

Why is Jesus being so hateful and divisive? Why can’t he bring people together instead?

2025-43
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org

by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 15C-Tr1), August 17, 2025
Isaiah 5:1-7 ; Psalm 80:1-2, 8-18 ; Hebrews 11:29-12:2 ; Luke 12:49-56

In today’s gospel reading we’re a little past the halfway point in the narrative, which is Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountaintop and his conversation with his forebears, Moses and Elijah. I’ve come to understand the transfiguration as the moment when Jesus became crystal clear that the cross was his destination. Jesus was baptized in water at the beginning of his ministry. His baptism by fire comes with his willingness to face death for the sake of all humanity.

Until that happens, Jesus is stressed out, and his feelings are spilling over into his teachings. I can hear the anxiety in his voice as he opines, “Do you think that I have come to bring peace? … No, I tell you, but rather—division!” Matthew’s parallel passage says, “Not peace, but a sword!” And then Jesus goes on to describe families pitted against each other, even under the same roof.

I can hear the murmurings of the crowd: “Why is Jesus being so hateful and divisive? Why can’t he bring people together instead?” We might well wonder along with the crowd. I mean, he is Jesus, right? It’s a fair question.

For some reason we may have an image in our heads of a Jesus who is tranquil, even passive, in the face of evil. We remember that he said to “love your enemies” and “turn the other cheek,” and we remember that he allowed himself to be crucified. If this were all we knew of Jesus, we might imagine him to be a naïve marshmallow just waiting for God to raise him from the dead so he could finally exercise some real power!

But even a little familiarity with the Bible shows us that this is foolish. Consistently, through all four gospels, Jesus is both graceful and blunt. Consistently, and in keeping with all the ancient prophets, Jesus’ most graceful words are for the poor and persecuted, while his most doom-laden words are for the rich and powerful.

In Jesus we see the human embodiment of Isaiah’s God, the one who sang the love song to his vineyard, only to find that the vineyard had cheated on him by yielding nasty-tasting fruit instead of the good fruit he had planted. It sounds like Jesus has also given up and is crying out, “Tear down the hedge! Break down the wall! Stop up the rain! Burn it all to the ground!”

Honestly, I think this makes Jesus way more relatable. These days I get why someone might just say, “Burn it all to the ground.” Isn’t that what it will take to finally bring freedom to the prisoners, provision to the poor, hope to the downtrodden? To know that Jesus felt this way in the first century is more than a little reassuring.

For Jesus does seek a complete realignment of society—not through wealth and power, but through the surrendering of power that is even more powerful: love. By necessity, then, Jesus shows up not to make the world simpler, but more complicated. The very fact of him divides us, because this is how people are.

We might prefer that God stop all human sin just by snapping the divine fingers, or just by presenting clear commandments for us to follow. But if that were the case, we’d all have returned to the Garden of Eden ten minutes after Moses came down from the mountain. We know how this really goes: God plants good grapes, but inexplicably, poisonous fruit grows instead. God speaks truth through the prophets, but we reject their words. God shows up in person as one of us … and we kill him.

So when Jesus talks about bringing fire to the earth, I get it. We have met the enemy, and he is us. We have concentrated our wealth and resources among very few in the name of “progress.” We have wrecked our planet, and that is affecting the poor first. We continue to allow all sorts of injustice. When we do gather the courage to fight evil, we go about it all wrong. We lump people into broad categories so we can make excuses for our violence against them. And by using violence we accomplish, at best, a sickly parody of what God desires for us.

But here’s the thing. Jesus doesn’t show up to add more conflict to our conflict-ridden world. He shows up to make clear what the real conflicts are—to expose our true loyalties. Our real conflicts are not about nation or political party or skin color. Our real conflicts are within our own household, between family members who can no longer deal with each other, so they no longer speak to each other.

Our real conflicts are even within ourselves—between the urge to love and the urge to shore up our power—between the urge to rise above and the urge to stoop lower—between the urge to allow for slow, patient change, and the urge to just fix it, no matter how many people get hurt. By our fruits we are known, and we continue to yield wild, inedible grapes. By the light of the torch in Jesus’ hand, we can finally see this.

Is all hope lost? No. We don’t get this context from today’s reading, but throughout this chapter of Luke’s gospel, Jesus is also blessing us with some of his most reassuring words. “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight … Do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows … Do not keep striving for what you are to eat and what you are to drink, and do not keep worrying … Instead, strive for his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.” And, if you remember from last week: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”

The gracious words and the blunt words sit side by side, just as with the prophet Isaiah, who today uses one of the most wonderful examples of wordplay in the Hebrew Bible: “[God] expected mishpat—justice—but behold, mishpah—bloodshed! ‘Tz’daqa’—righteousness—but behold, ‘tz’aqa’—a cry of distress!” Injustice reigns in the land, in Isaiah’s time and in every time.

Yet the people of the world are still God’s vineyard, God’s pleasant planting. For the sake of winning us to the side of love, God is always ready to give more than we either desire or deserve. The harvest time will come no matter what, but the crop is precious. So the task of the vintner is to burn up the weeds inside you. You are God’s beloved. You are eternal and will not—cannot be destroyed, even by death. Do you get that—really get that? We are intended to be God’s harvest and to live eternally in God together, starting right now.

I don’t know about your own experience of God’s love, but let me tell you mine. It was only once I truly understood myself to have yielded nasty, stinking, wild grapes that I felt Christ at work within me, redeeming my life. Sin-and-redemption is not a narrative that our culture is comfortable with, but it is a narrative that defines who I am in relationship to my creator. When I was in the pit, God jumped down into it with me and held me and called me “beloved.”

I didn’t become a better person through logic or willpower or shame, or to get something from God. I became a better person because I am loved. I love because God first loved me. So do you see? Becoming a better person is not a prerequisite for our salvation, but a likely by-product of it.

The call here is to humility—to say, “Every day I do wrong. Even when I keep my own peccadilloes under control, I sin just by participating in an unjust society. I cannot extract myself from it, no matter how I try! So I consent to the fire. Please, God, burn up all that is worthless in me and till my ground for new growth.” The harvest will come through a controlled burn, and Jesus has come to spark the flame—not to shout “burn it all down!,” but to carefully, carefully separate the evil in us from the good in us.

As I look around Good Shepherd these days, I see good grapes ripening for the harvest. Now, it’s not like we are incapable of producing wild grapes—after all, this story is for us, not just some kingdom next door. But God has given us more than we could ever deserve. So let’s relax into God’s love and grow more closely together, allowing the vintner to grow good grapes in us. For that, my friends, is God’s dream for this vineyard, and we are the planting of God’s delight. Amen.

Homeland Security

Sun, 10 Aug 2025 23:37:23 GMT

The spiritual impulse is the urge to bridge the gap between the actual world (which is a mess) … and the security of a true homeland that we fear may not exist.

2025-42
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14C-Tr1), August 10, 2025
Isaiah 1:1, 10-20 ; Psalm 50:1-8, 23-24 ; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16 ; Luke 12:32-40

We all wish we could feel a little more secure, don’t we? Especially these days. We remember times when things felt a little more under control—as if there were ever a time when this was truly the case.

A scene from my childhood came back to me this week. I’m sitting at the dinner table circa 1986 with my nuclear family of four, but there are five chairs. One of our cats, Grenada, has taken up his usual place in the extra chair, and he’s looking around the table at us as we share dinner conversation, and we’re poking fun at him for his presumptuousness. In this moment, I am content … secure. My family is all here, and I am safe, and I have everything I need.

This memory is a good representation in my mind of the word “home.” I hope that each of you might be able to come up with a similar image. But none of us gets to live permanently in a state of childhood contentment.

To be sure, today’s readings won’t allow it. We hear the Prophet Isaiah, in the first chapter of his book, in great discontent: “Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah!”

OK. To whom is Isaiah speaking?

Great. And in which book of the Bible were the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah famously destroyed?

Right. Genesis. The very first book chronologically.

And when did Isaiah live? You don’t have to know the century, but do understand that it was loooooong after Genesis. There is no longer any Sodom or Gomorrah. The passage just got a lot deeper, didn’t it? Why is Isaiah referring to the people of Judah as Sodom and Gomorrah? Well, what were the sins of Sodom and Gomorrah? Arrogance. Bullying. Gluttony. Complacency.

What good are temple sacrifices offered to God by those who are just going to keep committing such atrocious sins?

It is commonplace among the prophets to claim that God does not appreciate the people’s burnt offerings—despite the requirement of them in the Law of Moses. We find this not only in Isaiah, but also in Micah, Hosea, and Amos—and in some of the psalms. All these texts existed as sacred Jewish scriptures right alongside the ongoing temple sacrifices. How could this be?

Because the ancient Jews were not literalists. They knew this was all part of the ongoing story of the relationship between God and God’s chosen people. They knew that Isaiah was not speaking literally to the long-gone residents of Sodom and Gomorrah. They understood how metaphor works.

So when they heard Isaiah speaking for God and saying, “I don’t want your temple sacrifices,” nobody pointed to this text and said, “We should shut down temple sacrifices immediately.” This was not the ask. You’ll also find in the works of the prophets many references to the Chosen People someday offering sacrifices in righteousness again, as a community restored and reconciled to one another and to God.

Rather, God is saying, “I hate all your hypocritical efforts to appease me!”

Let’s look at the situation on our own terms. We don’t have a temple, but we do have church buildings, and they are a money drain, aren’t they? We spend nearly 20% of Good Shepherd’s budget on facilities maintenance, and that’s not even counting the long-term capital projects.

What good does it do for us to come here and pray every Sunday and then get back to our lives? Wouldn’t God rather we give up all our buildings so that we are forced out of them and into the community, where there is so much more need? If we met in one another’s homes or in public parks, we would have a very small budget. We could give much more of our money away—not just the roughly 2% we do now.

People outside the church would love to see this happen. When will Christians start acting like real Christians, they ask, instead of hiding away in buildings? If churches have property, why aren’t they housing the homeless on it? And if Christians have a better message than the rest of us, well … shouldn’t they actually live their lives better than the rest of us? Why are so many of them obvious sinners?

On its face, it's not an unfair critique. We all harbor a longing for a better world, and Christians down the centuries have frequently implied that “church people” are somehow better than others. Maybe if we actually were better than others, the buildings would be seen as an acceptable investment.

While I honor the ideal, the insistence that Christians be held to a higher standard misses the point. We do not live in the ideal world, but in the real world that we and God are making together.

Now, with God’s help, we do know how to make the ideal world. The prophets banged that drum all along: “Remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes; cease to do evil, learn to do good; seek justice, rescue the oppressed, defend the orphan, plead for the widow.”

Then Jesus redoubled the beat: “Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Who wouldn’t love to see Christians living like this? It might even convince many others to join us—if they actually saw results! The solution really is that simple.

It’s also the most difficult thing we can imagine. It seems to be in direct contrast to human nature.

We talked last week about the challenge of giving our money away. Now imagine restructuring our very lifestyles in such a way that we will not allow anyone to remain poor, unhoused, or oppressed. How would we start? Would enough people be on board that it would actually make sense? Who’s going to go first?

Why do we find ourselves unable to turn the world we know is all wrong into the world as we know it should be? Why do we continue as hypocrites, not taking the leap Jesus offers, to actually live today in the kingdom that it is God’s good pleasure to give us? The world continues to be all wrong—as if it were not our real home.

The author of the Letter to the Hebrews says that Abraham and Sarah knew they were “strangers and foreigners on the earth”—that when they packed up their tents and set out from Haran to follow God’s call, they were “seeking a homeland.” Furthermore, they both died without seeing that homeland. All their lives, they caught glimpses and followed, and then they left the continuation of the quest to their children and grandchildren.

They lived a universal human experience: the feeling that we don’t quite belong in this world. The spiritual impulse is the urge to bridge the gap between the actual world … and the security of a true homeland that we fear may not exist. Many people leave the church because they think it should be that homeland, and they have found that it is not. It seems to be an indictment of the church that they have found other communities that feel more like the homeland than the church does.

But the homeland God promises us is not primarily about security. It’s about trust. It’s about giving. It’s about using our energy in ways that will benefit others—not just ourselves. Trust helps us endure greater insecurity for the sake of building up the security of others.

Every week when we assemble and share bread and wine, we reinforce the idea that somehow, at the center of our longing for a homeland, is the church, founded by the Holy Spirit. God really is in relationship with us in a special way here. Yet so much of the time, the church is light-years away from resembling the homeland we long for.

Meanwhile, there are plenty of people who have left churches that hurt them but haven’t given up on finding one that won’t. I’m sure that includes some of you here today. You’re seeking a church that is more like that homeland. But to hold out for perfection is futile.

I urge you to dig into a place that’s just good enough and get to work, so that you find every opportunity to see the church actually acting like the church. Believe it or not, that happens sometimes. It happens often! Our buildings, as expensive as they are, offer a modicum of the security we need to begin to live more boldly—to go out of our way to be in one another’s lives and to love one another.

My invitation to you today is to listen to your longing for a homeland and know that to put down roots in the church is to invest in this homeland. Inhabit your longing and let it fuel you every single day. We don’t create the perfect homeland; it’s already been prepared for us. Every day we get to decide whether to live in it, in this very moment. When we do, we surprise ourselves. At other times, the Holy Spirit surprises us. And in moments like that, when the church is being what it’s actually supposed to be, people get a chance to glimpse the joy of that homeland together.

Our true homeland leaks through the cracks of this world and this nation and this community in surprising ways all the time. It leaked through at the dinner table when I was a teenager, with our cat Grenada sitting there, even more content than I, watching us enjoy time together as a family. In that moment and in many others, I was truly home, and I was seated at the table, and God was serving me spiritual food. How could I be worthy of such gifts?

I’d like to close with the words of George Herbert, who wrote this 400 years ago, probably after hearing today’s gospel reading.

Love (III) – George Herbert (1593-1633)

Love bade me welcome. Yet my soul drew back

Guilty of dust and sin.

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack

From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

If I lacked any thing.

A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:

Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,

I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marred them: let my shame

Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?

My dear, then I will serve.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:

So I did sit and eat.

The Nicene Creed (Annotated)

Thu, 07 Aug 2025 19:44:45 GMT

In the Nicene Creed, composed in the 4th century, every word counts.

Pastor Josh here: I wrote these annotations to help teach the 4th-century Nicene Creed to a high school confirmation class a few years ago. We also used it in Week 4 of our class "Why Christian? Why Episcopalian?" I had fun writing it, and I commend it to you. Hopefully it will leave you with more questions than answers.

We believe in (set our hearts on) one God (not zero, not two or more),

the Father (not the dictator), the Almighty (not merely a local strongman),

maker (not merely boss) of heaven and earth (the omniverse),

of all that is, seen and unseen (so yes, both angels and dark matter are included).

We believe in (set our hearts on) one (and only one) Lord (person to whom we owe allegiance, so no emperors, kings, or presidents can hold this spot), Jesus Christ (the man, the one anointed by God),

the only (not merely first) Son (not hireling) of God,

eternally begotten of the Father (always having existed),

God from God (he is also God), Light from Light (yet not created like light),

true God from true God (even more poetic language about how much he is actually God),

begotten, not made (in case that wasn’t clear two lines ago, and take that, Arius!),

of one Being with the Father (not a separate being with different intentions and actions—ahem, Arius!).

Through him all things were made (and without him nothing was made—and yes, this is still Jesus we’re talking about, so stop for a moment and try to wrap your brain around that).

For us (for you and me today, not just for long-gone ancient people) and for our salvation (that which is eternally beneficial for us)

he came down from heaven (he emptied himself of the obvious trappings of divinity so he could hang out with us for a while and yet somehow remained God):

by the power of the Holy Spirit (which is also God)

he became incarnate (made of flesh and blood and bone, which means he breastfed and spit up and peed and pooped and ran and played and had to cut his hair and his toenails and went through puberty and grew hair in odd places and got hungry and slept and laughed and cried) from the Virgin Mary (this one particular Jewish woman, through her very body, not just magically appearing in some other way—and by the way, the whole “virgin” thing really isn’t supposed to be about some supposed sense of sexual purity, but rather stresses God’s command over all the rules of the universe),

and was made man (“one of us—just a slob like one of us”—and more importantly than “man,” “human.” He just happened to be male).

For our sake (not just because he was bored one Friday, but because in some mysterious way this would fundamentally repair our relationship to God once and for all) he was crucified under Pontius Pilate (that specific Roman governor at that specific point in history—look him up on Wikipedia);

he suffered death (he didn’t just seem to die) and was buried (yup, really, really dead, not in a coma, not mostly dead like Westley in Miracle Max’s hut or Harry Potter at King’s Cross Station).

On the third day (the next Sunday morning, so a day and a half later) he rose again (wait, what? How?!? I guess the giver of life can die but can’t stay dead)

in accordance with the Scriptures (not “as predicted by the Scriptures,” but rather, in keeping with the ongoing narrative of salvation history, but this part is open to all sorts of interpretation, which is why not all Jews became Christians);

he ascended into heaven (obviously, because I don’t see him still hanging around in a mystical, multi-dimensional body with nail and spear holes in it)

and is seated (established, not just resting) at the right hand (as the living action-doer) of the Father (not the dictator).

He will come again (future tense or eternal tense?) in glory (like in Daniel 7, not like in Luke 1) to judge (to assess with love and grace, which may actually hurt like hell but needs to happen to open up an eternal path of growth) the living and the dead (everyone who has ever lived),

and his kingdom (spoken of figuratively and eternally better than any monarchy) will have no end (not just on a timeline into the future, but expanding to fill up the omniverse).

We believe in (set our hearts on) the Holy Spirit (mentioned above), the Lord (still only one, because this is still the same being as the Father and the Son, just somehow a third person), the giver of life (not just someone who shows up occasionally or as requested, but who holds all our souls in life in every moment),

who proceeds (is always coming into being) from the Father (see John 14:16) and the Son (see John 20:22, but note that this particular phrase has only ever been used in the West, and the Episcopal Church plans to do away with it gradually to get on the same theological page as our Eastern Orthodox siblings—so note that even the Nicene Creed has its squishy parts that people don’t agree on after all these centuries).

With the Father and the Son (as a Trinity) he (not really a he) is worshiped and glorified (by us, but also by angels and archangels and all the heavenly beings).

He (not specifically a “he”—and not kidding, because this section is gender-neutral in both Latin and Greek, so you might as well use singular “they,” but “she” would also work just fine, to be honest) has spoken through the Prophets (so the Holy Spirit was not late to the party, but has been part of this project all along).

We believe in (set our hearts on) one (not many, and not just our own Christian denomination) holy (set apart by God for a special purpose) catholic (worldwide and universal, nothing to do with the Pope) and apostolic (passed down through the generations through the laying on of hands) Church (a group of people, not a building).

We acknowledge (recognize as holy and legit) one baptism (no repeat performances necessary) for the forgiveness of sins (which is weird, because how does this work exactly? Did we choose baptism, or did God choose us through baptism? And didn’t Jesus already take care of this anyway? So does baptism forgive our sins, or does it serve primarily as a public proclamation of what’s already been done for us?).

We look (watch, wait, hope) for the resurrection of the dead (of the body, as the Apostles’ Creed puts it, not just the soul!—as an indication that all things are drawing to their conclusion, though there’s no need to assume we’ll see it happen on this side of death),

and the life of the world to come (the perfection of all of God’s plans and dreams in eternal joy, and the restoration and redemption of all good creations that have ever been). Amen (Make it so, God!).

The Sin of Self-Sufficiency

Sun, 03 Aug 2025 20:16:38 GMT

Make a habit of getting rid of some of your money. Unburden yourself and repair some of the damage done by previous generations.

2025-41
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 13C-Tr1), August 3, 2025
Hosea 11:1-11 ; Psalm 107:1-9, 43 ; Colossians 3:1-11 ; Luke 12:13-21

“I don’t know how you guys do it,” my friend Katy said to me this week. “Giving away ten percent? That is really, really hard.”

It surprised me to hear this from someone who is not involved in a church. And I was impressed. Katy and her family have seriously looked at their finances and tried to imagine giving away ten percent of their income.

Katy went on to explain that she is involved in a group specifically intended for white folks who want to undo the historical legacy of racism—rather like a secular version of our Sacred Ground curriculum. One fundamental piece of that puzzle is generational wealth, which statistically runs along racial lines. I was impressed, too, that a secular group is encouraging people to tithe. They’re saying the same thing I say all the time: “Make a habit of getting rid of some of your money. Unburden yourself and repair some of the damage done by previous generations.”

Now, I’m well aware that this message lands differently on your ears, depending on your situation. Let’s imagine, for argument’s sake, a two-by-two grid with four quadrants. On one axis is our income level. And the other axis is our level of fear about money, which is conditioned by our family culture and our lived experiences.

In one square are those of us who have more than we need and say, “Yes! I am capable of tithing.” Whether you then go ahead and do it is, of course, up to you.

In another square are those who say, “Yes, I get what you’re saying. But what if I need that money later? And if I just give it away, I relinquish control over it, and then I don’t know that it will actually be used well. If I keep it, I get to make those decisions myself!”

For those in the third square, an encouragement to tithe—or maybe to give at all—may feel like a personal attack. What do I know of the sacrifices your family has to make to stay afloat? Or, what do I know of fixed-income living in a time when the economy is so unpredictable?

Finally, there are the folks in the fourth square. Among those of us who live from hand to mouth can be found some of the most generous people of all. These are those who joyfully part with enough income from week to week and month to month that the financial planner you could never afford would call you a fool.

Now, if you’re having a strong emotional reaction to any of this, know that I’m not trying to make you feel guilty. I’m calling all of us to an honest assessment of our position. I have no idea who’s in which quadrant, and that’s none of my business unless you want to unpack some of this with me one-on-one. My job as a preacher is to encourage theological reflection … and generosity.

Today, Jesus gives us a parable about a farmer who has earned a lot of money. The farmer’s land has produced well year after year, and he has become wealthy. What will he do with his excess? He socks it away. He wisely saves for the future.

But Jesus tells us the farmer is a greedy fool. Why?

Take a look in this passage at all the first-person singular pronouns: “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops? I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years: relax, eat, drink, be merry.’”

For those grammarians who were trying to count, that was eleven occurrences of “I” and “my,” and a second-person “you” applied to himself, plus the implied “you” of four consecutive imperative verbs: “relax, eat, drink, be merry.” So, in the course of only three sentences, the farmer addresses himself sixteen times!

Is there any other human being in this person’s life? Maybe he has an administrative assistant named Smithers to do his bookkeeping and to send on errands, since they didn’t have Doordash yet. Maybe he also has high fences around his barns. “Who’s that lurking around my barns? Smithers, call out the dogs!”

Hopefully none of us lives like this ancient version of Mr. Burns from The Simpsons. But we don’t have to be cartoon characters for the parable to apply to us. What makes the character a fool is this: not that he has too much, but that he keeps too much, and that he keeps himself removed from the concerns of all the other humans around him. His sin is that he has become self-sufficient.

Yet isn’t self-sufficiency the ultimate American dream? Life … for me. Liberty … for me. The pursuit of happiness … for me. Wait, you want me to be concerned about others? About all of us together? Isn’t that … (gasp) … socialism?

American society is structured for independence, if you can make enough money to maintain it. It is not primarily structured for interdependence. And we live in a time when all vestiges of interdependence are under attack. USAID? Gone, and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide already dead as a result—mostly children. The Department of Education? On the way to oblivion. The Environmental Protection Agency? Now it’s the Environmental Pillaging Agency. No more federal funding for scientific and medical research, so I hope there’s not another pandemic on the way! We heard a couple days ago that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is shutting down operations. We’re well aware of the loss of Episcopal Migration Ministries. Food stamps? Over a hundred thousand people in Washington State alone are about to lose that option. Even some of our oldest and wealthiest universities are paying multi-million-dollar bribes to keep from being strangled to death.

What do all these organizations have in common? They are intended for the mutual benefit of all of us. They exist because people decided at some point, “Hey, if we pool our resources, we can help everybody!” And then we got taxed to fund them. Honestly, it’s so little tax money that most of us don’t even miss it. Most of our taxes go to pay for military spending, plus the big three: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Oh, wait … looks like Medicaid is next. Add to that the continuation of giant tax cuts for the super-wealthy, and you see where this is going.

What do we hear from those who support these cuts? “Oh, the churches should do that work, not the government.” The churches—like ours, with our $20,000 deficit. Those who think the churches can just pick up this slack have certainly never done the math. But they also tend to think people like me live in a mansion like Joel Osteen, rather than a 1400-square-foot house with one bathroom.

All the same, the church has been around a lot longer than the United States, a lot longer than capitalism, and a lot longer than any modern form of democracy. And our current concerns notwithstanding, I suspect that the church will still be around long after these things are gone. America will fall apart someday, maybe even in our lifetimes. But Jesus’ Parable of the Rich Fool will still be with us, holding out a larger vision for what we can be to one another.

So through all the noise, hear the voice of God speaking to the Rich Fool: “This very night your life is demanded of you!” Most folks assume this means that God immediately takes the man’s life to expose the futility of his hoarding. But the Greek grammar is tricky. The sentence may instead mean: “This very night your possessions demand your life!” In other words, your real god is the things you own. You have imbued inanimate objects with the power of deity, and that deity demands daily the recommitment of your soul.

What in this world is truly worthy of our worship? We all must wrestle with that question. In our passage from the Letter to the Colossians today, we are urged to “seek the things that are above.” This is figurative. “Things that are above” are actually all around us every day, in this world. They are the people and situations that call us away from total self-sufficiency and into a life of interdependence, in which we cannot control everything, but in which we rely on the love and generosity of others to carry all of us.

Why must we “seek the things that are above”? Because, as we hear: “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.” Were you aware that you’re already dead? Pinch yourself! What could this mean? Well, our future death is an absolute certainty. But a core piece of the Christian faith is this: the sting of death has been taken away forever. Jesus did that. I don’t understand how, and I don’t always believe it myself. I get scared about the future, and when money was tighter for me than it is now, I kept more of it around.

Early in our three years of seminary, as we struggled to maintain enough cash flow for our weekly grocery trips, I confessed to Bishop Greg that we weren’t pledging to the church at all. His response was clear: “As a seminarian and a future priest, you have placed yourself under orders. It is your responsibility not just to pledge, but to tithe. You’re going to need to let go of this fear and just do it.”

So we did. The math didn’t work out on paper. But in real life, we never wanted for anything. And we found ourselves to be … less scared. And our relationships with others got stronger … more authentic. We just gave the ten percent right off the top, as if it had never been ours to begin with, and we trusted that we wouldn’t need it. We didn’t.

Maybe the Rich Fool figured he’d eventually get around to sharing. Maybe he said, “I’ll just work one more year, retire … and then I’ll start to give some of it away.” But we don’t get to live in any time other than the present. We have already died, and our life is carefully preserved, mystically, in the bosom of the resurrected Christ. Can we believe this together? Will it strengthen us to become more interdependent—to live a little more simply, so that others may simply live?

God in Our Own Image

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 27 Jul 2025 20:57:36 GMT

We always create God in our image, rather than the other way around. We don’t have any other choice. We can only work with what we know.

2025-40
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 12C-Tr1), July 27, 2025
Hosea 1:2-10 ; Psalm 85 ; Colossians 2:6-19 ; Luke 11:1-13

Today we hear Jesus teaching his disciples how to pray. This seems kind of odd, because the disciples were all faithful Jews who had been taught from the cradle how to pray. But Jesus has given them a new way to imagine their relationship with God, so they wisely ask for new tools for maintaining that relationship. And Jesus is happy to provide.

If you grew up as a Christian, you have probably memorized and internalized the Lord’s Prayer. It is the most beloved prayer of our faith, because Jesus himself taught it to us. And for two millennia, we have cherished its opening phrase: “Our Father.” The notion of God as Father wasn’t new. We may well think of God as our Father—and Mother is also fair game, since God created all parents. But let’s be honest: the fathers and mothers in our experience probably fall far short of what Jesus is talking about.

I want to suggest that we always create God in our image, rather than the other way around. This is what atheists accuse us of, you know: that we are making up a god and projecting all our insecurities onto him. I think they’re right: we do this all the time. And that’s because we don’t have any other choice. We can only work with what we know.

But our failure to understand God says nothing about whether God is real. God is more than real: God is the reality because of which all reality is real. All our lives we can try to know God, but we’ll never actually get there. So our imagination must play a role in our understanding.

Here’s an example. We all know that when it comes to parenting, consistency is important. I learned this before I even became a dad. That doesn’t mean I’ve always been great at it. And who has? You see it all the time in public: a child is acting up loudly on the bus, for instance. The parent blurts out, “If you don’t stop that right now, we’re getting off this bus and walking!” Yeah, well, what if the walk is four miles, with a stroller and shopping bags, uphill, and a screaming toddler? This threat is not likely to be carried out. Now, all parents occasionally lose their cool and paint themselves into a corner. Hopefully we never find ourselves uttering the worst phrase of all: “If you walk out that door, don’t even think about coming back!” Oops—the kid called the bluff. Well, now what?

When we imagine God as eager to punish, ready to fly off the handle and destroy us, we have made a god we can imagine, a god who is like us, like an irritable parent or even a narcissistic dictator, so wrapped up in the needs of the ego that the powerless must suffer for it. In reality I don’t believe that God has ever broken a promise or a relationship. But would the prophet Hosea say the same?

Let’s talk about Hosea for a minute. He’s a prophet who might make you want to stick a “Parental Advisory” sticker on your Bible. Hosea comes on the scene in Israel around the same time as Amos, and in the course of his book, God alternates between father and lover, which really is twisted. The first thing Hosea proclaims is that God says, “Go find a promiscuous woman and marry her, because that’s how Israel has acted toward me.”

Then Hosea gives Gomer’s three children prophetic but insulting names. Jezreel is the name of the place where the notorious Jezebel met her violent end, a shameful site of violence—so this might be like naming your child Columbine or Abu Ghraib. The second child is named Lo-ruhamah, which means “no pity.” The third is Lo-ammi: “not my people.” In short: “That’s it. I give up. Israel, I divorce and disown you. You are not my people and I am not your God!”

Hosea proclaims the rift between God and humankind in a way that is clearly abusive to his poor family. (Can you imagine trying to make friends at school if your name were “No Pity”?) We don’t know how much of this literally happened, though it is true that the prophets of ancient Israel did some very strange things to make a point. Throughout the remainder of the book Hosea hears God saying, “You know, I brought you out of slavery in Egypt, and I can put you back again.” Is God a fed-up parent … or an abusive lover?

Yet this reading ends with a familiar turn toward hope, a restatement of the promise to Abraham: “The number of the people of Israel shall be like the sand of the sea, which can be neither measured nor numbered.” Sure … that’s what all abusers say. They’ll always take you back, but they’ll assert their emotional power over you in the process. Do you see why this metaphor is so problematic?

The ancient Israelites knew that all metaphors break down. And throughout their sacred writings, they put a big fat spotlight on their own shortcomings. I have yet to learn of any other culture on earth that did this so flagrantly and authentically. The Israelites interpreted the disasters in their lives as punishment from God, but as they recorded their history, they never forgot that they would always be God’s chosen people, destined for health and wholeness, accomplishing their work of blessing all the peoples of the world. The living God does not break promises.

So if you’re ever tempted to view the Old Testament as the home of the angry, abusive God, as opposed to the all-loving, all-forgiving God of the New, that just means you haven’t read enough of it yet. When God is portrayed as angry, it is to express that God cares so deeply. The imagery may disturb us, but when we hang in there, we see that it leads not to shallow platitudes, but to true reconciliation and wholeness.

We Christians are an example of other peoples of the earth who have come to be blessed by God’s chosen people. We see the law of Moses and the proclamations of the prophets come to fulfillment in one brief human life—in Jesus’ words and actions, punctuated by the ultimate prophetic act of being killed and rising to life again.

The Church understands Jesus as the icon of the living God, the one whom we have longed for but whom even the most confident parents among us could never hope to imitate, and whom even the most faithful lovers would cheat on. Have we created this God in our own image? Or could it be that this longing in us, this desire for a God who loves and cherishes us, points toward a reality we can only glimpse? Could we be catching just a hint of the God we cannot imagine and therefore cannot possibly have invented? Even when so many of our stories about this God fall short of revealing the true depths of God’s understanding and mercy?

After teaching his disciples to pray, “Our Father,” Jesus shifts to yet another metaphor—that of a friend. In more than one place in the gospels, this is the term he uses to describe himself. But here Jesus inserts a humorous story about what prayer can be like. You are surprised by the arrival of guests in the middle of the night, and you’re out of food. So you go next door to your friend’s house and bang on the door: “Hey, help me! My pantry is empty!”

The friend irritably calls back, “No! Stop it! It’s the middle of the night! You’ll wake the baby!”

But you keep pounding on the door: “Come on! I know it’s the middle of the night—that’s why I’m coming to you instead of going to the store! Because it’s the first century and the 24-hour Safeway hasn’t been invented yet!”

The friend gets angrier: “You’ve got to be kidding me! In what world do your in-laws show up in the middle of the night and expect a meal?”

Bang bang bang. “Sorry, I can’t help it! And the hospitality rules of our ancient culture are very clear! It would be a disgrace for me not to be able to feed them! If anyone else found out, it might affect the property values of the whole neighborhood!”

From inside you hear the baby begin to wail loudly. You hear your friend knock over an end table and swear under his breath. Then the front door opens, and a loaf of bread is shoved in your face. It turns out to be the most delicious bread you’ve ever eaten, and your guests never forget it.

Is God like that? What does that even mean? And Jesus doesn’t stop at one story. “Daddy, can I have a fish?”

“Sure, son: here you go.”

“Aaaaahhhh! It’s a snake! It’s a live snake! Forget it! Can I have an egg instead?”

“Sure, son: here’s an egg.”

“Aaaaahhh! It’s a scorpion! I thought you loved me!”

Look, says Jesus. God is not an insensitive friend or an abusive parent. God knows what you need and how much you need it. If you fail to ask, that doesn’t mean God doesn’t know. But when you do ask, you’re investing in the relationship. You’re demonstrating your commitment and your trust. And you’re safeguarding against the human complacency that upset God so much in Hosea’s time and still does today. So pray. Whatever it looks like, just pray.

God is parent or lover or friend, depending on how you want to tell the story today. All these relationships take work and commitment from both sides. Yes, with God it’s fundamentally an unequal relationship, and that’s why it’s so easy to imagine a cruel, abusive God. We’re always in danger of creating God in our own image, and that’s because we can never truly leave the realm of metaphor.

But by becoming one of us in Jesus, God breaks down the barriers. If God is a parent, then God bears with us through the diapers phase, the tantrums phase, and the surly teenager phase until we can become more like equals. If God is a lover, then God loves us with mutual respect and wants us to grow more and more into who we are always becoming. If God is a friend, it’s the friend in the anonymous quote who “knows you as you are, understands where you’ve been, accepts what you’ve become, and still gently invites you to grow.”

Today, may you rest securely in the knowledge that God—father, mother, lover, friend, and so much more—is always loving you into healing and wholeness. Amen.

Worried and Distracted

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 20 Jul 2025 20:38:17 GMT

Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to his teachings. This is her core work—not the endless little tasks piling up in the next room.

2025-39
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11C-Tr1), July 20, 2025
Amos 8:1-12 ; Psalm 52 ; Colossians 1:15-28 ; Luke 10:38-42

These days, it's shocking how often our readings in church hold up a mirror to the United States of America. Surely you’ve noticed, right? We don’t pick these readings ourselves; many different Christian denominations use the same three-year cycle of readings.

Two weeks ago Luke got me preaching about our need to work against the abhorrent injustices dominating our country, and last week Jesus got Anna preaching about who our neighbors really are, and now I get … Amos preaching about the rich abusing the poor? And Psalm 52, all about the wicked tyrant who loves all words that hurt, with a fervent prayer that God might demolish him utterly!

On top of that, as if to smack me upside the head for my sermon two weeks ago encouraging us to choose our work intentionally for the sake of God’s Kingdom, I get this gospel reading in which Jesus appears to take Martha down a peg for … working.

All right, Holy Spirit. What gives?!

But as I once heard the great preacher Barbara Brown Taylor say, the fire department doesn’t show up and then complain about how big the fire is. They just start putting it out, because that’s their job. So as I always do, I will now humbly submit to the Revised Common Lectionary and get on with it.

Well, Amos. Amos, Amos, Amos. Nobody likes him, so I guess I’ll be his friend. Amos comes from herding sheep and pruning trees in the southern kingdom of Judah and crosses the border into the northern kingdom of Israel to yell at them for a while. Last week, we heard Amos use a plumb line to show that Israel was crooked and needed to be straightened out. Of course, saying this made the King of Israel mad, and he said, “Look, Amos, go back to your own country and criticize them. What did we ever do to you?” And Amos said, “Hey, God made me do this! I didn’t want to!”

Well, this week, Amos is still at it. And now, as if he weren’t insufferable enough, he’s making dad jokes. The thing about the “summer fruit”? It’s a pun. In Hebrew, “summer fruit” is qayits . But the word qets means “the end.” It may even be that in the Northern Kingdom, the pronunciation of the two words was nearly identical, which would mean that Amos is making fun of their accent. “See this fruit, this qayits ? Well, God now says that qets —the end—is near!”

In English, then, I’m going to riff off a play on words I found in a Bible commentary this week [1] : “Hey, Israel—it’s summertime—or summary time! Enjoy your peaches and your raspberries, because pretty soon they’ll all be eaten or spoiled, and then the story of summer will be all told, and God will give the summary. God will sum up the summer in a summary judgment against all of you wicked people! (See what I did there?)”

Worst dad joke ever.

And who are the wicked ones Amos is yelling at? They’re the people who show outward piety by observing the sabbath day of rest, all the while champing at the bit for the sabbath to be over so they can get back to making money. Lots and lots of money, because they’re falsifying the tools of their trade to cheat the poor.

They weren’t the first or the last to do this sort of thing. In our day, they gather for a National Day of Prayer, and then they vote to jack up the interest on student loans. They pile on layers and layers of bureaucracy so that even if the poor do qualify for Medicaid, they’ll never be able to jump through enough hoops to get it. They tell those working for tips that the tips won’t be taxed, but that will only be true until the next election, and most folks won’t even make enough money to qualify. And if any of the poor are immigrants—even the ones following every rule to the letter to try to live here legally—nope, not good enough. Lock them up, feed them one maggot-infested meal a day, and don’t tell any lawyers where they are!

In our day, Amos would come here from Mexico to preach to us, and then he’d be handcuffed and hauled off so fast he wouldn’t even have time to tell “la migra” where to get off. But were he allowed to keep speaking, surely most of the content of his message would be quite similar.

Can we take any consolation from the fact that the injustices in our country are nothing new? That people of faith have lived through far worse atrocities? Amos knew all about this stuff, as did the psalmist: “You tyrant, why do you boast of wickedness against the godly all day long?”

Well, we might wish to think of ourselves by comparison as “green olive trees in the house of God.” We might proudly declare that we’re more fruitful than the grifters running our government. But notice in the psalm what allows the psalmist to say, “I am a green olive tree.” It’s not because he’s more moral than everyone else. It’s because, as he puts it, “I trust in the mercy of God for ever and ever.”

I’m not out there actively persecuting the poor. But every day I participate in systems that do—systems like home ownership, a sizeable carbon footprint, and paying taxes to this government. And on a personal level, I know I sometimes lapse into fear, anxiety, and shortsightedness. So like the psalmist, I too am always in need of God’s unending mercy. I have no cause for conceit. My trust is what sets me apart—not my lack of evil deeds. Because who knows what harm I do just by having more than I need?

God’s mercy is everpresent and is ours for the taking. But to make use of it in this life, we have to focus. We have to stretch our trust. And as I say that, it sounds to me like mercy is only truly ours if we … work for it?

No, that’s not quite right either. I mean, we should work. We must work. It’s what we do every day—we work to manage our environment. Work can be a source of constructive pride, and it can inspire others also to do good work for their communities. I’m not putting down work.

But I am saying that Americans in particular have some funny notions about work. There’s a harsh value judgment that goes without saying in the United States. It suggests that if you’re going to remain alive, you should have to work for it. Are you on Medicaid? What, and you’re not working? How dare you! You don’t get to be in this world without making money for the shareholders!

How did we come to believe that nonsense?

I’m also saying something else. I’m saying that not all work looks like work.

I think this is what Jesus is telling Martha. Notice that when he calls Martha up short, he doesn’t tell her not to be busy. He tells her not to be distracted and worried. Jesus is the presence of God right in her house! Can she slow down and focus long enough even to notice? If Jesus is here, how can there be anything to worry about?

Mary gets it, and Jesus affirms her. Mary sits at Jesus’ feet and listens to his teachings. This is her core work—not the endless little tasks piling up in the next room. Martha can’t fix the broken world. She might be able to fix a delicious meal for everyone. But even as she does that, she’s grumbling about Mary and trying to fix her as well. It’s not helpful.

Now, doubtless Mary will do the dishes, right? Maybe. Maybe not. When my family throws a party, it usually takes us about three days to get the dishes caught up! Maybe Martha’s a little too worried and distracted about keeping up appearances. Or about hospitality customs. Maybe Martha takes great pride in her work and just wants Jesus to notice. But why would she need to go fishing for compliments? Jesus would rather his followers go fishing for people—for those who feel lost and alone, who need to be welcomed into joy, not just into a job in the kitchen!

Well, anytime I’m working, paid or otherwise, I need Jesus’ words of reassurance. There’s the work I do for Good Shepherd, and the work I do for the diocese, and for my community and my family and so on. Right now the work I do for my nation involves a lot of protesting, and frankly, I’m sick of it. We shouldn’t have to fight authoritarianism—not in America! But then, when there’s a fire, our job is not to complain about it. We just have to hook up the hoses and get to work.

And when I lack the knowledge or skill or strength or fortitude to put out the fire, I have to remember that none of this rests on me alone. None of this rests on you alone. So if you are worried and distracted by many things—and who isn’t these days?—the call is to STOP. Come sit down at Jesus’ feet for a while. We will not regain our focus by spinning our wheels faster. It is not our work that saves us.

It is not our work that saves us.

There is literally nothing you can do to save yourself—to make your life more worthwhile to God—to release yourself from sin or suffering—no matter how on top of things you may feel today or tomorrow. There will come a day when you’re just not on top of things anymore. And then there will come a day when you just have to let it all go.

So, like Mary and hopefully like Martha, practice letting go. Let the male disciples go foraging in the cupboards for themselves tonight! Make time every Sunday to sit at the Master’s feet and learn. Because without that kind of work, all the other work will be futile and joyless. Accept the salvation that is already yours, no matter what happens in the world. Delight in it. And then, when you must get up and do some other kind of work, go out refreshed and full of love. Amen.

[1] Shalom Paul, Amos (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 253; cited by Thomas W. Mann in David L. Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor, ed., Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 3 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Press, 2010), 245.

How Are You a Neighbor?

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 13 Jul 2025 20:03:39 GMT

"We are now being faced with a series of choices between the demands of the federal government and the teachings of Jesus, and that is no choice at all."
- The Most Rev. Sean Rowe, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church

2025-38
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10C-Tr1), July 13, 2025
Amos 7:7-17 ; Psalm 82 ; Colossians 1:1-14 ; Luke 10:25-37

Art credit: Olga Bakhtina, "Good Samaritan with Lily"

retrieved from https://olgabakhtina.com/painting/good-samaritan-with-a-lily/ on 7/13/2025

Source of Presiding Bishop’s statement:

https://religionnews.com/2025/07/03/once-the-church-of-presidents-the-episcopal-church-must-now-be-an-engine-of-resistance/

What Is Your Labor?

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 06 Jul 2025 20:21:29 GMT

It's easy to pray that this chapter of history will pass us by. It will not.

2025-37
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11C-Tr1), July 6, 2025
2 Kings 5:1-14 ; Psalm 30 ; Galatians 6:7-16 ; Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

I planted new grass this spring. I did my best, but I fear it may all have died. I won’t know for sure until fall, because of course in the summer the grass all turns brown anyway. If it comes up again, that’s all to the good. If it doesn’t, then I’ll try again. More grass seed, more compost … more labor.

But hold up a moment. Friday was the 249 ^th birthday of the United States. Do you know this poem?

Let America be America again.

Let it be the dream it used to be.

Let it be the pioneer on the plain

Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed—

Let it be that great strong land of love

Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme

That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty

Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,

But opportunity is real, and life is free,

Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.") [1]

That’s only the first few stanzas. It was written by Langston Hughes in 1935—ninety years ago. Does it resonate with you today?

“The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into [the] harvest.”

What is your labor? What are you harvesting?

At the site of an abandoned airport deep in Florida’s Everglades, in just a matter of days, a huge facility has been constructed and dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.” It is a tent city full of cages, built in the middle of a hot, humid hurricane zone, surrounded by swamp-dwelling wildlife. The plan is to put 5,000 people there at a time. The cost of running it will be $450 million per year.

Who are the people who built Alligator Alcatraz, and how did they do it so quickly? Why didn’t they build actual homes instead?

Right-wing activist Laura Loomer tweeted this week: “The good news is, alligators are guaranteed at least 65 million meals if we get started now.” [2] The total number of Latinos living in the United States is 65 million. That’s 20% of the population. So I wonder … does Laura Loomer believe she is doing helpful work for her country?

Did you know that the Nazis built their first concentration camps in 1933—six years before World War II actually began? Nobody died there in 1933. Not yet.

Meanwhile, here’s a quote from a new federal court filing in Los Angeles:

Individuals with brown skin are approached or pulled aside by unidentified federal agents, suddenly and with a show of force, and made to answer questions about who they are and where they are from. If they hesitate, attempt to leave, or do not answer the questions to the satisfaction of the agents, they are detained, sometimes tackled, handcuffed, and/or taken into custody. In these interactions, agents typically have no prior information about the individual and no warrant of any kind. If agents make an arrest, contrary to federal law, they do not make any determination of whether a person poses a risk of flight before a warrant can be obtained. Also contrary to federal law, the agents do not identify themselves or explain why the individual is being arrested. [3]

Who are these thugs who do the illegal labor of apprehending American residents without cause? Are they proud of their work? How do they justify judging people not by the content of their character, but by the color of their skin?

Meanwhile … what is your labor? What are you harvesting?

Friends, it’s so easy not to try—to sit here in all our privilege and pray that this chapter of U.S. history will just pass us by. It will not. And that means we all need to decide what our labor will be.

I know that most of you are older than I am—you’ve seen more U.S. history with your own eyes. Some of you have served in the military, offering your very bodies in defense of our nation. You have voted. You have marched in protest, either in the 1960s or recently, and maybe you were arrested for civil disobedience. You have canvassed or lobbied or called your senators and representatives.

Some of you wish you could do more these days, but you feel your body is no longer up to it. You can still make phone calls, and pray, and speak encouraging words. We all have our labor.

“Bear one another’s burdens,” Paul writes, “and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” What is the law of Christ? To love one another … as Christ has loved us. Yet Paul also writes, in the same passage, “all must carry their own loads.” It sounds like a contradiction. But Paul is not calling us to rugged self-reliance. He’s simply pointing out that each of us has a responsibility to live with integrity.

This puts me in mind of another early 20 ^th -century poet, Woody Guthrie:

You gotta walk that lonesome valley,

You gotta walk it by yourself,

Nobody here can walk it for you,

You gotta walk it by yourself.

There's a road that leads to glory

Through a valley far away,

Nobody else can walk it for you,

They can only point the way. [4]

I recently spent a week serving as chaplain to a summer choir camp. Only eleven kids signed up this year, compared to 24 last year. That was disappointing at first, though we knew that certain choirs had scheduling conflicts, and they’ll return next year. So eleven kids and seven adults spent the week rehearsing, and then we sang Evensong at St. Mark’s Cathedral that Friday night and Eucharist at Christ Church, Tacoma last Sunday morning.

Each night of the camp we sang Evensong together as both rehearsal and worship, and I preached a homily at each service. One night I gave the kids a challenge:

Who are the people in your life … who never feel like they fit in? Who are the ones who can never get a break … who live in constant fear of messing up … who get picked on and victimized by others? … Can you choose those people as friends?

Maybe sometimes you’re the one on the bottom of the heap. Maybe you desperately need a friend … Here’s my tip: do the same thing. Look around and figure out who most needs a friend, and go be a friend to that person. Because that’s where the real joys are to be found: in being there for others. Not in gathering all the safety and power for yourself.

Afterward, one girl approached me and thanked me for my words (that is, for my labor). She told me about an adult in her life who really needs a friend right now: a longsuffering parent who always does his best. The girl’s love for her dad was clear and stark, formed in a crucible of impossible challenges. In that moment, I deeply loved her and her dad and her siblings. And the labor she had expended, by approaching me in great vulnerability, built the trust we needed so she could tell me about her own difficult life later in the week.

What good did it do for your priest to spend a week preaching to eleven kids? Well, I planted some seeds. God allowed me to be present in the lives of these young people. So we’ll see. Or maybe we won’t see, but others will.

And so we hear Paul again, writing to the Galatians and echoing down the centuries: “Let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith.” His call is not to prioritize Christians above non-Christians, but to proceed from where you are. Who has God placed right in front of you? You have energy to give. Give it to them.

I’ve often heard it said that it doesn’t take much to make a positive change in the world. The example frequently given is that simply smiling at strangers will brighten their day, and that this might be enough. Now, it’s true that neither you nor I can fly to the Everglades and tear down Alligator Auschwitz with our bare hands. But these times call us to new forms of labor nonetheless. If we content ourselves with merely smiling at strangers, how will we look back on this period in our lives? Most of us have far more energy than that—if we don’t insist on hoarding it.

“See,” Jesus tells his laboring disciples, “I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

I do rejoice that my own name is written in heaven, not because I have worked hard, but because God loves me. The same goes for all of you. I do not fear for the ultimate fate of anyone’s soul, save those who are, in this moment, embracing cruelty as a way of life. Will they ever be held to account? I can pray about this if I like, but I feel no desire to walk their lonesome valley for them. God will show them how much they must suffer for the sake of the gospel.

Instead, I’ll focus on my own labor, and I encourage you to focus on yours. May it necessarily involve those who are more in danger in this moment than you are. Since DOGE unconstitutionally destroyed USAID, tens of thousands of people, including thousands of children, have already died of AIDS for lack of the life-savings drugs our country would have provided. Back at home, millions are at risk of losing Medicare, or losing their homes, or losing their freedom, or all of the above. Others are in danger of sinking into depression, anxiety, or rage. A lot of people just need someone to invest energy in them right now—to know that somebody chose to be inconvenienced for their sake.

Begin by acknowledging the work you are already doing. God does not call you to be successful, but faithful. You are already using the gifts God has given you. Make sure you’re using them to benefit not just yourself, but also others.

Then, before and after directing your energy outward, make time to direct your prayers to God, and to sit and wait in silence for God’s instruction and God’s action. There is always work to do, and it needs to be steeped in fervent prayer.

What is your work? What seeds are you planting? None of it is futile, even if all the seeds die. Plant again. And again. And love with all the love you have to give. Amen.

[1] https://allpoetry.com/Let-America-Be-America-Again . Retrieved 3 July 2025.

[2] https://www.instagram.com/p/DLn37S9yRaw/ . Retrieved 3 July 2025.

[3] https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25988190/clean-vasquez-perdomo-v-noem-first-amended-petition-and-complaint-1.pdf . Retrieved 3 July 2025.

[4] https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/Lonesome_Valley.htm . Retrieved 3 July 2025.

RSCM West Choir Camp

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 19:31:42 GMT

Eleven kids with amazing voices

Dear friends --

I spent last week serving as chaplain for the RSCM West Choir Camp . This was my second year doing this, and it was a rather different year than last. And it was a blessing in many ways.

Last year, 24 kids participated; this year there were only 11. This is largely due to a conflation of events that removed some of the usual participating choirs from the capm this year (tours abroad and such). But having only 11 kids made many things go very smoothly, and it certainly enabled the kids to bond with one another, even across the broad spread of ages represented (10 to 16).

The kids came from congregations in Seattle, Tacoma, Salem, and Dallas. A typical day involved many hours of rehearsal, broken up by leisure activities and downtime. The other staff hailed from Seattle, Colorado Springs, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Indianapolis, and New York City.

We sang Evensong together at St. Mark's Cathedral on Friday night. You can watch the service here. On Sunday morning we sang at Christ Church in Tacoma. That service is available here . It was an extremely rewarding week, and I hope to keep serving in this way for a long time.

- Pastor Josh

Ordinary Time

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 15:20:15 GMT

When the world becomes overwhelming, seek the ordinary.

2025-35
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7C-tr1), June 22, 2025
1 Kings 19:1-15a ; Psalm 42 and 43 ; Galatians 3:23-29 ; Luke 8:26-39

If you’ve been worshiping in the Episcopal Church for only a short time—or more especially if regular participation in Christianity is new to you—you may have heard only part of the story. I mean, it’s a huge story, the story of our faith. And you’ve been hearing parts of it each week.

Way back in December we began the Christian year with the season of Advent, the time of preparation that leads to Christmas. Advent is about the prophets, about their calls for justice and their frustration that the people didn’t heed their calls. Advent teaches us the necessity of Christmas, of God coming to be with us on our own terms as Jesus. Then we get twelve days of Christmas joy.

Christmas leads to Epiphany, a day and a season when we look from many angles at Jesus’ earthly life: his growing up, his baptism, his calling of disciples, his teachings, his healings. We learn with wonder about the man whose disciples came to know him as the living icon of God. We hear that they struggled to make sense of their own wonder.

Ash Wednesday begins the season of Lent, a time when things get real. We don’t shy away from talk of sin and the need for repentance. We are encouraged to make sacrifices for the sake of coming to a deeper understanding that God’s presence may be most obvious in the absence of other things.

The final week of Lent is Holy Week, the “high holy days” for Christians. We wash each other’s feet, pray at the foot of the Cross, and wait for the coming of a new light into our world.

On that Saturday night we gather in the dark to hear the stories of our faith and to baptize new Christians, and then all the lights burst on and we proclaim the Resurrection. We continue to celebrate Easter for fifty days, during which time we hear the narratives of Christ’s return to life, his mysterious appearances to his friends, and his ascension into heaven.

The fiftieth day of Easter is Pentecost, the day of the arrival of the Holy Spirit to build us up as a Church to go to every corner of the world and proclaim the Good News. And last week was Trinity Sunday, which shows us the continuing unfolding of God’s love in our hearts in ways we know we’ll never fully understand.

We share these events together every year. It’s our family history, our back story, our organizational mandate, our lifeblood. And then we spend the other half of the year doing … what exactly?

Well, now we stare down the calendar at the vast expanse of summer and fall. It’s called “Ordinary Time.” And yes, I know what you’re thinking: ordinary time? If only! We all know these are anything but ordinary times.

Well, all the more reason to come here every week and seek the ordinary. We now enter the part of the calendar when we’re not telling the Jesus story per se, but remarking on it and going deeper into certain aspects of it. It’s a subtle, less dramatic style of storytelling. From now until November 30 (with just a couple special exceptions), the color of the vestments and other trappings is green. We have entered the “green growing season,” the time from planting to harvest, the time when our faith grows within us in subtle, ordinary ways.

We still follow the same pattern of worship: gather, share the stories of our faith and unpack them, pray, share the bread and wine that become for us the Body and Blood of Christ, and then go out refueled to share the Good News of Christ Jesus with the world.

We hear today of the prophet Elijah on the run—hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. He is given divine food to help him go another forty days. He has a direct encounter with God … but God is not found in the flashy wind or earthquake or fire. God is present in the ordinary silence. Elijah may even experience that silence as a letdown, but nonetheless he is given clear instructions and hastens to carry them out.

We hear today from Paul, writing his angry letter to the church in Galatia and trying to set them straight: stop making distinctions among yourselves! Everybody belongs! It doesn’t matter where we’ve come from, what we’ve been through … God loves each and every one of us and is at work in our lives to reconcile us all to one another. The Church gets to help with that work in special and specific ways, but they’re not all flashy ways … just ordinary life. Every day we find opportunities to be with one another as fellow children of God. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just people. Just life.

Finally, we hear of Jesus entering into a chaotic situation and turning it ordinary. He casts loud, raucous demons out of this wretched man and gets rid of the demons once and for all. When the people from that area return to the scene, the man has become … well, ordinary, sitting as a student at Jesus’ feet, “clothed and in his right mind.” (I’ve always wondered where the clothes came from!) So, go figure, when the people encounter the ordinariness, that’s when they ask Jesus to please just leave. It frightens them.

We often think that “ordinary” means “boring.” But sometimes our lives can be so chaotic, so frantic and exhausting, or so frightening and devoid of hope, that we crave the ordinary with all our being. A funny side note: Many of you know that I’m a lifelong student of popular music. This week, three of the most popular songs in the U.S. are called “Anxiety” (what we’re all feeling); “Ordinary” (what we all long for); and “Manchild” (the presenting problem).

Anyway, we can seek out the ordinary here as we gather to pray, for that is indeed our calling in these times. We need to pray for our nation, which has been invaded by masked kidnappers. We need to pray for other nations as war spreads among them, and as our own leaders repeatedly demonstrate that they are not knowledgeable or capable in any helpful way. We need to pray for the people of the world, consumed by fear and desperately in need of hope—including ourselves.

You may have seen the bumper sticker on my car: “Since all else fails, love one another.” We see all else failing all around us every day, but this is only the context in which we get to share that love. Sometimes it will seem weak or insufficient—a little too ordinary!

We need to be patient. We’re in the middle. We don’t yet get to see how all this turns out. When anxiety threatens, church in Ordinary Time is the place to be. We have ritual and routine to ground your week. We have kind people who can lend an ear. Ordinary Time can be a shelter in the storm, every single Sunday.

For that matter, I don’t think I can suggest too often that all Christians are called to make weekly worship the most ordinary thing of all—the default setting. I want to urge all of you, if you haven’t done so, to set up for yourselves and your households the practice of being here on Sunday mornings. Don’t leave it up to your feelings or a last-minute decision. Just come by default … because the ordinary, repeated over and over, Sunday after Sunday, is what enables us to grow in faith and in love for one another and the world.

When we begin the season of Advent again, we’ll all be slightly different people, changed by the Gospel, always growing. And no doubt we’ll also have some new people among us who haven’t been through the story before, and we can delight in sharing it with them.

A lot of us make summer plans. Some of us travel, while others just try to change up the routine. When I travel, I enjoy checking out different churches. I might go in for something very different, but I usually stick with Episcopal churches because that’s just what I do! It’s fun to drop in on our compatriots in other places, also telling the story, also drawing closer to God through Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

While some of us go missing for a time in the summer, you never know who might drop in. The community shuffles a bit, and usually we have fewer extra activities going on, though this year we’re actually doing more than usual: the interdenominational Bible study … the “Why Christian? Why Episcopalian?” group … an end-of-the-summer picnic on August 31, and then Bishop Phil joining us on September 7. But in and among these opportunities, let’s not lose sight of the ordinary.

One year when I was the Associate for Christian Formation at St. Thomas in Medina, my spiritual director and I were ruminating on Ordinary Time. I confessed that I had come up with a marketing slogan for this season: “Make your Ordinary Time Extraordinary!” And we would follow that slogan with new faith formation programs! Big, exciting events for kids! A full summer of wow! Wow! Wow!

And my spiritual director said, “Stop it! It’s called Ordinary Time. Let it be ordinary! And take a vacation.”

As I said I couple weeks ago, I hope we can spend the summer just loving one another. This half of the year is supposed to be ordinary. The Good News is mind-blowing enough; we don’t have to add to it. We just need to keep reminding each other of it. For the time being, make this Ordinary Time just plain ordinary. Join us at church. Listen and pray. Reach out to others. No big deal. Just each other. Just Jesus, dead and risen. Just the unfathomable mystery of God’s grace given to us through the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Dance of Three

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 20:05:07 GMT

The Trinity is not just an idea about God, but an experience of God and an invitation to a dance.

2025-34
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday (Year C), June 15, 2025
Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 ; Psalm 8 ; Romans 5:1-5 ; John 16:12-15

Our first experiences of God go all the way back to the womb. You can’t live in God’s universe without experiencing God. Then we hear words about God from our parents and other people in our lives, and we begin to learn that our experience of God can actually be shared and discussed. A small child once said this to me:

“I went outside, and I prayed to God with no words at all. And I didn’t hear anything back … except the wind blowing through the leaves in the trees.”

Time and experience may allow that child to hear the blowing wind as an answer in itself, and then perhaps to move on to even more sophisticated understandings of the ways God talks with us and nurtures relationship with us.

I have experienced my own faith as a continual unfolding—an ongoing revelation of truths that were always true, but that I couldn’t bear before now. Sometimes this unfolding means that I have to let go of understandings that no longer work. And so I followed a path from being an attempted “do-gooder” to discovering myself to be a hopeless sinner, and then relaxing into God’s forgiveness and redemption of me and finding hope again in Jesus.

All human beings, of all ages, are theologians. You are a theologian when you ponder, even for a moment, the mysteries of the universe. When you stand beside the ocean and feel small, you are engaging in theology. And when, for instance, you go out of your way to show love to someone who is of no use to you, or to defend people who are under attack, you are applying your theology and continuing to develop it in real time. Theology is the study of God, and it happens in everyday life, in everything we do, whatever else you might want to call it.

You see, then, that while the Christian life involves thinking about God, it is not something you can merely think your way into. I mean, I’m a pretty intellectual person, very much at home in the world of ideas. But postulating things about God has never caused me to fall in love with God. Sitting in an ivory tower, well-fed, privileged, and content can be terrible for one’s faith. Many people believe intellectually that there is a God but feel no need to let God affect their lives in any way. In other words, faith is caught, not taught, through participation in faith communities.

Today is Trinity Sunday. For many people, the Trinity might seem to be only a theologian’s intellectual game, irrelevant to our faith in any real sense. But what if I told you that the Trinity is not just an idea about God, but an experience of God and an invitation to a dance? What if I told you that the Trinity is a great example of the continual unfolding of things we couldn’t bear before now?

It all started when a small group of Jews found themselves worshipping a human being. This became much more pronounced after Jesus’ death, when dozens and then hundreds of people claimed to have seen him alive and talked with him and eaten with him and continued to learn from him. But Jews believe in one God, not two. How, then, to make sense of this new reality? Must there be two gods after all?

No, they realized. There is but one God, and Jesus is a manifestation of that one God. He referred to himself as the Son of Man, a metaphor steeped in the Hebrew Bible, but this turned out to mean Only Son of God—a human being in unique, eternally loving relationship with the same God who had given us the Law and the Prophets.

But wait: there’s more. God the Creator, after receiving the Son back into Godself again, sent the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. Are there three gods, then? No—still just one. And the Holy Spirit may also show up in the Hebrew Bible: we heard about Lady Wisdom today—in Greek, Sophia—in Hebrew, Chokhmah—feminine in both languages. The Book of Proverbs tells us that Wisdom was there at the beginning, working alongside God the Creator as the first of God’s creations—an image from the Hebrew Bible. But over the centuries, the church came to understand that God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are not created but have always been God.

And now we are into deeply poetic language. Theology must be poetic, I think, to be worthwhile. If you think you fully understand God, then by definition, you don’t. But you can always draw nearer to understanding. And to love this God-created world and its creatures is also to love their Creator.

Christians experience the Trinity in so many ways. Karen Armstrong writes that since God invented mathematics, the divine being is not limited by the construct of number. Such is the Trinity for someone who finds poetry in math! St. Augustine wrote that our every thought contains a Trinity: the thought process is informed by our memory, experienced in our understanding, and manifested through our will. We can be Trinitarian theologians, too. We can mine the Hebrew Bible for poetic hints of the Trinity: in the three strangers who visit Abraham in the desert, for instance.* Three is a magic number, as I learned from Schoolhouse Rock ! And no metaphor is out of bounds as long as we recognize that all metaphors do break down.

In her play The Zeal of Thy House, renowned British author Dorothy Sayers explored the Trinity using a metaphor of creativity. Here’s a quote:

For every work of creation is threefold, an earthly trinity to match the heavenly.

First, there is the Creative Idea, passionless, timeless, beholding the whole work complete at once, the end in the beginning: and this is the image of the Father.

Second, there is the Creative Energy begotten of that idea, working in time from the beginning to the end, with sweat and passion, being incarnate in the bonds of matter: and this is the image of the Word.

Third, there is the Creative Power, the meaning of the work and its response in the lively soul: and this is the image of the indwelling Spirit.

And these three are one, each equally in itself the whole work, whereof none can exist without the other …

Idea, Energy, and Power: We can observe this metaphor every time we create something, whether it’s in words, in music, or in physical form.

Let’s say I want to write a novel. It starts with an idea, and contained in the idea is the whole work, but it isn’t fleshed out yet. So I flesh it out, expending energy and time and, in the old days, paper and ink, to create the work. The book has the physical boundaries of cover and pages, and the time of my work has a beginning and an ending, as did the earthly life of Jesus. Finally, I can share the finished novel with others, and the story I have created has Holy Spirit-like power to inspire others … Idea, Energy, Power. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. They are all separate persons, but they work together with unified purpose at every moment for the sake of the finished work—and we can call this finished work Love.

It’s hard to conceive of the Trinity without leaning in the direction of one of two heresies: the absolute unity of God at the expense of the Three, or the absolute diversity of God at the expense of the One. In the West, we tend to lean too much toward Unity. I am a father, a son, and a husband all at the same time, and that may seem to be a way to explain the Trinity. But I am not in any way three persons, so that metaphor lapses into the heresy called “modalism.”

Meanwhile, diversity reigns in the East; on the cover of your service leaflet you see a classic icon by Rublev showing the three persons of God sitting at a table and inviting the viewer to come and eat with them. The metaphor breaks down instantly when we seem to see in front of us three gods rather than one—this is the heresy of “partialism,” as if Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were each one third of God.

Both of these images approach the reality of God but fail to get there. But here’s the good news. As beings that God has created, we are products and images of the Creative Idea, Energy, and Power of God. We are the characters in the Great Story. And as if that weren’t enough, the author, the originator of the first Creative Idea, has also become a character in the story! We all belong to God and begin our lives already in relationship with God, and that will never end.

This relationship is not transactional. It’s more like a dance, and it’s patterned after the Trinity. Whatever one person of the Trinity does, the other two are doing as well, with unity of purpose. The three persons of the Holy Trinity are forever engaged in a dance of love, always giving love, always receiving love. And They (singular They!) are calling us into that dance.

When we dance together, we don’t all conform to the same steps or the same style. Sometimes we step out boldly, but at other times we withdraw—that’s how dancing works. And dancing only happens over the course of time—you can’t take a photo of people dancing and call that photo the whole dance. So dance, dance! all your life.

A dance doesn’t feel like a dogma, does it? In this dance, we move from stale certainties into new curiosities and questions. When you wonder about the Trinity, don’t be terrified of heresy. Rather, enjoy the dance … the dance of creating, redeeming, and sustaining … the dance of idea, energy, and power … the dance of life in this created universe, where we are created to love and always to dance into love in new ways. Amen.

* After I preached the sermon, the same child I quoted above, now an adult, informed me that there are nine Greek muses, not three. Oops. I removed the reference from the text, but it is committed to audio!

The Healing Fire

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 22:24:48 GMT

Don't you dare fit in. Belong ... in all your uniqueness.

2025-33
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Day of Pentecost, June 8, 2025
Genesis 11:1-9 ; Psalm 104:25-35, 37 ; Acts 2:1-21 ; John 14:8-27

Years ago I was staffing a middle school youth retreat, and a 7 ^th grader dropped this vital nugget of wisdom on me:

“Life is like Tetris. When you fit in, you disappear.”

I later learned that this teenager was transgender—in a time before any of us staffing youth events had any idea how to handle that reality well.

Is it any wonder that most teenagers spend so much time trying to fit in? If you disappear, maybe people won’t bother you … or threaten you. But disappearing doesn’t make for a life well lived, does it? I don’t know anybody who would prefer disappearance to, say, being loved and valued eternally for being exactly who they are. It’s just a question of whether that feels possible.

Now, some people, given the chance, prefer to stand out, to make a name for themselves … to be recognized and applauded for their accomplishments. Some people crave praise because it makes them feel valuable. There’s nothing wrong with that … until it gets out of whack.

Look at this story from Genesis about the people building a giant tower to the heavens. Chances are the ancient Judeans told this story to poke their Babylonian oppressors in the eye for the pomposity of the gigantic ziggurats they built. No matter what we humans manage to achieve, of course, there will come a time when it comes crumbling down. Only God’s work is eternal. To stress that point — to put the humans in their place — God says to the divine council, “Let’s go down and split their speech into languages so they can’t understand one another and can’t get their unified act together! Let’s remind them that they’re only human.”

Notice, if you will, the linguistic connection between “human” and “humility.”

Now, one linguistic connection that isn’t present here has to do with the word Babel. Contrary to what you might assume, this is not where we get our word “babble,” to speak meaningless syllables. The people’s speech isn’t meaningless; it just isn’t understood. And “babble” has no known linguistic roots prior to Old English. No, the Tower of Babel, in Hebrew, is “Bavel,” which means “gate of God.” The humans are trying to crash the gate, to charge into the divine domain and assert dominance. God says in response, “No! There is nothing you can do to approach me without my invitation.” Smackdown!

Does this mean that God would prefer us to shrink, to diminish, to disappear? Of course not. From this point on, the entire story of the Bible is of God engaging with specific people of the specific tribe of the Hebrews. It’s like God says, “Fear not—we will repair the breach that formed between us in the Garden of Eden. But we’re not going to take your quick, easy, and futile way. We will do it my way: deliberately, patiently, step by step, through my direct guidance. Hey, you—Abram—let’s talk!”

Along the way, the Hebrews will swing back and forth, back and forth between wanting to stand out and wanting to fit in. Building a mighty kingdom with a temple and a palace was intended to do both, ironically: to create dominance and swagger just like all the nations all around them so foreign invaders might think twice. It didn’t work. The kingdom first split into two and then was taken to pieces by successive waves of invasion. Political and military dominance only ever leads to the persecution of those with the least power. The nations of today can still benefit from this lesson.

The Tower of Babel beings with frightening uniformity: all people are presumed to be the same, so the expectations of everyone’s lives are clear—no deviation from the norm. This kind of uniformity can indeed bring order from chaos. It can build walls and towers, and it can go on to build empires. But it does so only by squelching differences and eliminating human freedom. God sees that uniformity is dangerous and puts a stop to it by establishing and sanctifying diversity—giving us the gift of many different tongues and cultures and tastes and needs. Our variety prompts us to separate and scatter. But that’s not the end. God’s plan is much bigger than that.

There is a way toward healing that is neither dominance nor disappearance, nor a twisted combination of both. This way is far less instinctive, and it’s far more challenging—because it means denying our baser instincts and embracing God’s Way of Love. The prophets of Israel and Judah knew this all along, and they kept pushing for it. The people listened well enough to preserve the prophets’ writings, but not well enough to heed them.

And so we meet Jesus, who walked among us, called disciples, taught, healed, and eventually was killed. Not even God can win by domination—that just makes everybody lose! Nor can we win by disappearance—that just keeps God’s purposes in us from being fulfilled. We have to walk right into the healing fire of love—the fire of the Holy Spirit that came down on the first apostles on the Day of Pentecost.

See, Pentecost doesn’t reverse the Tower of Babel. It transcends it. And when the Holy Spirit goes to work, you can first expect not order, but chaos of a different quality. The Holy Spirit shows up like a rushing, violent wind of flame, but the comfort she brings is too overwhelming to be expressed. Ever since that Day of Pentecost when many languages were heard and understood, the Holy Spirit has thrilled to be at work in the wreckage of our lives. The Spirit is both comfort and challenge … and She shatters our carefully constructed expectations and categories.

For we humans do have a knack for categorizing each other, starting from a place of fear. When I was in Costa Rica meeting people from Europe, they were quick to remind me that the rise of new forms of fascism is not restricted to the United States. It’s happening wherever people of different backgrounds settle near each other. In many countries, fear is leading people to give up on the benefits of diversity and choose instead the uniformity of Babel.

When life feels out of control, it’s all too easy to imagine that diversity is to be feared. It’s not wrong to wonder about this … but to enforce it is straight-up evil. Any form of “law and order” that hides behind masks, and that lies in wait to entrap the underprivileged at the slightest hint of stepping out of line—all the while protecting corruption at the highest levels of government, the likes of which our nation has never seen before—this is a force I don’t hesitate to describe as demonic.

The Holy Spirit invites us instead to resist evil—to learn well that God is at work in all people, all relationships, all languages. The whole earth will never again have one language and the same words. But we can most certainly learn one another’s languages—and the more the better!

Once you come to understand the sweep of salvation history as expressed in the Bible, you can see plainly the urge to celebrate diversity, the wonder of unexpected grace, and the surprise of love around even the darkest corner. This is the biggest, longest-term consequence of Christ’s death and resurrection! We never get to go back to the way things used to be, but only forward into new wonders and joys. And that means stepping willingly into fire—fire that looks at first like it will burn, but which ultimately brings healing.

So now let’s bring it all the way back to the individual level. Where do you fit into all of this? By not fitting in! Don’t you dare fit in! No, I hope instead that you’ll choose to belong—in all your uniqueness—because of all the things that make you “you”—the marvelous, imperfect, one-of-a-kind creature God made you to be.

I had a big realization this week. I’ve been here at Good Shepherd for nearly seven years, and I love you all. I have no plans to leave! But in returning from my sabbatical and getting back to ministry with all of you, I’ve come to see that I’ve helped build a very task-heavy culture. We’re so organized into teams and committees and task forces, and we’re doing so many good things! But are we seeing one another—really seeing one another—and valuing one another for the unique person each of us is?

Friends, I want to make sure we don’t lose that skill. We’re not truly a church without it. And I would give up all sorts of work in the world—and all sorts of slick, efficient systems—to make sure we extend unique welcome to everyone. I don’t want you to fit in. I want you to stand out! I want you to be able to be among us exactly as you are, in all the divine glory God planted in you—so that you can help change Good Shepherd, not adapt to it. As Irenaeus said all the way back in the second century, “The glory of God is the human being fully alive!” That’s for you, too.

This Pentecost, the Holy Spirit continues to do Her work among us—and, yes, to call us into a share of that work throughout our lives. There’s plenty of work to be done. But right now, I don’t want to emphasize work. I want to emphasize joy. Can we all just spend the summer enjoying one another? Yes, there are tasks we have to attend to, but can we keep setting down the tasks long enough to check in with each other?

Before you send that ministry-focused email … “Hey, how has this person been?”

When you see someone at coffee hour you need to connect with about something pressing … “I wonder what’s giving them joy these days?”

When you meet somebody new at Good Shepherd, before wondering whether they might be a good fit for some committee you serve on … who is this person? What are their unique needs? How is the Holy Spirit already moving in them, apart from anything Good Shepherd might bring into their lives?

I do love you all, and not just the mass of you, but also the individuals of you. It takes time and care to make that clear, so if we’re going to expend energy, let’s put it there. Today I invite you to spot the Holy Spirit in someone and tell them exactly what you see! Give them words of affirmation. Remind them that you care that they exist, not just for what they do, but for the wonderful person God has made them to be. This is how we come to belong, not to a congregation of uniformity, but to a beloved community empowered by the healing fire of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Take Pride in Our Differences

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Wed, 04 Jun 2025 17:49:40 GMT

Just how wide open are our arms? Pride month is a good time to search our hearts for that answer.

2025-32
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon
The Seventh Sunday of Easter (Faith 4 Pride Sunday), June 1, 2025
Acts 16:16-34 ; Psalm 97 ; Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21 ; John 17:20-26

Whenever I hear this scripture from John, I find it to be one of the most intimate, loving, and unifying prayers in the Gospel. It speaks to Jesus’ vision and hope as he prepares to leave his earthy ministry and go back to the Father.

Today we are at the end of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse, and our reading is a part of a longer prayer in the 17 ^th Chapter of John. This is the last prayer that Jesus prays prior to his Death in John. It is unique, as it is multi-layered, in the way that it calls for unity among all believers- emphasizing love and connection.

As we enter this prayer today, Jesus has already prayed for himself - for strength during the coming crucifixion. Next, he prays for his disciples. Then, at the end of the prayer, Jesus vastly expands the group for whom he is praying. Jesus says, “I ask not only on behalf of these (his disciples), but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word.” That mean us! - You and I - We have come to believe in Jesus because of the words of those first disciples. Had they never gone out and told the story of Jesus, we never would have heard it.

We are believers today because of this unbroken connection, this community of faith that goes back to the time of those first disciples, over 2,000+ years ago.

When Jesus prays for us, “that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” This is Jesus’ true desire for his followers to be one, just as he and the Father are one. Through this unity that transcends our differences, Jesus is calling for a love that embraces all people and it’s that love that He wants the whole world to see.

This unbroken connection to those who have come before and the love that connects and unifies us, reminds me that today is June 1 ^st and as a faith community, we are recognizing and celebrating the beginning of Pride Month.

When I think of Pride, I always think about those shoulders that I stand on, the ones who came before. And the unity and love that I feel for my LGBTQIA+ Siblings today. I also think of the massive contrast between the pride of my youth and what pride represents today.

When I was young there was no Pride Month (I highly doubt that would have been tolerated), Instead we had the Seattle Pride Parade and in those days my friends and I would have pre pride conversations to remind ourselves that we were to avoid newspaper reporters and photographers ---and any of the tv news stations or their cameramen at all cost! The last thing any of us wanted was to end up on the evening news or on the cover of the Tacoma News Tribune the next day ----because we would have been outed! My friends and I were in the closet back then and our families did not know that we were gay and we certainly did not advertise that fact, as it was the only way that we knew how to stay safe and not face verbal or physical backlash for who we loved.

I do remember feeling so free to just be myself and how joyous it was to meet others from the larger community at Pride. There was love and connection that was freely given and it was such a blessing in my life, to understand that I belonged within that community. It most likely saved my life.

The following year my friends and again attended the Seattle Pride Parade – and yes -- we were all still all in the closet – and we witnessed the - let’s say religious far- right- also attending the Pride Parade - with their big signs, bibles and bullhorns. They were yelling that, “God hates f**s,” cherry picking versus from Leviticus to blast through their bullhorns and yelling that, “we must all repent, or we were going to Hell”. That was the year that I decided if God loved people like that – then He could never love me. But my community loved me - - and that was all I needed then (or so I thought).

I can remember attending Seattle Pride the year that the Postal Service allowed their employees to march in their postal uniforms, as well as the City of Seattle Police and Fire. I could not wait to get home and call my mom (who worked for the post office for her entire career), so I could tell her that the Post Office /the Federal Government was progressing and so was our society. I felt joyous in the knowledge that the community was growing, and we felt the movement being more open and freer.

Oh, and around that time- I also came out of the closet…as did a few of my friends – I could no longer not authentically be myself, especially to my family. And the freedom that came in that gut wrenching decision (as I later discovered) was a pure blessing from God. And once I tasted that freedom -of being out - I was never going back in!

Fast forward almost 20 years, and I had become a Christian and an Episcopalian – Wow! How did all of that happen!

I had discovered that the entire time that I thought God could not love me -- Because I was gay, that he had been walking right beside me, loving me- all along. And through that love, he led me to the Episcopal Church – To St. Matthew / San Mateo in Auburn to be exact-- And that faith community which I had been searching for and needed so badly in my life, was ready and waiting with arms wide open to welcome this queer seeker, into their community of faith. Thank you, Lord.

I know this sounds like my journey into the church was easy, but I do want you to know that I tried and failed multiple times to find the right faith community. And what I learned is there is no hate, quite like Chirstian Love! But I refused to let Christian Evangelicals then or the Christian Nationalists of today, twist a religion of love – to justify their hate.

My first Seattle Pride Parade as an Episcopalian, I had a new mission. No longer was I going to simply meet up with my friends and attend the parade – No - I was going there to march with my church with a sign that read, “God Loves You! No Exceptions”. And that the Episcopal Church was happy to welcome the 300,000+ LGBTQIA+ folks, their allies and families who lined the streets of the pride parade. And this time, I would have loved to have been on the news or on the cover of the Tacoma News Tribune!

I also met the Rev. Deacon Earl Grout that day, which made me so proud to know that our church would send Deacons and Priests in their liturgical collars to support our march in the Pride Parade – Clergy and laity - shoulder to shoulder– Yes! That is the way it should be.

As a postulant for the Diaconate, I wrote an essay on the history of the Episcopal Church and LGBTQ inclusion dating back to 1976 through 2023:

Here were my final closing thoughts in that essay:

“In 2022, at the 80th General Convention, it was mandated that a Task Force on LBGTQ+ inclusion be created and initiate a churchwide audit of how The Episcopal Church has lived into its 1976 commitment to provide full and equal claim to the love, acceptance and pastoral concern and care of the Church to its LGBTQ+ members and begin the process of creating an archive of the history of the work for LGBTQ+ inclusion in the Episcopal Church.

"I am overjoyed to be a member of a church where this Task Force exists and is doing such important work (especially honoring those who began this work so long ago and those who are committed to the ongoing work today).

"Clearly, the Episcopal Church has come a long way towards the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ identifying people, but we must remain aware that even though someone has been invited to have a seat at the table, if they are not allowed to speak or if they are not being listened to, then they are not truly included. All means all, and I pray for the joyous day when all people feel seen, heard, and included in the congregations and leadership of the Episcopal Church.”

Which brings us to today. The Episcopal church has kept its promise and recently hired a new Staff Officer for Gender Justice – Aaron Scott. Aaron stated, “what excites me about the job is getting to connect and build power with the thousands of gender justice leaders across our church. I am here to support gender justice work that’s been underway for generations, both inside and outside of our institution. Our people, prayers, and power are badly needed on the right side of history at this moment in the world."

I could not agree more.

So, when you hear someone say, “Why do they have to celebrate Pride for an entire month?” – I hope I have given you some insight into the importance of the love and community that Pride provides. Sometimes that community is all that a LGBTQIA+ person has and within that month – they can feel proud of that history – and find a connection to those who came before – it’s a celebration of our differences, unity and history.

In our Gospel reading, Jesus prays for us to live a life of love, unity and inclusion with one another – so that the world will notice and believe.

Are we ready to be the continuation of that 2,000+ year connection?

When our LGBTQIA+ neighbors drive down 312 ^th Street and notice our electronic sign that sends a message of welcome, inclusion and love for all people inside the walls of this sanctuary – Just how wide open are our arms, if we are blessed and folks walk through that door? Are we ready to listen and hear what they have to say? Pride month is a good time to search our hearts for that answer.

Today in recognition of our Faith for Pride Sunday – we are taking up a special offering for the Trevor Project – I want you to know that the Trevor Project is the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention nonprofit organization for LGBTQ+ young people – They do this work 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week / all year round. If you feel so inclined today - it would be a be such a blessing to help them save the lives of our LGBTQIA+ youth.

In closing, I would like to read a quote from Poet and Activist, Audre Lorde: “It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.”

Go in Peace and Love my friends and embrace those differences! The world is watching! And Happy Pride to you all!

Amen.

You Are Theophilus

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Thu, 29 May 2025 16:36:37 GMT

Theophilus? Who the heck is Theophilus?

2025-31
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Eve of the Ascension, May 28, 2025
Acts 1:1-11 ; Psalm 93 ; Ephesians 1:15-23 ; Luke 24:44-53

In the forty days after the Resurrection, Jesus is always coming and going. You never know when he’ll turn up, and when he does, it often takes a while for the folks to recognize him. He’s the gardener, except he isn’t. He’s a stranger on the road, except he isn’t. He breaks bread, and then somehow he’s gone.

As I’ve said before, I find the confusing nature of Jesus’ resurrection appearances to be among the very best evidence for their truth. Hucksters would have tried to make a cohesive attempt at a conspiracy. Instead, we find that the resurrected Christ is elusive, but no less physically solid for it. And his friends are left to tell the story of his constant appearing and disappearing in any way they can.

The same goes for the Ascension. Luke is the only gospel writer who gives us this story, and he gives it to us twice: first at the end of his gospel, and then again in a slightly different way at the beginning of his sequel—the Acts of the Apostles. That time, it’s like he begins by saying, in a voice made for voice-overs: “Previously on The Good News …”

Except that what he actually says is this: “In the first book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus did and taught from the beginning until the day when he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom he had chosen.”

So who the heck is Theophilus? This could be a real person, or this could be a generic name for Luke’s audience, because “Theophilus” literally means “lover of God.” I’m partial to that second explanation myself.

Even after all the resurrection appearances, the disciples are still clinging to their political agenda of Jesus using force to make Judea great again. They ask, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”

Jesus sees how stuck they are—it’s like he’s given up on telling them that’s not where he’s going, because he knows they won’t hear him anyway. So he urges them to be content not to know—just to sit back and enjoy the ride, because it will be quite a ride. The Kingdom will come, but it won’t be the kind of Kingdom anyone was expecting. And Jesus’ disciples—and millions of disciples after them—will keep pointing the way toward the Kingdom Jesus intended.

This reading brings us to the heart of what it means to be a Christian today. We are a people who note that we are alive and aware and then dare to believe that we are created, not accidental. We dare to believe that the One who created us loves us and wants a relationship with us as individuals and as an entire world. We dare to believe that we personally, as people and as a church, have been called in a specific way, to follow a man who lived 2000 years ago and yet is still somehow with us.

This Jesus keeps calling us, the church, in new directions. When we dare to follow Jesus, we find ourselves in situations that aren’t really under our control. Indeed, the deeper we go into knowing and understanding Jesus, the more we learn that we were never really in control in the first place.

Like those first disciples, we are baptized. We are baptized in water and the Holy Spirit, and we receive the light we are to bring to the world. This light isn’t to be used for manipulation or coercion, but simply to bring a message of Good News: You Are Loved Eternally. The very creator of the universe is always wrapping you up in love, even when you are at your lowest, no matter what, and you don’t have to do anything to earn God’s love or to keep it!

It’s a radical idea, isn’t it? Each one of us, sooner or later, entertains notions that maybe we aren’t so loved after all, especially when we find that we have hurt others or let them down. We fall prey to the mistaken belief that our sins come between us and God, and we let that mistake inform our decisions. We try to hide ourselves from God, like Adam and Eve hid in the Garden. But God hunts us down, calling, “Where are you?” It’s a voice filled not with anger but with heartbreak, because relationship with us is what God most wants.

This is reflected in a thread I wanted to preach on Sunday, but I didn’t have time to cram yet another theme into that sermon. In John’s gospel, in his farewell discourse to his disciples on the night of his arrest, Jesus says, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.”

We heard the same theme the previous Sunday in the Revelation to John: “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God … he will wipe every tear from their eyes.”

There’s no place God would rather be/
Than hanging out with you and me.

Hey, that sounds like the first two lines of a song! Hmmm, maybe that needs to get written sometime. Anyway …

After forty days moving in and out of the dimension of earthly life, the risen Christ steps back out of it for good. To the disciples, at least according to Luke’s telling, he appears to do this by rising into the sky. But they know it happens in a number of ways. He has stepped into the garden with Mary Magdalene, and into a locked room with the Eleven, and onto the road with Cleopas and his buddy and later broken bread with them. And according to John he has stepped onto the seashore and called to the fishermen from the land, “Come and have breakfast!”

Jesus is always showing up to set a table, like a Good Shepherd serving food in the valley of the shadow of death … right in the presence of our enemies. Jesus is laying out the silver and pouring the wine, just like we hear about Sophia, the image of God’s Wisdom in the Hebrew Bible. The very expression of God’s love is moving among us in many different ways, so often spotlighting meals as the best place to gather. And we make our places of worship, and we eat and drink together here, too—in ritual in this room, and more literally downstairs in Seaman Hall.

But our work doesn’t stay within these walls. Everywhere we serve food and pour drinks, we get to live in joy with our neighbors, and to share that same Good News: “You are loved eternally!” When our day-to-day life becomes a grind: “You are loved eternally!” When the wolves are at the door: “You are loved eternally!”

This proclamation isn’t meant to deny the realities of life, but instead to serve as fuel for the engine of our compassion. If we are loved eternally, and if everyone else is too, then why would we ever do evil to another person? Why would we ever hoard our possessions, since there is no end to the provision God makes for us? Why would we ever let apparent scarcity have the last word? We are free to share ourselves with others. Even when tragedy takes hold, that is the place for us to go, to be with those who are suffering, and to serve at least a little bit of that heavenly food of hope.

We are gathered here tonight to refuel yet again, on this, one of the seven principal feasts of the Church. Marking the Feast of the Ascension is an ancient tradition that I’m not willing to let go of just because it falls in the middle of the week!

But after we are fed tonight, we are not to hang around looking up into heaven. Our job is to get back out there, where the Holy Spirit is spreading a table for everyone, even in the presence of those who wish them harm. We need to get back to our lives, for the Holy Spirit will surely come to us. Home is not the safe little places of shelter we make for ourselves to keep the world out. Home is wherever the Spirit shows up and serves food.

If you are here tonight, you are Theophilus. You are the lover of God who is Luke’s intended audience. You have been clothed with power from on high. That may look different for you than it did for the apostles on Pentecost! I know it does for me. But that power is upon you nevertheless.

And so I pray for you using the same words we hear from the Letter to the Ephesians: “I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation as you come to know him, so that, with the eyes of your heart enlightened, you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance among the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power for us who believe.” Amen.

We Set Sail

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Mon, 26 May 2025 03:47:58 GMT

"I wish there were a club of people who dedicate their lives to loving everyone, even those who don’t really deserve it."

2025-30
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2025
Acts 16:9-15 ; Psalm 67 ; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 ; John 14:23-29

Pop quiz: the Acts of the Apostles is part two of which of the four gospels? Every Christian should learn and remember this.

That’s right: Luke! Whoever Luke was.

The Acts of the Apostles also contains lots of sailing stories. As we get toward the end of the book it feels more like a classic children’s adventure novel set on the Mediterranean Sea. There’s a stormy shipwreck and a snakebite by the campfire and imprisonment in the jail of a seaside town. About the only thing the story doesn’t have is a sea monster threatening to crush the ship in its coils … or a boy changing into a dragon.

But all we get today is a little snippet. Paul has a vision sent by God to arrange things to happen in a certain way. In the vision, a man from Macedonia says, “Come help us!” Pretty straightforward, right? So Paul goes to Macedonia with his crew, and this is the first time in the whole Bible where the narration switches to first-person plural: “We immediately tried to cross over … We set sail from Troas …” From here to the end of the book, it’ll periodically flip back and forth between first- and third-person.

Why is this the case? It may be because the author was indicating the times when he was actually present. It may be because the author was working from original travel diaries and didn’t want to change anything unnecessarily. Or there may be some stylistic reason we just don’t understand today. But I really like the “we” sections; I find them very humanizing. I also think they’re an invitation to include ourselves in the action.

This means that “we” get to Macedonia with Paul and Luke and the crew, first to the island of Samothrace, then to the mainland at Neapolis, which was near modern-day Kavala, and finally to the town of Philippi, about four hours’ walk inland. There we meet Lydia, a dealer in luxurious purple cloth. Lydia is a Gentile who likes to hang out with Jews.

We see here that Lydia is the prime audience for these foreign evangelists: she knows about the God of Israel but is not connected by heredity. It’s a recurring theme in Acts that while Paul always approaches his fellow Jews first with his proclamation that the Messiah has indeed come, he often finds that Gentiles are more receptive to this message. We see here the beginning of what will eventually become a permanent split into two religions: one that continues primarily through family ties, and the other that actively tries to convert people from everywhere in the world.

Well, we all know how effective and how disastrous the project of Christian evangelism became in the long run. By all accounts, Christianity was spread by conquering armies just as much as by peaceful pilgrims. We are still haunted by that legacy today, and while I can’t speak for all Episcopalians, I find that a lot of us are deathly allergic to the notion of “evangelism.”

I also notice that our church has been shrinking for decades, and that most people under 30 today have never even heard of us. In my four years of university campus ministry, this is the most common question I was asked: “What does ‘Eppiscopple’ mean?”

Well, if evangelism evokes for you medieval images of the Crusades and modern images of people with sandwich boards yelling at you about how evil you are, I can’t blame you a bit. These associations are real. But today I’d like to offer another vision of evangelism that may be something more like the exchange between Paul and Lydia. Just imagine it happening with you in Paul’s place, speaking to a 20-something named Lydia who has never been to a church service in her life. Lydia says:

“You know what I wish? I wish there were a club of people who dedicate their lives to loving everyone, even those who don’t really deserve it. They would create an alternative community irrespective of nation or race, and this community would include any and all who wanted to be part of it. They would understand themselves to be acting on God’s wishes—to make the world more like the way an eternally loving God would want it to look—never by violence, never by governmental control, always by love—even if that takes all our lives and beyond—starting from wherever we are right now.”

Your response: “Well, guess what. We’re that club! We’re not perfect people by any means, but the project you name is indeed our project. And the way you join this club is to be baptized.”

“OK then,” says your friend. “Baptize me! I want to join this movement with you.”

I know, it never really goes quite like that. It’s the eager, joyful spirit of the exchange that I’m trying to offer you. Do you see how this might look different from every other understanding of evangelism you’ve ever had?

It is every Christian’s duty to practice speaking of our faith in terms that others can hear and receive our stories. Our job is not to collect everybody in the world, but simply to make everyone in the world aware of the Good News we have received, that they may or may not choose to trust in and to participate in sharing.

Our job is not to conquer the world through controlling seven mountains of influence or any of that nonsense. That kind of crap turns Christians into tyrants. When we find that we are very much in control, it’s our job to relinquish that control. Because we will misuse it. We always have.

We hear Jesus say today, “Those who love me will keep my word,” and that word is to love one another. Do you see? Loving Jesus is more abstract than being a Christian; anyone can get baptized and then get back to being hateful. No, our definitions need to be looser and broader. We are never to shame those who choose to walk apart from us, but just keep loving them in whatever ways they wish to be loved. We have no need for anxiety about the eternal fate of anyone. Take the most generous approach to Jesus that you can, because Jesus is endlessly generous with us!

This is why I aspire to let go of my fear that the church will not be able to function anymore the way it did in the 1960s. Of course we won’t: the world has changed around us. We are followers of Jesus, so obviously our understanding of “success” must look different from what the rest of the world expects. We are followers of Jesus, so even death must not look to us like a threat, but like an opportunity for God’s deepest joys to sprout and grow in fertile soil.

This is also why I’d always rather belong to a congregation that thoughtfully exerts political pressure without holding any sort of political dominion. It’s our job to state clearly our understanding of God’s priorities, seen through a lens of non-possessive, self-giving love. Then we are to get ourselves out of the way and let the Holy Spirit do her work.

Well, here “we” are, in the same story as Paul and Lydia, only 2000 years down the road. “We” are also a “we” here at Good Shepherd today. What are “we” doing together?

Last Tuesday night the vestry and I finally reunited for our first meeting together since I returned from my sabbatical. In February the vestry identified mutual ministry goals for 2025, but they needed to wait for my return to formalize them, because they are intended to be mutual work.

Last year’s goals were as follows: to develop and make a plan for maintaining those wonderful colored ministry cards you see on the bulletin board downstairs. To repaint and refresh the furnishing in Seaman Hall to make it a more welcoming space. And to encourage one another to wear our nametags on Sunday mornings, so new people can more easily get to know us.

We did these things, and I’m glad we did. But notice that all of these goals were internal: nobody outside our building can benefit from them. This year, then, we made an intentional shift. Our congregation represents one hundredth of one percent of the population of Federal Way. We are a well-kept secret, and we want this to change. We need to meet our neighbors if we ever want to raise awareness of our existence! Not that we expect everyone to join us, but you can bet that many more people would if they only knew about us.

Here, then, are the mutual ministry goals for the vestry and the rector for 2025, and please note that some of them can only get started this year:

1. To form a Social Justice Team to be in relationship with persons currently being persecuted or marginalized. This will be done in cooperation with the Faith Formation and Outreach Teams. When the group participates in direct action, it will be only nonviolent in manner.

2. To develop a new mission statement that better represents and speaks to who we are as a faith community in understandable language. This will first involve your input.

3. To form a project team to pick up the work of the Buildings & Grounds Task Force and begin the building project as soon as possible. Elevator! Restrooms!

4. To empower the Finance Committee to gather congregational input on your wishes for the use of the three and a half acres of woods on our property; to gather the perspectives of our Federal Way neighbors; and to outline a long-range plan for the congregation’s land.

Last week we finalized and approved these goals, and now we will send them to Bishop Phil’s office for his signature. I like these goals a lot. They begin to make us less insular. And because the vestry and the rector can’t possibly accomplish all of this alone, I’d like to encourage all of you to think about how you can be part of the “we.” Which of these goals speaks most clearly to your heart and calls out your gifts and talents?

Every week when we go out from this place, we set sail again on the seafaring adventure of life in a dangerous but thrilling world. We seek out Jesus to keep teaching us how to love. He promises to send the Holy Spirit to bring us clarity and peace. This is not the kind of so-called “peace” that rams through legislation in the middle of the night for fear of people actually reading it, or that is enforced by masked agents whisking away perceived troublemakers. The peace Jesus offers leaves nobody out and is never coercive. It’s always an invitation—to greater humility, greater understanding, and greater potential for joy. Amen.

Turning Around

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 18 May 2025 20:36:09 GMT

That’s what repentance is. It’s not about beating yourself up with guilt and shame.

2025-29
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Fifth Sunday of Easter, May 18, 2025
Acts 11:1-18 ; Psalm 148 ; Revelation 21:1-6 ; John 13:31-35

I’d like to invite you all into a shared imaginative space with me. We’re going on a hike together. You may wish to close your eyes if that will help. It’s a balmy spring day, and it’s not raining anymore, and everything smells fresh and clean. We enter the woods, and suddenly the sounds of suburban life all around us disappear, to be replaced by the cawing of crows and the rushing, glacier-melted waters of a stream. The sun dapples the leaves. There’s some mud, but not too much, and we’re all wearing good boots. The day couldn’t be better.

After a while, though, we realize something is wrong. We don’t know where we are anymore. We were sure the trail would lead to a certain meadow, from which we could eventually find our way through the woods and back to the road. But now we appear to be lost.

We have two choices, right? What are our two choices?

That’s right. We can stubbornly plow ahead, certain that we would never actually get lost in these woods!

Or … we can humbly turn around and retrace our steps.

Which option makes more sense? I guess that depends on the degree to which we admit we are actually lost. For a time it might be worthwhile to keep going, to see if maybe we only lost our bearings for a moment. But there is a rule of diminishing returns. If we are truly lost, eventually we’ll just have to eat crow.

You know the term, right? “Eating crow”? It’s an odd expression, and we don’t know for sure where it comes from. The most convincing explanation I’ve heard is that it may have been the result of a bet—that the loser literally had to eat crow meat. But now we use it to mean, “Humbly admit that you were wrong and move on.”

Well, the point is that none of us can know everything all the time, and we keep learning. There’s nothing wrong with being wrong. It just means we’re human. And while some of us dislike being wrong more than others, the skill of dealing with being wrong is a basic sign of maturity. To be wrong and grow from it is how we become better people. If we can never admit we’re wrong, we’re likely to get stuck and cause a lot of harm to others.

Last week we left Peter in Joppa, staying at the home of a tanner named Simon. Now, do you know what tanning is? No, we’re not talking about lying on the beach in a bikini. Tanning is the process of turning animal hides into leather. Does that sound fun? Think again. Take a dead animal, skin it and clean the hide using foul-smelling acids, including an especially useful acid called urine … well, you get the idea. Everything about the job would render the tanner ritually unclean every single day that he worked. And he would come to smell bad all the time, such that he might even have a hard time finding a wife!

Now, understand that to be “ritually unclean” was not a sin. In ancient Judaism, everybody became ritually unclean from time to time—a woman on her period or having just given birth, anyone who had just had sex, anyone who had come into contact with blood or a dead body—none of this was sinful, because it was inevitable. But it did render one temporarily unfit to participate in worship. You had to make yourself clean to draw close to the presence of God, whether through a cleansing ritual or just by waiting for a set amount of time. It was the way the rules worked, and the purpose of the rules was to show proper respect for God’s holiness.

The problem was that certain people had to be ritually unclean pretty much all the time. The fact that Peter is even staying with this guy shows how much he has already changed, because tanners didn’t typically find themselves making up their guest rooms! Jesus taught Peter well that there were all sorts of Jews whose entire life situation made it difficult or impossible to follow the rules of ritual cleanliness. So you can see why a tanner like Simon might have been ready to hear about Jesus, who flagrantly broke the rules about ritual purity on a regular basis to demonstrate that mercy is a more important concern than ritual.

But then Peter has a vision from God that sends him even deeper. God lowers a heavenly tablecloth filled with animals that Jews have always considered ritually unclean—which is why they just don’t eat them. It’s one thing to have to be unclean, but it’s another thing entirely to do it on purpose when it could be easily avoided. “No way!” Peter says to God. “Never in my life have I eaten any of these things! I’m not going to start now.”

“Oh yeah?” God replies. “Well, what if I just declare that these things are clean now? Isn’t that my right? Will you keep following the rules that I don’t demand of you? Here—alongside the marinated pork and roast alligator is a delicious helping of crow.”

The vision happens three times, and then immediately Peter is approached by a Roman centurion named Cornelius, a Gentile and a colonizer, who says, “I’d like you to come stay at my house and tell me about this Jesus guy.”

Stay at the home of a Gentile? OK, that’s not forbidden, but it would definitely make a Jew like Peter ritually unclean. And it could easily be avoided, so why do it at all? Because God has arranged it. There’s a higher call here than the treasured rules of ritual. Peter finds that he is lost in the woods … and now he has to turn around and retrace his steps.

And that’s what repentance is. It’s not about beating yourself up with guilt and shame. Repentance simply means “turning around”—the Greek word is metanoia. There’s nothing wrong with rules per se, but merely following the rules doesn’t make you a better person. And overemphasizing them at the expense of human thriving will make you worse! If Peter wants to grow, he’s going to have to suspend a lifetime of assumptions about what makes something right or wrong. Because once you decide to turn around, you can see what you hadn’t seen before.

When, after this episode, Peter goes to Jerusalem, his fellow apostles take him to task for staying in a Gentile home. So he relates his vision to them and tells the story of God’s Holy Spirit moving powerfully and undeniably in this whole situation. His story silences them completely. The game has changed. Even Gentiles get to join the Jesus movement! They put it like this: “Then God has given even to Gentiles the repentance that leads to life.”

The repentance that leads to life. As usual, I feel I have to point out that the salvation of Cornelius is not about him getting into heaven when he dies. It’s about a transformation of his life now—and the lives of all those around him! The baptism of Cornelius is not just for him and his family. It has a powerful effect on the whole church. What if we welcomed every baptism with that level of awe? When Parker Chang was baptized here two months ago, did you allow the Holy Spirit to blow your mind?

This also shows how repentance and baptism are tied together. You can’t have one without the other. Of course, when we baptize children, we don’t make them intellectually walk through a list of all the things they’ve done wrong—that would be ridiculous. Instead, we start them on the path of Christian community. As they keep walking it, they will participate in weekly worship, learn from peers and elders, and serve the world in Jesus’ name, using the gifts they discover within themselves.

They will also make mistakes. They will mess up and hurt people. Over time, our hope is that they’ll live a life of consistent repentance—not because they are inherently depraved, but because only through repentance can we grow in love for one another and for God’s world. And all the people in their lives will benefit from the love implanted in them by the Holy Spirit at their baptism.

At the last supper, Jesus is glorified by God in the moment of his betrayal by Judas. Isn’t that weird? Jesus is glorified because he invested in love, whether or not that love was received and acted on. So he commands his friends: “Love one another.” He calls it a new commandment, but there’s nothing new about it at all. Jesus is clarifying the proper priorities of human beings. We are not to live only for ourselves, but also for others.

Well, life is a gift, and life is long, but nothing lasts forever. Life is also full of pain that we would all love to put behind us. So at the very end of the Bible we have this odd vision of the end of all things, and here we find what may be my favorite verse in the entire Bible: “See, the home of God is among mortals.”

This is why I’m a Christian. Because the project of life is not to escape it in favor of something better. No, God came among us in person, to show us the whole point of life. We are here for one another, and that necessarily involves pain, disappointment, and loss. We all go through it together. We learn how to be holier from the sins we commit and repent of. This is the very method God keeps using to make all things new. So we hear that when all is said and done, we will not escape this world for a better place. No—in the end, God comes to us, collapsing heaven and earth into one beautiful reality.

Today, do you have a need to turn around? To stop going in the way you’ve been going and move your feet in a different direction? We are still moving through the fifty-day season of Easter, when in our rituals we recognize that we are swimming in a sea of forgiveness! There is no reality in which God does not include you. Jesus invites you to this table today, to meet him in person, to meet him in the faces of all the other people in this room. Come live the repentance that leads to life. Amen.

Alternate Shepherds

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Mon, 12 May 2025 00:43:02 GMT

Jesus urges his own leaders to look back to the prophet Ezekiel and humbly place themselves into his narrative.

2025-28
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 11, 2025
Acts 9:36-43 ; Psalm 23 ; Revelation 7:9-17 ; John 10:22-30

In the little town of Quepos, Costa Rica, there’s a coffee shop called Caffetto. Their logo is of a sloth embracing a warm cup of coffee, with a caption in English: “Because Adulting Is Hard.”

This is a popular saying among Gen-Z folks, and it’s true. Adulting can be very hard. It’s good to get as much guidance in the effort as possible. Today is Mother’s Day, and how many of us either still rely on our mothers for advice and support, or at least wish we could? Parents are responsible for making sure their children know that there is a place for them in this world, and for helping carve out such a place when the world itself doesn’t want to cooperate. Parents are supposed to be good shepherds.

On our second day of classes at the Máximo Nivel language school in Quepos, Christy and I were hanging out at the school’s pool. (I know—rough life, right?) That morning we met young people from several countries; some were there to study Spanish, but most had come because Máximo Nivel also organizes volunteer opportunities. One of our housemates was a 19-year-old from Philadelphia; she was playing her guitar at the pool and singing original songs. Another, an American expat from Spain, had graduated early from high school and was traveling Costa Rica on her own at the age of 17! There were young people from England and Switzerland, and a Colombian-born German. And then there were three young women from Queens whom we came to know as las chicas de Nuevayol. (You might only get the full reference if you’re a fan of Puerto Rican musician Bad Bunny.)

As we got to know all these young folks, it came out that I’m a priest. That didn’t take long; everyone always asks, “What do you do?” And two of las chicas were especially intrigued. They’d never heard of the Episcopal Church before, though when we mentioned Bishop Mariann Budde, they got excited: “Oh yeah! We saw what happened at the National Cathedral after the inauguration—she’s one of yours?” They asked us for more information: books, podcasts, articles ... anything about this branch of Christianity that they knew nothing about.

One week later over lunch, they said, “The reason we’ve been so curious about your church is that we’re gay. And we’re a couple. When we came out to our families, they weren’t helpful. And we know that we can’t possibly come out at our church back home … but we have so many good friendships there! This has become a crisis for us. Just before we came to Costa Rica, we were praying together, and we said, ‘God, please help us. We don’t know what to do. We love our families and our church, but we are in love, and we need to be who you made us to be. We can’t keep hiding like this. Please send someone to guide us!’ And now … here you are.”

When the ones who are supposed to be good shepherds aren’t doing their job, it’s natural to seek out alternate shepherds. And the dilemma these two young women are facing is indicative of the most obvious fault line dividing Christians from one another in the world today. Yes, it’s partly about the Bible and how to interpret both its contents and the nature of its authority. But it’s also about how willing we are to humble ourselves and learn about what we don’t yet understand. When fault lines develop this clearly within a religion, it may well lead to a major, permanent division—like we heard about in today’s gospel.

This passage could benefit from a whole bunch of footnotes. We could put an asterisk after “the Jews” to remind ourselves that Jesus is also a Jew. If I were to insist that las chicas’ church in New York isn’t Christian, simply because we disagree on theological matters, that would be both dishonest and unfair. In the same way, it’s not helpful for the gospel writer to imply that “the Jews” are the problem here.

We could also put an asterisk after the phrase “my sheep hear my voice,” and point ourselves back to the prophet Ezekiel, chapter 34. If I had time, I’d read you that whole chapter, because it’s all about sheep and shepherds. Ezekiel, speaking with God’s voice, criticizes the “shepherds of Israel”—that is, his own religious leaders at the time of the Babylonian exile—for enjoying the benefits of privilege while persecuting the people they were supposed to be protecting.

God promises to rescue the sheep from these bad shepherds. The sheep will also be judged, God says, because the strong sheep have been victimizing the weaker ones; this is where we first hear about separating “the sheep and the goats.” And we hear: “I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd.”

Understand that when Ezekiel writes, King David has been dead for centuries. Ezekiel means that though the line of kingship in Israel has been broken by invasion and exile, God will restore that kingship and will put a descendant of David on the throne of the chosen people. This came to be understood as a prophecy about the coming Messiah.

So we could also put an asterisk after the phrase, “If you are the Messiah” and talk about the lack of theological consensus among ancient Jews. Jesus is saying, “What if your assumptions are wrong about what the Messiah is supposed to be like? Does that need to divide us? But you have allowed yourselves to become the bad shepherds. And I am the descendant of David that Ezekiel spoke of.”

He might as well pull out a guitar and launch into a Bob Dylan song:

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land

And don't criticize what you can't understand

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin'

Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand

For the times, they are a-changin'

Put a big fat asterisk as well, then, after the phrase, “You do not belong to my sheep.” Jesus is not creating a dividing line, but acknowledging one that already exists. He urges his own leaders to look back to the prophet Ezekiel and humbly place themselves into his narrative: “You think you’re shepherding our people faithfully, but you’re not. You are failing to meet their needs in this specific moment in our history. God has sent me to call you to account.”

But passages like this did indeed lead to a far worse, permanent division, and that has been nothing but tragic. In the fourth century, when Christianity became a tool of the empire, it gained enough power to persecute Jews, and it has continued to do so over and over throughout history, using gospel passages like these as justification for its atrocities. Even many of our revered saints, like John of Chrysostom and Martin Luther, inspired pogroms with their hateful words. And we all know what happened in Germany in the 1930s and ’40s, when the people chose to elect bad shepherds into office.

You can’t follow the Good Shepherd and persecute others—no matter their religion, no matter their immigration status, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity … no matter how much you may disagree with them. The bad shepherds are those who would place limits on God’s love. The bad shepherds act in bad faith, out of their own fear of change. They fail to hear God’s voice saying, “See! I am doing a new thing.”

In my own weaker moments, I, too, can be a bad shepherd and need Jesus to call me to account. If I declare that reconciliation across a dividing line is not possible, I’m limiting the power of the Holy Spirit. Well, today I’m not condemning anyone. I only ask … are the shepherds of our faith being humble, learning from what God is doing? Are the shepherds able to see healthy love right in front of their faces, and rise above their old prejudices about what love is allowed to look like? Or will they tell the sheep, “You don’t belong here”?

So who doesn’t belong in the sheepfold of God’s world? Not those who disagree about the messianic status of Jesus. The only ones who don’t belong are those who see obviously good works being done and say, “No, these works are bad and cannot be of God.” Coming to belong again simply means learning humbly and changing our minds. So whether or not you believe Jesus is the Messiah, the prophet Ezekiel tells us that what matters is how you handle your responsibility as a shepherd, and as a fellow sheep, in the one sheepfold of all of God’s creation.

Las chicas just got back to New York and, I understand, returned to their home church this morning. I have been praying for them all weekend. We have found a couple Episcopal churches to send them to, led by priests we know and trust. But who knows? They may not find a home in the Episcopal Church. They may stay in their own church and work on changing it from the inside. Or they may find good shepherds in a place none of us has yet imagined.

Christy and I thought we were going to Costa Rica to get better at Spanish, and we did—but God had bigger plans. We were called to be shepherds, not just for las chicas, but also for several others of the young people we met. We shared conversations about relationships with parents … about college and career uncertainties … and about what it’s like to experience the presence of God. We got to accompany a 19-year-old woman from England to her first church service ever! And a young man told us over lunch one day, “I had never really thought about God until I came to Costa Rica.”

There’s something about travel that opens us up to God’s creation in new ways, and often that happens through unexpected new friendships. All these young friends have been in my prayers since we returned from Costa Rica more than two months ago. What a blessing and a terror it is to be a young adult in today’s world—to be growing into a deeper knowledge of yourself, and to be asking, “Who are my mentors? How do I know I can trust them? Who will allow me to be the person God made me to be—the person I continue to become? Who will hold out a space for me to step into as I engage in this difficult practice of adulting? As I listen for the voice of the Good Shepherd, who will be good shepherds to me? And then, to whom will I also become a good shepherd?”

Who Radicalized You?

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Mon, 05 May 2025 13:21:10 GMT

In Christianity, to be "saved" is to be radicalized by God's love.

2025-27
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2025
Acts 9:1-6, (7-20) ; Psalm 30 ; Revelation 5:11-14 ; John 21:1-19

There’s a common meme on social media: “Who radicalized you?” It’s usually intended to call out those who think that something everyone should agree is good is somehow on the political fringe. So, for instance, to someone who thinks that helping others is a sign of weakness, I could say that Mr. Rogers radicalized me. To someone who has no problem with our current government illegally ignoring due process and separation of powers so they can persecute certain groups of human beings, I could say that that I was radicalized by … my high school government teacher.

Well, there’s one person who has radicalized me more than any other, and yes, that’s Jesus. Who else did you expect in a sermon? But Jesus isn’t a banal example; I believe that following Jesus is a truly radical act. That is certainly the case in America today: it is radical to actually follow the Way of Jesus instead of merely branding ourselves with him. It is radical to do the loving, daring, potentially dangerous things he told us to do instead of using the words of his ancient apologists to beat up the vulnerable.

Once you’ve been radicalized by Jesus, the whole world looks different. We have just heard two stories of people being radicalized by Jesus. In Christian speak, that’s called “salvation.”

This week I pulled an old book off my shelf: John Macquarrie’s Principles of Christian Theology. Yes, I know, that’s an awfully dry title. It’s not a new book; I have the copy my uncle owned in the 1970s. What is it? Simply put, it’s a downright readable introduction to Christian theology.

In the chapter of Macquarrie’s book called "The Holy Spirit and Salvation," he lays out four stages of being saved: (1) conviction of sin, (2) repentance, (3) divine election, (4) justification and sanctification, which he counts as a single step because they should never be pried loose from one another.

I know, so far this must sound boring and fiddly. Either that, or it’s bringing up nightmarish memories from a church you used to attend. Theological terms can do a lot of damage when Christians toss them around carelessly. If we’re going to use them at all, we need helpful stories on which to hang them. And so we get to today’s two stories of salvation.

The conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus is pretty famous in Christian circles. If it’s new to you, great! Enjoy for the first time the way Luke hits the ground running when he introduces a new scene: “Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest …” Saul is heading to Damascus with an administrative warrant. There he plans to go from house to house arresting followers of The Way: a new, dangerous group who claim that the Messiah has indeed come, has been killed, and has risen from the dead.

Will Saul be able to carry out his plans? Not today!

Now, there’s nothing written here about Saul riding on a donkey. But the way most people imagine it, a light from heaven knocks Saul off his ass. And this is Stage 1 of Saul’s salvation: conviction of sin. “Who are you, Lord?” “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting!” Can’t get much clearer than that. “Saul, don’t you know that persecuting people is bad? Stop it!”

Stage 2: repentance. Having been struck blind, Saul also fasts from all food and water for three days. Maybe he’s sorry for what he has done. Or at least he’s scared enough to know that he’s in serious trouble here and had better make a good show of it. Sometimes repentance works that way, you know: we say we’re sorry when we’re not really, not yet. But the action itself might well get the ball rolling, with or without internal feelings to go with it. Luke doesn’t tell us what’s in Saul’s heart at this point.

Stage 3: divine election. God tells a follower of The Way named Ananias that the notorious Saul, who is now being given safe harbor while he recovers from his ordeal, “is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel.” So, yeah—God elects for Saul to take on a special task. That doesn’t mean anyone else is un-elected. It means that God loves Saul in a Saul-shaped way and is sending him on a Saul-shaped mission—which, it turns out, will be incredibly consequential for world history.

Stage 4: justification and sanctification (not to be pried apart!). This new arrangement is as if God told Martin Luther King, Jr. that Bull Conner was now going to lead the civil rights movement. Ananias rightly wonders: “God, how can you choose this horrible person to accomplish your purposes? We can’t trust him. We don’t even know that he’s sorry! Are you just going to let him off scot-free?” The divine response: “I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” Reconciliation between Saul and Jesus will come, but it won’t happen all at once. The grace of Saul’s salvation will cost him the rest of his life, given in service to others. Through many hardships, Saul will become a holier and holier person. That begins with his baptism … followed by the breaking of his fast.

We also have today a story of the risen Christ appearing to the disciples on the beach, with a spotlight on Peter. Let’s look at Macquarrie’s four stages again.

Stage 1: conviction of sin. Jesus doesn’t need to send a blinding light. Peter knows perfectly well that he escaped arrest by denying three times that he’d ever met Jesus. This was after swearing he would follow Jesus into the very jaws of death! So much for courage.

Stage 2: repentance. Though this is the third time Christ has appeared to his friends since his death, Peter hasn’t really apologized for denying him. Maybe he wonders whether that will be necessary; after all, everything is clearly different now. Yet still Peter harbors this guilt. What will he do with it? First he’ll cannonball off the fishing boat fully clothed and swim to Jesus as fast as he can. Then, when Jesus asks him directly, “Do you love me?,” Peter will say, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” This happens three times—one for each of Peter’s three denials. As with Saul’s fasting, this gentle confrontation is Peter’s repentance.

Stage 3: divine election. In response to each of Peter’s declarations of love, Jesus tells him, with slight variations of phrase: “Feed my lambs … Tend my sheep … Feed my sheep.” Jesus sees Peter in all his uniqueness and loves him and marvels at him. Jesus had already chosen Peter numerous times before dying; now, after his resurrection, he chooses Peter yet again.

Stage 4: justification and sanctification. That threefold exchange with Christ reassures Peter that all is mended. Peter will spend the rest of his life boldly proclaiming Christ as Savior and Lord in place of Caesar Augustus—and he will care for the developing Church built on the rock of his faith. But Christ foretells, “When you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will … take you where you do not wish to go.” While Peter’s death is not chronicled in the Bible, ancient legend has it that the Romans crucified him upside-down—at Peter’s own request, because he didn’t feel himself worthy to be crucified in exactly the same manner Jesus was.

All this talk about salvation, and you know what hasn’t come up even once? Heaven!

Isn’t that what churches are always talking about, especially when you see them advertising on billboards and on little pamphlets everywhere? Isn’t it all about following four easy steps to secure yourself a place beyond the pearly gates? I mean, let’s be honest: when people talk about being “saved,” isn’t heaven their primary concern? Maybe even their only concern?

Well, I’m here to tell you … that’s nonsense. Heaven isn’t nonsense. I don’t know what heaven is like, though I do know Jesus came back from it to reassure his friends that all’s well. But people are not saved for heaven. Rather, people who experience the overwhelming reality of God’s love are saved from the hell of living only for themselves. They are saved for a transfomed life in the here and now. I don’t believe this only happens to Christians, either—I believe the Holy Spirit is acting all over the world, and that salvation transforms people for loving service in many different ways all the time. In our Christian context, though, we mark the reality of that salvation with baptism.

We didn’t hear today the story of Zaccheus, [1] the wee little man who climbs a sycamore tree, but I’ll mention him because he’s a good example. Jesus announces Zaccheus’s salvation the moment this rich man commits to give away a huge chunk of his wealth. The purpose is not to buy a place in the hereafter. It’s to practice a new skill that will enable him to have abundant life right here … today … together with others, instead of in opposition to them. How hellish it would be to live all one’s life surrounded by money and always assuming that people are out to take it from you!

A passage also comes to my mind from the Letter of Titus, one of the last pieces of the New Testament to be written: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all (justification), training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions (sanctification), and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.” [2]

Christianity means a transformation of our lives, from self-focused to outward-focused … from fear and hiding to bold proclaiming! Peter is converted. Saul is converted. And yes, hardship comes with it. As I pointed out to somebody this week, “When you’re engaged in ministry in the world, you can expect that a sword will always be piercing your heart.” Because you drew close to people who were experiencing tragedy … and that’s the price of love.

But in the end, I do not believe that we need to worry about heaven. Not today, and not at the end of our lives. Because if God loves us eternally, God will take care of all of that in whatever way is best for our growth in love. In the meantime, once you accept that God’s love for you is eternal and completely unearned, that can free you up to live a life so genuine and generous that some might even call you … radical. Amen.

1] Luke 19:1-10

[2] Titus 2:11-12

A Thank-You from the Northwest Kidney Centers

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Wed, 30 Apr 2025 18:00:05 GMT

We remember those we love by helping others.

Dear ones:

During my sabbatical, I was sad to hear of the death of Jim Manning at the age of 93. Jim had been worshiping with us for nearly two years.

When I came to Good Shepherd, I instituted a policy for funeral services: when we celebrate Holy Eucharist, we always take up a money offering. This may strike some folks as strange in a situation where we typically welcome so many guests. But it is absolutely in keeping with the centuries-old traditions of our worship. Especially in a culture like ours today, with a gigantic gap between the rich and the poor, the church needs to make every opportunity to gather from those who have and give it to those who don't.

That said, funerals and weddings and such are times when we may meet a lot of folks who are not particularly invested in the financial well-being of the church and may even find such an ask offensive. That's why I encourage those planning funerals to identify an outside destination for the offering, typically a nonprofit organization that their deceased loved one supported.

In my absence, that happened with Jim. And I want to share with all of you a thank-you note we received via email this week:

Dear Rev. Hosler and congregation of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd,

Thank you for your recent donation in memory of the late Col. James Manning. We are deeply touched by your generosity and honored by your support.

Because of gifts like yours, we are able to serve nearly 3,000 community members across the Pacific Northwest who rely on us for dialysis care. Your contribution helps us continue offering free education about chronic kidney disease and the choices available to those affected.

Thanks to your kindness, all our patients have access to life-changing support, regardless of their ability to pay. We are humbled by your partnership in making this vital work possible.

With heartfelt gratitude,

Rachel Mckeon

Donor Relations Coordinator

P.S. If you have any questions about the work we do, I would love to connect and learn more about what is important to you.

www.nwkidney.org

¡Pura Vida!

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Mon, 28 Apr 2025 12:12:49 GMT

How can we breathe the Holy Spirit onto others?

2025-26
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2025
Acts 5:27-32 ; Psalm 118:14-29 ; Revelation 1:4-8 ; John 20:19-31

When I first told your former rector, Esther, that I was planning to take a sabbatical, I asked how she had spent hers. She said, “Well, for the first month, I napped on the couch.” I thought, there’s no way I would do that. I have too much energy! Then, in January, I found myself taking daily afternoon naps. I think I was making up for years of lost restfulness.

In February, Christy and I journeyed to Costa Rica. In the mornings we studied Spanish at the Máximo Nivel language school, and the rest of each day we enjoyed beaches, scenery, wildlife … and people! We were welcomed into a friendly community, and we also did some community-building of our own.

I have not brought back for you any sort of “finished product” of my sabbatical, as it were—no capstone project, no book or curriculum or blog, and not even any new musical compositions. That would have defeated the purpose of my time away. I’m a 3 on the Enneagram, which means that my default approach to life is, “Produce and perform! Produce and perform!” I needed not to do that for a good long while. I needed to remind myself who I am as a human and as a Christian—not necessarily as a priest.

To be healthy human beings, we all need regular opportunities to suspend the expectation of work. Yet even when we must work for our daily bread, we can do so joyfully. See, they have this saying in Costa Rica. If you’ve ever been there, you know what I’m about to say. Has anyone else been to Costa Rica? What is it they say there?

“Pura vida!” Yes!

Pura vida literally translates as “pure life.” People use it to say hello, to say goodbye, and to wish one another well—like the way people use “aloha” in Hawaii. You can use it to inspire optimism: “Pura vida!” According to one of our Spanish teachers, Davíd, you can even use it to express disappointment with someone’s behavior, with a shake of the head: “Pura vida.” Like, “You are not living life as you should right now!”

But pura vida does not simply mean, “Don’t worry, be happy.” It’s far deeper than that. I’ve come to see that pura vida means, “Place your anxiety and fear into a larger context. Life is pure gift, even where there is pain. Stop for a moment and notice that gift of pure life all around you and within you!”

Pura vida is a way of living life more patiently, more generously, and with more gratitude. But it’s also a way of giving life. To wish someone pura vida is to breathe onto them the breath of the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. On a tropical beach, pura vida can mean, “Oh yeah, this is the life!” But in any situation, it can mean, “Here we share the life that is pure life.” Or as Jesus would say, “Peace be with you.”

For today we hear a story of pure life—a story that is literally unbelievable. Jesus is dead … and then he appears among the disciples behind the locked doors they hoped would keep out any and all surprises. Jesus appears inside these locked doors, but then he invites his friends to touch him physically. He’s not a ghost. He’s alive! But he’s not alive like they are—how can he be? He has already died! No, this is a bigger and better life—a purer life—pura vida!

For the disciples, first comes fear of the unknown. Then comes the shocking gift of peace.

At first, Thomas misses out on this. But there’s a graceful experience reserved for him—a one-on-one opportunity to learn to trust in what had seemed impossible. “Thomas, your doubts are understandable, but they don’t make me any less alive. Welcome to a world much larger than the one inside your head. Pura vida!”

I hear these words spoken as well to the generations of people after the apostles who came to trust in this Good News: “Happy are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.” That’s all the rest of us who weren’t there in the room that night. We can only get there the way Thomas did—late to the party, but no less blessed for it. Let those who came only at the eleventh hour have no fear—pura vida is for you, too!

When Thomas’s eyes are opened to this strange new reality of resurrection, he says a curious thing: “My Lord and my God!”

Did you know that nowhere in the Bible will you find Jesus claiming to be God? He may or may not imply it. You may think I’m splitting hairs here, but my point is that any notion of a trinitarian understanding of God—three-in-one, Father, Son, Holy Spirit—developed gradually over the next 400 years. You can begin to see this development within the Bible, but it’s not yet fleshed out. That doesn’t mean it’s not real—just that we shouldn’t expect to find it all carefully explained.

I don’t think any of the earliest apostles saw Jesus as God in any literal sense; this would have been completely foreign to first-century Jewish thought. I think they saw Jesus as a human being who was uniquely at one with God—whether they believed that was true from the moment of resurrection, the moment of his baptism, or in some cosmic sense in the earliest moments of creation. Their experiences still needed words that it would take centuries to develop.

We see Thomas’s proclamation show up in a different way in the Acts of the Apostles. Rather than “my Lord and my God,” we hear Peter proclaim Christ as “Leader and Savior.” Now, these words don’t hit the same for us as they did for first-century people oppressed by the Roman Empire. These words were reserved for Caesar Augustus, to whom imperial propaganda gave the specific title “Leader and Savior.” Who is in charge? Who is getting things done? Who keeps the trains running on time? Who is making life better for you by stomping out anyone who threatens us? Praise be to the Leader and Savior! All hail the king!

This is why we say Christ is our King—not because we believe he is anything like a literal king, but because we refuse to divinize the authority of any king or any human leader. There’s nothing wrong with loyalty to people and situations that are helpful and not hurtful. But if you’re baptized, it’s crucial never to give your ultimate loyalty to your government, no matter what kind of government it is. We honor the only true authority in the universe—and that authority is so humble that he showed up and allowed us to kill him!

When Peter proclaims the risen Christ as “leader and savior,” he’s insisting that Jesus is the only human window onto divinity. The emperor is a pretender whose arrogance makes him a fool. No matter how much power he wields, and no matter how many people he hurts with that power, his reign is doomed. In the meantime, we are forming a community that, at its best, will continually get in the emperor’s way.

It's no wonder, then, that the acts of the apostles always seem to run afoul of law enforcement. When Jesus spoke clearly enough about an alternative community that was to rely on love instead of fear … well, that empire lynched him. Literally. They hanged him on a tree. So wherever the ruling powers are unjust—and also wherever they don’t even obey the rules we have democratically given them, but rely instead on fear and cruelty—the baptized need to be out there making “good trouble.”

Yet I do need to say something more about this passage from the Acts of the Apostles, because it brings with it problems that have plagued the world ever since they were written. A lazy reading of the passage makes it looks like this is all about Christians versus Jews, and the language Luke chooses doesn’t help. Peter talks of “Jesus, whom YOU had killed.” The high priest says, “You are determined to bring this man’s blood on us.” If the high priest is set up in the narrative as the bad guy, we may think we’re supposed to say, “Yup, that’s right! This is your fault!”

Is this reading supposed to make us angry all over again about Jesus’ death? To relitigate it and to cast blame? That is not Peter’s purpose. Ultimately he is trying to share Good News: here is how it honestly played out, yet now all is forgiven, and all is reconciled! Peter’s proclamation is met with disbelief and anger, and can this be surprising? This is a disagreement among Jews, and the arguing was still hot when Luke was writing, some 50 years after the events he describes. But ever since, Christians have used passages like this as an excuse to persecute Jews—even to lynch them. As if we had learned nothing from Jesus—nothing at all.

I don’t have time today to go into all the insidious ways that anti-Semitism is spreading like a disease all over the world right now. But I am putting some thoughts together, and you will hear more from me about it. For today, suffice it to say that violence and cruelty of any kind is not pura vida. Whatever religion they claim as their totem, governments that rule by fear and intimidation place themselves in direct opposition to God.

But don’t think for a moment that you and I are immune. Controlling our environment through fear and cruelty is a temptation we are all prone to, because God’s world can be a scary place. “Do unto them before they do unto you,” right?

There will always be people who shore up their power by pitting the less powerful against one another. Don’t let them dictate the story of your life. No matter how fearful the world gets, our marching orders as Christians remain exactly the same: “Love one another.” That means living interdependently. It means walking straight through the uncertainty and relying on one another to strengthen us through it. It means giving up a degree of comfort so that others may simply stay alive.

Love casts out fear when we share the kind of peace the risen Christ breathes on his disciples. And it comes with a commission. Since true life could not be held long in the grip of death … what will you do next? Christ clarifies: “You have the power to work toward reconciliation. You also have the ability to withhold reconciliation. If that’s what you choose, what will you do with all that brokenness? Where’s the pura vida in that?”

We’re living through harrowing times that demand bravery from all of us. Have you thought about what you would sacrifice for the sake of others—to what lengths you would go to protect the vulnerable? How can we approach our fears from a pura vida perspective?

I commend to you this community of faith. Jesus moves from life to pure life—from pure life to purer life. This is the journey we’re all on. But when we remain isolated, we avoid opportunities to see that life in one another. You may be late to the party like Thomas, but there’s no fear or judgment in that. Will you walk with us at Good Shepherd, from vida to pura vida?

The Lord Is Risen Indeed! (Me Too!)

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 23:46:34 GMT

2025-25
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Carola von Wrangel
The Day of Easter, April 20, 2025

Singing Over You with Delight!

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 23:26:53 GMT

2025-24
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Carola von Wrangel
The Great Vigil of Easter, April 19, 2025

To the Throne of Grace

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 23:18:34 GMT

2025-23
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Carola von Wrangel
Good Friday, April 18, 2025

By Our Love

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 23:06:54 GMT

2025-22
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon
Maundy Thursday, April 17, 2025

Put Yourself in the Story

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 23:03:35 GMT

2025-21
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Carola von Wrangel
Palm Sunday, April 13, 2025

Love in This Suzerainty Treaty

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 22:49:38 GMT

2025-17
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Carola von Wrangel
Second Sunday in Lent, March 16, 2025

Understanding God

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 22:49:37 GMT

2025-19
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon
Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 30, 2025

What Is the Eucharist?

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 22:49:34 GMT

2025-20
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Carola von Wrangel
Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 6, 2025

Wanting God

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 21:24:17 GMT

2025-18
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Carola von Wrangel
Third Sunday in Lent, March 23, 2025

Strangers in a Strange Land

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 21:09:15 GMT

2025-16
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y Billie Jones Stockton, MA
First Sunday in Lent, March 9, 2025
Deuteronomy 26:1-11 ; Romans 10:8b-13 ; Luke 4:1-13 ; Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16

Episcopalians do not often talk about the devil and temptation, but in today’s Gospel, Jesus is confronted and tempted by the devil. In our culture, the devil is a red mythic character with horns and a pitchfork. By viewing the devil in this way, we can deny the reality of his power and our responsibility for our actions. In Hebrew, the devil was known as an adversary and accuser. I also see the devil as a challenger, as the one who exploits our human vulnerabilities and as the one who can disrupt our relationship with God. We are somewhat familiar with the workings of the Holy Spirit and the Communion of Saints, but what about the workings on an evil spirit? We can view all that is wrong in our world as a sign of our brokenness, a misuse of God’s creation, and mistreatment of His people, who are exploited, deprived of resources and human rights, and who struggle with untreated diseases and extreme poverty. This awareness can be overwhelming, and we can feel hopeless and helpless, but with God’s grace we can contribute to the healing of the world.

As a sideline, I want to commend to you an excellent sermon by our former Presiding Bishop the Right Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, titled “ Have You Met the Devil? ”

Temptation for Jesus was possible because of his being fully human and fully God. He had self-interests such as we do. In this encounter, Jesus could choose to serve God or serve the devil. Being filled with the spirit of God who came down on him at his recent baptism, he exercised his free will and rejected the devil’s offers of physical comfort, self-fulfillment, and power. Now, we don’t have to be concerned about big choices like whether we will murder or rob someone, no, our temptations are often more subtle. The temptations may appeal to our own selfishness, self-preservation, our thinking we are superior to another class or ethnic group, or being fearful of losing influence or power. Through prayer or discernment, we can choose good and love God and our neighbors. Even though we may not think of it as a response to temptation, we can frame this in the choices or decisions we face every day, in how we think, believe, and act. We can choose to follow Christ’s command to love God with our whole being and love our neighbors as ourselves or we can choose to express judgement and hatred that are so common in the current social and political spheres.

I want to give you an example from my personal experience. I worked with marginalized people as a social worker in my early career and then later as a Psychological Practitioner in the KY Corrections system. I tried to view my clients as wounded people who had been deprived of the necessities of unconditional love, nurturing families, and adequate resources. However, I never lost sight of why they were in prison. Sometimes, I failed to love my clients because they had a thick façade that was off-putting. They behaved as though they were unlovable. That was when I had a spiritual challenge. Trying to love sometimes was hard because some of my colleagues had written off the prisoners as unredeemable. I had to do some inner work to be able to balance out what my colleagues and I thought how I was supposed to love. I knew that I I did not look for that spark of a soul who can respond to God’s love, then I had no purpose there.

Eventually, some of the prisoners learned that I was someone who would listen, rather than judge. I hope I helped to develop a more peaceful environment among the prison population. As time passed, I noticed that some colleagues were showing the prisoners more understanding, compassion, and helpfulness. During that time there, I grew spiritually from interpersonal interactions and from being part of a team. Now, I am reminded that when we learn of government and social policies that negatively impact the marginalized, we need to stop and think that we, including our leaders, should look for that spark of a soul who is beloved of God.

As people of faith, we need to make our views known to those who form policies.

In our scripture from Deuteronomy, the Israelites’ relationship with God called for tithes of the first of our crops in the third year after coming to the promised land. They were told to acknowledge before God from whom they came— “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor…” They were to recognize that they were strangers in a strange land. Through their gifts and tithes, many people were cared for—the Levites, resident aliens, orphans and widows. These people were all viewed as part of the community and needing care. So, what does God want from us in dealing with strangers, immigrants, the homeless, and the unfortunate? Be merciful, for you were strangers in a strange land.

The Epistle for today says, “There is no distinction between Jews and Greeks for salvation. The Word is near you, on your lips, and in your hearts. The Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him. Everyone who believes in his heart and confesses with his mouth shall be saved.” Again, the scripture tells us that all are under the umbrella of God’s love. Thus, being recipients of God’s grace, we cannot withhold God’s generosity from anyone.

Our psalm today reminds us that as children of God, we are protected from danger. We can let go of our self-serving ways, our anxieties and concerns for emotional and physical wellbeing, wealth, success, and comfort. As Robert Boak Slocum wrote in “ Turning Around – Reflections, Questions, and Prayers for the Days in the Season of Lent ”, “We can discover life that lives, life in God if we can see beyond ourselves. Our life is not all about us. We are not and cannot be the center of our world.” If we can accept this, then, we will be freer to love others unconditionally and view ourselves as the hands and feet of Jesus.

There are quite a few scriptures supporting our love for God and service to our neighbors. In this time when hatred, judgement, and discrimination dominate the speech of some of our leaders, we need to recognize who we are and whose we are, that our God loves all humanity. Likewise, we should love and care for the stranger, the immigrant, the homeless, and the poor, for our ancestors were also immigrants and strangers in a strange land.

Amen.

Transfigured

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 21:07:08 GMT

2025-15

sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Carola von Wrangel
Last Sunday after the Epiphany, March 2, 2025

Love Your Enemies

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 22 Apr 2025 21:04:56 GMT

2025-14

sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Carola von Wrangel
Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany, February 23, 2025

Living into the Kingdom

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 17 Feb 2025 06:57:35 GMT

Jesus comes down to our level – into the deepest valleys of our lives

2025-12

Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA ⁠

www.goodshepherdfw.org⁠ by the Deacon Anna Lynn

Sixth Sunday after Epiphany, February 16, 2025

⁠Jeremiah 17:5-10⁠ ; ⁠1 Corinthians 15:12-20⁠ ; ⁠Luke 6:17-26⁠ ; ⁠Psalm 1

Good morning, I want to do a quick check in and ask how are you doing today? Anyone else feeling a bit overwhelmed? Or maybe a lot overwhelmed? Anyone else chose to turn the news off this week or step away from social media? Well, I want you to know that you are not alone.

And What a blessing it is to be able to come together within this wonderful community in Christ today and take a deep breath…

let’s all take a deep breath --------In and Out.

And to be able to pray for those in need, those who are dealing with uncertainty, fear, loss of employment - Those being targeted with hate speech, lack of empathy and being treated unjustly. Lord, we send up our fervent prayers. And for each one of you:

If you don’t believe you are created for such a time like this…..

Let me remind you that you have more courage, strength, and resilience than you may know. Once you take the first step, may the fullness of who you are and whose you are propel you forward….AMEN.

Today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke is similar to the Sermon on the Mount, or the Beatitudes, from the 5th chapter of Matthew. But there are some differences.

Lukes’s version is known as the Sermon on the Plain and unlike the Sermon on the Mount, this sermon on the Plain is shorter and more direct, highlighting the reversal of worldly values in God’s kingdom.

The Sermon on the Mount Jesus offers only Blessings and the Sermon on the Plain, He offers blessings and woes.

Just prior to the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus had gone up on the mountain to pray overnight, and in the morning, called his disciples to him, and from them, chose the twelve apostles.

Then Jesus went down the mountain with them –to the level place, were he could greet the crowd of his disciples, and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon, which was further north than Galilee and Samaria and populated by Gentiles…..which informs us that the multitude of people- represented many differences beyond just the distance of geography.

We might wonder how that looked. A massive crowd, varying by race, culture, dialects, geopolitical histories, and religious practices all reaching toward Jesus to experience the power of his healing presence.

And all in the crowd faced Jesus, all tried to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. Despite their status in the community, or wealth (or lack there of), or gender, or nationality.

Now, let us consider how we might feel in that place. Standing side by side and seeking the same thing as all the people around us. People we have surmised to be “less than” or even “more than” ourselves, perhaps even in shame for our own lack of faith.

Yet Jesus is there. Savior of all. Jesus comes down to our level – into the deepest valleys of our lives – to comfort, to heal, to walk with us and to bless us. To encourage us to turn around from old ways that do not support the common good.

Incidentally, since I am not focusing on the blessings and woes particularly, I want you to know that Makarios, the Greek for blessed, means satisfied, unburdened, and at peace.

And “woe” does not mean condemned. The Greek, OY, is a call to repentance, to change one’s behavior, to lament. It’s a warning to turn around, towards God.

Luke’s Jesus is turning human expectations, traditions, and ideologies upside down, as he stands in radical solidarity with all people. In solidarity rather than judgement.

We are included in that solidarity! Jesus sees each of us as beloved, regardless of how others might see us. In Christ, we are free to be unapologetically who God created us to be! Each of us wonderfully made and gifted by the Holy Spirit, so we can let go of all the burdens of how others might view us.

ALSO, we are called to imitate Christ, to seek out those places where people are hurting, lonely, ostracized, marginalized or criticized for being “other.” And as we have learned, Jesus had no problem with “otherness.”

This reminds me of last March, when I was in Mexico - As my friends and I walked to a small street café for dinner, I noticed an older man standing in the shadows in the doorway of a building that was under construction.

As we walked by, I said Hola, (Which is hello in Spanish) and he did not look up or make eye contact with me, but said Hola back, as he starred at the ground. I also noticed as we passed by, that this man had a hand that looked like it had not fully developed at birth.

After we sat down at our table, I could still see this gentleman in the shade, just watching what was happening at the restaurant. I asked the owner when he came to take our order, if I could ask him- who the man was and what was he doing in the building across the street.

He told me that he was the night security guard….making sure that the workers tools and equipment stayed secured through the night. And that because of his handicap…this was a good job for him, but because the building got so hot late in the afternoon, he often would see him standing outside in the shade of the building.

I asked the owner if the man ever at dinner at the café’? and he said no…. he has money to do so.

So, I said, will you go over and offer him dinner and if he cannot come over here to eat, can you allow him to eat across the street where he is comfortable or if he would like to eat at a different time, that would be fine too, but I want to pay for him to have a meal here.

So, the owner walked across the street and invited the man to eat dinner and after a moment he pointed at us and I put my hand up to say hello….and man removed his hat and put his hand back up at me and walked with the manager to the restaurant. He sat at a table on the furthest edge of the cafe’ and ordered dinner. I noticed that when they brought his meal, he had ordered a fish (like a whole fish) and rice. Which was one of the least expensive meals on the menu and I wondered if he had ordered what he liked or what he deemed appropriate to order when someone else was buying his meal. I had hoped he had gotten what he liked.

We finished our meal prior to the gentleman being finished and as we walked toward the exit, he got up from his table, hat in hand and bowed his head and said, “gracias” which is Thank you in Spanish. I told him de nada, which means you’re welcome in Spanish and I bowed my head in return…as I did this, we made some eye contact and both smiled.

As we walked toward our condo, I wondered if this man had a family or a system of support in his life.

The next night, we again - saw the same gentleman standing in the door way of the building under construction, but this time he was not looking at the ground and he made eye contact with me. And right away I noticed a sparkle in his eyes that I did not notice the night before – and he seemed happy – and as we approach him, he smiled and greeted our group first and it felt like it was a greeting from an old friend.

Once we were seated at our table, I told my friends that I was going to ask our new friend to join us for dinner. So, I walked back over and asked if he would join us …..I feared he might not understand English and that was exactly what happened, so I pulled out my phone and I typed in my invitation for dinner on Google Translator and handed the phone to him and he got a big smile and he said Si’ - Which I am sure most of you are aware means…..Yes.

We began an evening of Google translator conversations…handing my phone back and forth. I learned was named Adan….or Adam in English and he and I learned about each other’s families and of his life in Mexico and mine in the United States. Adam ordered fish and rice again for dinner, but this time I found out it that fish was his favorite food….and it was truly a great night getting to know my new friend.

That night I told Adam on Google Translator that we would be celebrating my friend Teresa’s birthday two nights later and that there would be a surprise birthday cake for her and I hoped that he could come and have dinner and celebrate with us.

He smiled and seemed so excited that there was going to be a gathering with cake and that he was invited. I loved to see the joy in his face because he was included.

When we arrived on the evening of Teresa’s Birthday, Adam was already there and he was in casual clothing, instead of his work attire and I invited him sit with us at our table and I could just tell he was so overjoyed to be a part of the secret cake surprise for Teresa.

When the cake was brought out after dinner, everyone in the Café gathered around and began singing Happy Birthday in English to Teresa and when I looked at Adam, he had pulled out a harmonica and was joyfully playing along with the song. It was a perfect moment of community, Teresa had tears in her eyes and it was a grand way to end our time in Mexico with so many lovely folks celebrating, singing, and eating delicious birthday cake together.

Prior to leaving Mexico, Adam and I connected on WhatsApp and we now communicate at least once a month and always on holidays and I feel I have made a good friend –

And I could say that Adam was the one who benefited ……he came out of the literal shadows and felt included, cared for and a part of something larger than himself– but then so did I…….and after some thought I realized that I was the true beneficiary of this encounter, because it wasn’t me changing Adams life, it was God changing my life by allowing me live into the Kingdom of God now. Showing me that every day we have an opportunity to use our eyes to see and our ears to hear - to find more meaning in the life that Jesus has called all of us to live and when I am living into the Kingdom, I feel joyful, fulfilled and healed. The trappings of worldly values, power, and control - fall away, as I strive to follow Jesus’ teachings and examples of love, mercy, and humility.

When I look back the best part of that trip to Mexico….the experience that I talk most about - wasn’t the pool or food (although you can see we found a great restaurant to enjoy)…..no…. it was making a new friend and loving him as my neighbor, right where we were- on the level plain- and watching him grow more joyful each day.

In closing – I would like to share a quote from theologian and Franciscan priest Richard Rohr,

“We need to look at Jesus until we can see the world with his eyes. In Jesus Christ, God’s own broad, deep, and all-inclusive worldview is made available to us….and, the point of the Christian life is not to distinguish oneself from the ungodly, but to stand in radical solidarity with everyone and everything else.”

Amen.

A Call

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 08:07:57 GMT

Jesus says “Peter, I’m climbing in your boat”, and Peter goes “okay”

2025-11
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Mother Carola Von Wrangle
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, February 09, 2025
Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13] ; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 ; Luke 5:1-11 ; Psalm 138

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

Amen

Please be seated.

In case you’re wondering about this little parade that comes down every Sunday while I’m here, it’s so hard to preach front and back, and so it’s just easier to be able to see people when I’m preaching, so thank you for doing that.

I want you to know that I love these four months that I am spending with you. I really enjoy being here, you are so interactive, and aware, and you listen, and you respond, it’s wonderful. I have been for the last 11 years an itinerant preacher at thirty different churches in a year. I never get two or three Sundays in a row, much less four months of Sundays. One of the things that I am especially delighted about is that I have never experienced Epiphany like this! We’ve been going through these Epiphany Sundays for the last six weeks. I used to think of Epiphany as “oh well, another season”, it never meant as much as it has this time. So, thank you for that gift.

Now, you might remember that in Epiphany, we’ve talked about certain major themes of epiphany. I’m not going to test you, but one of those things is that Jesus is made manifest to us, right? And He’s made manifest to the gentiles. Another is that Jesus is made manifest as God through miracles, right? A third one is that we have a job to do with Jesus, that Jesus calls us to join in the work of making our faith manifest to others, to tell of our faith, to share it, to share the stories of our faith, and to talk about our testimonies and things like that, right?

Oh, you’re still saying yes! Good! Because that is often kind of a scary part, and that piece of Epiphany, I haven’t given it so much a name, but it is a calling upon us. We are called to participate in the life of Christ.

Today, we have two wonderful stories of calling. The first one is the reading from Isaiah, and we hear Isaiah, a great, great prophet, he is suddenly in a place where he sees the Holiness of God. There are Seraphs, who are very large, very heavenly beings with lots of limbs, six of them, they have different purposes, and they are there to proclaim, “Holy holy holy is the Lord God”. Isaiah sees this and hears this, and he does, what I think is a pretty smart thing to do, he falls on his face, and says, “God, get away from me, because I am a person of unclean lips, and I am a sinner! I have no business being in this incredibly holy place!”

Then, something rather strange, a little scary, happens, which is that the Seraph takes a coal from the altar and touches his lips, Isaiah’s lips, and says “You are forgiven, you are now clean, cleansed from your sin”. That little piece of scripture always kind of scares me, because I am so thankful that I don’t have to walk up and down the isles touching your lips with a burning coal! Are you thankful for that too? It’s so much easier to say “Your sins are forgiven” than to use burning coals! But, for Isaiah, this is a moment where he is suddenly freed to hear the call of God.

The call of God comes in this form: “Whom shall I send? Who will go out and speak to me? Who will be my proclaimer?” Isaiah responds with the wonderful words, “here I am, send me”, he answers the call, and he writes Isaiah, he writes these wonderful prophecies of what is to come! He answers that call so immediately. In the Old Testament, there are many other stories of call, and they are not always answered the same way. There was Moses, remember Moses?

“Moses, go talk to Pharoh!”

“I don’t think so!”

His excuse was that he had a speech impediment, and he couldn’t possibly go and speak on behalf of God, and God says, “get over yourself”, and Moses says “yes”.

Then, there’s Jeremiah, who says “I’m too young! Nuh-uh, nope! I haven’t gotten my PHD in theology yet, don’t send me!”, and God says, “get over yourself” and he is sent forth. Over and over there are these stories, of, Jonah! “Noooooo! People of Ninevah aren’t acting like how I want them to act, and I am not going to speak on your behalf!” God says, “get over it, get over yourself, go do what I am telling you to!” and these people eventually do, for the most part.

But we now come to the wonderful story of Jesus at the lake of Gennesaret, and he is followed by crowds. He’s been teaching, he’s been healing, it’s still very early in His ministry, and he’s too crowded at the shore of the lake, and so he says “Peter, I’m climbing in your boat”, and Peter goes “okay”, and Jesus preaches and teaches and does what He’s doing, and then they come back to shore and Jesus says “now, go fishing.” Peter is a fisherman, this is what he does for a living, he says “You don’t understand, I’m the fisherman here, I know my fishing business, and it’s the middle of the day, it’s not a good time to fish, we tried all last night, and we didn’t catch a thing, why would we fish and catch something now?” and then, without Jesus saying why, like “I’m God and I have a plan”, or something like that, Simon says “hey, I’ll do it”. It’s that first step to “yes”. They go out, and they catch so many fish that they try to sink two boats with that many fish. Then, Peter hears who is actually speaking to him, and so much like Isaiah, Peter falls on his knees and says “Lord, get away from me, for I am a person of unclean lips, I am a sinner, I can’t possibly be even in your presence!”

Jesus says, “don’t be afraid”. Boy, those are important words! Saying yes can be fearful, don’t be afraid, I’m sending you out and you will not be a fisher of men, as you have heard so many times, probably, but a catcher of people, my people, they aren’t going die, well they will, but. Peter and James and John become those three disciples, the closest ones to Jesus, and they drop everything and follow Jesus! They leave the two boatloads full of fish behind, and follow Jesus, they say “yes” to the call of Jesus.

This week I was at two retreats, the vestry retreat, a wonderful event, and then the clergy retreat in Bremerton. Our new Bishop preached on Wednesday the closing Eucharist, and he said, “all of you have been a this retreat all week, you don’t have to prepare a sermon this week, just use my sermon.” I couldn’t do that, because he said, “you cannot change a word of my sermon”, and I don’t know how to read sermons, but in this sermon, he preached on these lessons, and he said a wonderful thing. He said “where, how, when, have you been called by God to follow? When was that experience of hearing the call and responding to the call?” Bishop Phil told the wonderful story of how, when he was a little boy, he got out some ritz crackers and some tuna fish and served communion to his parents. He said, “when were you called, and when were you called deeper? How did God call you further in?” And again, with that image of “Oh god, get further away from me, I am not worthy.”.

And so, I thought about it this week, and I have two stories of my early call in life. No ritz crackers and no tuna fish, I’m pleased to say, but I want you to not only listen to my stories, but to think about your own story. Where has God called you?

My first story, I was seven years old, I was in a summer camp for children who were recent immigrants to Canada and the United States. I was the youngest at the summer camp, and I had a call at that summer camp, that was that there were a lot of dead garter snakes lying around in the yards, and in the streets, run over, and I thought that they needed a proper burial, so I organize the other children in the camp, and we created little wagons, and put our stuffed animals in the little wagons, and one wagon was the hearse, which was for the snake. We picked dandelions and other flowers that we could find, we strewed them, whatever the word is, along the path, and we sang songs as we walked with our little wagons and buried that snake. We dug a hole, buried the snake, and I said a prayer for the snake.

I want you to know that I thought that was an easy sense of call to ministry, no one has ever guessed that that was my first call to ministry, that was part of a women’s retreat opening event, “let’s tell your early call to ministry”, and no one thought that was mine.

That was my first call, I then grew up a little bit. At age 36 I came to know Jesus, in a personal, wonderful, renewed way. I went to a dinner at church about three weeks after that happened, and at this dinner there were about 50 people, they had all been to Cristillo, I had been to Cristillo, and I was waiting for the grace to be said over the food, and a man turned to me and said “Carola, will you lead us in prayer before the meal?” and I said “Out loud?! I don’t have a prayer book! What am I going to do?” and he said, “God has a call on your life, and you’re going to have to know how to pray, so get started”. And so, I said some brilliant “God bless this food please, Amen” prayer over the food, but it was a call. There was something behind that and having someone point out “you are called” helped that, but also that “do not fear”.

So, I share these stories not because I am called, but guess what? We are called. We get to respond with “Here I am Lord, send me!” We are called in different ways, Martin Luther, the great reformer, said “It is the priesthood of all believers”. It’s not just a time in history where those who have studied the most, or know the most, get to do the special stuff and God loves them special, and everyone else is just sitting in the pews. We are called, we’re called to proclaim, we’re called to serve, we’re called to suffer, we’re called to be the Word of God in our communities.

I ask you to go home this week, you might be, the two of you might be burying snakes, or doing something that might not sound that important, but all of us have an important call on our lives. May we hear, and like Peter and James and John and Isaiah, leave everything and follow the One who Calls us.

Amen.

Hope in Desolation

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 03 Feb 2025 06:35:40 GMT

I think, “What is hope”?

Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Reverend Andrew Cooley
The Presentation of Our Lord, February 02, 2025
Malachi 3:1-4 ; Hebrews 2:14-18 ; Luke 2:22-40 ; Psalm 84

Lord Jesus Christ,

Live out in us, in all that we are and have yet to become, the full mystery of Your death and resurrection.

Help us to yield all by showing us and teaching us to welcome all, especially the dark guest in our soul.

Stretch and transform us by the power of Your love, that we may find ourselves and see ourselves in You, in Your beauty.

Amen.

Well, today is a special day in the calendar, you woke up this morning and discovered there is going to be six more weeks of snow! Today, February 2 ^nd is 40 days after Christmas, and s there is a special provision in our worship that whenever February 2 ^nd falls on a Sunday, we preempt the normal course of the lessons for Epiphany, and we read these lessons that we have today, that tell the story of the 40 day old infant brought by Mary and Joseph to the temple for two things. First of all, is Mary. As was the practice of the time, would come to be made ritually clean and pure with a sacrifice. Secondly is that Jesus, a baby who is the first born male, would have a special prayer said over Him. And so, we see their obedience on this day.

It has taken on a kind of significance over time, on this day the Feast of the Presentation, also known as the Purification of Mary, also known as Candlemas in some traditions, it would be a time where people would bring the candles that they would use at home, to bring them to church and be blessed. It’s also, curiously, one of those times, there were some very ancient traditions of celebrations or recognitions that happen halfway between a solstice and an equinox. That’s the case here, six weeks after the winter solstice, and halfway to the spring equinox. There would be a time where people would pay attention to the stars, and to the seasons, and to the weather, maybe even make predictions about when the right time to plant would be, hence the Groundhog Day tradition. Mayday is one of those midpoint days, as is Halloween and All Saint’s.

But at any rate, as we recognize that this has an interesting history, I think there is something for us that we need to lean into today. That is, I’m particularly drawn to the two prophets, Anna and Simeon, with the idea that maybe they have something to say to us right now, in this moment.

Simeon, the most famous piece of that is that we have his song, that he sings in recognition as he holds this 40-day old baby, that he sees something profound in this child. He sings this song, which we have, as part of our tradition on compline or evening prayer in the Episcopal church. Something that I was very familiar with, certainly going to seminary, clergy are called on to practice the offices, and so knowing this was certainly part of my life. But it took on a new meaning about 30 years ago, my father-in-law is also an episcopal priest, I married into a dynasty, he ended up moving to a place near where my wife and I were living, but then he contracted cancer.

There was a point in which he came to a doctor’s appointment in Denver, where we were living, not near his own town. It became apparent at this doctor’s appointment that it was really not right to go home, that he was not fit to go home. We were able to make arrangements rather quickly to turn part of our house into a home hospice setting, we had a big family room with a guest room, we put a hospital bed there, and Don came to be with us, as did Joan, my mother-in-law.

But a practice was that I would come home from work, and I would go down to be with him, and often would read the evening prayer. Early on, he was fully present and engaged and would read the responses and the lessons, and we would say that. As time would go on, his participation began to wane, but it still seemed important to do that. Then, finally, he was just not responsive at all. Still, I would find myself sitting by his bed, “Lord now let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen the Savior whom You have prepared for all the world to see. A light to enlighten the nations and the glory of your people Israel”. The idea of what does it mean to die in peace became very present to me as I think about those words, what does one see, to experience, to be able to let go, to trust as it were.

As I was preparing for today in particular, I was drawn to that one little phrase, about Simeon, and I really think it’s appropriate from a literary point of view to lump Simeon and Anna together, sharing the same longing, the same inspirations, it says that they were longing for the consolation of Israel. Consolation. That’s one of my favorite words. Consolation is related to the notion of Solus, the idea of the sun, the soul, but also the life that comes from being under the influence of the sun, to be in consolation with the sun, with the solus of the sun, that life happens. The opposite of consolation is desolation. Not just darkness, but a sense of lifelessness, or sense of barrenness that happens. So, I put myself in that position of Simeon and Anna, in a place of, if they’re longing for consolation, then their awareness is of desolation, I’m going to presume. I think of Anna and Simeon, what would they say to us, what was it that happened to them that they were able to see this amazing gift, but they were in a place of desolation.

I had two phone calls this last week that really struck me in an interesting juxtaposition, my “Simeon” and my “Anna”, actually one phone call and one visit with “Simeon”, I’ll call him, in a bar Thursday, a retired pastor, Presbyterian pastor, he and I go to grab a beer every week or so, and we talked.

He, like me, is called upon to preach from time to time. He was thinking of the situation, the circumstances that we’re in, finding it a real struggle, “what do I say”. On the one hand, he was wondering “do I have the voice”, he spoke of a woman, whose name I have since forgot, who wrote poetry while she was in Auschwitz, or one of the concentration camps, who took such joy and delight seeing a crocus come up through the snow on the other side of the fence, these little instances of beauty and grace in her place of desolation. Is it our call to point out this beauty and the grace that we’re surrounded by. Or is it also, as he was reflecting on the Bishop who, almost two weeks ago, was speaking about Christian unity, and the hallmarks of unity being dignity, and honesty, and humility, and in the course of that message also offered a plea for mercy, and how that has been so controversial, and how do we speak truth to power in a place where there is a lot of disrupting that is taking place. It was a hard place for him to be, what does one say?

The next day, I got a phone call from a friend, my “Anna”, who in a place of desolation was talking about phone calls that she is getting from friends of hers who are made vulnerable because they are dependent upon agencies, or staffing, or funding, or wondering about their immigration status, very upset, and yet she’s finding as she lives with someone who doesn’t share the anxieties about the administration she does, that she feels very isolated. How does she maintain hope?

I think of Anna and Simeon, maybe the day before this happened, where were they? What were they thinking? What was their life like? Then, something came into their life. They were in the temple. Mary and Joseph come in, bringing this 40-day old child. They see in this child something that changes them, such that Simeon begins this beautiful song, that “set thy servant free”, it is as though he had been imprisoned, and he is being released. The idea of now I can die in peace, I can be released because I see something that gives me hope. Anna talking about in this child is “all the redemption of Jerusalem”. What is it that they’re saying, they’re saying hope.

I think, “What is hope”? I read a book last summer that has influenced me significantly. It is a book by Brian McLaren, it is called “A Life After Doom”. It’s not an easy book to read. It starts with the premise that we are in hard times. The hard times that McLaren is talking about particularly are things like climate collapse, ecological overshoot, of massive inequities that are causing tremendous suffering of marginalized people especially, political polarization. What does hope look like? Well, Brian McLaren says that hope is complicated. I would say that, perhaps Simeon and Anna would say that as well to us. In McLaren’s book, he quotes a couple of voices that might be worth hearing, one is Vaklav Hovel, perhaps you remember a couple generations ago, the premier, I don’t know the word in Poland, but Vaklav Hovel says that “hope is not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something is worth doing, regardless of how it turns out. This hope gives us the strength to live and continually try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.

Or, the wonderful Episcopal mystic, Cynthia Bourgeault, contemplative, she says “our great mistake is that we tie hope to outcomes”. So, what would Anna, what would Simeon say to us, what would they give us in this moment? I think that the word that I’m going to use is “sacred imagination”. It says that the Holy Sprit was upon Simeon particularly, and I’m going to claim a gift of the Holy Spirit is that ability to see, even in the midst of our desolation, these glimpses of, even in a 40-day old infant, the transformation and inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. And yet, even for Simeon it would mean that this child would grow up to experience pain, he was saying to Mary “your own soul will be pierced, and it’s not going to come easy”. And then, Anna and Simeon are talking about the redemption of Jerusalem. Anna, particularly, is night and day in the temple, every day. Yet, within a couple generations, that very temple would have been destroyed, and a new thing would emerge. So, I pray that maybe this sacred imagination would give us the eyes to see.

One of the things that I’m really coming to see with increasing clarity is that two things can be true at the same time. Things can be hard. Desolation can be peoples’ real experiences. Yet, even in the midst of desolation we recognize that there is a God who is right here, right now. The Celtic saints talked about this phenomenon that they called “the resurrection eyes”, the ability to see the Risen Christ here and now. So, I pray that we do those things that encourage the sacred imagination, that open our eyes to let the Spirit reveal that, even in the midst of this moment, right here and right now, that God is here.

God is with us. God has not abandoned us. That we might share that.

Let us take a moment, just let ourselves be reminded of that gift of consolation.

Would you repeat Psalm 46, the words of the psalmist.

Be still and know that I am God.

[whole congregation: Be still and know that I am God.]

Be still and know that I Am.

[Whole congregation: Be still and know that I Am.]

Be still and know.

[whole congregation: Be still and know.]

Be still.

[whole congregation: Be still.]

Be.

[whole congregation: Be.]

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is Upon Me

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Tue, 28 Jan 2025 08:48:47 GMT

Bishop LaBelle wrote this to all the clergy in the diocese, that it needs to be talked about.

Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Mother Carola Von Wrangle
Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 26, 2025
Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 ; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a ; Luke 4:14-21 ; Psalm 19

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be always acceptable in Your sight, Oh God, my strength and my redeemer.

Amen.

We are blessed with how much scripture we get to hear every week in the Episcopal Church. We get an Old Testament lesson, we get a Psalm, boy that was fun to sing the whole psalm today, and we get a New Testament lesson and a Gospel lesson. That feels sometimes like a lot, and a lot to have to hear and struggle with and think about, what does that mean, and all of that. But today, in the story from Nehemiah, oh my goodness! Do you know what they did on that day with Ezra the scribe? They got up early in the morning and handed Ezra, they said, “go get the scriptures”, Ezra came back with the scriptures, and they stood up and they started reading. All the men, and the women, and those old enough to understand heard him read the scriptures for the whole day! Can you imagine what that would be like? This story is actually fascinating because it has a history to it.

The scriptures got lost for a while. There were things like exiles, and moving, and wars, and storms. The scriptures were lost, and they found the scriptures again! People were so excited about them that they wept. I cannot imagine that joy, and that level of “oh my goodness, look it, God has formed this covenant with us, and has formed this relationship, and has told us He loves us and has rules for us, and has all of this for us! Now, let’s understand it, and let’s grow in it".

We are blessed that we have what we have. If you would like to arrange a day where I get up, and Anna and I can share this, she’ll read the gospel portions, and I’ll read the others, and we can spend the whole day doing this if you like! [voice from congregation: “That’s not covered in your Sabbatical…] But we’re not going to do that. I just wanted to talk briefly about Nehemiah because the importance of scriptures and what it has to say to us, and where we go with, how do we respond to all of that that God gives to us. It’s such a wonderful question.

So, here I am, on this Sunday. It’s been a week, hasn’t it. It has been a week. I have a friend who posted on Facebook on Saturday, he said “this is the most difficult month of the first month after an Inauguration that I can remember. Oh, it’s only been a week”! We have had a week, and I promise you, in case you are starting to pack your bags, and think “I’m going to leave, she’s going to get political” [voice from the Congregation: “no no no, we like this”], you like this? Okay, good! Remember that when this is over. But I got a letter from my Bishop this week, saying “it’s been a week, and I want you to preach it on Sunday”. He wrote this to all the clergy in the diocese, that it needs to be talked about. I have taken my wisdom on preaching on political questions from Michael Curry, our former Presiding Bishop, who said “you must be political, but never be partisan”, so I would never tell anyone how to vote. I might tell you to vote, but I won’t say how to vote, and for whom to vote, or anything like that.

But this week, on Tuesday, the Bishop of Washington D.C. got up at the National Prayer Service, and called the president out, and said “please have mercy and compassion on people who have no power, on immigrants, on refugees, on LGBT, on various groups, please”. The president was not well pleased with the sermon, so I am going to preach about that. We have the best Gospel lesson we could possibly have to talk about this question. How do we proclaim good news to people who don’t always have power? How do we proclaim to people in power?

Our Gospel lesson today is Jesus going into the Synagogue, as was His habit. It was a Saturday, and He was an adult male Jew. He went into the Synagogue and decided it was His turn to read from scripture. So, He got up and the Rabbi, the head of the Synagogue, or whoever was there, handed Him the book of Isaiah, the scroll of Isaiah, what would now be Isaiah chapter 61 verses 1-3. Jesus took the scroll and read from it.

First of all, we think “okay, he’s going to take the scroll and unroll it, and do all of this”. Well, in the Synagogue, there is a fascinating thing, a little instrument that looks like a back scratcher. It is a stylus, and on the end of the stylus is a hand, and the hand has a pointing finger. The Rabbi would hold this pointing finger to where the reader is going to read. I wanted to know what that’s called, you know I googled that? I said, “what is the pointing finger called in a Synagogue”? It’s a yad, Y-O-D or Y-A-D, I couldn’t get it to bounce back up to check my spelling. But it’s a yad, because the Scripture is so holy that you don’t just touch the scriptures, the scrolls. You just use the pointer. My Bible, you should see my Bible, it has yellow, green, and pink underlining, notes in the margins of when something is important and why. It’s written all over, I am not following that rule, I guess.

What I would like to do is read to you from Isaiah 61, because Luke chapter 4 has a shorter version. This is what Jesus would have read:

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me, because The Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken hearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives, release for the prisoners. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, the Day of Vengeance of our God. To comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion, to bestow upon them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me, because He has anointed me to proclaim, release healing, hope, transformation.”

And then Jesus said this wonderful line at the end of His reading. He looked at everyone in the Synagogue, and he said:

“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your midst”

That’s a verse not to be forgotten, and I’ll go back to it in a little bit. The first time I heard this scripture, I wrote it down in my Bible in yellow and pink and said “boy this is important”, and I thought, “isn’t it so wonderful that the Holy Spirit came on Jesus and He had the boldness to preach that”. And then, suddenly I heard, “and the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on you to preach and proclaim Good News, and to do the things that bring that good news into being”.

I am now going to preach and proclaim to you, that the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on you too. To do these things, to work, to proclaim, to be bold, to be a Bishop Budde, or I don’t know how to pronounce her name, sadly, and to be bold in the face of death threats, which is what she’s receiving right now. To bring the transformation and change into our culture and society that we are called to bring and to be.

So, I’m speaking maybe a little controversially for you. If anyone is uncomfortable with what I am saying, please talk to me about it [you can email rector@goodshepherdfw.org if you have questions!], I am going to be at a birthday party later and then an annual meeting, and then I am available. But I have two stories that go with this, with the importance of this proclamation and change. The first story is that I have a great hero of the faith, his name is [in German pronunciation] Deitrich Bonhoeffer, if you are an America his name is [in America pronunciation] Deitrich Bonhoeffer, but for me it’s [German] Deitrich Bonhoeffer. How many of you have heard of Bonhoeffer? Ah, about half of you. He was a Lutheran pastor, he was German, he was high in the Lutheran Organization, and he lived in the time of the Nazi party in Germany. The Nazi party said “Church, you are under our control, and you are going to preach what we tell you to preach and do what we tell you to do, and if that means rounding up the Jews in your neighborhood, you are going to do it”.

The Nazis said, “you have to stop saying that Jesus was a Jew, because that just wouldn’t be right”. They had many rules for the Church, I’m talking Catholic church, Lutheran church, there weren’t any Episcopalians or Anglicans in Germany at the time, but all of you had to follow this rule, and Bonhoeffer said, “No! I am called to preach what Isaiah 61 says, I am called to preach what Luke chapter 4 says”. He eventually founded what’s called “the confessing church” and said that “we will stick by our confession of the truth”. He was arrested for that, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp and was executed five days before the end of World War II, the end of April beginning of May 1945. His most famous book is probably The Cost of Discipleship. There is a cost to being bold and to being willing to speak the truth, to speak to proclaim the good news.

My second story is, how many of you have heard “the already of the not-yetness”? Oh, I love to watch faces go [contorts her face, imitating that of someone bewildered]! The already of the not-yetness is a theological construct that was put together about 60 years ago by a theologian named George Eldon Ladd, I even remembered his middle name [although the transcriber had to look it up]. He said, “Let’s look at two verses. One is from Luke chapter 4, where Jesus says, “today this has been accomplished, has been fulfilled”, the second is from Jesus’ words on the cross, “it is finished”. What does that mean? Well, if you take the words and what Jesus had done, it means that salvation is accomplished, healing is accomplished, forgiveness is accomplished. No more tears, no more crying, no more suffering”.

Is it accomplished? Eh, it really isn’t, but Jesus said it was, and I’m not going to disagree with Jesus! But Ladd said what we have here is the already of the not-yetness. It is accomplished, but we’re living in a time when it is not fully done. There is work to be done to add to the accomplishment, so that there won’t be World War III, so that there will be peace, so there will be these changes. We live in that strange time of the already of the not-yetness, and his example of this, in case you’re fascinated by this, is D-Day.

D-Day, the 6 ^th of June 1944, the allies landed on the beaches, the war was won on the 6 ^th of June 1944. Experts on history and war say it was won that day. When did the war end? [voice from the congregation: “it never did!”] Well, there’s one point, but its declared peace was May 8 ^th , 1945. We have the Battle of the Bulge, we have the Coldest Winter in Europe, we have all of that yet to happen. Yet, people knew that it was over, a victory was on its way. That’s living in this in-between time.

We live in this in between time. It’s finished, it’s fulfilled, but we still need to be proclaiming freedom and healing and release and hope and comfort. By we, I would love it if all of you said “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me”

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me.

Amen.

Common Holiness and Spiritual Gifts

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Tue, 21 Jan 2025 07:23:38 GMT

Boy is that an important gift!

2025-08
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Mother Carola Von Wrangle
Second Sunday of Epiphany, January 19, 2025
Isaiah 62:1-5 ; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 ; John 2:1-11 ; Psalm 36:5-10

I almost never do this, but I have to start today’s sermon with a joke. It’s supposedly a true story, but I’m not convinced that it is.

There was the annual visitation from the bishop to the diocese and there were two young acolytes, much like the two of you (gestures to acolytes). The bishop was reading the worship service at the altar, and the taller of the two young acolytes was serving the bishop, and went to wash his hands, the Ablution, it’s called. And he poured water over the hands of the bishop, only he had picked up the wrong cruet, he had poured wine over the hands of the bishop! The bishop gave him a look, and the acolyte said ‘ah! It’s a miracle!” That was for you guys.

Today we have the wonderful blessing of the wedding in Cana. I told you all, several weeks ago, that there are three major themes of Epiphany’s season. The overriding theme is that the Gospel is made manifest, Jesus is made manifest to the gentiles. It comes in three forms. The first is the wise men, the three kings jumping over the altar rail and worshiping Jesus and then going back and telling where they came from about the Messiah, and that they had found the Messiah. That’s that call to evangelism. The second, you remember well, is baptism, Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan River, and His Glory was made manifest, especially in hearing the words “This is my Son, my Beloved, in whom I am well pleased”. And the third form is miracles, that in seeing Jesus perform miracles we see the Glory of God. That’s what our gospel says today, “And His Glory was made manifest when He turned water into wine”.

That was a whole lot of water that became a whole lot of really good wine. People said, “oh my”, and a really big line there is “and His disciples believed in Him”. One of the main purposes of miracles is so that people will say “Oh, I can’t do that, there must be something to this, this must be the Messiah, this is the Miracle Worker”. I’m kind of surprised that even our song said that changing water into wine was the greatest of the miracles. I don’t think so. I think it was a cool miracle, I think there were some miracles that were maybe more helpful, or blessed people more, but who knows! I wasn’t at that wedding.

But I have two sermons this morning, I will eventually learn to preach only one sermon on a Sunday. Half of this sermon is about changing water into wine, this miracle of Jesus. There is a hymn that I absolutely love, you are welcome to pull out those blue hymnals if you want, we are going to sing it during communion, it is called “Lord You Give the Great Commission”. In verse three it says “Lord, You make the common Holy”. It is the perfect hymn for this miracle at Cana, that Jesus took water, H2O, pretty common, and made it Holy. He churned, he changed the substance of that water. Does that remind you of anything? Those of you who grew up Catholic, it might remind you of Transubstantiation, that what was wine became the blood of Christ. Here, Jesus turns water into wine that then can be used, there’s this looking forward to the Eucharistic prayer.

When I am blessing the Eucharist, there is a sense in that. I say “Lord, send your Holy Spirit upon these gifts, that they may be the body and the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ”. In those words, I’m saying “God, take this common wine, and let it be to us Your Body and Blood”. There’s a second part to that prayer, and I love this part, it is that I then say, “Let us be sanctified that we can be Holy as well”. And I’m not saying the words exactly right, but basically, I always cross myself here, and I don’t cross myself all the time. But I cross myself here, because I’m saying “God, you can take me and make me holy? Good luck!” but there is that deep sense that God can do that!

That’s a miracle. For each one of us, God can take common and make it holy. And we say, “The gifts of God for the People of God, Holy thigs for Holy people”. We really say that we become Holy. Holy has a meaning to it, not that we’re saints, and certainly not that we’re perfect, but that we are set aside for service to God. Isn’t that a cool thing? We are set aside, we’re special! All of us, we are beloved.

Then, in order for us to do this work that God has set us aside for, we need gifts. This is part two of the sermon, in case you were wondering. We have the reading from 1 Corinthians chapter 12, where Paul starts talking about spiritual gifts, he says, “I don’t want you to be ignorant about spiritual gifts, I want you to know about these spiritual gifts” and he lists nine spiritual gifts. I used to know them by heart, and I’m going to test myself on them now.

Wisdom, knowledge, tongues, interpretation, discernment of spirits, faith, prophecy… and two more. I made it to eight at the eight o’clock service. Oh well. Those are the nine gifts of the Holy Spirit, and he says something really important about gifts: Gifts are for the people to receive for works of services, it’s not that one person has more gifts, or that one person has all the gifts. Oh no. or, that a person is way more special than another because some gifts are more important. It’s simply that the gifts are given to us by the Holy Spirit, not because of, again, how special we are, but it’s God’s wish for us.

Now, the gifts are listed not only in first Corinthians, they’re also listed in Ephesian, in Romans. Sprinkled throughout the Old and New Testaments are various gifts. One book that I have says that there are 28 spiritual gifts, I have certainly not memorized all of them. Other books say there are 11, other books say 7 or 9, various numbers. But some of them are clearly in Scripture, like the gift of generosity, the gift of giving, compassion, prophecy. In Ephesians, the gifts are like surpassing your teacher, one is an intercessor, one is apostle, a prophet, and various gifts like that. Other gifts are gifts of service, boy is that an important gift. Intercession is one of my very favorite, prayer, comfort. Some of the gifts aren’t’ listed, but I bet you could come up with them, administration not one of my gifts, nowadays technology clearly not my gift. But there are gifts like listening, and gifts like pastoral care and worship, worship leadership. One of the wonderful things about gifts is that God seems to know us really well, and gives gifts that match us. If you ever were to ask me to be an administrator, I actually lost a job once, because they said, “What are you worst at?’ I said “administration”, and they thought that meant leadership, and I said “oh no, administration under the letter T for The annual meeting, The annual report, The budget. You name it, it’s T because I can’t tell you what the other letters are, I don’t do administration”

But God takes what we already do, and do well, and will add to that, often. On Thursday, we have Bible study, and one woman said “I write birthday cards for people here at church, and I don’t do it so I’ll get to heaven faster. I do it because it gives me so much joy”. Isn’t that a wonderful reason to serve God? I think that using our gifts should be life giving, not life stealing. And so, this person has a life-giving gift, she likes writing cards. I can’t even find the stamps and the envelopes, so you don’t get as many thank you notes from me as you should. But there are other gifts that you might want to explore “What is it that I love to do, and that I am good at, and where God has a place for?”

You all have done an amazing thing here, at Good Shepherd. When Pastor Josh first talked to me about being a Sabbatical Priest, he told me everything that you all do, and I said, “I’m supposed to do that in 20 hours a week”? And he said, “no!” and then he handed me a few months ago three pages that said all the things that you do, and who is doing them, and it’s not me. Mary’s name comes up at least 28 times there, Karen’s name is in capital letters and underlined. But we have people here who are coming forward and doing the ministry of this church and doing it wonderfully. You stepped in as a reader this morning, thank you! There’s a joy in that. I haven’t had anyone complain “do I really have to do this?” and if you did complain, I don’t know what my answer would be, I’d probably say “yes, for four months you really do!”

But the cleverest thing that I have found here that goes with gifts is these sheets, do you all know about these little sheets? They’re downstairs at the bottom of the stairs, on your way into coffee hour. I picked up one that says “Church of the Good Shepherd Pastoral Care Team”. But there’s about 20 different committees and ministries that have cards like this, and the first question they ask is “what is the spiritual connection”. If you think that washing dishes in the kitchen isn’t a spiritual gift, you’re wrong! You are providing community, fellowship, and many other things, cleaning. Wonderful! And then “What is it we do”, and then “How can I participate”, and finally “whom can I contact?” Carol, you are on this list for pastoral care committee. This is a gift! We had newcomers last weekend who got a stack of these and took them home all excited! This works, we can look for where are my gifts, God, and how do You want me to use them?

There’s a book called “What Color is My Parachute?” and the author of that book says that your gift is where the world’s greatest needs and your greatest joy intercept. So, it doesn’t mean you have to go to deepest, darkest, Africa to be a missionary. It might mean that; I’d love to do that. But where does your joy and the world’s needs intercept, and that giving of that gift.

We are a community beloved by God, with gifts to share in our community, within and outside. In 1 Corinthians chapter 14, two chapters after this morning’s reading, it says “Pray earnestly for gifts”. Are there gifts that you might have that you want to share in this church or in this community?

How will God be using us more and more?

Amen.

Concerning Baptism

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 20:14:34 GMT

Why Did Jesus Get Baptized?

Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Mother Carola Von Wrangle
Frist Sunday after the Epiphany, January 12, 2025
Isaiah 43:1-7 ; Acts 8:14-17 ; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22 ; Psalm 29

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

Amen.

Last week, we began our season of Epiphany, and we had the three wise men, the three kings, the magi, make their way up front and we talked about “what is Epiphany”. It is a season where Jesus is manifest as Lord, where we see the glory of God in Jesus, and where he is manifest to the gentiles, that’s us.

That is a main focus of Epiphany, but there are two other foci, focuses, for Epiphany. One of them is that Jesus was a doer of miracles, so we always read the story of the wedding at Cana, where Jesus turned water into wine. That is part of the “Miracle Doer”, the “One who Heals”, the “One who can do Things with Power that we Cannot Do”, things like that. That is this focus of Epiphany, that “ah, That’s the one, That’s the Long-Expected Messiah”.

The third passage, interestingly enough, is the baptism of Jesus, which is what we are celebrating today. It’s an amazing thing that that is such a big deal. I want to look at what is baptism, why do we baptize, why were we baptized, and why would Jesus be baptized? Okay?

So, let’s start with our own baptisms and why we were baptized. I was baptized on January 5 ^th , 1948. The interesting thing is that I wasn’t born until February 2 ^nd , 1948. The clerk made a mistake on my baptismal certificate. But I was baptized, we lived in a part of Austria that was 120% Catholic, and suddenly two Protestants were born in the same region. The pastor came from Southern Germany by train to baptize us. A good reason to baptize me is that my Godfather, the only one of my many godparents that actually showed up at my baptism, was the commandant of the French occupation forces in that part of Austria, and he had access to good food and champagne. There was a party! But I remember very little of it, as I hadn’t been born yet.

But we baptize in the church, that’s the fun part of this story of baptism, but we baptize in the church for a variety of reasons. One is tradition, we baptize because our parents were baptized and our grandparents were baptized, and it’s kind of what we do. When I was a priest of a church in Upstate New York, I got phone calls saying, “hello there, is this the priest, I’d like to have my baby done”. I had to figure out what that meant, and what it meant was baptized. It meant that they would show up on a Sunday morning, hope to receive 20 minutes of instruction on baptism, have their baby baptized, and disappear. That would be the last we would ever see of them, until it was time for a marriage or a funeral. That’s tradition, it doesn’t mean a lot, but it’s not a bad reason either. My children were baptized when I was a card-carrying atheist, and I had my children baptized because I was pleasing my parents, that was the only reason. And yet, it was okay, because eventually I have come to faith, and they have come to faith. God is in charge, so I’m not actually against traditional baptisms, but it’s one reason.

Another reason that we baptize is that it is a sacrament. In the Lutheran tradition, a sacrament is something that is instituted by Christ himself, which is interesting because he didn’t actually institute Baptism, it had been going on in the Jewish tradition for a long time before He was baptized, but still it is this sacrament and we are part of a church and we are a sacramental people, and we do this. Baptism has, as all sacraments, our definition of a sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, right? The outward sign in baptism is, get ready, it’s water, right? The inward sign is a variety of things. The inward sign is that we believe that baptism involves forgiveness of sins, that there’s a newness. Well, most of the people I’ve baptized in my life are about [18 inches] big, and they haven’t had a lot of opportunity to sin yet. But it’s part of who we are as people of God that we baptize for forgiveness of sin, if I’m baptizing a teenager to an adult, no problem, lots of opportunity for sin and what a wonderful thing to have this regeneration, this newness and new life.

Another reason that we baptize, and I’m going to see if I can hit them all, and you are welcome to respond afterward, is to welcome a person to the family of the Church. It’s a wonderful thing, when I baptize someone, I ask “will you who are gathered here, witnessing this baptism, will you support this person in his or her life in Christ” what is your answer? [“We will”] “WE WILL!!” Yeah! We mean it, we will support this person, this person is part of our family now, and is welcome into our family, is welcome to sacraments, is welcome to all of that.

Those are some of the reasons for baptism, does anyone have someone that I missed?

Fear. Thank you, I did mention that at 8:00, thank you for bringing it up. Now, for those of you who, well, there’s connection, but the fear is that if we don’t get baptized, that’s it. We’re lost, yeah, Carol is doing this [drawing her hand across her throat to signal death], and there is this fear that we won’t go to heaven. In the Catholic tradition, that fear was so strong that they created a ting called limbo, so that children who hadn’t had a chance to be baptized wouldn’t go to hell, they’d go to some intermediate state.

So, those are some reasons for baptism. Carol? Oh, receiving gifts! We’re going to get to that! Thank you, that’s absolutely true. Oh, and we have, yes, sir! That’s the welcoming, joined into the body of Christ, very good.

“Part of the Apostolic Succession”, I think we will have a conversation about that afterwards, but interesting thought. Thank you! Okay, I’m going to stop taking responses now because there’s a coffee hour afterwards.

So, all of these are reasons to be baptize, why did Jesus get baptized? And I ask this very seriously. Jesus, did he meet any of those criteria? Did Jesus sin? No, Scripture says that He experienced everything the rest of us humans experience except He did not sin, Which I think is impressive, because He was a teenager at some point, and yet it seems that He did not sin. So, He didn’t need the forgiveness of sins. Did He need to be brought into the Body of Christ, connected to the Body of Christ? My response is no, because it didn’t exist yet, He was the Body of Christ! Any of the other reasons we had, I see that Jesus did not meet those requirements. He was perfect, He was God, and yet He was obedient and got baptized. John didn’t want to baptize Him, particularly. He knew He was the Messiah, but he said, “Who am I to baptize you?”

But, in obedience they went through with the baptism.

A couple of things that I would say why Jesus was Baptized. One is as a model for us. It is part of the Christian life to be baptized. Jesus started with that, and here we are. Most of us were baptized as infants, and so didn’t have a choice about it? How many of you had a choice? Cool! That’s a pretty high number! What a wonderful choice to get to make, I love to baptize people who get to make that choice, because there’s a reason for them to be there.

Another reason that Jesus was baptized is that people would see Him, it was part of that “made manifest”, there He is. There were a lot of other people being baptized that day, and they could see what was going on between John and Jesus, what was happening at the baptism, possibly hear the voice of God in all of that. So, there He was, doing this.

I think that maybe we now get to Carol’s point, the receiving of gifts. Jesus had been working in his father’s carpentry shop until now. He is now going to go out and minister, and He needs the empowerment to do that, so the Holy Spirit comes upon Him in the shape or form of a dove and empowers Him with the gifts of the Holy Spirit to do ministry. He had never preached a sermon, He had never taught the Sermon on the Mount, there were teachings he had never performed, miracles, he had never done any of those things. Now He was empowered and sent forth to do that. That’s something that I love that all of us have that available to us too. We can ask God to anoint me for ministry, to send the Holy Spirit so that I can understand this scripture, or minister to the homeless, or the shut in, or whoever.

Finally, Jesus was baptized for the very best reason I could possibly imagine. That is that Jesus heard a voice from Heaven saying, “This is my son, my beloved, in whom I am well pleased”. Those words are words that stayed with Jesus throughout His ministry, that He could say “Oh, I am so tired. I am my Father’s Beloved”. Oh, this is so hard, or so whatever. I am my Father’s Beloved. We’ve talked already about the definition of grace, that grace is the unmerited, unearned, unconditional love of God. That, again, wasn’t because of how incredibly anointed Jesus might have been for all of this, it is that He is loved. We hear those words again, we’ll hear them on the last Sunday of Epiphany, and on the 6 ^th of August, at the Mount of Transfiguration, where again a voice from Heaven says, “This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased”. They strengthen Jesus for going to the Cross, and His ultimate Ministry.

We, too, get to hear those words. We, too, get to be empowered by the Holy Spirit for ministry. We, too, get to be beloved people.

Praise God.

Amen.

We are now going to have a renewal of our baptismal vows; I want to introduce that with one more little story. That is, I think it was last week, I think I told a story of an 8-year-old at her baptism. This girl is from my parish in upstate New York, and she was an excited young Christian, she was going to be the first person in her entire family to ever go to college. She came to church every Sunday, and was an acolyte, and did all sorts of things. Then she went to college, and a young man in college got her on drugs and started trafficking her. This girl became lost. She really was lost, for about two years when no one knew where she was. But that baptism stayed with her, and she found her way back, she found her way into recovery, and back into the church. I went and visited the church about four years ago, and this young girl was clean and sober, and was graduating with a nursing degree. Those words of her belovedness and her being received into the family and her forgiveness stayed with her and carried her through those dark, dark times.

As we renew our baptismal vows, we can be encouraged that God’s promises stay with us.

Amen again.

What is Epiphany?

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 06 Jan 2025 06:02:51 GMT

They bowed down. They fell in worship. They were transformed by coming and meeting Jesus.

2025-06
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Mother Carola Von Wrangle

Transcribed by Jess Isenberg
Sunday just before Epiphany, January 05, 2025
Jeremiah 31:7-14 ; Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a ; Matthew 2:1-12 ; Psalm 84 or 84:1-8

In this process of getting to know each other, I want you to know that I’m having an interactive service today. And, when I say interactive that means that you need to act with me. I promise not to do this every week, but today is epiphany, it’s a wonderful day. It’s a day that a lot of us don’t have a clue what it means.

But, every year, on January 6 ^th , the 13 ^th day after Christmas, we celebrate the coming of the Wise Men, and the manifestation of Christ. We, as I said last week, decided to move it up a day, because who’s going to come tomorrow to celebrate this great feast when we could just do it today.

So, here we have it. This is going to take some doing to explain all of what Epiphany is about. Let me just start by saying that I have a collection of 142 nativity sets, which is absurd, I live in 800 square feet! My smallest set is the size of a walnut, and my largest takes up the front of the piano approximately. But I love especially the wise men and the camels. The first church I was the rector of the children 20 years before I got there had named all the wise men and all the camels. They would move them, week after week onto different windowsills, and saying ‘here goes Bozo’! Bozo was one of the camels.

I brought my own wise men today; these are from Puerto Rico. In much of the world, Epiphany is really celebrated! It’s really important. The three wise men are a big deal, they’re not the ‘we don’t need to bring them forward, we have Mary and Joseph, the important ones’. These are made in Puerto Rico, they’re made of paper mâché, I know you can’t see them in the back, but they brought the best gifts of all. They brought a toy truck, a hobby horse and a doll.

Now, for our first act of interactive action, I need (counting) six people to come up, because the wise men and camels are not supposed to be. Will you help me move the wise men and camels?

Can we have a little We Three Kings to with this? [Alan Lynch plays We Three Kings on the organ]

So, Epiphany. What does ‘epiphany’ mean? [Gestures to several people with their hands raised] Enlightenment is a really good word. A revelation, a very good word. Surprise! There is a sense of ‘ooh, wow’! I love the old advertisements for V-8 juice, “I could have had a V-8”! That’s kind of the aha! There it is! Eureka, I’ve found it! Yes, all those words are part of Epiphany. So, it’s a day of celebration. What it actually means, found in the Bible in 1 ^st Timothy, is the manifestation of God.

At Christmastime, we have the incarnation of God, that Jesus takes on our flesh, and comes and dwells among us. But Jesus

was born in a stable in a little village in Bethlehem, and not a whole lot of people were going to find out about it, until the wise men showed up. It’s a wonderful story that we heard in our gospel this morning. The Wise Men, or Magi, or Kings, they’re from far away, and they are not Jews. They’re from Arabia, or Saba, or some other place. They see in the stars in the heavens that something is happening somewhere, and they follow that star. I wouldn’t know where to go, I would get lost in a moment, but they keep following the star and end up in Jerusalem, thinking a King is going to be in Jerusalem!

But there’s only King Herod.

And he never comes across as a good guy in the scriptures.

King Herod says ‘ooh’, and he makes nice. ‘Oh, isn’t that wonderful, a new king is being born!’ and ‘wow, I would love to go and worship and bring gifts too, can you please come back and tell me about this wonderful event that’s happening somewhere!’

And the wise men think ‘sure’ and they go. And they worship Jesus, a baby, surrounded by animals, in a cave maybe, in a manger. We don’t know exactly what it looks like, but this is our western image of what it looked like, it looks much cleaner than any stable I’ve ever seen. They fall to their knees because they know a mighty thing has happened.

And then they do an amazing thing.

They don’t listen to Herod.

Herod has just said ‘come back and tell me where that baby is’. They go home a different way, and at that point the real event of Epiphany happens, which is they tell the rest of the world what happened.

I’m going to be very bold and say that because of Epiphany, because of that work of the wise men, we have the right to become Christians. Jesus was prophesied about in the Old Testament, in Isaiah particularly; “Unto you a child will be born, and his name will be Emmanuel and He will be a Prince of Peace and a Comforter” and all those things. Isaiah was Jewish, so to whom was he writing? The Jews! There was no thought that some… gentiles in Federal Way Washington would care about this baby, or would be redeemed by this baby, saved by this baby, comforted by this baby.

It was all for the Jews. But the magi go off and tell the story. Because of them, we, in Federal Way, get to tell this story.

So, Epiphany starts out as being a day of sharing the Good News. I already said it last week, but you’re going to hear it from me again, that evangelism is a scary thing, isn’t it.

This idea that we have to go tell other people that we know some good news, that we know the source of life itself. Yet that’s what we’re called to do.

Many years ago, on Epiphany, I was preaching this sharing the good news idea of Epiphany, and the words from Ephesians chapter 6 came up, where Paul talks about putting on the whole armor of God. He says to put on the shoes of eagerness to spread the Gospel.

So I said, ‘Everyone, in this church, next week bring your shoes. I’m going to bless your shoes, and then you’re going to be eager to spread the Gospel’. And you know, everyone brought shoes, we had a big pile of shoes in front of the altar. We blessed the shoes, and then half an hour later we were separating out who’s shoe belonged to whom. Maybe not the best idea I had.

But people were willing to go out. People willing to say ‘gosh, yes, this is good news’.

I had an 8-year-old who was preparing for Baptism, and I was going through the baptismal service with her. One of the

questions that is asked during the examination of baptismal services is ‘will you share with others the good news of Jesus Christ?’. I said, ‘How are you going to do that, Lacy’, she said ‘oh really easily, on Monday morning after I’m baptized, I’m going to go to the principal of my school, and he makes announcements over the intercom to all the classrooms and I’m going to say that I am Baptized and I believe in Jesus Christ’.

I said “Okay”. And she did that, she got it.

Her life was changed, and that’s part of that epiphany, that wonderful sense.

Well, Epiphany has other aspects to it, not just tennis shoes and eagerness about the Gospel, not just singing about the wise men. But in various cultures, Epiphany has other ideas, one of which is water. In Eastern Orthodox tradition, that’s Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, and other Eastern Orthodox people, they bless all the water for the whole year on Epiphany.

I lived in Frankfurt, Germany for five years, I was the rector of the Episcopal church in Frankfurt. On Epiphany, I was invited to the blessing of the waters, where all the priests from the different traditions came to the river Rhine, which is a really big river. They stood there with their big beards, their wonderful robes and vestments. They blessed the whole river, the ships on it, and blessed the activity on it. Then, they marched back to their churches. People brought water jugs, empty jugs. They blessed tons and tons of jugs, and people filled their water jugs to take home their water to bless their homes, their cars, their families, and the events of their lives. It was a big deal, and if you ran out of water throughout the year you went back to church with your jug and refilled your jug. People understood this sense of God is among us, God is real, and we’re going to bless for more of this.

We are going to have a little water blessing today. We’re not done with our interactive work yet.

Another part of Epiphany, especially when I lived in Germany, everywhere I looked houses and doorways had little letters across the top. You’ve done that here at Church of the Good Shepherd, where you write letters across the top of the doorway.

We’re going to do that today.

Through the wonders of Amazon, on Friday night at midnight I ordered 100 pieces of chalk. They arrived last night. Each of you is invited to take a napkin and a piece of chalk to take them home, then you can bless your own homes with chalking over the top of your doorway. We are going to do that here this morning as well.

What you’re doing is that you are saying, for the year 2025, you are following in the footsteps of the wise men. There are three letters that are put across the door, “C”, “B”, and “M” for Casper, Balthazar, and Melchior. However. they may be written. It is a blessing for a whole year, but it’s also a way of blessing those who enter your home or into this church, that you are welcoming and also sending forth, again with those shoes of eagerness.

So, my questions to you are:

First, do you know who brought you to faith in Jesus? We have the wise men, but did someone or some event or something bring you into the church or bring you to or increase your faith? I’ll tell two stories before I ask you, and you don’t have to tell me your answer(but you are more than welcome to email office@goodshepherdfw.org or rector@goodshepherdfw.org ). The first story is about a friend of mine. He had been a hippie and had done everything but ever go to church. He was a musician.

One day, he became a Christian, and he went home for Christmas. There was all his family gathered there in Montana. He said, ‘family, I want you to know that I am now a Christian’, and people looked at him like ‘you? Really?’ but a voice from the back of the room, his grandmother, said “Praise the Lord! I’ve been praying for you since you were born!”

Maybe there’s been someone who’s been praying for you. Maybe there’s been someone who invited you. I spent fifteen years as an atheist, which is really an agnostic because as soon as you say you don’t believe in god, you’re already saying there might be God. But anyway, one Thursday morning, a friend called me up and said ‘you know, our children really should be going to church. My husband’s a Muslim, and your husband’s a jerk’ which wasn’t very nice, of them to say, ‘but let’s take our children to church’. She was an Episcopalian, so we went off to St. Stephen’s Church in Warhurst, and I never left.

Someone invited me. Someone saw a need. I would encourage you to think who are the three kings in your life, who have spread good news to you. Maybe you have done the same for someone else.

Then, to think about the difference that today makes. What difference did it make to the kings? Those wise men were kings, they were used to people bowing before them, to receiving gifts and tributes. What did they do when they saw Jesus?

They bowed down. They fell in worship. They were transformed by coming and meeting Jesus. Then, they went forward and told others. We all have different gifts, different ways of knowing and coming to God. I encourage you to allow more and more of that deepening and transformation in your lives.

Now!

I would ask those of you who would like to and are able to move back to the baptismal font. We are going to move into the interactive part of the sermon.

I very carefully asked Karen if this water that we use to put in the baptismal font had been blessed, and she said no. So we’re going to begin by blessing it. We will ask god’s blessing on this water.

Lord God, we thank you for water

For the source of goodness and life,

Of renewal and refreshment

We thank you that you use water for blessing us and our communities in our service to You.

We ask Your blessing on this water in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit

Amen

I’m going to dip my bowl into this water, as is Anna, and we’re going to sprinkle you, it won’t be so much that it’ll be painful, but it’s cold. When you are sprinkled, it is appropriate to make the sign of the Cross, in remembrance of your own baptism. That is, at the baptism the priest, using crism[??] oil makes a sign of the cross on your forehead and says “You are sealed and marked as Christ’s own forever”. That is the joy that we have in remembering that today.

[To Anna Lynn] What am I supposed to say when I do this?

[Anna Lynn] Remember your baptism.

[Pastor Carola] Remember your baptism! [gesturing to Anna] The expert!

[Pastor Carola and Deacon Anna use little evergreen branches to fling the water that we just blessed at everyone gathered around the baptismal font, reminding them to “Remember your Baptism”]

Okay, let’s start moving towards the front door, we are coming back in again, you don’t get to leave!

The chalk and the napkins are here, so come on out, and I need one out here, so I’ll just take.. thank you!

I have a wonderful liturgy of the chalking of the doors, thanks to Alan, our musician. What I am going to need is the [counting] five tallest people in the room to chalk the doors.

Alright!

[if you want to enjoy the unedited ambient sounds of people moving in anticipation of something to come without seeing anything that is happening, may I suggest watching the video on demand on the Church of the Good Shepherd Federal Way’s youtube channel, under the “live” section]

[The responses made by the congregation will be bolded ]

Peace be to this house and to all who enter here

Amen

May all who come to our place of worship here, rejoice to find Christ, and may we seek and serve in everyeone we meet that same Jesus, who is Your incarnate Word, now and forever

Amen

God of Heaven and Earth, you revealed your only begotton one to every nation by the guidance of the star, bless this church, this church family, and all those who inhabit it.

Fill us with the light of Christ, that our concern for others may reflect Your Love.

We ask this through Christ Jesus, our Lord and Savior.

Amen

Now to the six wise men(or tall people).

The first one, please go up, and write the number 20 over the door and a plus sign. Good!

Next, the three wise men! Now, Casper, who makes a C and a plus sign. Excellent!

Melchior makes a M and a plus.

And Balthazar makes a B and a plus.

Someone else, you get to make a 25!

The three wise men, Casper, Melchior, and Balthazar, followed the star to Bethlehem and the child Jesus 2000 and 25 years ago, therefore those numbers.

May Christ bless our homes, our church and remain with us throughout this new year.

Amen!

Sermon : No Better Place

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 18:21:44 GMT

What if the baby is too good for this place? What then?

2025-05
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Christmas Eve, December 24, 2024
Isaiah 9:2-7 ; Titus 2:11-14 ; Luke 2:1-14-20 ; Psalm 96

On December 13, 1985, my cat Eowyn died of cancer. She was only five years old. And while my family had three other cats and a dog, Eowyn was my cat, and I was her human. As Eowyn was dying, my family was busily packing for a cross-country move that would take place the next month. It was the middle of my eighth-grade year.

I cried a lot in those days. My dad bought me a poster of the famous “Footprints” poem, which was new to me, and after the move I put it up my bedroom. And someone from church gave me a photocopy of a treacly poem called “Four Feet in Heaven.” I treasured that gift. I needed all the comfort I could get. I needed the ressurance that Eowyn’s five years on this earth were not merely a waste.

For even at that age, I remember making the agonized observation, through my tears, that “Eowyn was too good for this world.” I couldn’t fathom that a creature as beautiful as my cat could be allowed to suffer and die as she did. Where was God? Somewhere else? Somewhere far away from Eowyn’s suffering and my own? Was Eowyn in a better place now? Then why was she ever here to begin with?

I was 13 when Eowyn died. I’m 52 now. Has anything changed? Adulthood has only starkened for me the contrast between innocent life and brutal suffering. Apparently this is the way the world is. Genocide in Gaza. Brutality in Nigeria. Hopelessness in Ukraine. Authoritarianism in America: our livelihoods are now at the mercy of the tweets of billionaires. And in every place on earth, babies continue to be born: unsullied, helpless, crying out for love and warmth and comfort and milk. But they won’t all receive what they need.

The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.

Has it really? How could we possibly tell? Shouldn’t there be evidence of this?

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all.

Salvation from what? Certainly not from confusion, violence, hopelessness … these things are still with us. Everywhere we look. Or is this salvation reserved for our future? Maybe only after we die? That’s easy to imagine, but then, why are we living now? Could we possibly be given a piece of that salvation on this very night? A great light in the darkness?

What if divine salvation actually showed up in history?

Here’s some history for you—history also attested by other ancient sources. In the year 6 C.E., the governor of Roman Syria, Quirinius, took a census. It wasn’t actually taken during the time of Herod the Great, because Herod died ten years earlier, and his son Herod Archelaus was deposed by … Quirinius, who then held this census.

Anyway, Jews living in Judea at the time had strong opinions about census-taking because of their interpretation of certain passages of Torah—and because it would mean dealing in Roman coins that bore the image of Caesar Augustus. They saw this as idolatry. So a Jewish liberation group called the Zealots revolted. They were defeated, of course—then, and every time after.

Doubtless this episode was on the mind of the writer of the Gospel of Luke when he wrote about the birth of Jesus. He wrote a couple generations later, after the revolt that brought on the destruction of all Jerusalem. He didn’t get his dates and rulers correct, but we must forgive him for living in an era without Wikipedia or even school textbooks. The important thing is that Luke wrote about the coming of salvation into history—a different kind of revolt than the ones that kept failing.

When salvation finally comes to the world, what should it look like? A mighty general on a war horse? A charismatic politician blaming some group of “others” for your pain and promising to punish them on your behalf? Is that what salvation looks like?

How about acts of violence against the wealthy and powerful? Will that heal our society’s wounds? What if a group rises up in revolt? Do you hear the people sing? Will you join in their crusade? How has that gone in the past?

You have multiplied the nation,
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as people exult when dividing plunder.

You know how it is, right? The joy among the people when dividing plunder? Oh, you don’t? Well, neither do I.

But the people of Syria do—today! What happens when the people do manage to overthrow the dictator? Will you help them build a new nation? Whose rules will it operate under? How will you make sure they’re the rules that you and your people agree with? What happens when that doesn’t work out?

For all the boots of the tramping warriors
and all the garments rolled in blood
shall be burned as fuel for the fire.

Such violent imagery, mingled with patriotism and hope! Such glorious imaginings! But … is this what divine justice looks like? Winning a war—even a so-called “just war”? Where is divine mercy? Are we listening beyond our fears? What would it take to bring us into alignment with God’s wishes for our world? Perhaps Luke wondered this as he wrote.

A census causes chaos, and then, into the midst of this chaos, we hear the first humble cry of a newborn infant. Where? In Bethlehem, the city King David came from. Wait, what? Dig that symbolism! Where else would salvation come from? Is this our new king? Will he be the one to lead us into long-overdue revenge against our enemies?

“And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.”

All the beds are taken—no room for a baby. No room, no room. But babies are tiny. Anyone have a pack-n-play? No room, no room. How about a dresser drawer? No room, no room. How about a plastic bin? No room, no room.

OK, then … how about a feeding trough? The hay is warm, but we’ll wrap him up tightly to help him sleep.

The animals gather around, and here you can see the cartoon I’ve printed in your service leaflet, drawn by my own child Sarah several years ago. “Seems like they coulda found a better place.”

What if the baby is too good for this place? What then?

Then and now, harmless innocence is enclosed on all sides by cruelty. If we were reading Matthew’s gospel tonight instead of Luke’s, we’d immediately read of a plot against this baby’s life—and while this baby escapes, many others do not. King Herod (we imagine, were he still alive), might well act like the Egyptian Pharaoh of days twice as ancient. Wouldn’t he?

How many kings do you know who willingly surrender their power to someone else? Yet this baby will do exactly that. And that’s how we’ll finally know he’s for real.

But we’re in Luke’s gospel, so we’ll save Matthew’s story for another day. We’ll let the Magi from the East come straggling into town on the twelfth day of Christmas. We’re not there yet. Instead, we’re shifting outside of Bethlehem to the hills where shepherds are patiently—or maybe impatiently—waiting out the night.

What if something wondrous happened—something that convinced these rough, smelly men to leave 99 sheep on the hillside unprotected and come searching for … for what? A lamb? A lost divine lamb who has somehow stumbled into humanity, right into the animals’ breakfast?

Who among us would put our baby in a feedbox? Well, what if there was no better place? Refugee children sleep in tents and cells and cages, and while governments may be indifferent, their parents love them no less for it.

What if the baby is too good for this world? What could this mean?

Could it mean that there is no better place? That merely to exist, for any amount of time, is to reveal something truly wondrous to the world? That helpless innocence is indeed our original state, to which we must someday return? Could it be that even the mighty and murderous will be humbled and sing of God’s love, along with everyone who ever existed?

Could it be that God now sings of our love, because one night in Bethlehem two thousand years ago, God came into the world, and his parents fed him and kept him warm?

My cat Eowyn lived for five years and then died. Her suffering was not unique—but there’s never been another cat like her, and there never will be again. She was—she is—a glorious part of God’s world. And I’m sure that some of you are truly suffering tonight—physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. I don’t have all the answers.

The church doesn’t have all the answers. But we do have a bunch of stories—not just this one. Stories for every occasion and every hurt. We’ll keep telling these stories week by week, and all of us can gather around their warmth and listen and learn how to love like Jesus loves.

What better place could there be for God than the humility of the world God created? And what better place could there be for you tonight than the places these stories are told? For without stories, we would be merely sheep and donkeys and cows, nosing into a trough so we could fill our bellies and live another day. We wouldn’t think about what’s coming. We would be merely innocent belovedness.

But we are humans. And that means we lose our innocence. We remember the past somewhat and predict the future rather badly. We can never quite kick this feeling that we don’t fully belong in the only world we have ever known. As if there might be a better place.

But what if this is the Good Place? What if it has been made good by the one who has joined us in it?

I’m sure glad to be in this world with all of you tonight. I see here a great light shining on people who have walked in darkness. Open your eyes and see it. Open your ears and hear its stories. Open your hearts and give yourselves to one another with joy.

Hallelujah!

Merry Christmas!

Sermon : Getting To Know You

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 05:34:05 GMT

First Sunday After Christmas

2025-05
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Mother Carola Von Wrangle, Sabbatical Priest
First Sunday after Christmas, December 29, 2024
Isaiah 61:10-62:3 ; Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7 ; John 1:1-18 ; Psalm 147 or 147:13-21

Dig Out Our Ears!

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 23 Dec 2024 06:57:29 GMT

We are not alone as we seek justice, mercy, and humility.

2025-04
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Fourth Sunday of Advent (Year C), December 22, 2024
Micah 5:2-5a ; Psalm 80:1-7 ; Hebrews 10:5-10 ; Luke 1:39-55

Did you hear our psalm today? The psalmist cries out to God: “Restore us!” Everything has gone wrong, and we need you to come and save us. In the name of our ancient ancestors, come be with us! We are in pain. We are sailing through a sea of uncertainty. We have wandered far in a land that is waste. Come. Come restore our fortunes. Don’t forget the people you love.

The psalmist urges God to hear, and hopefully we do, too. Hopefully we hear all these words from scripture—the words of the helpless and the hopeless, the lost and the wandering, and the earnest desires of those who only wish to see God’s face, so that we can begin again. Hopefully we hear these words and hold them alongside our own lives.

So now, pop quiz: In what language is the Letter to the Hebrews written? No, not Hebrew. It’s Greek—the most splendid, erudite Greek in the New Testament. Did you hear the sophistication of the writing as it was read? Neither did I—because we heard it in English! But scholars tell us that this author was probably a Jew who was highly educated in Greek. I spend a lot of time heeding the words of Bible scholars. Sometimes we need those with more knowledge to help us hear things that otherwise we would have missed.

It's not a new problem, things getting lost in translation. Ironically, it was also a problem for the author of this letter! When he quotes the Old Testament, he’s not quoting from the original Hebrew, but from the standard Greek translation that people used in the first century. That translation, called the Septuagint, was already a couple centuries old by then. And unfortunately, it wasn’t necessarily a very good translation.

We know all this now because there has been so much biblical scholarship over the course of Christian history. But we need to forgive the author of the Letter to the Hebrews for what he didn’t know. Today we hear him quote from the seventh verse of Psalm 40:

“Sacrifices and offerings you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me.” The ancient Hebrews attributed all the psalms to King David, even those that were written long after his death. But the author attributes this quote to … Jesus. Whoa! How could Jesus speak these words a thousand years before Jesus? “A body you have prepared for me”? What a prophecy this must be!

OK, that’s thrilling and all, but I’d like to invite you all to get a red Book of Common Prayer out of the pew in front of you and turn to page 640. Look at verse 7 of that psalm, Psalm 40, as it’s written there. That’s page 640, Psalm 40, verse 7:

“In sacrifice and offering you have taken no pleasure (you have given me ears to hear you).”

Wait. Where’s the part about preparing a body?

I even looked up the text in Hebrew and attempted a halting translation myself, with help from a Hebrew lexicon. Here’s what I got: “Ritual sacrifice and offerings you have not delighted in. Ears you have dug out for me.”

Ears? Dug out?

Yet when we look in the Septuagint, there we find, in Greek: “A body you have prepared for me,” instead of “ears you have dug out for me.”

I learned this week that the Hebrew verb karah can mean to dig, to pierce, or to open. But it can also mean to acquire by trade … or to prepare something. Now, we also have words in English that mean more than one thing, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Think of the many meanings of the verb “to run,” for instance. But this linguistic phenomenon sure is inconvenient when we’re trying to translate the Bible!

Poetically, I do like to imagine God preparing our bodies from the clay, digging out holes for our ears so that we will be uniquely able among the creatures of earth to hear and respond to God’s call. So maybe it can mean both things at once?

Keep hearing, then, as we turn to the Prophet Micah, who lived some 700 years before Jesus. Like the psalmist, and like most of the prophets of ancient Israel, Micah said that though we may seek to honor God with ritual sacrifice and burnt offerings, it’s not supposed to be a strictly transactional relationship. God doesn’t drink the blood of goats. God loves us whether or not we make temple sacrifices. And because it’s expensive to buy an animal and then hand it over to the priests for slaughter, the poor are supposed to have special provision made for them.

Micah had a big problem with sacrifices and offerings that were not accompanied by ethical action. A Christian equivalent today might be going to church every Sunday, but victimizing people the rest of the week—through a career where we insist we’re “just doing our job.”

To give gifts to God is of honorable intent. But when we do so instead of loving one another—or even do so in the process of exploiting one another—our rituals are shown to be empty. Have we not used the ears that God dug out of our heads? How dare we try to bribe God with things God doesn’t need? What does God ask of us, after all, but to seek justice, show mercy, and walk humbly in God’s world?

The Prophet Micah asks this rhetorical question in the chapter that follows the one we hear from today. But first, Micah envisions a new ruler emerging from the little town of Bethlehem. Hey, that’s where King David came from! Yet salvation will not come from great and glorious kings. Salvation will come from someone far more humble. Symbolism upon symbolism—this is how scripture and prophecy work together. The prophets give us ancient songs that we can always remix for younger ears. When the Messiah finally does come, his earliest followers will comb the scriptures, come upon this verse from Micah, and say, “A-ha!”

But we’re not in Bethlehem yet—not as we read from Luke’s gospel. Mary is from Nazareth of Galilee, a long way from Bethlehem. And when she becomes pregnant, she immediately visits her older cousin Elizabeth, who is also pregnant and who can, no doubt, share some feminine wisdom. I bet, though, that Elizabeth is surprised by the wisdom that proceeds from her mouth: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” For her child, John the Baptist, has leapt for joy in utero.

We pull all these threads of scripture together today: a thirst for justice, so children don’t have to be sacrificed to fund the salaries of insurance CEOs and gun lobbyists. A thirst for mercy, so that even the cold and unfeeling are not gunned down in the streets, but merely removed from positions of power as we seek healing for them, too. A thirst for humility, so that we will look to others to add their knowledge to our own, that we may not stupidly trample the vulnerable by our own lack of understanding.

And we’re not alone as we seek justice, mercy, and humility. Mary seeks exactly the same things. She’s not just excited to have a baby. She’s preparing for the revolution! And so she sings her magnificent manifesto:

“My soul shows everyone how large God is in our world! God is large because God comes to be with someone as small as I am. God’s mercy is always available to the humble. God’s strength is on the side of those who cannot save themselves from harm. God’s cause is to tear down the thrones of the powerful, so that they, too, will have no choice but to join us in our humility. God’s long-term plan is to feed us all, so that nobody goes hungry—so that nobody is shot in the streets or in the schools, nobody murdered in war zones or in their own homes. God has promised to be with us through all things—through danger, through violence, through suffering—all the way. And lest we doubt that God is serious about this, look! Here is God within my very body, kicking against ribs and bladder, somehow divine, yet now, in some way, not yet able to imagine all the wonders to come.”

Of course, that’s not really a translation of the Magnificat—that’s my poetic remix. I pray that it helps you hear.

To love one another, then, turns out to be the same thing as loving God. We can’t truly do one without the other. Mary knows this, and she proclaims it. The world is about to turn!

As we draw ever closer to the mystery of Christmas, let’s ask God to “dig out our ears”—to flush out the years of accreted wax that prevent us from hearing what God intends. May we never be deaf to the cries of those who feel so trapped, whose suffering is so deep, that they can only envision revenge. Yet may we never honor the urge toward revenge, but instead keep pointing back to the One who created us, who longs for hope and healing for each and every one of us.

In the four months I am away from you, I ask you to keep listening, hearing, and responding. Listen for divine justice, which is never mere punishment, but true reconciliation. Listen for divine mercy, which is never cheap, but costs the commitment our very souls and bodies. And listen for divine humility, which knocks all of us mighty from our thrones and prepares us for wonders and joys we cannot yet imagine.

Amen.

Concerning Joy and Call

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 16 Dec 2024 04:55:47 GMT

J ohn does not ask the people to change the world, but rather to change themselves.

2025-03

Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, Wa

www.goodshepherdfw.org by Deacon Anna Lynn

Third Sunday of Advent

⁠Zephaniah 3:14-20⁠ ; ⁠Philippians 4:4-7⁠ ; ⁠Luke 3:7-18⁠ ; ⁠Canticle 9

Transcript in process

What it Takes to Belong

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 02:46:37 GMT

Advent is a time to prepare for the overwhelming reality that, yes, we do belong!

2025-02
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Second Sunday of Advent (Year C), December 8, 2024
Baruch 5:1-9 ; Canticle 16 ; Philippians 1:3-11 ; Luke 3:1-6

Back in the fall of 2019, during Good Shepherd’s annual pledge drive, we picked as our theme that year “A Place to Belong.” I chose to preach a four-part sermon series—the first time I had ever done anything like that. Each week, I preached on a different factor that makes belonging possible. In order, they were as follows: Justice. Humility. Inclusivity. Trust.

Little did we know then that we would all soon be thrust into a multi-year pandemic that would make on-site worship inappropriate for nearly 16 months! During that time, the Church of the Good Shepherd was dragged more deeply into the question of what it takes not only to belong, but to feel and know that belonging. We leaned into all four of those four factors: justice, humility, inclusivity, and trust.

We did our best to assure justice. We kept ourselves from catching and spreading COVID-19 by moving our worship to Zoom. When we did return to the building, we were still masked and enforcing social distance. These days we recognize that the congregation probably wouldn’t put up with an ongoing mask mandate, but we still want as much justice as we can muster for those who are immunocompromised. So to this day, our altar party still masks up for the distribution of communion.

We tried to approach the pandemic through a lens of humility. We didn’t buy into conspiracy theories; we followed the emerging science as best we could and strongly encouraged vaccinations once they became available. We recognized that online worship could not really replace worship in the building, but that it could tide most of us over for now. We decided we’d rather gather in awkward ways than not gather at all.

We accomplished inclusivity as best we could. I remember making phone calls on an endless cycle to everyone in the congregation, checking up on their physical and spiritual health. Those conversations also did a lot for my own well-being. And while we made as much space as possible for the various ways people were negotiating quarantine, we were exceedingly careful. We didn’t manage to keep all our parishioners connected during those years, but we did OK.

Above all, we tried to maintain trust in one another, and we learned how hard that can be when we’re not in the same room, breathing the same air. In a time of isolation and fear, it’s easy to imagine that something someone said in an email was more aggressive than it was intended to be. Trust built slowly over time can erode through lack of attention or fall apart in a single careless moment. Our community did not remain completely unscathed by this. How could we? We’re human beings.

But overall, I was proud of us. I was impressed by this community’s ability to maintain justice, humility, inclusivity, and trust during some very difficult years. Many congregations shrank dramatically during the pandemic; Good Shepherd did not. If anything, I think we got gradually healthier because of an inherent spirit of kindness in this place—a spirit I will miss when I’m away from you. But after my sabbatical, I’ll get to return and belong with you all again.

This season of Advent is an important season for a culture steeped in loneliness—for people who just aren’t sure they belong anywhere in particular. We might technically belong to a family, a church, a club, a nation—but really, truly feeling we belong can remain elusive. If our self-image has been damaged by abuse or trauma, belonging may feel impossible—but it can be built up again by those who treat us with justice, humility, inclusivity, and trust.

Advent is a time to prepare for the overwhelming reality that, yes, we do belong! We belong in this universe because God created it for us. And we belong to one another. This should be assumed, and it should require nothing from anyone. Yet I observe that each of us only gets to feel we belong through the hard work of others. So it’s also our responsibility to help others feel they belong.

And so we hear today from Baruch, who was scribe to the Prophet Jeremiah: “Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God.” Look, my people! God is giving you clothing to wear—the beautiful clothing of humanity that will always mark you as belonging to God.

In Paul’s most joyful letter, he writes to the church in Philippi: “You hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.” Though the Romans have locked Paul away, he does not feel disconnected from this community, because he knows they are praying for him. And because he knows that we all belong to God, this means that Paul, too, belongs to the Philippian Christians.

Then, in Luke’s gospel, we are introduced to John, son of Zechariah—yes, that John. John the Baptizer. John quotes Isaiah—whom Baruch has also quoted—to call everyone to change their lives, to make ready for God’s arrival. All those who belong in a household have a responsibility to help clean house! And when this happens, John proclaims, “All flesh shall see the salvation of God.”

Did you hear that? All flesh is included, because everybody belongs! The definition of divine justice is that God will rescue everyone from whatever threatens their souls. We have a role to play in preparing the way, but God is the one who will make it happen, not us, so … stay humble. And trust the words of the prophets to strengthen you and remind you that God loves you and wants only growth and joy for you.

Now, if you have ever felt in the church the opposite of belonging—injustice, arrogance, exclusion, or fear—I’m so, so sorry that happened. Truly, that can happen anywhere, including the church, because we’re human beings. But hopefully, the church can at least keep reasserting our goal: to help people feel their true belonging and even to assume that they already truly and always belong, regardless of the times flawed people have hurt them.

I became a priest because so many times in my childhood I felt I didn’t belong—at least, not at school, among my peers. I knew I belonged to God and to my family, but I learned as I grew that this was not a given for everyone. I decided always to help others feel—and know—and assume the belonging that I myself got to experience growing up.

Today, as we like to do twice a year, we are publicly welcoming a crop of new members. We’ve been doing this ever since I arrived at Good Shepherd. Now, we don’t only accept new members twice a year—that can happen anytime. If you are baptized and say, “I want to be a member,” them boom! You’re a member. If you are not baptized, that doesn’t mean you don’t belong. It means that we’d like to invite you to hang your hat here with us and explore, in a dedicated way, the implications of committing to the Christian life—by working alongside Christians, by hearing their stories, by sharing and absorbing the formative stories of our faith, and by engaging in daily and weekly prayer. Then, if you want to follow Jesus and join in the work of the Church, baptism is how you do that.

All of these things happen at Good Shepherd in carefully facilitated ways—through the worship and music planning that Alan and I do together, and through the classes and small groups created by our Faith Formation Team. After Christmas Eve, I will be on sabbatical, but these things will continue. I don’t even know yet what all will take place while I’m away. I guess I’ll find out when I return after Easter Sunday!

I’m going on sabbatical now because we agreed when I started that this could happen after five years—and also because, believe it or not, I’m still exhausted from the pandemic! I need to get away for awhile and reboot my soul. This is truly a good time for me to step away, because Good Shepherd is, by and large, a happy, healthy congregation. You have good systems for getting things done, and that’s important. You have generous people contributing both money and time to the work of the

Holy Spirit in this place. You have Carola von Wrangel stepping in to cover me at half time. You have everything you need for the next four months without me.

And that’s great news, because the church is not the property of the priest, and the priest doesn’t simply “do church for you.”

Did you know that technically, I am not and cannot be a member of Good Shepherd? I pledge money to Good Shepherd, but my membership resides in the Diocese of Olympia. This is your church, not mine! I am your employee; I serve at your pleasure. I bring my own unique gifts to use alongside yours.

So it’s up to you to what degree you will make space for people not only to belong, but to know and feel and assume that they belong. That does take work—the work of investing in one another. Cultivate thoughtfulness. Take a parish directory and use it to pray for another and to keep in touch with one another. Give little gifts. Invite people to do things with you. Meet the people you don’t yet know. Meet people from another generation, and learn their names well. This is just what we do here—because through God’s love, we all already belong.

Amen.

A Place for Despair

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Sun, 01 Dec 2024 23:37:38 GMT

Christianity begins with despair, but it doesn’t leave us stuck there.

2025-01
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The First Sunday of Advent (Year C), December 1, 2024
Jeremiah 33:14-16 ; Psalm 25:1-9 ; 1 Thessalonians 3:9-13 ; Luke 21:25-36

Bishop Augustine of Hippo, one of the most famous and prolific theologians in the history of Christianity, lived during the time when the Roman Empire was coming apart at the seams. In a sermon preached in the year 400, he wrote:

“Let us not then faint, my Brethren: an end there will be to all earthly kingdoms. If that end be now, God knows. For perhaps it is not yet, and we, through some infirmity, or mercifulness, or misery, are wishing that it may not be yet; nevertheless will it not therefore some day be? Fix your hope in God, desire the things eternal, wait for the things eternal … Christ did not come down into the flesh that we might live softly; let us endure rather than love the things present.” [1]

Ten years later, the Visigoths sacked Rome. Twenty years after that, the Vandals besieged Augustine’s hometown of Hippo in Northern Africa. An old man by then, Augustine died of natural causes in the midst of that siege. I love this quote of his: “Let us endure rather than love the things present.” It’s such an understated way to acknowledge the facts without giving in to despair.

In the long run, our very existence on this earth is tragic: everything and everyone dies. Everything we create and everything we love will fall apart, either before our eyes, or after we ourselves have fallen apart and returned to dust. The human experience is fundamentally tragic because it always, always ends.

And more often than not, the last moments of our lives are not at all the happiest, most hopeful, most contented times we have ever experienced. At the end of our lives we usually feel reduced, compressed, somehow less than we were in our full glory. You know it’s true. You’ve seen it. I know I have. Many people fall into despair toward the end of their lives.

Christianity begins with despair because despair is at the center of the experience of being human. Christianity begins with the despair of Jesus on the cross, but it doesn’t leave us stuck there.

So we Christians begin the calendar of our year with despair. The Prophet Jeremiah wrote from amidst the Babylonian invasion of Judah, and Bishop Augustine must have taken comfort in this prophet’s words a millennium later:

“The days are surely coming, says the Lord …”

Jeremiah speaks words from God into the void of despair all around him. What days are coming? The days of the fulfillment of God’s promises to us. Christians look back on Jeremiah and see Jesus as the branch springing from the family tree of Jesse and his son David.

Two weeks from today, the Good Shepherd Choir School will make its debut. Alan and I have been working with the first members of our new youth choir on the song “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” I asked the kids, “What feelings does this song evoke?”

“Sadness,” one chorister said … “and also excitement.”

Think about that. How can a situation be both sad and exciting at the same time? We humans are so muddled in our feelings, so turned inside out with joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, and anxiety. Yet this chorister nailed it. “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.” We are sad. We are despairing. We need you, Jesus. Oh, please come! And … we are excited. Because we know you are coming. You were promised to us!

Hear, then, words from Jesus, the “righteous branch” himself, from the Gospel of Luke:

“People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in a cloud' with power and great glory. Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”

Jesus lived during a time of growing tension between the Jews of Jerusalem and the occupying forces of the Roman Empire. Luke wrote his gospel after those tensions had boiled over—after the Roman armies had sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Jewish temple.

All the words of Jesus we have are given to us through the lens of that world-shattering event of despair in Jewish history. In recent centuries, scholars have used a lot of ink debating which words of the gospel were really spoken by Jesus and which were editorialized by the gospel writers. It’s not a fruitless debate, but it is a debate that can never truly end. We only have the words we have, in the way we have them, and there is no going back in time to get more clarity about them.

So we call these the words of Jesus whether or not Luke put them into Jesus’ mouth. Many scholars think this particular part is more likely to be directly from Jesus: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”

Do you hear this? When ruin and destruction are raging all around us, the kingdom of God is near. How can this be? Shouldn’t the kingdom of God be marked by safety and relief and cause for celebration? When the kingdom of God is near, shouldn’t we be able to “love the things present” rather than merely enduring them?

Well … why not both?

We hear Jeremiah speaking hope into despair. We hear Jesus, through Luke, speaking hope into despair. And wedged in the middle, we heard a piece of the earliest writing in the New Testament: Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, probably written around the year 50.

“How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy that we feel before our God because of you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see you face to face and restore whatever is lacking in your faith.”

Think about this timeline. Twenty years have gone by since Jesus’ crucifixion, and finally, finally, we have preserved for us a piece of writing about Jesus. Yet the focus is on the function of the Church in the city of Thessalonica. The letter is so early that Christians aren’t even being persecuted by the Roman Empire yet—they’re still flying under the radar. The Christians in Jerusalem are still worshiping in the Jewish temple. And Gentile Christians all around the Mediterranean are meeting in people’s homes to share joyous “love feasts” that include bread and wine in remembrance of Jesus. All of them together are expecting Jesus to return in glory any day now to establish, on earth, a permanent kingdom of God.

For the earliest Christians of all, the purpose of the Church was to share joy in community: joy while we all wait together with eager anticipation for a “second coming” of Christ. “O come, O come, Emmanuel!”

Yet their earnest, hopeful theology had some flaws in it. Jesus kept not returning. Paul died, and the churches went on, and the Romans destroyed Jerusalem, and the Christians began to be persecuted, and the Jews began reinventing themselves for a post-temple era, and the Gospel writers wrote, and still Jesus did not return.

Luke quoted Jesus as saying, “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.” Yet that generation did pass away. And the Roman Empire continued. And Christianity was legalized and then made the official religion of Rome. And Rome fell apart, yet the Church continued. And Christianity spread. And so on … and so on.

Did Luke misquote Jesus? Did he editorialize a little too much? Or did Jesus literally say that? If so, was Jesus wrong? Or could it be that he meant something else by it—something less obvious to the earliest Christians?

The “second coming” of Christ is still a vital piece of Christian theology. It’s right there in the Nicene Creed, which we will say together as a prayer right after this sermon: “He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” The Nicene Creed is poetry. We mean it when we pray it, but it is poetry, and as such, it needs interpretation—as do the poetic words of Jesus that the gospel writers have passed down to us. “Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place.”

What if all things have taken place? What if there’s no more that Jesus needs to do? What if the kingdom of God has the ability to function fully and absolutely right in the midst of a despairing world? What if Jesus “coming again” simply means that someday, eventually, the entire human race will be no more … yet all despair will be conquered, since we will all somehow be with God in a state of eternal joy?

Today is the first day of the new Christian year. This season of Advent is marked by both sadness and excitement. Jesus is coming. And Jesus is here. And Jesus is still to return. We walk through this cycle again and again, straining with solemn joy to come close to the mystery of Christmas and the fulfillment of all of God’s dreams for us. These joys are both fully present and “not yet.” The “not yet” just means that we are standing on a moving timeline and haven’t yet died.

We will die. We must go through the despair to get to the hope. And that’s what we do in the church. A congregation that makes no room for people’s despair is no church of Jesus. Are we doing that—sitting with people in their despair without trying to rush them into a hope that has not yet been revealed to them?

We will die. But wedged between despair and hope is every little place we carve out of a despairing world in which we live in the fully present kingdom of God, with its single, unyielding law: “Love one another as I have loved you.” People faint from fear and foreboding, yet we Christians just get back to loving one another—in endlessly creative ways—in ways necessarily dictated by the needs of the present moment. We don’t know what form our love for one another must take tomorrow, because we don’t know what fresh despair the world may throw at us.

And so we pray—for strength, for good judgment, for Jesus to send people into our lives to love. Because when we’re busy loving, we might just forget to despair. Against all odds, we might somehow find joy instead. Amen.

[1] https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/160355.htm , retrieved 30 Nov 2024.

A Tale of Two Kings

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 25 Nov 2024 03:20:57 GMT

Which of these two kings would you rather allow to dictate your choices in life?

S ermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Last Sunday after Pentecost (Christ the King), November 24, 2024
Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14 ; Psalm 93 ; Revelation 1:4b-8 ; John 18:33-37

“Worship” is a strange word. We like to use it ironically, as in: “He worships the ground she walks on.” Or, “My dog totally worships me.” Honestly, we use the word “worship” this way so much of the time that I’m not sure many people still get its full range of meaning. We suppose that its true use must be reserved for religious practices. An atheist might insist that worship is something they simply never do.

Yet everybody worships something or someone. Habitually. With or without awareness. Bob Dylan put it well: “You gotta serve somebody.” That which we worship is that which we find worthy of our allegiance. We all have default settings—inherited, adopted, and nurtured—that determine who and what we will serve the interests of. You might worship the way your parents raised you, or the way your church was in the 1950s, or your bank account, or the stock market, or grind culture, or popularity, or fashion, or your smartphone, or your gun, or your nation and its flag. Those of us who outwardly claim allegiance to Christ also, inevitably, allow something or someone else to rule our usual practices.

So I want you to imagine for a moment that there are two kings you might serve. One is Jesus. The other is your usual, run-of-the-mill king—not necessarily a literal king. Maybe a president, or a CEO, or a bishop or priest, or a social media influencer. Or anybody, really, who is placed in a position to affect the lives of others.

Which of these two kings would you rather allow to dictate your choices in life?

Oh, you’d rather follow Jesus? Hey, we are in church, after all. OK then, let’s look at the example Jesus has set. You can no longer give your ultimate allegiance to nation or money or popularity or security or even survival. You’ll have to help people who don’t deserve it. You’ll have to give your money to those who need it more. You’ll have to spend lots of time with total losers, simply because losers are the only people Jesus has any use for. You won’t necessarily have a place to lay your head at night, and oh, by the way, you might get nailed to a cross. Maybe not. But you’ll definitely have to carry heavy crosses that you’ve lifted off the backs of others.

Having second thoughts?

OK, now let’s look at this more conventional king. If you follow him, you’ll feel a lot of pride in your country because it’s so powerful. You may be rewarded with quite a bit of wealth and power yourself—as long as you don’t let others get too close. See, they want what you have, so they are a threat! But the more wealth and power you have, the more you’ll be shielded from the lives of others, so chances are you won’t have to think about them much.

Which of these two would you rather follow? Because, as it turns out, the worhsip of one is in direct oppostion to the worship of the other.

One hundred years ago, the world had just come through World War I, followed by revolutions in Russia, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Ireland, Greece, Spain, Mexico, and Malta—and those are just the revolutions in Christian nations. Observing all this with concern, Pope Pius the Eleventh decreed in 1925 that the final Sunday of the Christian year would hereafter be observed in the Roman Catholic Church as the Feast of Christ the King, with readings from scripture underscoring the eternal reign of Jesus Christ. He did this because he realized, in his own words, that …

... manifold evils in the world were due to the fact that the majority of men had thrust Jesus Christ and his holy law out of their lives; that these had no place either in private affairs or in politics …

If to Christ our Lord is given all power in heaven and on earth … He must reign in our bodies and in our members, which should serve as instruments for the interior sanctification of our souls, or to use the words of the Apostle Paul, as instruments of justice unto God.

Interesting: the pope thought that Christians weren’t mixing politics and religion nearly enough! Nor were they engaging in personal practices of prayer and worship. Their fearful ambitions had jettisoned any check that their baptism might place on their will to power. All over Europe, nations led by baptized people were committing acts of unspeakable violence against vulnerable people.

After World War II and the even worse horrors of Nazi Germany, the Pope’s idea took root among Protestants as well. Episcopalians began observing the Feast of Christ the King in 1970. Today it is also observed by Lutherans, Methodists, Nazarenes, Moravians, and Calvinists.

This is the 100th year of the Feast of Christ the King. And here we find ourselves, a quarter of the way through the next century, watching as waves of nationalism rise in Europe again, with their insidious promise to protect the “pure” from the “unworthy.” In America it’s the same thing: “Those desperate, hungry people are an invading army. They will take what’s yours. Do not help them; use violence against them. Protect our nation’s sovereignty.”

We hear this theme repeated ad nauseum by baptized people who somehow never mention the value of diverse immigrants to our country, both economically and culturally; the existing injustices in our broken immigration system; the fate of those who are in the country illegally through no fault of their own; the criminalization of refugees who are following the law; the destructive slander of migrants of all kinds; the problem of figuring out who is actually undocumented without resorting to blatant racism; the certainty that climate change will exacerbate migration exponentially from here on out; the moral requirement to respect human life and dignity; and hey, how about the possibility of forgiveness for a felony that may have been committed decades ago, with no detrimental effect today?

Once again, people’s allegiances are getting confused. They’re worshiping certain laws of the land, but only certain laws, and the effect is to prop up wealthy criminals while victimizing the poor and vulnerable who are, by and large, law-abiding.

As present-day theologian Walter Brueggemann has observed: “The crisis in the U.S. church has almost nothing to do with being liberal or conservative; it has everything to do with giving up on the faith and discipline of our Christian baptism and settling for a common, generic U.S. identity that is part patriotism, part consumerism, part violence, and part affluence.”

One hundred years ago, the Roman Catholic Church, and indeed the Episcopal Church, could realistically make positive change in society through the practices of our liturgies, because many more Christians back then were fed by their weekly participation in church. That’s no longer the case.

In the United States today, those who claim Christian identity are less likely to actually be part of a church and more likely to display their nationalistic fervor proudly. They may not actually have been formed in the teachings of Jesus, or they may have become jaded enough to view kindness and compassion as quaint, unrealistic ideals from a bygone era. They’d rather have a strongman to protect them—a conventional sort of king—a human being whose authority must not be questioned. Even if that king has, himself, broken many laws.

But we’ve been down this road so many times before. When the ancient Israelites turned to Samuel to provide them with a king, God issued a strong warning: “The muscle of political power might seem like a great idea now, but it will turn around and bite you!” And indeed, it did. And indeed, it still does.

Yet we hear today from the Book of Daniel about an Ancient One on a throne—the most powerful king in the universe. And then one “like a human being” comes to his throne, and the Ancient One gives him dominion over the entire earth—and “his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed.” The Book of Daniel was the last book of the Old Testament to be completed, and much of it consists of prophetic, eschatological poetry. Christians have always looked at that “one like a human being” and seen Jesus.

We also hear today from the prophetic, eschatological poetry of the Revelation to John: Jesus is “coming with the clouds” such that “every eye will see him.” Is he finally going to exact revenge against those who killed him? Any conventional king would do that and more! But read on to chapter 5, and what does this conquering Christ look like? A lamb. And not a happy, frolicking lamb either, but a slaughtered lamb.

Your true king sits on a throne, but—have mercy!—he’s bleeding all over the velvet seat.

Your true king brings a sword, but it’s not a sword for killing. It’s a sword for dividing falsehood from truth.

Your true king brings fire, but it’s not a fire for destroying. It’s a fire for purifying, refining—killing only the germs of hate and fear that infect our humanity.

Your true king waits patiently until the end of time to come back again and say, “OK, thank you all for playing. I’m knocking at your door now. Do you want me to come in and eat with you?”

Which of these two kings is worthy of your worship? Only the one who will not be your king without your consent! Only the one who is objectively the king forever and always anyway, not by virtue of his power, but of his divine humility. This king doesn’t cling to power. He surrenders it … to you. Now, what will you do with that power?

And what about that conventional king—or president or CEO or bishop or priest or social media influencer—who looked strong and reassuring for so long? At the end of all things, he and you and I are all in the Lamb’s presence together. Every one of us has just been invited into the eternal kingdom, which is always a rip-roaring party, where everybody is loved and welcomed and honored just for being who they are!

Do you think that conventional king will want to hang around? To face all those he hated and feared and scapegoated? Those who suffered and died because of him?

Or will he insist he could be a better king than that slaughtered lamb? Maybe he’ll wander off somewhere else—into the darkness—looking for some other kingdom to rule—and maybe we’ll never see him again.

Until then, we must all work together to protect the vulnerable from the foolishness of the conventional king. But I guess we’d better pray every day for him as well. If he ever does decide to take the difficult path toward healing, he’s going to need all the help he can get.

Amen.

Dancing Among the Fallen Leaves

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Sun, 17 Nov 2024 23:16:48 GMT

Yes, everything falls apart eventually. Yes, there is hope even then.

Dancing Among the Fallen Leaves

2024-60
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 28B), November 17, 2024
Daniel 12:1-3 ; Psalm 16 ; Hebrews 10:11-25 ; Mark 13:1-8

Charlie Brown and Lucy Van Pelt are walking outdoors in the autumn. Charlie Brown muses to Lucy, “Do falling leaves make you sad?”

“Absolutely not!” Lucy fires back. “If they want to fall, I say, ‘Let ’em fall.’ In fact, falling leaves are a very good sign. It's when you see them jumping back onto the trees that you're in trouble!”1

Charles Schulz’s humor is, as usual, steeped in wisdom. The image of leaves leaping back onto the trees is ridiculous, but I think it shows us what we’d really prefer. If that happened, wouldn’t have to go forward into the cold and barrenness of winter.

Well, I have certainly been “in my feelings” for the past couple weeks. Do you know this term? It’s something the kids say these days. When we’re “in our feelings,” we’re reacting automatically instead of responding carefully. Yet one good goal for people who want to mature is to be less “in our feelings” and more “using our feelings for good and not evil.”

That’s pretty hard to do in our current situation. It is crystal clear to me that this election marks a pronounced shift—a irrevocable decision point—in the history of the United States. Originally I wrote paragraphs and paragraphs explaining why I think that, but then I decided I was too much “in my feelings” and scrapped it. I was running very quickly from “this happened today” to “that means this will happen tomorrow”—and next year, and next decade. It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t measured. I was trying to predict the future with very limited information.

But remember what I said last week? We only get to act in the present.

“Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!”

“Ha! You think this temple is impressive? Sure it is. But it’s not going to be here for long.”

“What? No, no, that could never happen—God wouldn’t allow it! How could we possibly be the chosen people without a Temple?”

“We were the chosen people long before there was a Temple, and we still will be the chosen people long after it’s gone. Temples are temporary; only God is eternal.”

“But Jesus, you don’t go around saying these things!” we American Christians cry out from our own present time. “To say that the temple will be destroyed is like saying that our nation is in decline and that democracy is on the ropes. That’s not just unpatriotic—it’s treason! Isn’t it better to have faith in God to prevent these things?”

“On the contrary,” Jesus might reply. “God allows human actions to have consequences, and those can be massively destructive. God doesn’t go around preventing the ends of things, but walking with us through them. You can pray, ‘Let this cup pass from my lips’—God hears your sincerity. But be sure add to that prayer, ‘Not my will, but yours be done.’ When everything you know seems to be ending, that doesn’t mean God has abandoned you. It just means that the leaves will not be jumping back onto the trees.”

“But, Jesus … when will all this happen?”

“Wrong question. Those who answer it confidently and arrogantly are the ones to be wary of. All you need to know is that violence and despair are not signs of the end of the world. They are signs of new beginnings.”

Thanks, Jesus. Thanks a lot. That helps soooo much right now, to come to church and hear your gloom and doom and be told that it’s actually somehow good.

“Oh, beloved ones,” I imagine Jesus continuing. “You keep looking for signs about the future, as if that could help you act in the future. Humans don’t get to do that.

“But that won’t stop some people from trying to convince you that they know what’s coming. Powerful people will promise to save you from whatever fearful thing you’re going through. They’ll pick some segment of the population and blame them for everything that holds you back. They’ll say, ‘Just get rid of those people and you’ll be OK again.’

“That’s how wars start. That’s how rumors of wars lead to wars—wars of genocide against scapegoats. And along with that are the usual troubles of life that are far more random: earthquakes, famines, diseases. When these things happen to you, you will truly believe that the world is ending.

“But here’s the thing, beloved disciples: none of that means the world is ending. None of that is a sign. It’s just the way the world has always worked. It’s going to keep happening. Change will always be painful. The question is, what will you do about it?

“Will you join forces with the cruel and the vindictive—those who vow revenge on their enemies? Will you take the easy way of anger and control—the lie that promises a quick fix? Or will you take the true and difficult way of complicated relationships, patient forbearance, and respecting the dignity of every human being?

“When you look back on the most difficult times in your life, will you remember them as times you panicked and resorted to rage and violence? Or will you remember them as times when you accepted some degree of suffering, grew in humility, and learned to give more to those who are even less fortunate than you are? In short, will you continue to learn in this worldwide school of Love, or will you start skipping class?

“Quit looking for signs. You’ll get no signs that you couldn’t spot through your own God-given critical thinking skills.”

Dear friends, we are most certainly heading into even more chaotic times. But we don’t yet know the specific shape of that chaos—so we need to wait, watch, and listen. We need to pay attention, even when it hurts, so that we can be ready to bring our own unique gifts to bear. We each need to tend our own garden, but we also need to keep building community together. Bishop Phil has advised all the clergy—and I advise all of you—to double down on your pracitces of daily prayer and weekly worship, and if you’re not doing these, to start now.

Yes, everything falls apart eventually. Yes, there is hope even then. We hear it in our funeral rite: “All of us go down to the dust, yet even at the grave, we make our song Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia!” When everything falls apart, God is here, and God has made us the song-makers of eternal life.

So when you suffer grief and loss, where will you place your trust? When comfort and familiarity cannot continue, where do you seek out and find love? Our call today is to feel our feelings, acknowledge them, and become better students of them. We can’t do this without God’s help. We can’t rise above our survival instincts and emotional overload without calling on the one who made us, who named us, and who keeps calling us to trust more deeply. If Jesus says that this is only the beginning of the birthpangs, what reason do I have not to trust him? Only my human perspective, which I know is woefully limited. Only my feelings, which have a habit of getting in the way.

When the center cannot hold, it’s time to find a different center. I most certainly want all of you to be near that center for me. I don’t want to spend all my energy focusing on scheming authoritarians and opportunists. I don’t want to focus on some crisis in the future that I would no doubt predict very wrongly. How can we draw closer together right here at Good Shepherd? Better yet, how can we draw others to share joy with us, right here, right now?

Last night a group of folks rented our downstairs space for a celebration of life for a woman named Angelina. I’m grateful to the members of the Fellowship Team who took turns, with me, to be present during the event as a designated member on-site. When you think of an event honoring someone who has died, do you imagine lots of solemnity and lots of tears? Well, kind and caring words were spoken, to be sure. And prayers were prayed. But there was also an incredible amount of delicious food. And then the DJ started the dance party!

This is what Christians must be: those who dance among the fallen leaves. Because we have a hidden well of joy that cannot be drained even by death.

What invitation can you make to someone who is grieving or afraid? “Hey, here’s a community I’ve been hanging out with. Our goal is just to love one another, because we think Jesus had that exactly right. Come and see.”

So let’s not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some. I want to be with you all, and I notice and care when someone is missing. I know it can be hard to get out of bed on a Sunday morning when it feels like everything is falling apart. But that’s when we most need to be together. Because love takes time. It’s a process. It means showing up, again and again and again, and being in each other’s lives. And maybe we can dance more often!

In the spring, there will be new leaves on the trees. But we don’t have to wait until spring to find hope, because spring has a very early harbinger. After today, the green goes away—because the season is about to change.

Lifestyles of the Poor and Semi-Educated

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 00:39:19 GMT

Friends, our work as citizens and as Christians now continues

sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 27B), November 10, 2024
1 Kings 17:8-16 ; Psalm 146 ; Hebrews 9:24-28 ; Mark 12:38-44

In the early 1990s, I was a music major at a small liberal arts school in Michigan. One the big attractions of Olivet College was that it had a radio station where I did my work study: I hosted the morning show three days a week. My friend Dave also worked at WOCR, and together, he and I did a weekly comedy bit. I played myself—my air name was “Da Sooper Yooper.” (You’ll understand that if you’ve ever lived in Michigan.) And Dave played none other than … Robin Leach, the Englishman who hosted the ’80s TV show Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.

In our imagining, Robin Leach was now a washed-up former TV star who had squandered all his earnings and was desperate for gigs. So once a week he would sail across the Atlantic on a raft called the Splintery Sue, hitchhike to Southern Michigan, and appear on my morning radio show. I paid him in breadsticks from Tim’s Pizza, but I threatened to dock his pay every time he said something clueless—which was, of course, the source of the laughs.

The name of our show was Lifestyles of the Poor and Semi-Educated. Poor because, well, we were college students, and semi-educated because we hadn’t yet graduated. I still have recordings of some of our bits. Did Dave do a good impression of Robin Leach? No, not remotely! Were we funny? Maybe sometimes. I tell you what, though—we certainly cracked ourselves up. And in college radio, that’s what matters most.

I tell you this story partly because it’s quirky and personal and has nothing to do with the election. In fact, I wrote this entire sermon before the election and didn’t change it. This was advice from Bishop Phil, and I took it to heart.

But back to Lifestyles of the Poor and Semi-Educated. Could that be the title not only of an early ’90s small-town college radio feature, but also of a sermon? Why, yes. This week, yes, it could!

In the gospels, the spectrum of wealth and poverty is one of Jesus’ main concerns. Jesus understood that we humans are fascinated with money: who has it, how they got it, and how they live. He specifically calls out the scribes, privileged with social status and an education. He says they “like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets.”

(Look at long robes. Grimace!)

I mean, who doesn’t like to play dress-up? Hey, I worked hard for that seminary education! And I have to say, when I wear my collar in public, people show me a surprising amount of deference. Three times since I was ordained, someone has anonymously bought me lunch. It’s kinda embarrassing.

Did I earn my role as a priest? Sure, to some degree. But in other ways, it is a function of unearned privilege. What else does Jesus say about the scribes? That despite their showy appearance they actually accomplish a lot of good in the world, so it’s all OK? Let’s check:

“They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.”

Uffda.

Then Jesus pivots to point out a poor widow putting two small copper coins into the temple treasury. They are literally all she had to live on. She has just given it all to God, trusting that God will provide for her in ways that even money could not.

Should we honor what she just did? Should I stand here in my long robes and hold her up as an example? If I did that and stopped there, it would demonstrate clearly that my Master of Divinity has only made me semi-educated. Surely you see that for me to advise anybody to give all their money to the church is to urge people to remain in an endless cycle of poverty!

Yet Jesus appears to hold this woman up as an example of godly living. Right? Isn’t that what we’ve always assumed about this passage? Well, perhaps we’ve always understood this passage wrong. Parse out Jesus’ words a bit. He’s not holding her up as the best example. He’s just observing what happened. She gave all her money to the religious structure, and now she has none.

What will happen to her?

I don’t see Jesus praising this widow’s quiet strength, her unyielding faith, the example she sets for all the rest of us. No, he just points out that there are two ways to look at the math. By raw numbers, she put in the least. But by percentage? She gave 100%, while the rich folks dumping huge piles of money into the box put in … oh, maybe half a percent, but probably far less than that.

Jesus just observes this and moves on. He’s going to let that image bake into the minds of his followers, who will eventually write the gospels so we’ll still talk about it when they’ve died.

Do we fully grasp the systems of privilege and poverty in which we all play a part? It’s all well and good to participate in our democracy and vote for leaders who we believe will move our country in a better direction. But what is that better direction? Do we care enough about the poor widow to listen to her tale? Why did she just give 100% of her money away? What was she thinking? Who will provide for her needs? Do we expect God to see her gift and say, “Well, then,” and radically change her fortunes?

I don’t think God works like that. I think we’re supposed to take care of her. I think that’s always been the case—all the way back to the early church, and then all the way back to the Law of Moses. The ancient Jewish rules for taking care of the poor are quite clear.

God takes care of people not by helping them win the lottery, but by inspiring us, as individuals and as communities, to carry each other. We are all, at best, semi-educated. We don’t fully understand the larger systems in which we’re always operating. We don’t recognize—or often just choose not to think about—the ways these systems continually exploit the poor.

It is deeply American to assume that the rich have earned every penny, that the poor wouldn’t be nearly as poor if they just worked harder, and that any one of us could become a billionaire with just a little more luck and pluck. Of course, that’s nonsense. Because when the money you have starts making money on its own, you’re no longer earning it. And when you’re working three jobs just to stay afloat, it doesn’t matter how much harder you work. You’re never going to conquer the math of that situation.

Is it even possible to extract ourselves from such systems? If not, what can we do?

When I wrote this sermon, I didn’t know yet how the election would go. I didn’t know whether it would be settled quickly or whether we’d have to resign ourselves to recounts. I didn’t know whether there would be violent troublemakers intimidating voters at the polls. I didn’t know whether there would be riots in the streets. I didn’t know whether all our pre-election anxieties were overblown or spot-on. The only thing I knew for sure was that one of the candidates would declare victory on Election Night even if he knew he’d actually lost. Again.

Well, in our country, voting is our constitutional right, and it’s also our right for our votes to be counted correctly, in keeping with facts and not fantasies. But as Christians, we also carry greater responsibilities.

It is our responsibility not to settle for being semi-educated about what our fellow humans are going through.

It is our responsibility to become ever more aware of the ways our routines and habits take advantage of the vulnerable.

And it is our responsibility to follow Jesus as our ultimate role model, the one who spoke out forcefully against those who choose comfortable ignorance. Jesus boldly set himself up to be opposed by the powerful. According to the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus’ death was the death not only of an earnest rabbi, but the death of ritual sacrifice, the death of human sin, and the death of hopelessness.

In his death, Jesus became poor like all the rest of us. We will all die, but death is a door that even God has now gone through, and that makes it safe for us. Even in this life, then, death is not a spectre but a part of a pattern for living. When we no longer fear loss, we can free ourselves to participate in God’s political agenda: justice to those who are oppressed, food to those who hunger. Prisoners set free, the eyes of the semi-educated opened. Orphan and widow sustained … the ways of the wicked frustrated.

Friends, the election is over, and our work as citizens and as Christians now continues. Everybody dies just once. What will we do before we die? Will we share our abundance with those who have less? Will we consent to the ongoing education that Jesus offers us?

Look to the psalmist. “Put not your trust in rulers, nor in any child of earth, for there is no help in them. When they breathe their last, they return to earth, and in that day their thoughts perish. Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! whose hope is in the Lord their God.”

Amen.

God, Grief, and Remembering the Saints

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Wed, 06 Nov 2024 20:21:49 GMT

This is a safe place to feel your grief ... no judgment or requirements here ... only love.

2024-58
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org

by the Rev. Anna Lynn, Deacon
All Saints Sunday (Year B), November 3, 2024
Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-9 ; Psalm 24 ; Revelation 21:1-6a ; John 11:32-44

I wonder if any of you felt grief that you may be carrying bubble up to the surface as I proclaimed the Gospel this morning? I know that I have felt grieved, as I prepared my sermon this week for All Saints’ Sunday.

That might be because of the 44 verses in our Gospel reading today, 42 of them are about grief.

We have two sisters, Martha & Mary from Bethany, who are in deep shock and lost in grief due to the death of their brother Lazarus.

Earlier in this reading the sisters had sent world to Jesus that his friend Lazarus was ill. Upon receiving the message, Jesus waited two long days before leaving…. and by time he arrived in Bethany, Lazarus had been dead for four days.

Jesus enters a town where there is a deep sense of loss and sorrow and since Jerusalem is only 2 miles from Bethany, many of the Jews from within this community, had come to also grieve Lazarus’ death and console his sisters.

Martha is hurt when she sees Jesus. She says, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

Mary, then comes to Jesus and repeats the same accusation, and when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved.

He said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Then John tells us that, Jesus began to weep.

This is more than empathy that Jesus feels, he is filled with sorrow, as he grieves for Lazarus and experiences firsthand the pain that the others within this community are feeling.

And because Jesus feels real grief through his humanity, that also means that in Jesus, God also feels grief.

Jesus loved Lazarus and he weeps at the grave of his friend. We too weep over the graves of those we love. On this All-Saints Day we remember not just the great saints of the church, but also the saints in our own lives, we remember those we love who have died.

That remembrance most always comes with sorrow, but within this community it is our shared sorrow, as this is a safe place to feel your grief. There is no judgement or requirements here, only love.

The communal cup from which we all drink. It is ours to hold and gradually empty. We do this together, as we enter healing ground.

Psychotherapist, writer, and soul activist Francis Weller has said, “My grief says that I dared to love, that I allowed another to enter the very core of my being and find a home in my heart. Grief is akin to praise; it is how the soul recounts the depth to which someone has touched our lives. To love is to accept the rites of grief.”

As your diaconal intern, postulant and finally deacon, I have prayed and prayed for you and your loved ones over the past two years. We have experienced many losses together since my time at Good Shepherd began and I have been honored to have spent time with some of those folks who have gone on before us and to have also served at several of their memorials or celebrations of life.

I have been proud of the way that you all love and show up for one another, especially when there is a loss in this community and I would also like to include my gratitude in the way that you have shown up for and loved me when I have suffered loss.

One of my favorite traditions of this congregation is the hanging of the Memorial Ribbon with your loved one’s names on it.

I happen to be here in the sanctuary on the day that this memorial ribbon was last taken down and witnessed the great care that is given to the ribbon, to gently lay it out and place it back onto the reel so it is stored safely.

I wanted to help those putting away the ribbon this last time, so I held the ribbon strait, as it went back onto the reel and I paid special attention to each of the names as they went through my hands. I felt such a sense of love and honor for all the names who had come before, members of this congregation who have passed, or your family and loved ones and I even saw the names of folks that I loved and had their names added to the ribbon. It was defiantly a holy experience for me. Seeing the names, filled me with a deep sense of history, community, and remembrance.

What a beautiful way to honor and celebrate our loved ones beginning on this sacred feast day of All Saints’ each year.

Another way we can honor those who gone before us, is to live like the Saints. To remember the voice of Martin Luther King Jr. and his call for nonviolence or the voice of John Lewis when he called for Good Trouble.

We have a very contentious election taking place in our country in two days.

There will be many grieving because their candidate and ideology have not won.

Our own Bishop LaBelle, sent out a message on social media regarding the elections, Bishop LaBelle said, “If we are feeling fear or anxiety, to remember the scripture when God says, “Do not be afraid”. God reminds us again and again that we need not be afraid because God goes with us. Because Jesus is indeed Emanual, walking along side us, even in the most difficult or troubling times.”

Bishop LaBelle went on to say he is also reminded of the words from the 1st Letter to John, reminding us that perfect love casts out all fear. That it is love that is the thing that allows us to counter act that of which we are afraid.

I have spoken a lot today about love, community and honor, And Good Shepherd we are blessed to have all those things right here inside the walls of this sanctuary and we will be here for one another no matter what the outcome of these elections.

But we also need to be prepared and ready to be the light and love of Jesus Christ out in the world. We are called to love our neighbor whether they are republican, democrat or from any other voting bloc. Our work of love and reconciliation in this country will begin anew on election day.

I would encourage us all to pray for peace and calm in our country. The Episcopal Church FB Page even has a Live, Election Night Virtual Prayers Program if you would like to pray with our new Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, that live stream begins at 5PM PT.

In closing:

By becoming human, God was and is with us in Jesus in a way that caused him to experience the depths of human pain and loss. God is not distant and reserved. God is close, caring, and compassionate.

Our reading today from Revelation tells us that the time is coming when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and that death will be no more.

Jesus calls, “Lazarus, Come Out!” Come out from the grave. Grief is real, but loss is not the end. Grab hold of the sure and certain hope of the resurrection that comes through faith in Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “Unbind him and let him go,” to those around Lazarus, and he says the same thing to us. We are to be unbound, set free from the power of death. For even as we find death in life, we find life in death. We know that Jesus is resurrection and life, and those who believe, even if we die, we live.

Amen.

You'll See

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 14:20:50 GMT

Be very, very careful whom you worship. If you follow them into the unknown, your courage—and your principles—will be tested.

2024-57
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 25B), October 27, 2024
Jeremiah 31:7-9 ; Psalm 126 ; Hebrews 7:23-28 ; Mark 10:46-52

I like surprises. Usually—you know, if it’s a good surprise. A birthday surprise, or a Christmas surprise, or any sort of special treat.

Some people really don’t like surprises. They prefer to know what’s coming, even if it’s something good. Better to be able to plan for anything, right?

For folks like this (and maybe you’re one of them), situations where we simply can’t see what’s coming might feel intolerable. Some people will even decide—consciously or otherwise—to make up an explanation of a situation in order to decide what to do next, even if that understanding later turns out to have been wrong. Some people may be able to assess that they were wrong but will never admit it, because they don’t like the other possible explanations, and because brutal honesty will make the world feel too chaotic.

I think there’s something of this tendency in all religion. Because, by its nature, religion deals with a lot of things we just can’t know for sure. We rely on our faith to tide us over until we find out. For instance: What happens when we die? We don’t get to see that. The Bible doesn’t provide a clear, authoritative answer that can be corroborated by external evidence. It’s just not there. Actually, not much in the Bible is. It’s a spiritual toolkit, not a history book, science book, or operator’s manual.

We all pick and choose our dogmas based on what will make us feel more secure. It’s unnerving to realize this, but it really is true, and it’s pretty much undeniable. Welcome to the world. Choose your dogmas carefully.

We are all beggars without sight, sitting by the road, waiting for someone to come and shed some light on our futures. Someone we can trust. Maybe even someone we can worship.

But be very, very careful whom you worship. If you follow them into the unknown, your courage—and your principles—will be tested.

When you read the gospels over and over like I have, you come to remember where the pivot points are in the narrative. Today’s gospel reading is one of those pivot points. It shows up in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, and it’s very similar in all three. After the story of healing a blind man (or two blind men in Matthew), Luke inserts the story of Zaccheus, which is his story alone. But after that, all three of the synoptic gospels shift to the story of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a humble donkey—what we have come to know as the story of Palm Sunday and the beginning of the final week of Jesus’ earthly life.

I can’t help but look at today’s gospel with this larger narrative in mind. This is the conclusion of one section of the story … and a “ramping up” to the next. We’ve just been through Mark’s tenth chapter together, dealing with questions about divorce, and children, and wealth, and sacrifice, and the coming of death and—supposedly—resurrection. We’ve talked about power and how not to get it, and we’ve talked about what it might mean to serve others. Wrestling with these topics requires a lot of courage and honesty.

And then, on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus comes to Jericho, and a huge crowd with him. They know where they’re going, and they’re excited to be a part of it. A man named Bartimaeus hears who’s coming: the blessed one he can’t see. And he cries out, “Son of David, mercify me!”

Yes, “mercify” is a real word, or at least it used to be. I typed it into my computer and a red squiggly line appeared underneath it. It hasn’t been used much since the 19 ^th century. And that’s a shame, because it feels like a far more direct request than merely “have mercy on me.” I can have mercy in my head and never show it. I can pity a person and then go on with my life. But if I’m going to mercify somebody, that’s going to demand something of me!

“Son of David, mercify me!”

In other words … “I see that you are the long-promised Messiah, the descendant of David who is to restore the kingdom to Israel and overthrow the horrific Roman Empire! I know that you’re on your way to Jerusalem to do just that! Well, as long as our paths have crossed, do something for me! Make me a part of your miraculous arrival!”

The crowds try to shut Bartimaeus up, maybe because his transgressive “Son of David” language is a little too on the nose for public consumption. But Jesus picks this one man’s voice out of everyone else’s and stops in his tracks. “Hey, you insensitive jerks, there’s someone clearly in need. Quit being obstructive and bring the guy here!”

“Oh, OK!” they bumble. “Uh, dude, the Master is calling you! Gather your courage! This way!”

Off goes Bartimaeus’s cloak. He knows he won’t need it anymore. He will be able to keep warm and dry in other ways from now on.

“What,” asks Jesus … “What do you want me to do for you?”

“My teacher! Let me see again.”

Let’s pause there for a moment. You didn’t think I was only going to talk only about the gospel and none of the other readings, right? But rather than look today at Jeremiah or at the Letter to the Hebrews, I want to look at the psalm. It’s Psalm 126. And it’s really quite remarkable, because you could put it into Bartimaeus’s mouth. Or maybe you could put it into your own mouth!

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
then were we like those who dream.
Then was our mouth filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy.
Then they said among the nations,
"The Lord has done great things for them."

Remember the good old days, the days when we could see? We knew what was coming. We could count on a future that was at least somewhat predictable, if not in details, at least in its overall nature. Things will keep getting better. Our children will have more than we do—more money and more security, but also more reason to hold their heads high. The bad times are behind us. There were horrible sins in our past and in that of our people, but we don’t do those things anymore. We have seen the light!

People said of us, “Now that’s the greatest nation on earth! God shed His grace on them!”

The Lord has done great things for us,
and we are glad indeed.

“Where are we going, Jesus?”

“You’ll see.”

“Oh, ha, Jesus, I see what you did there. You said ‘you’ll see,’ and you just restored my sight! I get the joke.”

“Sure, Bartimaeus.”

“Yeah, but, Jesus … you put it in the future tense. I can already see. You restored my sight, and I praise God for bestowing such power on His Messiah! So … I intend to follow you now as you exercise your Messianic call. I’ll follow you all the way. But … what’s going to happen in Jerusalem? Are we going to storm the castle?”

“You’ll see.”

“Hey, why do you keep saying that? I already see.”

Jesus doesn’t answer. He just keeps walking. Bartimaeus, a spring still in his step and no cloak around his shoulders anymore, continues to follow. Where are they going? They’re on the way. On the way to where? What’s going to happen in Jerusalem?

Why don’t the people still say that God has blessed our nation? Why do they so often pity us instead? Remember when things were clear? Now they’re far more … opaque. What happened to our nation’s good fortunes? Are you the Messiah who will restore them? Will you force the crisis we need? And will you walk us through it and protect us at every step?

Restore our fortunes, O Lord,
like the watercourses of the Negev.
Those who sowed with tears
will reap with songs of joy.
Those who go out weeping, carrying the seed,
will come again with joy, shouldering their sheaves.

I have sowed with tears all my life, Jesus. I’ve never seen clearly, even when I thought I should be able to! So please, please … I want to see again. I want to know that everything will be OK, that I will not feel so insecure, so needy, so weary … and that the ones I deem to be my enemies will pay the price for their misdeeds! Please, Jesus—don’t mercify them in any way! Mercify me—us—and us alone. Our nation first!

We all want someone to swoop in and fix everything. We Christians claim Jesus for that role in our lives. But the way he did it—the way he keeps doing it—refuses to square with anything we can easily understand.

What if Jesus saves us by making clear that nobody’s coming to save us?

What if “me first,” even when it seems necessary, is actually heresy?

Can we admit that we are all blind beggars by the side of the road? Our fortunes are restored simply through this realization. Our exile is over. It was only ever in our heads anyway. But it was so real to us. We went out to plant seeds because we could do no other. And we wept the whole time, dropping seeds into the ground, saying prayers for all those we’ve lost. One for every seed. We’re still planting those seeds, though we may never see the harvested sheaves.

And nobody’s coming to save us … because our savior is already here, in this very room with us. So what will we do next?

We still can’t see what’s coming. But we can ask to be able to see again.

And maybe that’s enough for now. Maybe for now, our prayers can take the form of questions … not demands. Like, “Are you with us, Jesus? If so, where are we going?”

And though he answers, “You’ll see,” we already know the answer. He’s not going to storm the castle and throw the bums out. He’s going to Jerusalem, yes. But he’s going to the Cross. And we’re going there with him. Every day.

Beginning December 1 - 8:00 On-Site; 10:30 Hybrid

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 17:13:11 GMT

First Sunday of Advent Marks a Shift

Since our 8:00 service returned to the worship space, it has been a hybrid service. Beginning December 1, the 8:00 service will shift to on-site only. Our 10:30 service continues to exist in hybrid form thanks to our dedicated Tech Crew.

The COVID-19 pandemic showed all of us the value of doing things online when no other way is possible. Many of us became more technologically efficient, and many more of us became more dependent on the availability of online options for things we only used to do in the same room. Good Shepherd is committed to continuing the possibility of online worship in whatever ways we have people to make it happen.

Mary Aronen to Receive the Bishop's Cross

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Wed, 23 Oct 2024 16:35:04 GMT

This honor is bestowed at Diocesan Convention.

Good Shepherd's own Mary McClellan Aronen will receive the Bishop's Cross t his Saturday, October 26, at Diocesan Convention for her many years of faithful service in God's Church.

Please join us to cheer for Mary! The award will be presented during the proceedings of the Diocesan Convention around 1:00 p.m. that day. The Greater Tacoma Convention Center is located at 1500 Commerce St, Tacoma, WA 98402. Parking information can be found here .

Since 1953, a small number of Bishop’s Cross Awards have been given each year to those whose very lives embody the spirit of Christ. The criteria cannot be summed up better than by the bishop who instituted them, Bishop Stephen Bayne, who wrote on the inception of the award:

Ever since I came to our diocese I have thought that we needed some special way to recognize and identify the fine qualities of service and leadership which are so often manifest among our people. Many dioceses have awards of one kind or another — medals or crosses or certificates — which are given to members of the clergy and laity for unusual service to the church. In this centennial year I want to institute an annual recognition, in the form of a simple Bishop’s Cross, which I should like to give to certain individuals in token of our pride in what they stood for in their ministry among us, and of our thanksgiving for fine and imaginative Christian discipleship which, through their lives, they have helped us see more clearly. They will not, nor will we I hope, think of these crosses as either a prize or a pension. They are not rewards to those who have been especially good children. They will simply be this an expression on our part of our thankfulness for the virtues and graces which God gives to his disciples as those blessings have been signally illustrated in the lives of these church people.

Past Bishop's Cross recipients from Good Shepherd include Wanda Manseau, Mary O. Haller, and the Rev. Ken Grabinski.

The Suffering Servants

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 21 Oct 2024 03:30:05 GMT

The Suffering Servant is the only role model who can dissuade people from trying to claw their way to the top, ignorant of those they step on.

The Suffering Servants

2024-56
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Twenty-Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24B), October 20, 2024
Isaiah 53:4-12 ; Psalm 91:9-16 ; Hebrews 5:1-10 ; Mark 10:35-45

One of my favorite movies purportedly for children is called Nausicäa of the Valley of the Wind. It’s an animated film made forty years ago by Hayao Miyazaki, and it’s about a teenage girl growing up in the midst of a slow-moving environmental crisis. In other words, it’s deeply prophetic.

Early in the movie, Nausicäa’s village is attacked by a local strongman who assassinates her ailing father, the king, while he lies in bed. Witnessing this, Nausicäa flies into a rage and attacks the enemy soldiers. Suddenly her mentor, Master Yupa, steps right into the middle of the violence, and Nausicäa finds that she has driven her sword deep into Yupa’s arm. Yupa stands there, unyielding, as the blood runs down. For that day, all the violence stops.

Later in the film, in a moment when others around her are panicked, Nausicäa removes her gas mask and breathes polluted air to get everyone to stop panicking. And by the end of the film, she puts her very life on the line to stop rage and violence in its tracks.

Everyone experiences pain and suffering, but not everybody chooses it readily. What is the nature of pain and suffering? Why must we go through it? And under what conditions might we take it on for others?

In his 1943 book The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis wrote that pain is God’s “megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” If God didn’t use pain to get our attention, wrote Lewis, we would have no idea how much we need God or what God wants of us.

Eighteen years later, Lewis’s wife Joy died of cancer. And though I can’t find the quote, I’m sure I remember that he remarked,

“I wish I’d known more about pain when I wrote The Problem of Pain.”

The odd thing about pain, of course, is that it looks different to the outsider than to the insider. We can talk and theorize about pain logically: “Well, if we had no pain receptors, we’d never know anything was wrong. If we didn’t hurt for others, we wouldn’t be motivated to act compassionately. If we didn’t miss people who had died, it would only reveal that their lives didn’t matter to begin with.” All of this makes sense, of course. But would you say any of this to someone who is actually in pain? I wouldn’t. No matter your suffering, you can be certain that I haven’t suffered in the same way you have.

So what is the meaning of suffering? Or is it possible that our suffering is meaningless? In our first reading today, we heard the Prophet Isaiah speak about a poetic biblical figure commonly called the Suffering Servant:

Surely he has borne our infirmities

and carried our diseases;

yet we accounted him stricken,

struck down by God, and afflicted.

But he was wounded for our transgressions,

crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the punishment that made us whole,

and by his bruises we are healed.

It’s no wonder that the first Christians looked at Isaiah’s writing and said, “A-ha! That’s Jesus he’s talking about.” Way back in the Acts of the Apostles, when Philip encounters a eunuch from Ethiopia, this is the passage of scripture they discuss, and Philip uses it to point precisely to Jesus of Nazareth. And so, with this passage always in the background, various theologies began to form about the purpose and meaning of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. It became commonplace among Christians to assume that Isaiah was predicting the coming of Jesus some 700 years later.

But let’s not begin with that assumption. Let’s wonder for ourselves: “Who is the Suffering Servant?”

Let’s ask James and John, who in today’s Gospel want to be Jesus’ right- and left-hand men. All they can think about is grabbing power, but Jesus retorts: “You don’t know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?”

The silly fools answer: “Yes! We’re your men.”

“OK then,” says Jesus, “you will drink that cup.” (At this point, a shiver is in order, because we hear about that cup every year on Good Friday. A decade after that, King Herod Agrippa I ordered the murder of James, and although nobody knows for sure, some traditions hold that John, too, died a violent death.) Jesus tells them, “Your image of sitting at my right and left hand is completely the wrong image. If you really think this is a contest, then you’d better stop racing to the top and start racing to the bottom. You’d better become Suffering Servants.”

In other words, it’s useless to play the game of who loves Jesus more, or to do good deeds expecting a reward. It’s useless to try to be good so you can get into heaven. These intentions are misplaced and shortsighted. Doing God’s work in the world is a labor of love, and when we love others, we are willing to suffer for them—to take up a cross on their behalf. Jesus knew that Isaiah spoke the truth: the Suffering Servant is the only role model who can dissuade people from trying to claw their way to the top, ignorant of those they step on. The Suffering Servant transforms the entire situation.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews also has servanthood in mind when he refers to Melchizedek. Who was Melchizedek, anyway? Well, he was a minor character early in the Book of Genesis. Melchizedek was the king of the proto-community of Jerusalem—in fact, his name means “righteous king”—yet he brought Abram bread and wine and blessed him after a hard battle. In gratitude, Abram gave Melchizedek one tenth—a tithe—of all he had. (Take note, potential pledgers—bread and wine! One tenth! Dynamic relationship!) Melchizedek is immortalized in one of the Psalms, and later in this letter to the Hebrews. He is held up as a model for priesthood, a model to which the author compares Jesus, our “great high priest.”

I think Isaiah may also have had Melchizedek in mind, but he took that servanthood idea further—not just humble, mutual stewardship, but also suffering. And then Jesus, reflecting on both Melchizedek and Isaiah, went even further, embracing death instead of power—even constructive power. Jesus could have been a political revolutionary and accomplished wonderful things for his own people, but instead, he took on a much more powerful, long-term work for the entire world, a labor of love that walked him right into the middle of suffering for the sake of those enduring it.

In other words, it’s not the violence against the Suffering Servant that redeems us. Violence can never redeem anything. But to bear the brunt of the violence you cannot prevent—and not strike back? Like Nausicäa’s mentor Yupa?

So who is the Suffering Servant? It may seem that we’ve established him to be Jesus. That is the standard Christian answer, and I won’t tell you it’s wrong. But what good it would do for Isaiah to predict the coming of a suffering savior so many centuries in the future? Isn’t that a little like telling a grieving person, “It’ll all be OK”? In the same way, I won’t just stand here and tell you, “The Suffering Servant was Jesus 2000 years ago,” and leave it at that.

Instead, I want to suggest that the Suffering Servant is Anne, a girl who wrote in her diary that she loved God and humanity with her whole heart … and then she died in a concentration camp.

The Suffering Servant is Matthew, a young acolyte in his Episcopal Church in Wyoming. He was lynched because he was gay, but he inspired many in our country to change their hearts, and 20 years after his death, he was interred in the National Cathedral.

The Suffering Servant is Malala, a teenage Pakistani blogger who was shot in the head by the Taliban because her hunger for learning was a threat to their evil ideology. Yet she survived, and as an adult, she continues to work on behalf of girls who simply want an education.

The Suffering Servant is Nancy, a woman from Louisiana who learned the 10-week-old fetus she was carrying could never survive outside her womb … yet she had to travel to a different state to find a doctor who would protect her health and relieve her grief.

The Suffering Servant is a young Baptist pastor marching for freedom, and an unlikely Salvadoran archbishop preaching liberation. The Suffering Servant is a Palestinian child starving in Gaza and a Congolese child grieving the deaths of her parents. Elders in failing health and their caregivers are Suffering Servants, and the children of Uvalde, and the flooded in

Asheville, and the downsized and indebted and disenfranchised.

And yes, the Suffering Servant is a man who urged us to love one another, who healed us and blessed us and fed us, and whom the Roman Empire executed as a criminal. These are the suffering servants of God. These are the people who have become prophets by the experiences that they endured, wittingly or unwittingly, and by their obedience to the call of love. So if you really must imagine seats to the right and left of Jesus, then these Suffering Servants are the people you must place in them.

Have you been a Suffering Servant, enduring trial after trial and wondering when things might finally get better? It would be hypocritical of me to pat you on the shoulder and say, “There, there … I know how you feel.” I don’t know how you feel, because I’m not you.

But our faith tells us that Jesus is an insider. Because Jesus suffered, our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer does know how we feel. In coming close to us, closer even than we are to ourselves, God chooses to take on our pain and suffering. This is the claim that makes us Christians. Jesus doesn’t die as a due punishment, a transaction required by an angry bloodthirsty deity. Jesus dies because he loves us with all the love that defines who God is.

If this is true—if God is truly with us in our suffering—then can any suffering be meaningless? I don’t know. I pray not. I pray that every sharp twinge, every burrowing ache, every hollow pit of despair is carved out of God, the God who is infinite and eternal and therefore cannot be depleted. When we can’t go on, I pray that God can, and that God will raise us up from our suffering and reveal to us a world so shot through with joy that we cannot yet imagine it.

Amen.

Asperges - Resurrected

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 20:06:38 GMT

The church geocache is back! Wait … what’s a geocache?

by Deb Smith

A geocache is a hidden container that people find using GPS coordinates on a GPS device, or on their phones using the Geocaching app. There are millions of geocaches all over the world, and Good Shepherd's is as close as the parking lot!

The Good Shepherd geocache, “Asperges,” is an altered sprinkler head that was first placed by “51 Capitals,” our own Alisa Johnson, several years ago near the street power pole in the lower parking lot. It was very popular, bringing many geocachers to sign the paper log inside, then log their visit online. However, it kept disappearing and was expensive and time-consuming to replace. Eventually Alisa just didn’t replace the container, and she archived the cache.

Just before Easter in 2021, and with a nod to Alisa, I published "Asperges - Resurrected,” this time reborn as wheelchair-accessible and with a slightly different description:

The original Asperges, GC5DG5J, was nearby. This redux and its placement on private property are done with permission. Park & Grab. Please seek during daylight hours and be respectful of the property. No need to disturb any plants. BYOP.

Asperges, from the Latin aspergō (“to sprinkle”), is a Christian tradition of sprinkling the congregation with holy water as a remembrance of baptism and in renewal of baptismal promises. At this location, it is usually the children who sprinkle the rest of the congregation amid lots of laughter.

The word should not be confused with Asperger's, asparagus, or Aspergillales.

Our geocache brings geocachers to our upper parking lot and serves as an introduction to our beautiful church and its well-kept grounds. You are invited to find it, sign the log, and then replace it for the next person to find.

The geocache page for this hide is https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC97DQZ . For more information about geocaching, talk to Alisa Johnson (“51 Capitals”) or Deb Smith (“RxGal”), or go to https://www.geocaching.com .

Losing Faith in Our Stuff

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 14 Oct 2024 07:00:05 GMT

How can a single message both urge those with more to give more—and reassure those with less that there’s no reason to feel guilty about that?

Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 23B), October 13, 2024
Amos 5:6-7,10-15 ; Psalm 90:12-17 ; Hebrews 4:12-16 ; Mark 10:17-31

I woke up Thursday morning with great trepidation. I have a bad habit these days of checking the news at the crack of dawn, as if being better informed about just how awful things are will somehow make me more righteous. I watched footage of Hurricane Milton sweeping over Florida. I saw that there was an interview with medical helpers in Gaza about what they’ve seen and what it tells them about the nature of the war … but I didn’t have the guts to read beyond the horrifying headline. I checked the election polls, but they haven’t budged.

The only thing that made me feel good was that the previous night, Christy and I had just sat down and made a number of donations: to Episcopal Relief and Development, the League of Women Voters, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. And, of course, we made our pledge, which I told you about in my column in the Shepherd’s Crook on Thursday.

I looked at the draft of the service leaflet that you now have in hand, and I thought, “Whoa, it seems like all we’re doing on Sunday is asking people for money.” That is the focus of the gospel reading, of course. It’s just that some of us have a lot of money, and some of us have very little, and how can a single message both urge those with more to give more—and reassure those with less that there’s no reason to feel guilty about that?

I want to rescue everyone from feeling bad about money. But then, it’s not my rescue effort. That belongs to Jesus. And sometimes we don’t even know what we need to be rescued from.

Look at this wealthy man who approaches Jesus. He is not a notorious sinner. He is not abusive or malevolent. Rather, he is overconfident. He thinks he’s really winning at this life thing.

In this man’s mind there’s one thing left: eternal life, or, as Jesus calls it, the Kingdom of God. He wants to achieve his salvation and then feel secure in having obtained it. He wants to be one of those who believes it’s crucial to know exactly what’s up while he lives … and also where he’s going after he dies.

Now, there’s no reason to doubt his sincerity. He is a purpose-driven believer who has his best life now. This is his time. All he needs is that one key to perfection—which Jesus must certainly be able to provide for him.

“Good teacher,” he begins, kneeling in reverence before the master rabbi, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Let’s pause the recording for a moment. I want to tell a very brief story of my own. Early in our marriage, Christy and I wanted to buy a house, but we lacked the savings to make a down payment. Then, at just the right moment, my grandmother died and left us $12,000. And we had what we needed.

What exactly did I have to do to inherit that down payment?

Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’m starting to think that the man might be missing the point. Furthermore, it’s not like we actually needed to buy a house; we just wanted to. Was God in that process? I refuse to claim certainty. Financial privilege is never a sign of divine favor.

OK, hit the play button again. Jesus answers the man’s question with a question: “Why do you call me good?” It’s like, hey, buddy, stop for a moment and wonder. What makes me good? What makes you good? What’s the source of all this goodness?

Yet the man doesn’t stop to wonder; he plows onward, eager to share that he has perfected the art of following the law! He has never done anything wrong—and maybe he’s not just kidding himself. Let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is, indeed, a very earnest, very good man, not at all like the people Amos excoriates, the people who are intentionally trampling the poor. This man is one of the good rich people. They do exist … right?

I don’t think it occurs to this man that he might go away from Jesus grieving. Indeed, his privileged position has taught him that you can achieve anything you put your mind to.

Jesus replies: “You lack one thing: sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”

I’m going to pause the recording again and tell you about a dream I once had. I was with a group of people under a gigantic, permeable dome. We all knew that beyond the dome was heaven. We watched as a man and a woman, a married couple, pondered this fact. Then the woman suddenly took off into the air and flew, shooting up joyfully and puncturing the dome, which sealed again behind her. Her husband stood on the ground and watched. And he turned away, grieving, because he was too scared to follow her.

Meanwhile the rest of us were eager to fly after her, and we knew that we could. But there was just one thing: we had in our midst a gigantic machine of some kind, and we couldn’t imagine leaving it behind. So we tried to lift the machine and fly with it beyond the dome. But even with all of us working together, we couldn’t lift it more than a couple inches off the ground. So we resigned ourselves to staying down below, because we weren’t going anywhere without our machine.

Both in Jesus’ time and today, it’s the same situation: we are addicted to our possessions. We might say and believe that our possessions aren’t what counts, but what if we were given a distinct opportunity to put our money where our mouths are?

That’s what happens to this man in Jesus’ presence. For all his earnest and self-confident kindliness, he is called up short. In the Kingdom of God, having wealth holds us back. Period.

We all want to “get it right,” just like this rich man did. What if we can’t get it right?

What if we cannot help ourselves, but instead must become helpless? What if we cannot receive unless we are first empty?

What if even a good, steady job that benefits the whole world can’t get us closer to God, but unemployment can?

What if our generosity can’t earn us points in “the good place,” but our poverty blesses us?

What if our carefully managed plans for a safe life just lull us into a false sense of security? What if being in danger is actually better for our spiritual growth?

What if such a realization drives us into a form of grief that is actually the first step toward benefiting from our salvation?

See, here’s the thing: Jesus makes clear in the gospels that God sides with the unemployed, the homeless, the hungry, the lonely, and the abused … over against the rest of us. God loves us all, to be sure, but God doesn’t love our possessions, or our security, or our confidence in our self-sufficiency. “Believe in yourself” is not the gospel and often runs contrary to it.

When things are going well for us, we are so easily led into the false belief that we are in control. It’s not until we come to understand ourselves as poverty-stricken—voluntarily or otherwise—that we can begin to receive God’s love.

I’m telling you this with as much trepidation as I felt in my ill-conceived morning news comsumption. I walk away from this gospel passage grieving, because I have many possessions. And I wonder what it would take for me to lose all faith in their saving power.

Oh, the word of God is indeed “living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow”! God’s judgment of the folly of our lives is real, and it will cause us to grieve.

Jesus’ disciples are shocked. It’s as if, for one fleeting moment, they actually understand the gospel. When we talk about the baptized life, we’re talking about an alternative lifestyle, a lifestyle that stands in stark contrast to that of, for instance, American culture, because it is both totally free and costs us everything.

In his classic book The Cost of Discipleship, Lutheran pastor and Nazi resister Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote about Levi the tax collector, a man with many possessions who did indeed follow Jesus:

At the call, Levi leaves all that he has … not because he thinks that he might be doing something worthwhile, but simply for the sake of the call … The disciple simply burns his boats and goes ahead … The disciple is dragged out of his relative security into a life of absolute insecurity (that is, in truth, into the absolute security and safety of the fellowship of Jesus). [1]

You may now be saying, “Well, it’s not like it makes sense for all of us to sell everything we have”! I’m not saying that. But what if we all took just one step toward beginning to understand that we don’t actually own anything—that we have no right to keep any particular possession?

What if we practiced giving ourselves away?

What little thing can we do this week to lose faith in our stuff, to open our hands wide and say to God, “All that I have is yours, and so I offer it back to you”?

[1] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1959), 58.

Investing in One Another

Sun, 06 Oct 2024 22:47:04 GMT

Let’s be friends. That means taking risks to invest in one another.

Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 22B), October 6, 2024

Genesis 2:18-24 ; Psalm 8 ; Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12 ; Mark 10:2-16 I met my childhood best friend Travis the summer before his first grade year, my second grade year. It was Luke Skywalker who brought us together. From then on it was Star Wars at recess, Star Wars after school, Star Wars at sleepovers.

That’s how you make friends when you’re a kid, of course. You have something in common. Chances are neither person says to the other, “Let’s be friends.” It just happens.

Of course, children might well say, out loud, “Let’s be friends.” But that’s because they don’t yet know what a vulnerable proposition this is. The other person might say no. So we learn quickly not to say it. There are other ways to become friends than putting yourself out there so boldly.

When it comes to teenage romance, the avoidance of “let’s be friends” takes the form of coy flirtation, which is a skill not everybody develops. I believe the sophistication of flirting is an attempt to impress the other while maintaining some level of self-protection. If things get weird, you can always insist you didn’t mean what they thought you meant.

And so we grow into adulthood, and despite the difficulties marriage has endured in the past century, our culture still places a lot of emphasis on pairing off and reproducing. When you’re young, getting married will typically improve your tax situation. (When you’re older, not so much, but that’s a topic for another time.)

But not everybody wants to get married. Not everybody is even interested in romance or sex. So when we read in Genesis today the mythological story of the creation of Eve, don’t assume this means that God declares we must pair off and make babies. We all know from firsthand experience that this is not the case for everyone—nor does it need to be.

Likewise, when Jesus criticizes divorce, don’t assume this means that God is disappointed or angry with you if your marriage falls apart. It can be hard to get out from under that emotional baggage, especially if church folks have shamed you about it in the past. And there’s a huge gender imbalance here; over the centuries, men have routinely used this passage to keep women trapped in abusive marriages, not acknowledging that Jesus was speaking specifically to men. And if you were here last week, you’ll remember that Jesus had just told his disciples that if they’re having a hard time being good to those who are vulnerable, they might consider chopping off a hand or plucking out an eye!

Jesus’ larger concern here is that our relationships with one another matter. When we decide—with or without saying it out loud—“let’s be friends,” or lovers, or whatever … we are investing in one another. We are giving ourselves in vulnerability to someone we cannot control and whose actions we cannot predict. There’s a huge risk in this.

Years ago in a college communications class I read the book The Miracle of Dialogue by Reuel Howe, and it’s always stuck with me. The author begins his book as follows:

Every [person] is a potential adversary, even those whom we love. Only through dialogue are we saved from this enmity toward one another. Dialogue is to love, what blood is to the body. When the flow of blood stops, the body dies. When dialogue stops, love dies and resentment and hate are born. But dialogue can restore a dead relationship. Indeed, this is the miracle of dialogue: it can bring relationship into being, and it can bring into being once again a relationship that has died. [1]

In every case of divorce that I’ve ever known of, the marriage stopped working when the partners realized that they were no longer on the same side. It can be far less painful to walk away—still painful, to be sure, and sometimes with sad consequences to children and others affected by the marriage. But divorce might well be the lesser of two evils, chosen with care and wisdom.

Even so, often it is indeed possible for dialogue to bring a relationship back from the dead, as Reuel Howe writes—whether a marriage or a friendship or a work partnership. The decision to be on the same side is the decision to expend the energy to invest in one another again, and this is one way resurrection happens in God’s world.

And this is a glorious thing, isn’t it? How do humans do this? The Letter to the Hebrews quotes Psalm 8 to assert that God has made humans “but little lower than the angels.” What other creatures in the known universe share such complex, mutually dependent love with one another and can even see it rise again after death? Reuel Howe believes the difference is the ability to communicate so clearly and specifically.

Do you see how amazing you are? Your very existence? No wonder the psalmist also cries out, “I will praise God because I am fearfully and wonderfully made!”

Do you see also how amazing every other human being is? If we could only remember this each day, clearly and faithfully, nobody would ever abuse or kill another human being, and even divorce would become far less common. We would use our energy to invest in one another instead.

Look to your right. Look to your left. Look behind and in front of you. Every face you see is the face of one of God’s precious creations. On Ash Wednesday we’ll remember that we all die, but today, don’t miss noticing that we all live! We are systems—processes—works in progress—create by God so that we can learn to walk in love. We are creating ourselves, with God’s help, and with the help of one another. And we are doing so through repeated incidents of death and resurrection, on small and large scales.

Our relationships with one another matter.

I dream of the Church being a place where people really can say, out loud, “Let’s be friends.” Not just within the Church, but also to those beyond our walls. People can be difficult, God knows, and often we lack the self-awareness to see how we truly affect others. But we are also capable of incredible patience, shocking grace, deep generosity. And when we recognize that someone needs patience, grace, and generosity, we’re far more likely to stretch ourselves to give it. So we do take up other people’s crosses and walk with them.

Today we begin our 2025 pledge drive, and I want to say one thing about it very clearly: the investment we make in Good Shepherd with our money is actually tied to the investments we make in one another. If we were just a bunch of disconnected individuals, showing up once a week or once a month or twice a year for a quick spiritual hit and then payng for the show, we would see that reflected in the church budget. People wouldn’t give as much to help this place thrive.

But to the degree that we are friends in this place—vulnerably offering our lives to one another to share—we find that more money flows through Good Shepherd not only for the good of our members, but for the good of the world. Our relationships matter so much that the effect of it even shows up in black and white on spreadsheets.

Now, this may sound crude to you. But like it or not, money is one of the many tools we have for expressing love, because it accomplishes real things in this world that can benefit others tremendously.

And of course, correlation is not causation. More money doesn’t mean a healthier church, and not having enough money doesn’t make a church a loveless place! It would be blasphemous for me to suggest that. I am only observing what I have seen in this place.

Those who take the vulnerable step to care for one another, for our community, and for the world invest not only their love and care, but also their money, in whatever ways they can personally afford. We pool our resources as we can afford—and some of us even stretch our previous assumptions about how much we can afford—because we see that it will enable the Church of the Good Shepherd to keep doing what we do. We expect that the money we give will benefit not only others, but ourselves as well.

The hard line Jesus takes against divorce is shocking and difficult, but it is ultimately about depth of investment. When we invest time and effort and love and, yes, money in one another, we’re far less likely to say, “I’m going to throw this away and not worry about how much it hurts the other person.” Jesus is simply saying, don’t do that!

And I don’t think it’s coincidental that the gospel writer places Jesus’ words about children next. Children are inherently vulnerable, as yet unaware of most of the pain that they will have to endure in life. Some of that pain will be needless and avoidable, if only people would care for them more. But other kinds of pain will help them grow and learn and love. Children will fall out of trees and learn from the pain. Children will give themselves to others in trust and sometimes endure rejection, and they’ll learn from that pain, too.

We are all children in this world, forever and always, if only we will not become jaded and cynical—as long as we keep reminding ourselves that all human beings are actually on the same side, growing into the love God would have us learn.

Hello, Good Shepherd. Let’s be friends. That means taking risks to invest in one another, and sometimes it even means getting hurt and committing ourselves to the dialogue it will take to envision resurrection. But there’s no other way to learn to walk in love as Christ loves us.

Amen.

Heart of a Helper

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Sun, 29 Sep 2024 23:00:08 GMT

No matter how busy or bored you may be, there’s work to be done, and we’re the ones to do it.

Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 21B), September 29, 2024
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29 ; Psalm 19:7-14 ; James 5:13-20 ; Mark 9:38-50

“I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me.” Truer words have rarely been spoken by any leader in any human situation. And as a priest, I feel reassured that I have a spiritual ancestor as important as Moses who felt the same way that I sometimes do.

The scale of unmet human needs in our world is overwhelming. I was just talking the other day with someone who noticed that for most of human history, we could only care about those in our immediate sphere of influence. There were situations we couldn’t control, like the weather, or the presence of a foreign army at our gates. But from day to day, people in Egypt didn’t hear about floods in China or revolution in Argentina. That all changed in the 19 ^th and 20 ^th centuries. And in the 21 ^st , we’re so aware of other people’s troubles that many of us shut down, not even marshaling our energy for situations where we actually can help.

Yet there are always people among us who are hardwired to be helpers, and thank God for them. You can bet that Moses counted many of them among his first 70 elders. God’s spirit comes down on the elders and gives them power to act in God’s name. But there’s a twist: two others, Eldad and Medad, who were not among the 70 appointed, also receive God’s spirit. How dare they do God’s work without the approval of the religious hierarchy?

Ah, but that’s the thing: we don’t control who wants to help. We can only choose whether to accept the help that is offered.

It's not hard to see why this Old Testament reading was chosen to be paired with this gospel reading in the lectionary. John the disciple says, “Hey! Who does that guy think he is, casting out demons in Jesus’ name? We don’t even know him!” But Jesus calls John up short, urging him to look not at the person’s formal place in the structure, but on the good work the person is actually doing.

Formal structures exist for good reasons, but not for their own sake. When we elevate the structure above the work, we get in God’s way. Jesus reserves some of his harshest words for those who would prevent helpers from being helpful, believers from believing, worshipers from worshiping.

As a priest, I am inevitably tied into the formal structures of the church. It can be far too easy for me to expect everybody to understand those structures and work within them. So understand that your priest doesn’t “do church for you.” Your priest only gathers the people and convenes our gatherings, helping serve as a window into God’s action within the church.

Well, you know what a deacon does? A deacon serves as a window into God’s action in the rest of the world.

Deacons go all the way back to the Acts of the Apostles in the first few years of the church. Someone complained that the widows in the church weren’t receiving the food they needed. The structures weren’t working well enough, and it was too much for the original twelve apostles to carry: the text literally says, “It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables.” So they appointed seven deacons to help them.

Yesterday our own Anna Lynn became the newest deacon in the world, following in this nearly two-thousand-year-old tradition. She has spent several years engaged in study through our diocesan Iona School, and she has done field work among us for over two years, working within the church’s structures to get to this point. A great many people in the church needed to get on board to make Anna a deacon. And I most certainly see the Holy Spirit resting on her today!

So what will Anna do as a deacon? She’ll do what she’s been doing all along—the very things that helped the church identify her gifts in the first place. Anna is the kind of helper who notices the scale of human need in our own sphere of influence and mediates it to the church. It’s the deacon’s job to go out from the church, find where the trouble is, and bring the trouble right back to the church’s front doors.

It’s also the deacon’s job to notice where the Holy Spirit is moving outside of the usual channels of the Church. Deacons identify Eldad and Medad and help equip them for ministry. Deacons proclaim the gospel and call us to prayer and confession. Deacons visit the sick, like we hear about in the Letter of James. Deacons set the table for our weekly feast.

And on top of all this, deacons are not paid for their work. They have their own careers. Anna runs her own valet business, which is why she’s not with us every Sunday. Far more than I, Anna has to be very careful how she manages her time and what she says yes to.

Deacons prevent the church from becoming insular. But they also understand well the demands of life and work and family on the lives of lay people. I am Good Shepherd’s only full-time employee, so it’s easy for me to feel as if Good Shepherd stands or falls on my efforts. That’s never been the case, and Anna is here to remind me of that. I don’t do church for you; the church is all of us.

Here's another thing you may not realize: Anna is now our deacon at Good Shepherd, but I am not her boss. Anna answers directly to Bishop Phil, who decides where to deploy deacons throughout our diocese. We have Anna among us for now, and hopefully for a good long time to come. But Good Shepherd doesn’t own Anna in any way.

For over two years now, I have found Anna to be an able partner in ministry. She has organized our Eucharistic visitors and frequently brings Holy Communion to people herself, in homes and in hospitals. She has worked with our Saturday community meal and offered helpful feedback for its continual improvement. She has gotten to know by name the folks who frequent that meal, and she understands their situations. And of course, Anna is a very gifted preacher.

My hope for this next chapter of Good Shepherd’s life—with me serving as your priest and Anna as your deacon—is that all of us will continue to grow more deeply in our understanding of ourselves as ministers. Everyone here who is baptized is a minister; the Episcopal Church doesn’t reserve that word for the ordained. All together, we have a mission to the world, even if we also have full-time jobs, and even when we find that we can no longer do what we used to do.

Just last week I was talking to a member of Good Shepherd who has made it his mission to reach out to lonely people in his retirement community and befriend them. It’s not what he always used to do, but he has the heart of a helper, and this is the work the Holy Spirit is offering him today.

What work is the Holy Spirit offering you?

Today we will celebrate Anna’s ordination with a party in Seaman Hall following the service. When you go down there you’ll see on the wall a rack of colorful cards that we’re calling Ministry Cards. They explain some of the ministries of Good Shepherd, why we do them, and how you can help with their work. These cards are there for you to take for your own reference, but they’re also there so that when you notice gifts in someone else, you can give them one of these cards and say, “I think I see gifts in you for this particular work.” We have printed twelve different cards for now, but there are far more than twelve ministries at Good Shepherd. More cards will follow.

There’s another card you should know about, which you’ll receive in the mail in the coming week: a pledge card you can use to commit your financial support to Good Shepherd in 2025. But more about that later.

And after the party downstairs, we’ll all troop back up here for one more very important thing: a meeting hosted by the Buildings & Grounds Task Force. For two years, they have been working on the question of whether we will renovate this building, not only for the good of the formal structure of our church, but to become less insular. Any renovation we undertake must also make this building a better tool for befriending the community beyond our doors and walls. I pray that you’ll all attend and bring with you the heart of a helper.

No matter how busy or bored you may be, there’s work to be done, and we’re the ones to do it. If you’re one of the busier folks, it may well be that your paid work is your ministry. If you’re feeling a little adrift right now, this may be a good time for prayerful listening, and for noticing your own sphere of influence.

As a priest, I’m here to be a window for you into God’s action in the church.

As a deacon, Anna is here to be a window for you into God’s action in the world.

As lay people, the rest of you are being invited to move back and forth between the church and the world, mediating them to one another, guided by your helping hearts, where, through your baptism, the Holy Spirit has taken up residence. Some of this work happens within formal structures, while other work just happens because God wants it to happen. Nobody has to carry it all alone, for indeed, it is too much for any of us.

In the coming week, ponder and pray about the work you do in the church and in the world. Are you listening? Do you hear the Holy Spirit tugging you in a new direction? Where will you put your helping heart next?

Doing Our Chores

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 20:13:36 GMT

If we insist on being winners in life, eventually we’re in for a rude awakening.

Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20B), September 22, 2024
Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22 ; Psalm 54 ; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a ; Mark 9:30-37

One of the minor perks of becoming a priest was that I became eligible to attend the annual clergy conference of our diocese. As a team player with lots of love for my colleagues, I thought this was great. But when I got there, I discovered how easy it was to feel insecure about how things were going in my own ministry. I wanted to hear about successes in my colleagues’ congregations, but those successes also made me jealous, so then I would share my own successes.

And it wasn’t just me. It turns out that the clergy conference was notorious for a culture of one-upmanship born of insecurity, and I was falling right into it. This prevalent, ongoing dynamic had long made some clergy none too excited to attend.

Then COVID happened. And at the first clergy conference after the lockdown, poof, abracadabra … the one-upmanship was nowhere to be found. It was clear that every last one of us was the walking wounded, and suddenly our greater instinct was to listen to and care for one another.

One-upmanship can always find a way back into any human system. I’m certainly proud of the way we at Good Shepherd handled the pandemic. Our decision to use Zoom as our primary gathering space worked out really well and mostly held our congregation together, and I love to tell that story! But believe it or not, that was years ago now. All our congregations made their own best decisions based on their own context and the people involved, and some of them are still having a rough time. Others are now growing greatly in membership and have healthy Sunday school programs again, and that’s a nut we haven’t yet found a way to crack. So before I go bragging about how great Good Shepherd is, I always need to remember that 2021 clergy conference.

“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about. Be kind. Always.” It’s likely you’ve heard this before—it’s a quote from novelist and TV personality Brad Meltzer. Or to put it more poetically, we can quote the Letter of James: “Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.”

It’s so easy to become disillusioned. Somehow we think we have a right to succeed in life. But God didn’t make the world that way, and indeed, I don’t think God is much interested in helping us achieve what we call success.

If you don’t like that message, well, there are zillions of churches out there that will tell you exactly the opposite—maybe even that God is ready to put a Ferrari in your driveway if only you’ll think positive for once. And they’ll quote this same passage: “You do not have, because you do not ask.” Of course, they might leave out the next sentence: “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”

And please notice what I’ve just done: I’ve suddenly set up Good Shepherd as better than zillions of other churches out there. Whoops.

“Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.” Maybe we could rephrase it this way: “Just get out there and do good work, and don’t be concerned with what others think of you for doing it.”

On Wednesday night Ashlee Gee and company will begin a six-week Zoom discussion group on Christianity and the Enneagram. The Enneagram is a nine-point personality inventory we can use for our personal learning and growth and for understanding the motivations of others who are different from us. As someone who identifies strongly with the number 3 on the Enneagram, I really, really need to absorb the Letter of James. I am competitive by nature, and that’s one of my least favorite things about myself—that, and the fact that I actually care what other people think of me. So to those of you beginning that class, you know at the outset where your priest stands—and falls! For better or worse, I’m a Three.

But most of the time I am truly less interested in winning than I am in being understood. I pray that this may be true for all of us.

We can look, then, to the gospel, where we find Jesus having a lot of trouble making himself understood. He tells his disciples as plainly as possible what’s about to happen to him, but they stick their fingers in their ears: “La la la la! We’re not tryin’ to hear that! Our Messiah needs to be a winner, but you’re talking about losing! That makes no sense, so we’ll just wait for you to come to your senses! La la la la!”

And what happens next? The disciples get into an argument about which of them is the greatest.

I understand that this wasn’t an uncommon thing for young men to do in social groups in ancient times. Honestly, nothing’s changed—look at the slang term “GOAT” (“Greatest of All Time”). And which hip hop artist is really the best, Drake or Kendrick Lamar? Smack-talking has long been a way to assert dominance—and to quell our own insecurities. But we see the dire places it can go—places where we believe that we can only be OK if others are not. No, it takes work and maturity to come to an understanding expressed well by Taylor Swift: “We all know now/We all got crowns.”

Sounds like the Kingdom of Heaven to me. And if we all get crowns, that means we don’t actually need to earn them by shoving others off the throne. I guess that in God’s reality, there are participation trophies!

Today we heard Jesus’ second prediction of his death. Last week we heard the first one, and Peter’s reaction to do it, which led Jesus to refer to him as Satan. It turns out that if you’re going to follow Jesus, first you have to accept that he wins by losing. Next, you’ll have to accept that this is the pattern for living that he offers to all of us. We can take it or leave it, but if we insist on being winners in life, eventually we’re in for a rude awakening. Once we accept that we must all be losers, even of our very lives, we can let go of our obsession with being the greatest and put our focus back where it belongs—on loving one another today and every day, which, it turns out, is also to love God.

Today Jesus gives us a fresh example of what it means to win by losing. He takes a little child by the hand and says, “See this kid? If you’re going to follow me, you need to extend your welcome to children.”

Did Jesus mean this literally? I’m sure he did, and I’m sure he also meant it in other ways. In the ancient world, children had it pretty rough. From the time they were born until the time they could actually do chores around the home, they were just a straight-up burden. And child mortality rates were so high that parents knew it was unwise to get especially attached to them. Best wait until they’ve survived the ubiquitous childhood illnesses and gained upper body strength and hand-eye coordination. Then they can actually become useful—real people, not just potential people—and eventually, they can inherit and carry on the family name.

There was not as yet any of this sickly sweet Victorian notion of children being a symbol of pure and utter innocence, unfettered by the messiness of humanity. There were no airbrushed paintings of angels helping cherubic tots cross the stream without slipping on the rocks. Our ancient ancestors were far more realistic.

I think that when Jesus said to his friends, “You need to welcome children in my name,” it must have sounded ridiculous. Other people’s kids were none of their business. So there would have been a lot of head-scratching, because this was a parable. It turned their world upside-down. If children must be honored and welcomed in Jesus’ name, what does that say about adults? Distinguished, wealthy adults? Kings and emperors?

It’s hard work understanding parables, and it can only happen in conversation with our actual lives. So what does Jesus’ parable say to you in our own context in which at least we hope that every child is wanted, loved, cherished, and nurtured? Where we recognize that all children are fully human and not second-class creatures?

Maybe welcoming children means something different to us than it did to Jesus and his disciples. And maybe that’s OK. Maybe the parable transfers well into other cultures, other times, other realities. Maybe there’s something here about respecting the dignity of every human being—something that would have made no sense at all in the ancient Roman Empire—not to any people or tribe or nation.

Maybe for Jesus’ disciples, though, it just meant that everybody’s a loser. And our work is to welcome and love losers. This might even be a chore.

And that’s kind of where I’ve been trying to get for some time now … to our chores. James would have us do our chores. Jesus would remind us of all we have in common with children, and that probably means we need to do our chores. We need to do our part to belong to the family.

And what, says Jesus, is our primary chore? Picking up a cross and carrying it. When we take up a burden that we choose, knowing full well that we can set it down anytime we need to, we can call that “doing our chores.” It’s how we thank God for that eternal participation trophy—no, not really for the trophy, because in retrospect that’s a silly metaphor and I was just trying to be relatable.

Rather, by doing our chores, we say back to God, “Yes, we see now the wisdom you give us. We all belong. We are all eternal, and you love every last ridiculous one of us in all our particulars.”

We are all children doing our chores. But your particular chores may be invisible to me, and mine to you. And so we must be kind to one another. Amen.

The Tongue of a Teacher

jessieisenberg@yahoo.com (Jessica Isenberg) — Sun, 15 Sep 2024 20:34:13 GMT

"Let’s get clear about what a cross is. A cross is a burden you voluntarily pick up on behalf of another for the love of Jesus Christ."

2024-51
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
By the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 19B), September 15, 2024
Isaiah 50:4-9a ; Psalm 116:1-8 ; James 3:1-12 ; Mark 8:27-38

I grew up in two small towns—Rupert, Idaho and St. Ignace, Michigan—each containing only a few thousand people. Then I got my music degree from Olivet College, a liberal arts school with fewer than 800 students.

Did I have fewer opportunities than other young people? Yes, in some ways. But here’s the thing: I had many, many good teachers. I had some who weren’t good, of course. And sometimes the good and bad teachers were the same people—because, of course, people are complicated!

The good teachers were the ones who noticed my natural love of learning and went out of their way to nurture it. But the best teachers were the ones who noticed other kids’ lack of interest or motivation and kept making space for them, hanging in there with children whose lives at home were difficult, against whom the deck was already stacked. The best teachers drew things out of the other kids that they didn’t have to work hard to draw out of me.

Even the very best teachers cannot save every child from their circumstances. But sometimes they do encounter situations where, as Isaiah puts it, they can “sustain the weary with a word.” My mind goes first to teachers who meet a sad or angry child in their sadness or anger and lend a gentle, listening ear. But the best teachers also learn when to say the difficult thing—when to take the child to task and not let them off the hook. The best teachers are not only nice, not only kind, not only encouraging. The best teachers are often the tough ones. And this was certainly true for me in the small towns where I grew up.

(As an aside, thank you, Miss Schacht, for taking my thesis statement to pieces multiple times before you would let me go any further with my senior term paper!)

In their native Aramaic, Jesus’ disciples called him “Rabbouni,” which means “My teacher.” Jesus was their Sensei, training their bodies, minds, and souls to live in God’s world. His was sometimes a vigorous and punishing program. His dojo never stayed in one place—they were always moving, always growing, and if I may mix metaphors liberally, they were always having to hustle on the court, always having to hit a new kind of curve ball. Then, when practice time was over, they would feast joyously, but even the feasts could turn into teaching moments.

How did Jesus get to be such a gifted teacher? He listened before he spoke. He went off by himself to spend time in silence with God the Father, and he did this even when it inconvenienced everyone else around him. Then, when new people came into his life, he looked at them and listened to them attentively. He drew out of his students the gifts God had given them—gifts that could be used in the service of God’s love for all of us.

Now, teaching is one of my core duties as a priest. But I’m the kind of person who sometimes speaks before thinking. Sometimes I overshare. I could never be a politician; most of the time I see no reason to hold back my excitement, and I’m only so-so at holding back my indignation. I can lavish love and praise on people. But I also need to keep reminding myself that if I curse any human being, I am cursing someone made in the image of God.

This is why we read in the Letter of James that not many should become teachers—because teachers’ words are influential enough to require being held to a very high standard. I find James’s words both profound and terrifying. Just imagine—no, we don’t have to imagine because we know—what tremendous damage our tongues can do!

So some of the best teachers do more listening and questioning than lecturing or pontificating. It is a blessed path to listen to someone you are certain is wrong, and not to be quick to correct them. It is good to ask open, honest, vulnerable questions, even when we think we already know the answers. Sometimes people and situations surprise us. And those of us who are teachers find that we have much to learn from our students.

Let’s face it: all of us are teachers of something, whether we want to be or not. At the very least, we teach others how to react to us. We can do this with great self-awareness or with very little—and the consequences will vary greatly depending on that.

Look at Peter. He speaks, but then he won’t listen. Peter proclaims that the Messiah’s revolution is coming, which is true. Then he fails to listen to what the Messiah himself says that will look like. And though his first words had won praise from Jesus, his next words earn condemnation. To say satanic things means to say things with willfully limited perspective—to speak from a place of fear and retrenchment. We can choose instead to speak from a place of abundance and hope—a place that may be full of uncertainty but does not lack for clarity of vision.

How’s this for clarity of vision? If you’re going to listen to and heed the words of God from the mouth of Jesus, you must be prepared to lose everything.

On Friday I attended a lunch and conversation for all the clergy of our diocese, with Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. A priest asked him, “What are some of the idols of our day that get in the way of the church’s work?” Bishop Curry’s answer was, “Survival. Survival is an idol.” Bishop Curry was, in that moment, a teacher getting tough with his students—students in an aging, shrinking, anxious Episcopal Church. Why should any Christian church be afraid of dying?

For indeed, Jesus says: “Take up your cross and follow me. Those who lose their life will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”

But what does it mean to take up your cross? Certainly not what it has come to mean in casual conversation. You know the phrase: “I guess this is just my cross to bear.”

At the consecration of our new bishop Phil LaBelle yesterday, the preacher was the Very Rev. Pamela Werntz of Emmanuel Church imn Boston. She related a story about the Rt. Rev. Barbara Harris, who was the first woman bishop in the Episcopal Church. The bishop was in a small group discussion with aspiring seminarians, and a young woman talked about having been mistreated by men because she was a young woman, saying, “I guess that’s my cross to bear.”

The preacher went on: “Suddenly, Bishop Harris grew into her full stature, which you might remember was about nine feet tall when she was impassioned, and she said, ‘Let’s get clear about what a cross is. A cross is a burden you voluntarily pick up on behalf of another for the love of Jesus Christ. It is not something you are born with. It is not something that is put on you and you can’t get out from under. It is a burden you can put down anytime you need to.’ A cross is a burden that you can put down anytime you need to.”

The tongue of a good teacher nurtures and encourages. The tongue of a great teacher gets tough with us. But the tongue of a divine teacher can “sustain the weary with a word.” Even a tough word. A divine teacher can help us students die to what we only thought we knew but were always wrong about. To cling to old, dead ways is to listen to the voice of the Tempter. A divine teacher can teach us to learn, to unlearn, and to relearn—a pattern that will serve us well throughout our lives.

And so we find that Jesus is the one who takes up his cross and bids us follow. Jesus steps between the bully and the victim, to become the victim himself, the suffering servant, the one who both vindicates and is vindicated. Jesus is the one who looks the Tempter in the eye and says, “Come at me, bro!” Jesus is the one who draws the violence away from us, taking it onto himself. He is not suffering what we deserve. He is diluting the sufferings that pile upon us unbidden, so that it becomes impossible for them to destroy our souls.

And so Jesus suffers, and dies, and redeems, because he’s all in with us. Are you all in with Jesus? Are you learning how to take up your cross on behalf of others—the cross that you are free to set down anytime you need to? Are you listening to the voices of your divine teachers—most especially the voice of Jesus?

I want to close with a poem written by one of our own folks. David Leek, who is married to Ania, has been suffering from dementia for years, and recently he was placed in hospice care. He is slipping away from us bit by bit. David doesn’t talk much anymore. But he left Ania this poem called “Listening.”

Listening

By David Leek

Listening is most interesting

When sound is soft

And feeling is tender.

Shouted words and bombastic language

Raise our protective shields

And draw us into rigidity.

Even worse, they trigger animosity

And tempt us then to return the fire

Of anger, insult and refusal.

Tenderness is undefended.

It is open and hopeful.

Tenderness invites connection

By offering empathy, interest and respect.

Tenderness defeats anger

By opening the heart

To the underlying pain

That rage denies and conceals.

Anger offers the hope of victory over another,

So that few may dream vanquishing

What we fear, or do not understand.

But beneath anger is impotence:

The terrible inability to change

What we fear in ourselves,

And others.

Listening comes with maturity.

It brings the understanding

That each of us stands separate,

And each of us longs to believe

That our views, our values, our solutions

Are true and deserve concession, understanding,

Respect and warm consideration.

It is easy to forget

That we have these gifts to offer to others

In each and every moment.

In each and every connection

With each and every being we meet.

Amen.

The Rev. Fadi Diab Attacked in Ramallah

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 17:49:37 GMT

Fr. Diab and his family visited us last summer.

The Rev. Fadi Diab, his wife, and one of his sons visited us at Good Shepherd in the summer of 2023, before the Israel-Hamas war began. Listen above to the conversation we had with him that day.

Mary Pneuman of the diocesan Bishop's Committee for Peace and Justice in the Holy Land reports:

We heard last week that sometime around the middle of August, Father Fadi and his son were attacked by settlers on the road near Ramallah and their car windshield and side windows were smashed in. They were very lucky to escape without injury. Both sons are now out of the country, but the situation is increasingly dangerous as there has been a serious upsurge of setter violence since Oct 7. Fadi has been pleading with us to do what we can to make the churches more aware and more active in our response.

Perhaps the best and most immediate way we can help is to donate to the Anglican Diocese of Jerusalem .

Let Love In

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 08 Sep 2024 20:26:02 GMT

Is God prejudiced against the rich?

2024-50
Sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 18B), September 8, 2024
Isaiah 35:4-7a ; Psalm 146 ; James 2:1-17 ; Mark 7:24-37

So Jesus is trying to get away from it all—not an uncommon situation in the gospels. He goes into incognito mode in a foreign land. But it’s no use. Immediately he is spotted and identified, which is saying something in a world without photography.

Now, I’ve heard this story in church every three years all my life, and I’ve heard no shortage of sermons on it. Nearly all of them have zeroed in on Jesus’ harsh words to the Syrophoenician woman, and this one will, too: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Ouch. These words hurt. Why is Jesus calling this woman a dog?

We can apply a variety of lenses to the books of Scripture, some more appropriate than others, depending on the genre of the writing and depending on context we may or may not have learned. We don’t need all the available context for the Bible to be useful to us, or for God to love us, or for the Christian hope to be ours. But more context is always a good thing.

Before I provide some historical context, though, I’d like to invite you to imagine what we don’t know about this woman. Is she married? Divorced? Widowed? How old is her child? Make up an age. So how old is she herself?

OK, let’s keep fleshing out her profile. In today’s terms, how much money does this woman’s household make per year? Shout out a dollar amount.

Most sermons I’ve heard assume that this woman is dirt poor. That makes sense, right? Isn’t Jesus always addressing the needs of the poor? Yet it turns out that there’s a good chance this woman isn’t poor at all, but much better off than Jesus and his disciples. Even if she is widowed, she might well have plenty to live on.

The Syrophoenicians are those who in the Old Testament were called the Canaanites. These are the people the Israelites conquered when they entered the Promised Land. They never went away; they eventually settled in their own place north of Israel. Then many centuries passed.

Now, under the Roman Empire in Jesus’ time, the economy greatly favored the Syrophoenicians over the Jews. [1] Jesus and his disciples are in a foreign land among ancient enemies who are, in general, far better off. In other words, this woman might well have significant power over Jesus and his people. This changes the way I hear Jesus’ words. Jews commonly referred to the Syrophoenicians and other Gentiles as “dogs.” It might be like calling the police “pigs,” or like calling corporate executives “the man.” It’s an insult spoken by a frustrated, mistreated, downtrodden people.

So a privileged woman standing on her home turf approaches Jesus, a poor foreigner, and asks him for help. We might imagine Jesus saying, “Look, I’m a child of Israel first and foremost, and I take care of my own. I have a mission to them specifically, and they are hurting. Your people in particular—the ones we call ‘dogs’—are oppressing them by hogging the resources Rome allows you. And you want me to help you? Please!”

Many sermons on this gospel focus on whether Jesus really thinks of this woman as a dog, or whether he is putting on a demonstration for his disciples, or whether he is bantering with her because he knows she can take it. Yet all of these analyses arise from an emotional need of our own: it sounds like Jesus is acting like a jerk, and we don’t want that.

This is where it might be helpful to set the Letter of James alongside Mark’s gospel. James talks about the human tendency to welcome the rich into our worshiping communities and to curry their favor, and he says that we should not show favoritism or draw distinctions among the members of our community. Then he immediately turns around and calls the rich oppressors and blasphemers—as if there were no wealthy people in his congregation!

Is James being hypocritical? It says in the law of Moses not to defer to the rich or the poor. [2] But James reminds his folks that there’s a power imbalance built into the economy: the poor don’t have the means to persecute the rich! The rich, then, are the ones to blame for whatever persecution is happening in the world. We are rightfully upset when the bully picks on the weak, but do we not cheer on behalf of the weak when the bully is finally brought to justice?

As an aside, beginning in November we plan to offer again our class called Sacred Ground, about the history of American racism and the church’s place in it. In this class we learn together about how the invented concept of “whiteness” became, in essence, a form of European currency that is still used to bully people today. Stay tuned for more.

At this point I could hardly blame you if you feel that I’ve unfairly lumped wealth, whiteness, and bullying into one category without nearly enough nuance and without connecting any of it to the gospel effectively. And you’re probably right. It’s all a big muddle, isn’t it? Stick with me, though. My point is that this little snippet of conversation between Jesus and a Canaanite woman cannot be removed from centuries of ethnic prejudice and economic injustice. And no, of course we don’t want to stay stuck there, with the poor feeling helpless and the rich feeling guilty—or even picked on!

The thing that gets us unstuck is not Jesus’ harsh words, but the woman’s willingness to make herself vulnerable.

Have you ever been the Syrophoenician woman, living a relatively privileged life, but suddenly facing a terrifying situation? Wouldn’t you give anything to see your child healed, or your spouse’s cancer cured, or your own body working better again? Your suffering is real, and it matters—regardless of whether other people may be suffering more. And while money can buy better security and, to some degree, better health, it cannot buy the guarantee of a long, untroubled life. Nobody’s promised tomorrow today.

So now let’s hear the woman’s response to Jesus with all this context added in. “Well, yes, you’re right! I am one of your oppressors, and I own that. We have it way better than your people do, and we can’t possibly deserve that since it comes at your expense. I am one of the dogs you speak of—yes! But please—I’m just so weary, and my daughter is so dear to me. In this moment, I just ask for one little crumb from the Master’s table. I know there’s a scarcity of money and power in this world. But is there a scarcity of healing?”

Wow. It seems the wealthy are not immune to heartbreak and loss. Who knew? The Syrophoenician woman is not so different from those of us who live comfortably. She thinks of herself as a good person who has a right to the pursuit of happiness. She didn’t set up the relationship of her people to the Jews under the umbrella of their Roman overlords. She probably can’t imagine doing anything to change it.

But she is not ignorant of the facts, either. This woman has an immediate need—a daughter in need of healing—and somehow her understanding of God is bigger than ethnicity and property and empire and ancient grudges. This woman sees in Jesus the key to a larger reality—a reality so full of love and joy that it can’t possibly stay contained within Jewish lands. In this moment, Jesus could show mercy and heal this woman’s daughter. But in the long run, Jesus could change everything! So she’s saying, “If there’s any way for me, who is not Jewish, to be a part of what your Jewish God is offering—well, sign me up for that!”

We know that our world, as it is, does not live up to God’s hopes. Yet ours is the world God keeps choosing. God is not an absentee landlord. God has come to live right in our neighborhood—as Jesus. So Jesus knows the economic realities. Jesus can handle both the large-scale dynamics and the people right on his doorstep.

Is God prejudiced against the rich? No, God loves the rich. And God loves the poor. In our world, we must not paper over the distinctions that cause and perpetuate injustice, because to ignore them is to allow them to continue. More context is always a good thing. But after that—after you have learned well the context and allow it to affect your life—are you cultivating judgment, or are you cultivating mercy?

We all have the means to provide healing and hope to one another, whether we have money or not. And those of us with more money have a specific call from God to use it to heal and not to harm—to bring positive change on a larger scale. As James puts it, faith without works is dead. “Thoughts and prayers” without organized, informed action are straight-up hypocrisy. So if you’re looking to finally erase the distinctions between us, love is the only place where we can do it—love that will lead us to invest whatever we have, a lot or a little, in one another.

After healing the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter, Jesus heads back toward home by way of the neighboring Decapolis area. Here he is presented with a man who cannot hear. Well, forgive me for using this man’s body as a metaphor, but it’s pretty irresistible. Jesus takes the man away in private—why make a spectacle of him? “Ephphatha,” he breathes—that’s Aramaic, Jesus’ native language. “Be opened.”

Be opened. Oh, let your ears be opened and your tongue be loosed! Let your soul be cracked open to hear the specific sufferings of the poor—and also the inevitable sufferings of the rich, who are just as human, just as subject to the terrible surprises of life. Let the harsh realities into your heart. Acknowledge the role you cannot help but play in these realities—so that we can learn together how to change our real-world situation.

And then let love in—not just good feelings for your family and friends. Not just your internal concern for those you know who are suffering. Pray every day! And then keep opening up to a vulnerable love that changes the way you live, so that your thoughts and your actions become one. Amen.

[1] To learn more about the likelihood of this economic dynamic, read Sharon H. Ringe, “A Gentile Woman’s Story, Revisited: Rereading Mark 7:24-31,” in A Feminist Companion to Mark, ed. Amy-Jill Levine with Marianne Blickenstaff (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2001), 85.

[2] Leviticus 19:15

The Pursuit of Purity

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Thu, 05 Sep 2024 16:49:06 GMT

Why is religion so concerned with purity? What is purity anyway, and what is it for? What consequences do we fear when we fail to maintain it?

2024-49
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 17B), September 1, 2024
Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9 ; Psalm 15 ; James 1:17-27 ; Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Shortly after I came to be your rector at Good Shepherd, my family took a vacation we had already arranged: we spent a week in Japan with my brother Seth and his family. For several days, we explored Tokyo and several other nearby cities, and we found no shortage of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples. Of course, as I am a religious professional, these were places of particular interest to me.

At the entrance to each Shinto shrine was something resembling a large water trough containing many ladles. Seth showed us the practice that is expected here: you use a ladle to cleanse your hands with water. Then you touch some of the water to your lips to cleanse those as well. Then you wash your hands one more time and say a prayer. I did so, approaching the shrine in the full confidence that all of us seek a connection with the one God.

I thought about this ritual, and I thought about the fact that most religions seem to have developed rituals of purification. The Israelites’ temple in Jerusalem featured a large pool for the priests’ purification before approaching the inner sanctum. Muslims wash their hands and feet five times daily before prayer. And, of course, Christians become Christians through the waters of baptism, a rite which can be described as a cleansing from sin. I got curious about these practices and tried to think of a few examples from the Bible of people seeking to purify themselves before God.

When God first called him into service, the Prophet Isaiah protested, “I am a man of unclean lips, and I come from a people of unclean lips.” Rather than settle for this excuse, God sent an angel with a hot coal to touch Isaiah’s lips and purify them.

Have you ever put a needle in fire in order to sterilize it? The Prophet Malachi described God’s presence in similar terms, as a refining fire—or as soap. God kills germs. But there is anxiety here: Malachi asks, “Who can stand when [God] appears?” In other words, who doesn’t have germs that need to be killed?

When Peter the fisherman saw Jesus walk to his boat on the water, he fell down and cried, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!”

And St. Augustine, the 4th-century theologian renowned for giving us the concept of original sin and also known for his sexual misadventures and hangups, once prayed: “God grant me chastity and continence—but not yet!”

Why is religion so concerned with purity? What is purity anyway, and what is it for? Who has it, and who doesn’t? What consequences do we fear when we fail to maintain it?

There’s something about being in the presence of the Holy, of the One who made us all—when we’re in that space, we don’t feel worthy to be there in all our imperfection. We feel the need to purify ourselves. This is why we pray the Collect for Purity at the beginning of the Eucharist. This is why some people fast before church, or dress up in their “Sunday best.” And it’s why Roman Catholics go to the confessional booth before daring to receive Holy Communion. We ourselves take that step within our liturgy by praying the General Confession just before we pass the Peace.

Somehow these rituals make us feel a little more prepared for the holiness we’re about to encounter. To some, they may seem like empty rituals—how could they actually accomplish what they set out to do? I think the answer is that they will if we’re ready to let them. We want at least to try to be morally good. We don’t appreciate those who don’t try to be morally good. But what does this even mean?

Our Collect of the Day has us praying that God will “increase in us true religion.” The reading from Deuteronomy advises diligent observance of the Mosaic Law, and today’s psalm sings of people who lead “a blameless life” and who do “what is right.” Purity in these contexts is marked by honest speech, lack of contempt for others, rejection of what is wicked, and indifference to the lure of money. In the Letter of James, purity means a bridled tongue, a refusal to let our anger get the better of us, and proactively doing good works toward those who are most in need.

So in the Bible, purity has both a personal and a communal aspect. It’s about practicing self-control, and it’s also about actively working for social justice. To be “stained by the world,” on the other hand, is to be driven by the pursuit of wealth and the hatred and contempt of other people. Money is mentioned in particular because of the unique power it gives us to abuse others.

Now let’s take all of these things and keep them in mind as we hear today’s Gospel proclaimed. The Pharisees fastidiously observe the traditional Jewish rituals of purification, which is all well and good, but then they criticize Jesus and his disciples for not doing so. Now, I figure that Jesus’ disciples were observers of these purity rituals, just as the Pharisees were. I might just be making this up, but I imagine that in this case Jesus has urged his disciples not to wash, just this once, in order to be provocative. When the Pharisees take his bait, Jesus quotes the Prophet Isaiah to excoriate them: “You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”

In other words, there’s nothing wrong with washing, but Jesus objects to hypocrisy: doing the outwardly holy thing while quietly pursuing that which is abhorrent. Jesus names a whole laundry list of behaviors to which he assigns “evil intentions.” If you’re going to do these things anyway, says Jesus, then what are you washing for? Meanwhile, anyone can fail to wash but still do good works—and these are the ones whose intentions will be honored. Jesus is decoupling purity rituals from actual purity.

This is in keeping with everything the ancient prophets of Israel and Judah preached. Their main concerns were with the futility of idolatry and the moral demands of social justice. Purity could be found in dedication to the One God, but not merely in the externals. Performing your rituals “the correct way” may well help you. God doesn’t need that; you do. But if you have food while your next-door neighbor is hungry, you have no right to criticize your neighbor’s failure to “do it right.”

I see a couple points of tension here. One is that purity isn’t simply about keeping your head down and privately following rules. We’re not meant to be navel-gazers, but active participants in God’s world. This means that while we are not to nitpick others hypocritically, we still need to deal with evil. Far too many churches, in pursuit of quick forgiveness, have failed to stop evil things happening right in their midst or have even pursued active coverup campaigns. It’s truly abhorrent. But if someone else sins against you, I have no right to order you to forgive them! To fail to pursue justice in the face of evil is to avoid the painful truth-telling that must precede justice and reconciliation. Until this truth-telling happens, churches continue to be poisonous to others.

And this leads to the other point of tension: Rituals of purity are not required for salvation. But that doesn’t mean that we can avoid the consequences of our actions. We all know what justice is. When someone has committed evil, we want them to know it! They should not be able to escape the full knowledge of the effect they have had, and there should be a way for them to pay a price for it. Of course, if we’re being fair, the same goes for us.

My image of God’s judgment is that when our lives are complete, God shows us all the consequences of all of our actions. We see—no, we experience—the effect we have had on others, from the best to the worst, in full relief. But then, in an instant, God forgives it all. How would you feel if this happened? It may be that being forgiven—even though we don’t deserve it—feels like hell, or at least like a very painful purgatory. But if we have prepared ourselves through the pursuit of purity—which includes the practice of forgiving others—we may find our own forgiveness easier to bear.

So there’s nothing wrong with pursuing purity. It is doomed to fail. But maybe this failure is more helpful to us than success. From the Cross, Jesus taught us that God works wonders through failure. C.S. Lewis, in his autobiography Surprised by Joy, wrote that a vital part of his path into mature Christian faith was trying, and failing, to be pure—and then reckoning with the consequences—and then coming to a deeper understanding of himself as a forgiven sinner.

All this is to say that there is no place in our lives too impure for God to tread. No moral failing can keep God out. The psalmist cries, “Lord, where can I go from your presence?” God is with us in our joy and in our tears—in our successes and in our failures—in our good works and in our worst sins.

Another name for the pursuit of purity is sanctification: becoming more and more like God, two steps forward, one step back. Or even one step forward, two steps back. When we do good works, God blesses our efforts. When we fail to do so, God is with us in our sorrow and anxiety. We are always given another chance to “welcome with meekness the implanted word that has the power” to save our souls.

And when we fail whatever purity test others place on us, God is there too, whispering, “Don’t listen to them! I love you as you are. There is literally nothing you can do to make me love you less.” Amen.

Meal Train for Mary Aronen

office@goodshepherdfw.org (Evan Hershman) — Tue, 27 Aug 2024 18:36:04 GMT

Lend a hand by cooking or providing meals

Mary Aronen is having back surgery on August 29, and members of Good Shepherd are stepping up to help cook and provide meals for her throughout the month of September via the online planning tool Meal Train. Sign up to cover a specific day at mealtrain.com/trains/47dn05 .

Come Home for Dinner

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 25 Aug 2024 21:05:46 GMT

For Christians, the call to come home is the sound of a dinner bell ringing.

2024-48
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 16B), August 25, 2024
Joshua 24:1-2a,14-18 ; Psalm 34:15-22 ; Ephesians 6:10-20 ; John 6:56-69

Many cat owners like me enjoy the narrative that you can’t train a cat like you can train a dog. But it’s not really true. We have trained our two cats to come home from the outdoors when we stand on the back porch and clap our hands. If they come home at mealtime, they’ll get fed. If it’s not mealtime but we want them in for some other reason, they’ll at least get a tasty treat for their obedience.

But our cats’ response is not merely Pavlovian. There are other factors at play, including the weather. If it’s after sunset on a gorgeous summer evening, the cats, knowing that we intend to keep them indoors for the night, may choose to skip dinner and not come home until morning. Sometimes a cat will even come running when we clap, only to stop midway home, meow loudly, and then turn and leap the fence again. They know they always have a choice about whether and when to come home, and we allow it.

We heard today from the Hebrew general Joshua, after the death of Moses, after the Promised Land has been conquered and divvied up among the twelve tribes of Israel. Joshua’s final act before his death is to urge the people to worship YHWH in the long run, and no other deities. In the verses we skipped over, Joshua reminds the people of the whole history of the Hebrews and all the ways that YHWH has fought on their side. After this passage, Joshua will say to the people, “Are you sure you won’t worship other gods? If you do, YHWH will destroy you!”

These are frightening words, and Joshua’s warning is explicitly tribal. The ancient understanding was that there were many gods in the supernatural pantheon, but that “our God” fights for us. To try to make this reading about monotheism—the belief that there is only one God in the universe—would be dishonest, because monotheism developed over many centuries and was still a long way off at this time. The bold claim Joshua makes is that the local deity of the Promised Land has repeatedly acted outside the Promised Land. The Hebrew god YHWH went down to Egypt and exerted power in the territory of other gods. Then YHWH guided the people to their true home.

Why wouldn’t the people remain loyal to the God who is clearly the most powerful, and who rescued them specifically? What other choice could there be? And why wouldn’t YHWH become enraged at those who still didn’t get it? But there’s always another choice. The rest of the Hebrew Bible is the story of the people’s wavering loyalties to YHWH, and an exploration of the question: “When we refuse to come home, does God punish us? And what happens after that? And how does this connect to our situation today?”

I have an important side note here. It’s all too easy for us to draw, from our knowledge of the Bible, simplistic conclusions about the present-day situation for Jews in that very same Promised Land. I don’t say much about it from the pulpit because I don’t want to minimize the immense suffering on either side. I will say that I do not support the Israeli government’s systematic victimization of the Palestinian people over the past 75 years, especially the overwhelmingly violent actions of the demonstrably corrupt Netenyahu administration. Neither do I support the brutal, nihilistic actions of Hamas as they encourage Israeli violence against their own people to achieve the goal of a homeland without Jews. I do support the hope of present-day Jews for a homeland free from violence, and I recognize that the Palestinians also have a legitimate claim on the land. The Promised Land must be shared by Jews, Muslims, and Christians; no other option makes theological sense in any of these three religions, all of which are in relationship with the same God.

So now perhaps I’ve said too much and said it simplistically, but I am sincere and commit to keep learning. We have a choice every day about how we will treat the vulnerable among us, and this matters to God. Life is often characterized as a fight, for which you need to be equipped with weapons and armor. Yet we just heard in the Letter to the Ephesians that our enemies are not flesh and blood. What does armor look like in God’s domain? Truth. Right relationship. Courage to proclaim peace. Faithful living. The reassurance of God’s rescue of us. Our only weapon is the word of God, which doesn’t wound or kill, but divides truth from falsehood and ultimately reconciles. To engage in this nonviolent fight requires prayer. When we commit to love one another and even to love our enemies, this is what it looks like to come home.

For Christians, the call to come home is the sound of a dinner bell ringing. To reference last week’s readings, wisdom has spread a feast for us. Jesus invites us to chow down on his very self. But we always have a choice, and Jesus presents that choice so starkly that in today’s reading, many people choose not to take it. This teaching is too difficult; they don’t accept it, and they wander away. In the end, writes John, only twelve disciples remain—an exaggeration, to be sure, but a theologically significant one. Twelve is all Jesus needs. Twelve is still enough for a lively dinner party.

“Well,” Jesus observes, “A few of you are still here. But will you stay home for dinner? Or will you also turn and jump the fence?”

The disciples may be just as flummoxed by this teaching as those who left. The difference is that the disciples choose to hang in there even when they don’t understand. “To whom can we go?” Simon Peter plaintively responds. “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.”

This may sound like resignation, and on some level, maybe it is. Peter sees that there are no other options for him anymore. But with Jesus, even scarcity of options is a form of abundance—because it enables a clear decision. It’s not that there are no other gods Peter could worship—the idols of control and self-assurance may well keep tempting him. But in this moment, Peter no longer finds these gods worthy of his limited time on earth.

YHWH, revealed to him through Jesus the Messiah, requires us not to be in control—not to be self-assured. I daresay this God demands that we never quite be certain about God, because if we were, we could fool ourselves into thinking we need nothing more from God. Peter sees that the dance of uncertainty is the only honest way to engage all of life—provided that we live out our uncertainties faithfully.

This is paradox, not a contradiction. To live our lives faithfully means to risk with direction.

That phrase comes from a wonderful book I began reading this week: Camping with Kierkegaard by J. Aaron Simmons. Simmons is a philosophy professor at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina, and he’s also a Pentecostal Christian. In his book he asks this core question: “What is worthy of your finitude?” Life is a series of closing doors. How are we choosing to live our lives from one fleeting day to the next?

Simmons says this not to make us feel trapped, but to help us get real. He asks: Who is the person you are intentionally becoming? If this has never occurred to you before, could it be that you’re drifting aimlessly? Why would you do that? It’s better to keep growing into an understanding of your purpose—to dedicate yourself in faith, even though you don’t fully understand where you’re going.

As the poet Mary Oliver put it: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

The difficult teaching of Jesus demands that we come home for dinner. Without nourishment, how can we handle the uncertainties all around us every day?

Jesus also says that “the flesh is useless,” which may sound as if he means that our bodies doesn’t matter. But that’s not what he means. Our bodies are a gift from God, and God has marked our bodies as holy by living through Jesus’ body. Yet a body that has died is just a body: the spirit is also necessary to make the body useful.

If you are one of the baptized, Jesus’ difficult teaching means engaging honestly with your body. Don’t just feed and live in your body. Just don’t live as your body with no awareness of your soul. Choose to live as embodied spirit. Live through your body, which Jesus feeds, physiologically and spiritually, at this dinner table.

If you are one of the baptized, Jesus’ difficult teaching means coming home to the church and then going back out again into the rest of the world: a back-and-forth dance. So many are leaving the church these days because they observe that those of us here in the church don’t have it all figured out and often mess up, or because we have failed to achieve 100% certainty. Do you wish to go away, too?

But this state of affairs isn’t new. We even hear Jesus address it today: “Among you there are some who do not believe.” Well, I have news for you: not believing doesn’t make you Judas! It makes you human.

It’s a difficult call to live through our bodies in perpetual uncertainty. Yet this is how all humans live! So where else would we go? In Jesus we find our teacher and nourisher who can relate to us because he has shared that experience. This is why only Christianity makes sense to me. How could I worship a God who makes demands on me without having participated in what I’m going through?

God knows that we always have a choice about whether and when to come home, and God allows it. But your baptism makes you part of an eternal family, where dinner is always being served. Eternal life means an embodied life in which we rise above our fears and uncertainties to serve the world in Jesus’ name.

So what kind of world do you want? Here, the Holy Spirit is helping us live into that world. Come be nurtured, fed, strengthened, sent out. Today we have all come home for dinner. Let us thank God for the gift of Jesus, for the gift of one another, and for the gift of our “one wild, precious life.” Amen.

Om-Nom-Nom-Nom!

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 18 Aug 2024 20:45:47 GMT

The urge to love and the urge to consume are not always very distinct.

2024-47
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 15B), August 18, 2024
Proverbs 9:1-6 ; Psalm 34:9-14 ; Ephesians 5:15-20 ; John 6:51-58

One night when my sister-in-law Patty was pregnant with her first child, she had a dream. Here’s how she tells it:

“I dreamed that I was lying in bed, and we had a little crib next to the bed, and in it was our new baby. So I picked the baby up, and it was tiny—just about the size of my hand. I lifted the baby up to my lips and kissed it, and that’s when I realized the baby’s head was soft like a freshly baked sugar cookie. It didn’t just smell like a sugar cookie; it looked like a sugar cookie. So I ate the baby. In the dream, I wasn’t upset about it at all. But when I woke up, I was horrified!”

OK, everybody sing it with me:

C is for cookie! That’s good enough for me!

C is for cookie! That’s good enough for me—oh!

Cookie cookie cookie starts with C! [1]

A couple years later, when my own child was an infant, I dreamed that I had successfully converted Sarah into liquid form and was storing her in a two-liter soda bottle in the fridge. The label on the bottle was a cartoonish image of a screaming baby. And I remember thinking, “This is a great achievement, but I must remember not to drink her.” Well, what do you think happened next? That’s right—I poured some of her into a cup and gulped her down!

I find these dreams both hilarious and haunting. Such images feel archetypal, deeply psychological, exploring ideas so deeply forbidden that we don’t dare talk about them. To consume another human being—especially our own child? It’s monstrous!

Yet do you remember Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s book Where the Wild Things Are ? How many parents do you know who, in a moment of overflowing love, have said to their little one, “I’ll eat you up, I love you so!”? Then they come zooming in with ticklish, giggly, nibbly kisses. I have never known this situation to terrify a child. Even the youngest among us instinctively understand that the urge to love and the urge to consume are not that distinct. Parents and children want to cuddle—to come as close as possible to occupying the same space. In their own very different way, adult lovers do, too.

Maybe this is why eating and drinking, the most necessary acts for sustaining our existence, are things we usually do publicly, not privately. I remember my dad’s kneejerk disgust at anyone who dared chew with their mouth open—not just his own children! Well, if mastication is so unsettling, why don’t we all eat in private? Yet we don’t. (I wonder if a psychiatrist among us might have more to say about this?)

Having just heard today’s gospel passage, I hope you see where this is going. Jesus has just said, “Whoever eats me will live because of me.” Not once have I read this passage without experiencing both humor and disgust. Indeed, Jesus’ detractors cry, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” What is this, a zombie movie? (And Jesus hasn’t even risen from the dead yet!)

Now add to this disgust the religious taboo against consuming blood. From Leviticus 17, verses 10-12:

If anyone of the house of Israel or of the aliens who reside among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut that person off from the people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you for making atonement for your lives on the altar, for, as life, it is the blood that makes atonement. Therefore I have said to the Israelites, ‘No person among you shall eat blood, nor shall any alien who resides among you eat blood.’

For Jews then and now, the proper preparation of meat is crucial for following the Law of Moses. The roots of the practice go back to an ancient understanding that the blood of a creature is its life—given by God, and always to be respected for that reason. In the cultic practices of maintaining a healthy relationship with the divine, blood is used for sacrificial purposes—not for consumption. (If you want to go down a glorious rabbit hole, look up the Wikipedia entry on shechita, the proper practices for the slaughter of animals in Judaism.)

Well, we know that Jesus frequently used metaphors that would have sounded insensitive, tasteless, or even shocking to his audience. Just a few weeks ago we heard about mustard, an invasive species that will grow anywhere. This is what the Kingdom of God is like—weeds?

In another parable, Jesus describes God as being like a judge who refuses to render a just verdict until the plaintiff annoys God to the point of giving in. This is what prayer is like? Really?

So it is here with Jesus talking about the people eating him. It’s almost as if Jesus relishes their confusion, because he changes verbs to deepen the shock. First he restates his point: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” But next the gospel writer has Jesus begin to use a different Greek word for “eat,” and this one has earthier connotations. Especially in conversation about animals, people might use this version of “eat” to mean “crunch, munch, gnaw, or nibble.”

For all our efforts thus far to say, “It’s only a metaphor,” this one starts to push back. We are not to think of eating Jesus as a mere absorption of a gnostic spiritual concept, devoid of any physicality. This kind of eating makes slurping noises. Or maybe it's like Cookie Monster: “Om-nom-nom-nom!!!”

Anyway. Here Jesus pushes his metaphor so far as to dare his audience in Capernaum to walk away. It may be that only our cultural familiarity with Holy Eucharist keeps us from doing the same. But is Jesus talking about a Sunday morning ritual? Well, we don’t know what the practices of Eucharist were like in John’s community, but for the sake of the story chronologically, note that we haven’t gotten to the Last Supper yet. Furthermore, John is the only gospel writer who never describes Jesus instituting Holy Communion! Instead, he has Jesus washing the disciples’ feet on the night of his arrest. If you want bread and wine as body and blood in John’s gospel, this is the closest you’re going to get.

“OK then,” you continue, “does this mean that only those who become Christians can go to heaven when they die?” But now we’re getting bogged down by assumptions that have only taken hold in the last few centuries—and that have become malformed by overzealous missionaries more concerned with spreading their own cultural assumptions than maintaining an awareness of God’s presence throughout the world.

Jesus never talks about everyone in the world “becoming Christians”—he simply urges the disciples, at the end of Matthew’s gospel, to baptize all different kinds of people. And Jesus says almost nothing about “heaven when we die.” He only asserts that the overprivileged and self-assured will be judged and punished for not taking care of those in need in this life. But most of the time, Jesus’ concerns are earthly and embodied.

Even Paul, writing to the early church, seems to have literally no concept of hell! [2] Projecting out beyond death is merely a distraction from what we need to be about right here, right now. The Letter to the Ephesians, most likely a later compilation of Paul’s ideas, focuses on how we must behave daily, for since Christ is risen, we are all one community and there is no need to allow fear to lead us into sin. Gratitude is the proper response to God’s love, and gratitude enables us to participate in eternal life right now in community—not merely after we die as individuals. So in this new, resurrected life without fear, it is enough for Jesus simply to say, “I will raise them up on the last day.”

So what does it mean to eat Jesus? I think it’s about the deep human urge to come to occupy the same space as the one we love. Sometimes this might even feel like an urge to consume, to take our beloved one into ourselves bodily! And that’s unnerving. And shocking. And a great descriptor of what it means to be in love with God as revealed in Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, Emmanuel … God-With-Us.

So today, chow down! Come to this table and receive Christ, who gives his very body and blood to sustain your life, for the life you live today is indeed the origin of your eternal life. Take Jesus into your mouth and chew, and slurp, and swallow. Feel your jaw working, and become aware of your tongue. Note the role of your esophagus, and feel Christ taking up space in you on the way down, and the alcohol from the wine tingling in your throat.

Jesus came to be with us, not to promise us a disembodied infinity, but to feed us with embodied eternity. Taste and see—taste and keep learning—that God is good. Amen.

[1] Joe Raposo, “C Is for Cookie,” from Sesame Street.

[2] Astute Bible readers may want to refer me to 2 Thessalonians 1:5-9, but most scholars agree that Paul did not write this letter, and certainly not this passage in it, with theology so far removed from that in Paul’s genuine letters.

An Update on the New Hope Center (August 2024)

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 16:42:48 GMT

A message from Bruce and Anita Paden

Above: A group of young people performing at NHC for the celebration of Africa Children’s day on June 16.

There is a lot of despair these days in Goma and the surrounding area of the northeastern area of DR Congo. The fighting in that area between the army of the DR Congo and the rebel group called M-23 is ongoing and has led to over a half million IDPs (Internally Displaced People) flooding into Goma and living in squalid conditions in camps that provide flimsy, temporary shelter and surviving as best they can.

New Hope Center continues to function, bringing hope and some moments of joy to at least some of the many grieving and often traumatized children and young people in the area. Above is one such “moment of joy” that took place on June 16 of this year when 252 children, young people and adult facilitators came to NHC to celebrate “African Children’s Day”.

And so life goes on in spite of much fear and uncertainty.

The two of us recognize that at our ages (83 and 84 this year), we are in the final chapter of our lives. Before bowing out, however, we want to do everything we can to assure the continuation of this work that has brought hope and comfort to many children and young people in the eastern area of the DR Congo. We have been able to inform and encourage donors who have made it possible for NHC to now own two apartment complexes that in the month of June of this year provided $2,450 in rental income for the center. We would like to help the center with one final project that will provide additional financial support. The proposal from the team in Goma is to construct five or six small, commercial buildings that can be rented out to individuals who would like to have space for a small store. We believe that once this project is completed, it will provide additional income, around $300 to $500 a month, and so with the funds from this project and the ones from the two previous projects, the staff at NHC will be able to continue the work they are doing in Goma and surrounding areas providing psychosocial help to grieving and often traumatized children and young people and also helping them stay in school. We believe If they have adequate resources, our Congolese colleagues can continue this important work on their own well into the future.

We are acutely aware of the unfavorable conditions in this area of DR Congo that could complicate or even halt the carrying out of this project, especially the fighting that continues very close to NHC that obviously has people on edge and makes life very uncertain. Shelling has taken place close to the center, but so far it has escaped damage. Of course, we cannot be certain what the months ahead will bring. We will, however, do our best to keep you informed of the progress of this project and what is happening in this part of DR Congo.

We cannot say “thank you” enough for those of you who have helped all these years to support this vital ministry to children and young people in eastern DR Congo. We believe that we can count on your continued support until the realization of this final project.

We follow the news from DR Congo by going online and accessing Okapi News releases. If you would like to have more news of DR Congo, the following Web site, https://www.hirondelle.org/en/democratic-republic-of-congo-okapi, will be of interest to you. It is in English and provides a good summary of important news from DR Congo.

As for the two of us, suffice it to say that we have our aches and pains. Anita suffers from Parkinson’s disease, but she has managed it very well. As for me, Bruce, I recently developed bad pain in my left hip and leg along with a thick, stiff feeling in both feet. I recently underwent an epidural steroid injection to help with the pain, and it has definitely helped. PTL! We will appreciate your prayers both for NHC and for us as we seek to finish well what we started twenty-five years ago. Again, many thanks for your prayers, your support, and the words of encouragement we receive from you from time to time.

Many Blessings,

Bruce and Anita Paden

Hourly Bread

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 11 Aug 2024 22:31:57 GMT

God meets us day by day—and hour by hour—at the very bottom of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.

2024-46
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 14B), August 11, 2024
1 Kings 19:4-8 ; Psalm 34:1-8 ; Ephesians 4:25-5:2 ; John 6:35-51

Early last week I listened to an episode of Brene Brown’s podcast, Unlocking Us, in which she interviewed Richard Rohr. You may have heard of them. Brene Brown is a TED Talk veteran, bestselling author, and teacher of Sunday school kids at Christ Church Cathedral in Houston. Richard Rohr is a Franciscan priest and bestselling author who’s really into the Enneagram.

At one point Brown quoted from Rohr’s book Breathing Underwater: “Only hour-by-hour gratitude is strong enough to overcome all temptations to resentment.”

Something about that felt simultaneously challenging and comforting to me. Imagine spending every hour of every day noticing the things we’re grateful for and thanking God for them. It follows on what I said last week, that everything good that happens in our lives is a gift from God. What if we just noticed that a lot more often—like, 15 to 20 times a day?

I’m not normally like that, though. Usually I move through my days on auto-pilot. I drink my morning cup of coffee while reading the news (which may or may not be a great way to move from resentment to gratitude)! I might go for a walk if I can get myself out the door, but I may instead let the computer glue me to my chair just a little bit longer. I drive to the church, and I may take surface streets if I have time, because it’s more interesting than sticking with I-5.

And so my day goes, and it’s easy not to notice the gifts I am given. So imagine my surprise, just in the past week, to be plunged into a situation where these hourly gifts from God became an overwhelming reality.

On Thursday morning Evan and I were puzzling over the fact that our copier/printer was broken again. (It’s working now, by the way, and I have no idea what changed. Kudos to Evan for finding a way to get our service leaflets printed for this morning.)

I checked my texts, and there was one from my child Sarah who was busy serving as a counselor at Camp Huston. It said, “Guess whose lucky streak got broken?” Yes, after over four years of avoiding it, Sarah had finally come down with COVID-19.

Now, in a normal week, this would have been disruption enough. I suddenly had to drive to Gold Bar and bring Sarah home to isolate for a few days. But we had picked the week Sarah was away to replace literally all the plumbing in our house.

Remember back when John McCain was running for president and he kept talking about “Joe the plumber”? Well, Joe was at our house, and yes, that’s literally his name. Joe had spent three days doing careful prep work so that when he finally did shut off our water, we would only be without it for one night—two at the max. As of now, the water was off.

Now, it's not like we didn’t have a plan. Christy and I had booked an AirBnB literally four doors down from our house. Brilliant, right? We only had that for one night, but if we needed a second night away, we could figure something out. Well, we had not anticipated sharing that AirBnB with an unregistered guest shedding virus all over the place. So I picked Sarah up, and we both wore masks in the car all the way home. Then I sneaked her into the AirBnB.

Meanwhile, Joe the plumber had a problem. The co-worker who was supposed to help him had bailed on the job. Joe was now working all alone, and some of the work was proving more difficult than he’d anticipated. He loaded up on energy drinks and worked late into Thursday night. No, strike that: he worked literally all night and kept working all day Friday!

At one point I asked Joe, “Do you have a bathroom in your truck?” Nope, no such amenity is provided. Anytime he heard nature’s call, he had to go find a place—a convenience store or something. I had never thought about such things before.

Now, Christy and I just had COVID ourselves a month ago, so we resigned ourselves to spending the night in the same room with Sarah, trusting in our temporary natural immunity. Friday was my day off, but Christy strapped on her KN95, got on the bus, and went to work. Sarah and I had to check out of the AirBnB by 11:00 a.m.

Now what? We couldn’t go home. Sarah’s active symptoms were receding into a profound exhaustion. And then Christy provided the solution. We happen to have a friend whose parents have moved from their condo into a retirement community, but the family still owns the empty condo! We called our friend Katrina, who said, “Yes, you can hang out there, but the HOA has strongly worded language about guests being there when the owner isn’t around. We’ll have to sneak you in and out.”

This involved parking our car in a public lot, then hopping into Katrina’s car so she could drive us into the residents’ lot. Sarah still had all her bags from camp, including her sleeping bag, and I had Christy’s and my bags from our night at the AirBnB. We got it all into the condo, and Katrina left us there, warning us that we could not leave the room until we left the condo for good. Sarah zoned out on the bed for four hours.

Well, what would we do when Christy got off work? Could we go home yet? I called Joe, and he predicted that he might— might— have the water restored late that evening. Nope, that wouldn’t do. We decided to go to Christy’s dad’s place in Bellevue, a large house where Sarah could get in the door, go straight to a room all by herself, and not interact with her elderly grandpa at all. And Christy and I wore masks around him and only hung out with him outdoors before going to bed. I texted Joe and insisted that he go home, get a good night’s sleep, and resume work in the morning.

I don’t usually share such long personal anecdotes in a sermon, but I hope you see the point. I’m not used to having to make hour-by-hour decisions to meet my basic needs and those of my family. But other people do. I’m not used to having to decide whether to break the rules just to have access to a restroom and running water. But other people do.

The thing is, for most of the past few days, I have not felt all that stressed out. I have felt focused and accomplished. And I’ve noticed something else. Nearly every hour, I have felt remarkable gratitude. Just look at how robust our safety net is! When we couldn’t do for ourselves, others were there at every turn to give us what we needed. All of these people—and all of these situations—are in some way gifts from God. And yes, seen another way, they are all marks of unearned privilege.

Last week we had a guest at our 10:30 service: the Rev. Jeffrey Boyce, a deacon who is our diocesan missioner for the unhoused. In a conversation at coffee hour, he talked with us about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Remember that from school? At the bottom of the pyramid are our basic physiological needs: do we have food, shelter, access to a restroom? At the next level is basic safety, and we can’t make this a primary concern before our physiological needs are met. Then come belonging and love … self-esteem … intellectual fulfillment … aesthetic fulfillment … and finally self-actualization and transcendence.

I think a lot of people assume that all the church’s talk of God is primarily about transcendence. It would be nice to have that, but who has time? We’re too busy trying to achieve self-actualization, or intellectual and aesthetic pursuits. This is the language of the privileged who have all the needs at the bottom of the pyramid consistently met. But no … God doesn’t meet us merely at the level of transcendence. God meets us day by day—and hour by hour—at the very bottom of the pyramid. If we don’t see that, it’s only because we’re not accustomed to the need for hourly gratitude.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Do you see? The bottom of the pyramid.

You can also turn Jesus’ words into a metaphor for transcendence, and that’s not wrong. In that same podcast, Brene Brown and Richard Rohr pointed out that when religion doesn’t move people toward the contemplative, mystical, and transcendent, it becomes part of the problem instead of the solution. We always need to be about “healing, forgiving, reconciling, and peacemaking,” which cannot happen if we don’t first have enough to eat. God is definitely at the top of Maslow’s pyramid as well. God is found at every level of the pyramid.

But Jesus didn’t speak kind words to the self-made and self-assured. His audience was a whole race of people who were oppressed, downtrodden, barely getting by. Every day they worked hard for their food and frequently suffered through disease and tragedy. And, of course, they didn’t have indoor plumbing! When Jesus preached, his congregation was far more like the people who have been camping our woods than like most of us sitting in these pews today. In that same podcast, Brene Brown said, “I don’t trust a spirituality that doesn’t have dirt under its nails.”

“Only hour-by-hour gratitude is strong enough to overcome all temptations to resentment.” This morning, our house has a working toilet, but still no running water otherwise. Joe’s work will continue both today and tomorrow, and I could feel resentment about that ever-slipping timeline. Life does throw us for loops, so we need a prayer practice. Not just daily, but hourly. That doesn’t mean selling everything and moving into a monastery. But it does mean turning up the dial on our capacity to notice the blessings all around us.

What if God’s primary work in the world is simply offering us the means not to die yet? Of course, we will all die eventually—that’s a given. And many people die way too young, and not necessarily at the hands of other humans. I assure you, I don’t understand why that might be any better than you do.

But when we taste and see that God’s world is good, and when we keep the taste of God always fresh in our mouths, maybe we can walk in love as Jesus urges us to do. This once-weekly occasion of praise and prayer is only the bottom of our pyramid of spiritual needs. But raise your hand if you can think of a time when you have found yourself thanking God outside of a Sunday church service.

Yeah, that’s what I thought. After the service today, share some of those stories with each other. Let those stories serve as fuel for your hourly practice of gratitude. And later today when you pray again, try this one on for size: “Give us this hour our hourly bread.” Amen.

An Update on Pastor Josh's Sabbatical (August 2024)

office@goodshepherdfw.org (Evan Hershman) — Thu, 08 Aug 2024 17:09:43 GMT

Josh's sabbatical begins after Christmas

(August 2024 update)

The Sabbatical Planning Team is delighted to share that many of the initial concerns and questions regarding Josh’s Sabbatical have been resolved. We hired the Rev. Carola von Wrangel to fill in during Josh’s absence. We reviewed Josh’s responsibilities and are identifying which can be delegated, as well as those that are not critical and can temporarily be set aside. Parishioners who may be interested in temporarily taking on a task should contact a member of the SPT. We have more to do, so stay tuned for further updates!

The latest news:

1) Josh plans to relax, explore, learn, and discern where the Holy Spirit is leading him. While Josh is on sabbatical, he, Christy, and Sarah will all be on a communications blackout. They will not be in contact with anyone here at Good Shepherd. This allows both Josh and his family, and us, the parish community, to have time and space to focus on where we are being led, without any pressure. While Josh is away, Rev. Carola will handle the priestly tasks, and Karen White, Sr. Warden, and Jim Donahe, Jr. Warden, will take on overall administrative responsibilities for Good Shepherd.

2) As presented earlier, Rev. Carola is not a stranger at Good Shepherd; she has filled in for Josh several times in the last years. She will be working a part-time 20 hours/week schedule while serving as Sabbatical Priest. At this point, we anticipate Reverend Carola will be here one weekday and Sunday each week. Her other work hours will be spent working from her home. She will be available to parishioners via email and phone, and the Wardens and Ministry Leaders will continue to be available to assist, and to answer questions.

3) Remember, the Sabbatical Preparation Team is available to answer Sabbatical-related questions and concerns. Members are Karen White, Sr. Warden; Jim Donahe, Jr. Warden; Mary Aronen, Ministry Leader; Jason Armer, Vestry; Jess Isenberg, Vestry; Mark Medlin; Judith Perkins, Vestry; Billie Stockton. Our respective contact information is on Realm and in the Parish Directory. Call, write, stop to talk after the service: we’d love to chat with you!

---------------------------------------------------------------

(Original post)

Pastor Josh will take a sabbatical from December 26, 2024 through Easter, April 20, 2025 . Below are some basic questions and answers.

What other questions do you have? Submit them to the Sabbatical Prep Team here .

What’s a sabbatical?

The word comes from the word “Sabbath,” which is a day of rest dedicated to God. Essentially, a sabbatical is several Sabbaths put together. It allows a priest to take time for spiritual renewal. It releases Josh from the physical, emotional, spiritual, and intellectual demands placed on him as Pastor. It also encourages the well-being of the congregation. While Josh takes the opportunity to discover where Christ is leading him, the parish can contemplate where we feel the Spirit wants us to go.

Who will fill in while Josh is gone?
The Rev. Carola von Wrangel will serve as priest during the sabbatical. She has shared the following bio with us:

"Serving God and the Church for twenty-four years in ordained ministry has been a joy. I am almost a Seattle native and a graduate of the University of Washington (German), Seattle University (Law), and Fuller Seminary (M.Div.). I was raised up for ordination at St. Luke's in Ballard.

"Ministry has taken me to serve churches in New York, Germany, and Nashville, finally bringing me back to the Seattle area after semi-retirement. For the past ten years, I've worked with Food for the Poor, a relief and development ministry in the Caribbean and Latin America.

"In ministry, I love to preach and teach and be with people in their journeys. I love sharing the transforming and healing power of Jesus Christ.

"Travel, exploring new adventures, reading, and music are important to me. I have two wonderful adult children: Kyle and Cara. And I have hundreds of pictures of elephants and other animals from my recent trip to Africa."

What’s the Sabbatical Preparation Team?
The following people are helping Josh and the congregation get ready for this event: Karen White, senior warden; Jim Donahe, junior warden; Mary McClellan-Aronen, Finance Committee chair; Judith Perkins, Personnel Committee chair; Jason Armer, vestry member; Jess Isenberg, vestry member; Mark Medlin; and Billie Stockton.

How do I find out more?

Please direct any questions to any of the Sabbatical Preparation Team members listed above.

What can I do to help?

Please keep Josh and the Sabbatical Preparation Team in your prayers. We ask for wisdom and guidance as we continue to get ready for Josh’s sabbatical.

What Has God Ever Done for Me?

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 04 Aug 2024 22:47:20 GMT

Whatever unseen, mysterious force is behind the existence of any food, any warmth, any love—that’s who God is.

2024-45
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org

b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 13B), August 4, 2024
Exodus 16:2-4,9-15 ; Psalm 78:23-29 ; Ephesians 4:1-16 ; John 6:24-35

Many years ago I worked at a store in Southcenter Mall, selling CDs and cassette tapes. (Remember those?) We were generally a young crew: college, post-college, just starting to figure out “how to adult,” as they say these days.

I had a co-worker named Mindy. One night after closing, Mindy and I and a couple others were talking, and the conversation shifted to religion. At the change of topic, Mindy almost immediately turned hostile: “I don’t believe in God.”

“Why not?” someone wondered politely.

“Why should I?” Mindy replied. “What’s he ever done for me?”

Now, do go easy on Mindy. In today’s world, it’s totally understandable that she could get to the age of 19 without an answer to that question, “What has God ever done for me?” At the time, I had no idea how to answer Mindy, so I let it go.

Fast-forward now to a time when I was the youth group leader at St. Thomas, Medina. There was a high schooler in the group named Sam who kind of hung back from the rest of the group, but who nevertheless showed up every week. Once I asked him what it was that kept him exploring his faith at St. Thomas. Sam said, “Well, ever since I’ve come back to church, it’s become pretty clear that God’s got my back.”

From my first story to my second, I hope you noticed a gigantic difference in maturity between two young people—a difference marked simply by experience. Mindy had no frame of reference from which to begin to grow into faith of any kind.

You know, some people decide never to involve their kids in a church under the assumption that they’ll make up their own minds when they’re older. As a result, we have millions of young people like Mindy. Most of those who are given no model never come to any understanding of what the church is for. But those who are raised consistently even in rather faulty faith communities, as long as they are not traumatized or abused by that community, might well use it as a starting place from which to grow into a deeper knowledge of God. That was Sam’s situation.

But here’s the thing that both Mindy and Sam had in common: they were both thinking of God as someone who would do something for them if they did something for God. Mindy, perceiving that she had received no gifts from God, felt she owed God nothing. Sam, having genuinely tried to offer God something, felt that God was giving him something in return. Sam’s perspective was more experienced and, as a result, more mature. But in both cases, the perception of the relationship was primarily transactional. You give me this, I give you that.

To be fair, most of us start here. Or, maybe we don’t start here, but the transactional nature of our culture eventually places us here. In general, we think that people should get what they deserve, and that sounds reasonable enough. But the sinister corollary is that when people don’t deserve, they shouldn’t get.

Jesus knew all about this kind of thinking. He calls it out in today’s gospel reading. After the feeding of the five thousand, which we read last week, he crosses over the water to Capernaum—on foot, you may remember—and the crowds follow him in their boats. “Why have you chased after me?” Jesus asks them. “Not because you saw God at work in me, but because I fed you.”

Now, any youth group leader will tell you that if you want to gather people, serve them an abundance of food. There’s nothing wrong with that. Heck, that’s the main method of community-building in all times and in all cultures! So Jesus gathers people, feeds them, and then says, “OK, my newfound friends, it’s time to go deeper.”

It’s the same with the Hebrews in the wilderness. We heard the story, and then we read the psalmist’s poetic retelling of it:

So mortals ate the bread of angels;

he provided for them food enough.

I talked last week about enoughness. Manna is the ultimate biblical example of God demanding that the people learn enoughness. “Here’s food—enough for all. It looks a little strange. It tastes … OK. You’ll get sick of it after a while. But it’s enough.”

The people see the manna, and they say, “What is it?” So they name it “manna,” which is literally Hebrew for, “What is it?”

Oh, and God gave them quails, too. Thousands of quails—in the parallel story in the Book of Numbers, there are so many quails that they had quails coming out their ears and their nostrils. God gave them enough and more. God provided for them.

The bottom line is that every time we eat, we have the opportunity to notice that God is behind the food. When we enjoy the sunshine, we can notice that God gives the warmth. When we receive love, we can notice that God inspired it. We can accept every gift in this world with gratitude, knowing that whatever unseen, mysterious force is behind the existence of any food, any warmth, any love—that’s who God is. That’s the One we church people are always talking about. God gives gifts! What has God ever done for you? What good thing does not come from God?

Once we agree on this simple definition of God, we’re ready to go deeper. Our new task is to move in the direction of maturity, from the transactional to the interpersonal.

The one writing to the Ephesians—Paul, or more likely someone faithfully riffing on Paul a generation later—urges this maturity from the Christians in Ephesus. “We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people's trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.” In other words, God wants you to think for yourself, not just copy some flavor-of-the-month huckster who may not have your best interests at heart. God wants a relationship with you—not just with the people you think are holier or more credentialed or more spiritually mature than you are.

So grow up!, he says. Get rooted in a community that can provide you with the words of Scripture on the one hand and the wisdom of the Church’s traditions on the other. Then step out in faith. Step out into the world in the full confidence that God’s got your back. And you’ll find that you are, indeed, growing.

The goal here is to grow “to the measure of the full stature of Christ.” Can you imagine becoming so much like Jesus that people might mistake you for him? Neither can I. So don’t expect to get there. We are all works in progress. We should not expect anybody, including ourselves, to reach the destination—only to keep moving in that direction.

And our journey is a communal one by nature. These New Testament references to “the body” mean “the church.” Here we learn concrete ways of undertaking this journey to maturity together: “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love.” We hear of “speaking the truth in love”: this means being genuine and honest while respecting the dignity of the person to whom you are speaking, even if the relationship is difficult. Maturity and reconciliation will come to us all, with time and prayer and through God’s action. In the meantime, there is joy to be found when we all trust in God together. When we trust God to be at the center of all of our relationships, we will grow into the humility we need in order to stick together.

Jesus feeds the people, and they follow him. Even after that miraculous feeding, they ask him for another sign of wonder to help them come to trust in him. They remind Jesus of the example of Moses, who gave the Hebrews manna as a sign. “No,” says Jesus. “Moses didn’t do that; God did. As a matter of fact, God is behind every sign and every feeding and every occasion of joy. The bread from God gives life to the world.” Life to the world!—not just to a few people, but to all life on earth.

In the face of this realization, what can we do but ask for more? “Give us this bread always!” It’s the cry of the maturing. Just like the Woman at the Well, when the metaphor was not bread, but living water: “Sir, give me this water, that I may never be thirsty again!”

That woman experienced a shift, and the crowds around Jesus in Capernaum experienced a shift, from the transactional to the interpersonal. God is not merely a service provider. God loves us. God has given us everything, and the freedom to do with everything what we see fit. The gift is huge, and then so is the responsibility.

I’ve enjoyed watching the TV series of the life of Jesus called The Chosen. In the episode I watched the other day, Jesus is in conversation with a man whose daughter has begun to follow Jesus. He makes clear that he himself has no intention of following Jesus, and that it’s difficult for him to watch his daughter make this change. Jesus says to him with great gentleness, “I ask an awful lot of those of follow me. Of those who don’t, I ask very little.”

This is certainly my philosophy of what it means to be a Christian. And isn’t this really what it’s like to be deep in a relationship with someone—a relationship of any kind? The closer we grow, the greater the gifts and the greater the responsibility.

Still, God’s love for us comes first and comes with no preconditions. God loves us no matter what, keeps giving us gifts no matter what, and only then gently urges us: “Go deeper. Come grow into me. I’m already growing within you.”

Enoughness Is Abundance

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 28 Jul 2024 20:32:17 GMT

Abundance happens when God is present and when we’re willing to give generously to others.

2024-44
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Tenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 12B), July 28, 2024
2 Kings 4:42-44 ; Psalm 145:10-19 ; Ephesians 3:14-21 ; John 6:1-21

Here's a factoid that I’d love it if all Christians learned well and remembered: the Feeding of the Five Thousand is the only one of Jesus’ miracles recorded in all four gospels.

Through most of this year, we’ve been hearing from the Gospel of Mark. But Mark is the shortest of the gospels—so short that there isn’t enough of it to stretch into 52 weeks of the year! So beginning today, we’re taking a five-week break from Mark and shifting over to John, the gospel that is by far the most different from the other three.

Yet remember when I said that last week’s reading was two snippets from Mark with a snippet left out of the middle? Here is that snippet today, but remembered by a different community some decades later.

I had never noticed before that for all the ways John is different, John tells this part of the story in exactly the same order Mark does, albeit in his own Johannine way. Jesus and the disciples arrive at a place and find five thousand people waiting for them. The people get hungry. Someone has precisely five loaves and two fish. Jesus takes the food, gives thanks to God for it, breaks it, and gives it to everyone. And after everyone has eaten their fill, the disciples gather up precisely twelve baskets of leftovers.

But that’s not all. The disciples then get into their boat, leaving Jesus behind. There is a strong wind working against the disciples as they row. Jesus walks on the water to come to them, and then they reach the other side.

I find these parallels astounding. Either John’s community had a copy of Mark’s gospel but chose to use almost none of it, or they had among them people who remembered extremely well the events of that day in particular. It’s as if we find here a pivot point, a core formative memory, perhaps even the key to everything that Jesus was about during his ministry.

What are some ways we could express the importance of this core memory of Jesus?

Is the multiplication of food the most important thing? Was it magic— alakazam, a la peanut butter sandwiches, and food keeps appearing? If that’s the case, then it could never happen without Jesus around.

Or was it simple generosity—one person gives, and then other people are also inspired to give from what they hadn’t admitted they’d brought with them? If that’s the case, then it may no longer feel to you like miracle enough.

Honestly, though, I’m not much interested in the distinction. Because I think either way, two things were necessary to this pivotal event: the presence of Christ among the people, and the willing generosity of somebody, anybody, even a child, to get the process moving. I don’t believe Jesus would have performed a miraculous production of food for people who were unwilling to be generous with one another. But neither do I believe that the boy would have offered his lunch without a simple, childlike trust that it would somehow be enough.

Abundance happens when God is present and when we’re willing to give generously to others.

Now, abundance is a wonderful gift when it happens, but most of the time I don’t think it’s necessary. Enoughness is fine with me. Actually, I think enoughness is the conversation I’m more interested in having with people, because enoughness is what our whole culture needs to work on. Who hasn’t had the experience, for instance, of going to the drug store for cold medicine, only to be overwhelmed with the abundance and variety of available options?

In America, to be presented with abundance that we didn’t personally work for is the default setting, so much so that we might feel cheated when not all the options are available to us. Even when we have enough, we keep wanting more. We want to sock some away, which is one thing—or we want to be gluttonous, which is another. We do this out of fear of not having enough at some point in the future. The result is that others don’t have enough.

In contrast, our call from God is to carry each other, to make sure that we all have enough. There’s a reason we ask God for our “daily bread”—not a lifetime supply.

Likewise, the boy who offered his food to Jesus didn’t seem to worry about whether there would be enough; he just gave generously without fear of missing his own lunch or, for that matter, lunch every day for the rest of his life!

There’s one more factor that is, I believe, key to the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and it becomes clearer when we look at our parallel passage today from the Second Book of Kings. Centuries before Jesus, the Prophet Elisha may have worried about whether there would be enough, but he considered a factor that many of us would overlook: this unnamed man from Baal-shalishah had brought an offering from the “first fruits,” the earliest reapings of his harvest, specifically to share it.

Giving away our leftovers is good, but it’s not especially generous. Giving the first and best of what we have for the sake of God’s work among us is a pattern that echoes throughout the history of Israel. Elisha expected that wherever this highest level of generosity is found, God will guide the process.

Apparently, so did the boy with the loaves and fishes. It takes a child or a prophet to see this. A child or a prophet can tell you that the only way you can have enough is to give away the first and best of what you have, freely, without fearful hedging, without an agenda, simply because your giving gives joy to others. Children and prophets can see the enoughness.

But what if we don’t have enough? Well, in that case, our challenge is to give from the “not enough”—to trust that God’s abundance is not only a factor, but is the main factor. Sometimes, in the short term, we do indeed run out of resources. And that’s when we need to count on our community to sustain us. When we make our motto “I’ve got mine,” we get in God’s way. But when we trust in God’s abundance and pair that trust with generosity, God may well work through the process so that we find that we do indeed have enough—and that perhaps we are even steeped in abundance.

Last week I said the key was compassion. Today I say the key is generosity. Because the one leads to the other.

All year long in our liturgy, as we have prepared to bring our gifts to the altar, I have led us there with this prayer: “Rooted in the generosity of God’s creation, let us share our gifts at this holy altar in full confidence that God’s Spirit will renew us and will continue to reconcile the entire world.” We hear today from the Letter to the Ephesians that we are “rooted and grounded in love.” As we grow and stretch our branches toward heaven, God gives us the ability to comprehend just how amazing this life is, and just how urgent is the call to share the joy of it with one another.

Every Sunday, we get to decide to show up among a community of fellow Christians, hear the stories that guide our faith, pray together for God’s presence and action, and then give of ourselves: to share our money, so that it can be spread around more freely, and to share our God-given gifts with one another and the world.

Then, having offered ourselves and the products of our labor to God, at this altar we take part in a miracle. Our offerings are transformed and given back to us, specifically to be ingested so they can nourish us further. We never run out, because every single Sunday, we’re back again doing the same thing, perpetually being fueled by the miracle of God’s abundance.

To set aside Sunday mornings is to set aside the first fruits of our time. We may have to work or go to school all week. We may want to save some time also for fun and relaxation. We may find it difficult to imagine, after a busy week chock full of abundant opportunities, that Sunday morning could be anything other than a day for sleeping in! And yes, we have every right to rest, and we should rest.

But I observe that when Sunday morning isn’t even in question—when I know for certain that I’ll be with this community every week at this time—either the time for rest takes care of itself, or I am inspired to shift my priorities in a healthier way. It’s another miracle of enoughness that is also a miracle of abundance. When we show up and hang in there together, giving Sunday mornings as a gift of first fruits, we invest in one another and in God’s dream of beloved community.

After all this, there is still the other part of the story, the part that makes John’s parallel with Mark especially uncanny. The disciples get into their boat, leaving Jesus behind. There is a strong wind working against the disciples as they row. Jesus walks on the water to come to them, and then they reach the other side.

In John’s gospel, we hear, “And immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.” This is a reference to Psalm 107. Verse 9 of that psalm says, “For he satisfies the thirsty and fills the hungry with good things.” From there the psalm describes the people not recognizing God’s generosity and experiencing hardship and lack, including a storm at sea. Then they cry out to God for help. Verses 29 and 30 say: “He stilled the storm to a whisper and quieted the waves of the sea. Then were they glad because of the calm, and he brought them to the harbor they were bound for.”

In both Mark and John, when Jesus comes to the disciples on the water and they are afraid, he says to them, “It is I.” The English translation obscures the deeper reference here. In Greek it’s “Ego eimi,” the same words Moses heard from a burning bush: “I AM THAT I AM.” The maker of the whole universe is present, right here, right now.

This is enough. And this is more than enough: this is everything.

The Compassionate Shepherd

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Mon, 22 Jul 2024 22:56:40 GMT

To be accountable to God means being accountable to compassion.

2024-43
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Ninth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 11B), July 21, 2024
Jeremiah 23:1-6 ; Psalm 23 ; Ephesians 2:11-22 ; Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

I tell a lot of stories about my time in Bellingham doing campus ministry. I have another brief one for you today. Our group was talking about how we wanted to spend our two-hour Sunday night meetings that semester. One student commented, “I want to know the Bible better. I know we read it in church every week. But it’s only in little snippets, and we don’t get the larger context. Can we just read the whole Bible together?”

I pointed out that the Bible is far too big to read in its entirety; most Christians never do. But we could pick one book of the Bible to read together straight through. They liked that idea, so I suggested the Gospel of Mark. As one of the four gospels, it’s super important for Christians to read it. And it’s so short that we could read it out loud within a single two-hour meeting.

I recommend that you do the same, and not by yourself. We hear from Mark’s gospel today, but we actually hear two snippets, with a snippet missing from the middle, sewn together for the lectionary with some amount of awkwardness. Notice the citation: it’s skipping some verses, but if we read all of them, it would be too long. Two events happen in the middle of today’s passage: the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and Jesus walking on the water to rejoin the disciples in their boat.

What happens before this passage? Jesus has sent the disciples out in twos to do exactly what he has been doing: to teach and to heal. The disciples are shocked to find that it’s not just Jesus; the power of God lies within them, too! But Jesus sees that they’re tired, so he offers them time away to rest.

Well, this plan doesn’t work out. When they arrive at the supposedly deserted place, thousands of people are there. Looks like someone tipped off the social media influencers and the paparazzi! But these aren’t just stans; they are people in need of healing words. We hear that Jesus “had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.”

Now, people who are “like sheep without a shepherd” have a tendency to grab onto the first shepherd who speaks as if he understands them and all their problems. Such shepherds don’t have to be honest—just charismatic. They don’t have to be compassionate, either—they just need to exude certainty. We see clearly that people who feel lost will eat that stuff up.

But more about sheep and shepherds in a bit. Jesus “had compassion for them,” so let’s try to suss out this word “compassion.” “Com” is a prefix meaning “with.” What does passion mean? Passion is a burning desire, right? But when something burns, it actually hurts. The meaning of the English word “passion” has changed over the years. When we reach back into Latin, we find that it simply means “suffering.” So, com plus passion: “suffering with.”

Jesus knows the disciples need rest. But he is also modeling for them a way of being that is intimately involved with the lives of others. We don’t just get to marshal our energy and distribute it in a logical way every day as we see fit. Sometimes the situation demands more of us. So Jesus begins teaching the crowd, and then he feeds them, somehow, with only five loaves of bread and two fish.

Huh, will you look at that? Sometimes we don’t think we have the resources we’ll need to give just a little bit more where it’s needed. Jesus shows us that it doesn’t take much. Indeed, just being willing to enter a situation with true compassion may provide the main source of fuel … and nourishment.

Surely you’ve been in this situation. It’s been a long day, you’re exhausted and maybe even a little discouraged. Then you come home and find out that someone still needs your energy: a spouse, a child, a friend. To have compassion is to say to yourself, “Well, I guess I’m not done yet today,” then take a deep breath and keep going. You are willing to suffer some measure of inconvenience or even discomfort and exhaustion … because somebody else needs you. So you jump into it with them, because sometimes our mere presence provides much of what the other person needs.

Now, it’s also true that when we’re tired, it’s harder to show compassion. In recent years we’ve learned a lot about “compassion fatigue,” which is actually a form of trauma marked by a large variety of symptoms. Without sufficient rest from the demands of compassion, we might find ourselves more scattered and unfocused, irritable and angry, or even in greater physical pain. Well, what do we expect? It’s called “suffering with.” But compassion fatigue also leads to a reduced ability even to feel compassion: our bodies begin blocking it as a form of self-protection and might even lead us to find ways to numb ourselves further. So we can’t just give and give and give. We do need to set up boundaries.

Did Jesus ever suffer from compassion fatigue? Yes. I look ahead in Mark’s gospel to chapter 9, where Jesus experiences the Transfiguration on the mountaintop, but when he comes back down the mountain, the disciples are frustrated because they are unable to perform a certain healing. This sets off Jesus’ frustration, too. He cries out, “You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you?”

Yes, Jesus, a human being, also got stressed out and blew his top.

What are the limits of your compassion? Can you tell when you’re beginning to wear out? What do you notice about yourself? A little self-awareness can prevent a lot of pain. I’ve learned a lot about my own reactions to stress—and even about compassion fatigue—since 2020!

How do you make sure you get enough rest? And how do you do so without neglecting the people who count on you? Have you made your boundaries clear to them? I bet most of us have not given this adequate thought. Either we’re more likely to withhold our energy because we fear we’ll run out, or we’re more likely to give and give and give until we burn ourselves out. It’s hard to find balance without real intention.

As Jesus modeled compassion, he also modeled shepherding. We heard from Jeremiah God’s complaints about the religious leaders of that time: “Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!” When God promises to appoint new shepherds, that’s not just to try to recover most of the sheep who have been scattered. We hear, “Nor shall any be missing.” Unlike some leaders—those who let themselves off the hook with the notion of “acceptable losses”—God never loses anyone.

This is the level of accountability to which God calls Israel to repent, and it’s the level of accountability to which Jesus calls his disciples: the kind that treats nobody as an enemy, and that drives out fear and despair. To be accountable to God means being accountable to compassion, and that means being accountable to all other people.

This work of Christ is summarized well in our passage today from the Letter to the Ephesians, which insists that Jews and non-Jews need no longer to be in opposition: “For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us … that he might … reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it.” Jesus puts an end to human hostility by serving as a shock to the system—a wake-up call to return to the ways of compassion.

The Christian claim is that Jesus has made all of us one, no matter what. Now, what will we do about that? Our track record over the past 2000 years hasn’t been great. But every day, we all get to wake up and decide how we will approach the other people in our world. To engage with our enemies as a Christian is to be clear that, ultimately, there is a spiritual reality in which we are no longer enemies. Every one of our interactions, even when we must actively oppose people’s evil efforts, needs never to lose sight of the reality Jesus has ushered in.

So when you commit to following Jesus, you commit to the Holy Spirit being your fuel, specifically as mediated through a community of fellow Christians. You don’t get to go it alone. We are always testing one another’s boundaries and stretching one another’s compassion. That’s the point. It’s a dynamic relationship that simply cannot happen in a vacuum. And the cornerstone of this structure is the one whose compassion was so great that he allowed his life to be taken from him. Because he refused to consider anybody his enemy.

Well, did the disciples ever get the rest Jesus offered them? Not that day. There were too many people in need of compassion. Skip ahead a bit in Mark’s gospel and you’ll find Jesus feeding another group of thousands, only to have to endure his disciples complaining in the boat later on because they have no bread. I can imagine Jesus smacking his head on the side of the boat. Have they learned nothing?

But how well have we learned? For all the times when our source of compassion came through for us, do we still withhold our compassion? And for all the times when we failed to account for our own need for rest, do we still overextend ourselves?

That might make for a good conversation after the service. All Christians are called to become compassionate shepherds. Tell stories of the times you withheld your energy and times when you gave it away too freely. What practices do you use to seek that balance—to re-ground yourself in the source of compassion that never runs dry?

Safe Church, Safe Communities

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 19:27:31 GMT

Our leaders must always be prepared to protect the vulnerable.

At Good Shepherd, we are committed to train our leaders to maintain an environment safe from abuse. The Episcopal Church requires an online training called Safe Church, Safe Communities . The following leaders must take this course:

Clergy
Staff
Vestry members
Keyholders
Eucharistic visitors
All who work with children regularly

All told, it takes several hours to complete this training regimen, though the nine modules can be spread out over time. Those whose previous training is still current do not need to take this now. The Good Shepherd office will contact you directly if you need to re-up or take the training for the first time. In the meantime, any and all are welcome to be trained; you can expect to find the training valuable for many reasons.

Here’s how to take these courses.

First, a quick overview of the steps:

Set up a membership on the Praesidium Academy website.
Log in to the system.
Complete all nine required online courses; they are linked individually below so you can be sure you're taking the right ones.
Forward your certifications to the Parish Administrator so the Church of the Good Shepherd can log your training.
Fill out an online form so the Diocese of Olympia can certify you.
Download and absorb the model Safe Church policies.

Now let's follow the steps one by one.

1. Set up a membership o n the Praesidium Academy website :

Go to https://www.praesidiumacademy.com/redeem .
Set up a membership on the site by filling in your contact information and your desired password. Enter the registration code specific to the Diocese of Olympia:
reg-episdioceseofolympia-440-diocese
Click Validate. Click the checkbox to agree to the Terms & Conditions. Click Redeem.
Take note of your user login and password for future reference.
Answer the registration questions about your status and role with the church.
Click Save & Continue.

2. Log in to the system if you are not already logged in.

IMPORTANT:

The modules you now see on your screen are not necessarily the ones you need to take right now . The Praesidium system is much broader in scope than the trainings our diocese requires. Rather than making you search for each individual course by name, we have set up the following direct links in this blog post for you.

3. Complete all nine required online courses.

Click on the first of the following nine module links. After you've completed the first module, click on the next, etc.:
1. Safe Church, Safe Communities – Universal Training: Introduction & Theological Background
2. Safe Church, Safe Communities – Universal Training: Inclusion
3. Safe Church, Safe Communities – Universal Training: Healthy Boundaries
4. Safe Church, Safe Communities – Universal Training: Organizational Rules & Policies
5. Safe Church, Safe Communities – Specialty Training: Power & Relationships
6. Safe Church, Safe Communities – Specialty Training: Pastoral Relationships
7. Safe Church, Safe Communities – Specialty Training: Bullying
8. Safe Church, Safe Communities – Specialty Training: Abuse and Neglect
9. Duty to Report: Mandated Reporter *

* Please note that the “Mandated Reporter” module contains videos that might be especially triggering to victims of abuse. It is OK to absorb the content of this module without watching the videos.

You must take all nine of these modules to complete your training. (You are welcome to take any of the other available courses available on the site as well—not just the nine required of you.)

4. Forward your certifications.

When you receive each certification, please forward it to Parish Administrator Evan Hershman so he can log your certification. You may wish to complete the entire set of courses and then forward all nine certifications to Evan in a single email.

5. Fill out an online form.

I n order for your training to be logged correctly, you must then fill out this form . This is how the Diocese of Olympia is notified of your completed training; you are not finished until you fill it out!

Your training is good for three years; after that you must re-up.

6. Download and absorb the model Safe Church policies . The Praesidium trainings do not go into all the specifics that these documents do. As somebody certified in Safe Church, Safe Communities, you are responsible for knowing and understanding these policies on working with (1) Children and Youth and (2) Vulnerable Adults.

What God Wants?

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 14 Jul 2024 23:06:05 GMT

If everything that happens is God’s will, then we are ultimately powerless. If nothing that happens is God’s will, then God is powerless. Could the reality lie somewhere in the middle?

2024-42
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 10B), July 14, 2024
Amos 7:7-15 ; Psalm 85:8-13 ; Ephesians 1:3-14 ; Mark 6:14-29

Those are quite some readings, aren’t they?

I believe that the difficult parts of the Bible are best tackled not in the privacy of our homes with the book in hand and a befuddled look on our faces, but here, as a church. Here we can pool the wisdom of our diverse experiences and varying beliefs. Here we may even discern a message of hope in the midst of bleak confusion … like the bleak confusion of today’s readings.

So allow me to begin in a place you never would have. Roger Waters, the bass player for Pink Floyd, once recorded a song called “What God Wants.” (I’m sure I’m the only person in this room who remembers this piece of rock and roll obscurity.) Waters sings, “What God wants, God gets … God help us all!” And then he lists things that people at different times and places have claimed to be the desire of the Almighty: “God wants peace, God wants war, God wants famine, God wants chain stores. God wants crusade, God wants jihad, God wants good, God wants bad.”

Oh yeah? Who knows what God really wants? Whom do you trust to inform you of this? And how do you decide who is worthy of your trust? These are the kinds of questions that come to the forefront in the book of Amos.

Amos wrote around the year 750 B.C.E., long after the kingdom of Israel had split into the northern kingdom, Israel, and the southern kingdom, Judah. Amos was from Judah, but he crossed the border and proclaimed that God was about to destroy Israel.

The first thing I notice every time I hear this reading is the plumb line. Not being an engineer type, I always have to remind myself that a plumb line is an instrument used in construction to discover whether a wall has been built straight. In Amos’s vision, God uses the plumb line to assess that this wall (representing the Kingdom of Israel) is crooked. Israel has been achieving greater and greater wealth and security on the backs of the poor, and God is fed up with the situation. God is done here, and the divine punishment will be violence and death.

Now, whom would you trust to deliver such a horrible message? And would you believe them if you heard it?

Predictably, the Israelite priest Amaziah urges Amos to go prophesy someplace else. And isn’t that always the way it goes? How many people, feeling convicted and defensive, have uttered similar words?

“Look, I don’t like slavery either. But without it, the economy of the South will collapse. Can’t it wait a few generations?”

“Look, I know this Hitler guy is a little sketchy, but what happens in Europe is Europe’s business.”

“Look, I’m all in favor of people of different colors getting along. But can’t this Martin Luther King guy tone it down a bit? He’s making me nervous.”

“Look, I want to stop climate change as much as the next guy. But surely there must be a way to do it without lowering our expectation of infinite economic growth!”

The truths Amos prophesied were more than just inconvenient. Over the next few decades, the Assyrians began to press into Israel and take its rulers into captivity. By the end of the century, Israel was no more.

I imagine that nobody felt the inconvenience of his prophecy more acutely than the prophet himself. Responding to Amaziah, Amos says, “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. I didn’t ask to be a prophet. I don’t even consider myself a prophet. I raise cattle and prune sycamore trees. But I’m also a loyal Jew, and I will always do what God wants of me.”

In other words, Amos is saying, “What God wants, God gets … God help us all! I don’t understand it, but God holds all the cards here.”

The ancient Jews considered disastrous occurrences to be punishment from God upon entire peoples, including innocent children. It turns our stomachs because we just don’t believe such things anymore. The existence of this perspective in the Bible is enough to convince many people to write off religion altogether.

But we need to remember that the people of the time attributed every good occurrence to God as well. The Hebrew Bible never lets the people of God off the hook; their sins are noted as explicitly as their good deeds. If God is powerful, can anything happen that God doesn’t at least tacitly approve? And if God is just, shouldn’t our nation get what it deserves?

And then, within the course of the Hebrew Bible, this worldview began to change. Later, the Prophet Jeremiah would insist that children are not punished for the sins of their parents; each of us answers for our own sins. And the Book of Job, finalized even later, questions whether anyone really gets what they deserve.

So which occurrences in your life do you attribute to God? Just the “acts of God” that insurance companies dread so much? Or do you believe God is intimately involved with every detail of your life? If everything that happens is God’s will, then we are ultimately powerless. If nothing that happens is God’s will, then God is powerless. Could the reality lie somewhere in the middle?

In our Gospel reading today, we are told that King Herod doesn’t want to execute John the Baptist, but he had made a foolish promise to his daughter, and he doesn’t dare lose face. (I’ll leave you to wonder, though, whether Herod felt some measure of relief at finally being rid of John, and also of being able to say, “Hey, it was actually my wife’s fault!”)

Was John’s death part of God’s plan? The conventional wisdom of the time was the same as that of Amos: “What God wants, God gets … God help us all!”

Maybe. Or maybe our evil deeds mess up God’s plans, and then God has to change course.

Yesterday a 20-year-old man tried and failed to assassinate former president Trump. Another person was killed in the process and several others badly injured. We don’t know what was going through the mind of the man who pulled the trigger. But if I had to make up the story of it, I imagine it would be something like this: “I need to kill him so he cannot turn our country into a fascist state.” A person with a religious bent might even convince himself that this was what God wanted him to do.

But before saying more, I’ll bring in another story for comparison. When I was 11 years old, a boy at my middle school was killed by a drunk driver. I remember saying to my mother, “Matt was such an amazing person: talented, outgoing, good-hearted. I guess I was wrong when I thought God had big plans for him.”

My mother replied: “Maybe God did.” Whoa. It hadn’t occurred to me before that any one of us can overturn God’s will through our own stupidity—none of this nonsense about “It was just his time, and God called him home.” We must not allow ourselves to believe that a drunk driver was God’s agent sent to kill a 14-year-old. Because if we can convince ourselves of this, we’re not that many steps away from deciding that God wants us to start pulling triggers.

No, if I had to relay to all of you a relevant message from God that I believe has run throughout my life, it is this. Christians are free to commit violence—God certainly doesn’t prevent us. But when we do choose violence, we need to recognize that it comes from some other playbook. There is no righteous use of violence in Christianity.

You are under no obligation to agree with me, of course. You may have a lot invested in the possibility of using violence to bring about good ends. You may even point out that the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer conspired in a plot to kill Hitler. The plot failed, and Bonhoeffer was hanged in a concentration camp just weeks before it was liberated.

But make no mistake. Bonhoeffer fully expected to bear the full wrath of God for his efforts. Prayerfully, agonizingly, he concluded that the murder of one man could save many other lives. He did not see his decision as heroic. No, he saw it as evil. And he saw literally no way not to take part in that evil. God help me if I ever find myself in a similar position! I certainly can’t be Bonhoeffer’s judge. Only God gets to do that. But we must be very, very careful before we decide we must use evil to bring about good. Perhaps always, we will be wrong.

I recall that when Jesus’ disciples sliced off the ear of an enemy in self-defense, Jesus responded by restoring the amputated ear, commenting that “those who live by the sword will die by the sword.” And then Jesus went to his death.

One of my colleagues, the Rev. Benjamin Garren, posted this on Facebook yesterday:

The love [Jesus expects of us] is a love that lifts up the lowly and brings down the mighty. To pray for the love of Christ to manifest amidst our enemies is a prayer that they will be fed in regard to their hunger and emptied in regard to their fullness. The love … we pray others will encounter is not a prayer to be made lightly ... for to encounter that love in truth is to be transformed into something unrecognizable.

And Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have decided to stick to love. Hate is too big a burden to bear.” So consider the source. Sticking to love does not mean failing to oppose evil, as Amaziah did in his discomfort at hearing inconvenient truths. It does mean placing our very bodies between the oppressor and the oppressed. But I’m pretty sure that loving our enemies means we don’t get to kill them.

Why not? Because as humans, we are terrible at discerning when we are truly out of options. What God wants will always be bigger than we can imagine, and likely we won’t believe we can bear the inconvenience of it. So if you ever hear me bemoan in a moment of stress, “We have no choice now but to do an evil thing,” you have the right to kick me in the shins. Figuratively, please, not violently.

We are God’s children, eternally adopted in the deepest love. And we may well be able temporarily to derail God’s plans for our joy. But in the long run, nothing we do can stop God’s will. If we take a deep breath, swallow our pride, and develop a habit of prayerful listening, maybe we will even hear God’s voice: “Fear not. I am gathering up all things into me. There is no escape from my embrace, but neither is there any need for escape. What I want, I get—and I want nothing but love for every last one of you.”

What God wants, God gets. God helps us all! Amen.

Boats in the Storm

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 16:00:43 GMT

If Jesus is our captain, why is he asleep?

2024-39
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Fifth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 7B), June 23, 2024
Job 38:1-11 ; Psalm 107:1-3, 23-32 ; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 ; Mark 4:35-41

We live in stormy times. I’m fond of saying that life is an epic adventure. But you don’t have an epic adventure without hardship and suffering—your own, or that of those around you. Once the story is read, you may be able place the worst episodes in perspective.

But we can’t do that from where we’re sitting. We look around our nation and the world, and people are suffering. It’s especially blatant and unmistakable right now. We are part of broken human systems, and in many ways, we are complicit in them. We’re in uncharted waters in the middle of a storm.

And most of us at Good Shepherd find ourselves in the same boat. Whose boat is it? I’ve got news for you: if you’re baptized, you’re not in any boat that belongs to your family or nation or ideology. You’re in Jesus’ boat.

How do we, as Christians, respond to these stormy times?

Some of us content ourselves with saying, “Well, I go about my life and try to be a good person.” Unfortunately, that alone does next to nothing to address injustice, and sometimes, naïve niceness may actually help perpetuate it.

Others of us fret and fuss and fume, flailing about busily to do something—anything—to make the anxiety go away. We don’t respond; we react. And the net result isn’t always positive.

Between these two extremes, a lot of good work does get done to alleviate people’s pain and despair. But meanwhile, where is Jesus? This is his boat we’re in, after all. We were counting on him to be our pilot, to steer our ship safely to shore. Instead he’s in the stern, asleep on a cushion! “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”

When the disciples cry out, Jesus immediately wakes up and calms the storm. I find it annoying that the storm hadn’t disturbed Jesus’ sleep up to this point, but he does wake up, and he does help.

Some biblical commentators suggest that the gospel writer—Mark in this case—intends us to understand this is not as a natural storm, but as the product of evil forces. Jesus and his disciples are on their way to the country of the Gerasenes, where Jesus will send an unclean spirit out of a man and into a herd of pigs. Could this storm be an attempt to prevent Jesus’ arrival? In response, Jesus contends against evil and makes no peace with oppression. And if these commentators are correct, Jesus’ calming of the storm sends a warning to the forces that seek to oppose him on the far shore. Where Jesus goes, things get set right. Where Jesus goes, justice follows.

As Christians who know this, we come to church to find Jesus, imagining that we might wake him up and receive relief from the storm. But is this our experience? When we cry for help, does Jesus come to our rescue?

Well, first of all, just because there’s a storm doesn’t mean that Jesus is absent or asleep. Indeed, from Jesus’ reaction to the disciples—“Why are you afraid?”—I’m led to believe that they all would have been fine even if Jesus had remained unconscious. Jesus doesn’t calm the storm to save his friends from perishing. He calms the storm because they ask him to. It may be that the storm of the disciples’ own anxiety is far more dangerous than the storm raging around their boat.

Remember that at the heart of our faith is Good News: the news that in coming to be among us, in living and dying as one of us, Jesus has reconciled the entire universe to God. We can imagine all sorts of theories as to how this has happened—and we do. And we can splinter into tens of thousands of denominations and argue about how it works and what it means for the living of our daily lives—and we have. But that’s not the point. The point is that Christians dare to believe that Jesus has made everything right, and that even if the work doesn’t appear to be finished yet, it’s a fait accompli.

It’s easy enough to say it. But do we believe it?

Maintaining trust in God, even in the face of Good News, is very difficult when the storms of life are raging all around us. This leap of faith is difficult for us because we are in pain. If the Good News is so Good, why is there still injustice and suffering? This is the big question of all theology.

Job knew it, though his answer from God was, “Shut up and know your place!” I don’t like that answer. As for me, the simplest answer I’ve been able to find is that much of this injustice and suffering continues because we inflict it, and because we allow it. If we want there to be less injustice and suffering, we will work to end it.

Yet we can never stop all the world’s pain through our own efforts. That’s impossible. We can only do what we have time and energy for. And during such stormy times, we can’t always work out what to do next, and sometimes we just want some comfort.

I pray that you find that comfort here at Good Shepherd on a regular basis—and friendship, and belonging, and a community of folks to help carry you through your own storms.

But I also pray that you find sufficient challenge: challenge not just to believe with your head and your heart, but to live the Gospel by actively relieving people’s pain—as individuals, and in organized groups. So much of that work already goes on in this place, and everybody is invited into it. As Christians, we have a duty to each other and to everybody in the world: a duty to love, not just with fuzzy feelings, but with bold actions. Comfort and challenge: these are two things to pray for and to balance.

Paul knows this as he writes to the Corinthians. His list of hardships reads like a resume:

As servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger …

That’s the challenge part. Then he moves to the comfort part:

… by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute.

So it went for Paul. How’s it going for you? If you were writing to the Corinthians, what hardships would you list? Health crises, family drama, divorce, death of loved ones, lost job, meager income, self-doubt, anxiety, depression?

And what grace-filled moments of calm? Sunday worship, a visit from a friend, holidays with family all behaving for once, a compliment from a stranger, good news from the doctor, a direct encounter with the risen Christ?

By the way, I notice that our Gospel text also says, “Other boats were with him.” Now, I might just be making this up, but I like to think that Mark, writing for the early Church, included this sentence as a way of including those who were preparing for baptism into the Body of Christ. They weren’t in the boat yet, but as they learned about the faith and heard the Gospel, the text gave them another boat to imagine themselves into, also under Jesus’ care. Maybe you find yourself in one of these other boats, trying to figure all this out.

But whichever boat you’re in, we’re all in the same storm, and Jesus is here. We are surrounded by dangers and wonders, and sometimes it feels like we’ll be washed overboard.

And then there are moments of surprising calm and peace, and with that calm comes a promise: we will be brought to the harbor we were bound for. “Now,” comes Paul’s voice, “now is the day of salvation.” Not just someday in the far-off future, and not just at the end of your earthly life: now. You are saved from the storm even in the midst of it.

How is your relationship with God stretching and growing? And how are you responding in the wider world outside of your private prayer life? Does it strengthen you to understand that Jesus is in the boat with you—to know that there is grace even in the storm, and that you are loved eternally and through every storm? Even if your life ends in a stormy time, the comfort of former times may still come to your aid.

It is my honor to be sailing these stormy seas with all of you. We sail on with Jesus as our captain. And when our anxiety becomes too much to bear and we cry out for help, may Jesus wake, stand on the prow, and cry out, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped!” Amen.

Surprise! You're Dead!

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 16:00:42 GMT

Paul says that if Christ is alive, that means we've all died with him. What gives?

2024-38
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Fourth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 6B), June 16, 2024
Ezekiel 17:22-24 ; Psalm 92:1-4,11-14 ; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10,14-17 ; Mark 4:26-34

Would you like to hear an amazing, fascinating story? Here goes …

Somebody planted seeds, and they grew. The end.

Isn’t that incredible?!?

No, really! This is astounding! Do you know how hard that farmer had to work to make these seeds grow?

That’s right! After planting the seeds, the farmer did … nothing! She went to bed and got up in the morning. Over and over again. And all that time, the seeds were quietly doing their thing. Days went by. Shoots poked up out of the ground. The rain fell, and the sun shone, and the farmer didn’t control those, either. Weeks went by. More growth. Months went by. The stalks shot up, the heads opened, and the grain revealed itself.

And that’s when the farmer came back to harvest it.

She did something at the beginning and something at the end. But in between, everything just happened naturally. The word “naturally” here means “in accordance with how God set it all up in the first place.”

This is such an amazing story! Maybe Netflix should make a multi-season series out of it! Wouldn’t you tune in to watch the grain grow? (OK, maybe not.)

Jesus tells this wondrous story of growth, and then he shifts gears and talks about a different seed: a mustard seed. And then, you know what Jesus does? He lies to us about mustard.

The mustard seed is tiny, sure, but in reality, it’s not the tiniest of all the seeds in the world. It grows into a tall shrub, yes, but certainly not “the greatest of all shrubs.” And it definitely doesn’t sprout branches thick enough for birds to build their nests on! So either Jesus didn’t know much about mustard, or he wasn’t being truthful—he was making the story just plain wrong. Everyone hearing Jesus the first time would have known this. They would have listened and said, “Wait, what?”

Because if there’s anything truthful to say about the mustard bush, it’s the thing Jesus doesn’t say, and this is that it grows everywhere. Mustard is an invasive species. It violates gardens. If Jesus told this parable in the Pacific Northwest, he might feature Scotch broom or Himalayan blackberries instead! Who plants blackberries? It’s a ridiculous idea. Nobody wants or needs to do that. The blackberries will just show up unbidden in every place they’re not eliminated.

In other words, the story Jesus tells is plainly ridiculous. And I think that’s the point. When he says wrong things about mustard plants, he’s planting a clue he wants us to pick up on.

For one thing, Jesus wants us to understand that the Kingdom of God subverts all our expectations. It is an invasive species, and no matter what we say about it or do or don’t do about it, it will grow. And it will be spicy! He doesn’t need to say these things, because he trusts his audience already knows this about mustard, and they’ve just heard the previous parable about the farmer not needing to tend to the seeds at all.

For another, Jesus wants his hearers to remember a passage from Ezekiel—the one we just heard this morning:

On the mountain height of Israel

I will plant it,

in order that it may produce boughs and bear fruit,

and become a noble cedar.

Under it every kind of bird will live;

in the shade of its branches will nest

winged creatures of every kind.

All the trees of the field shall know

that I am the Lord.

Well, that passage is about a cedar, not a mustard bush. The point, I think, is who does the work of growing it. And Jesus flags that for his hearers by telling them something false about a mustard bush! When he says, “so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade,” they know right away that mustard bushes don’t do this, so he must be referencing Ezekiel. They know their Bible.

I just learned that connection this week, and I’ve been a priest for nearly ten years, and I’ve been preaching for twenty! So you can see how biblical literacy is truly a lifelong project. The better we know it, the more theological connections we can make to our own lives.

We could, for instance, see ourselves as the farmer who is planting seeds. That’s a good use for this story. We can plant our seeds of love and hope without anxiety, because God—through nature—is the one who will tend the growth—not us. We just need to wait for the harvest.

Or, to use the story another way, maybe we are not those who plant seeds. Maybe we are the seeds themselves. If that’s the case, then God plants us and stands back, and our growth is absolutely assured simply because God wants it that way.

There’s a third way to use the story, too, and that’s to envision ourselves not as the farmer and not as the seeds, but as the soil. The seeds are the Kingdom of God, and the farmer—who is God—plants them in us. They will naturally take root and grow because we are as God made us.

Again, Ezekiel speaks with God’s voice:

I bring low the high tree,

I make high the low tree;

I dry up the green tree

and make the dry tree flourish.

I the Lord have spoken;

I will accomplish it.

This is a real challenge to those of us who have been raised to believe that if we want anything good to happen in life, we have to make it happen ourselves! After all, if we’re not constantly fretting about the health of this soil and the growth of these seeds, what are we doing with our lives?

Could it be that we don’t have to work so hard to “get it right”?

Could it be that our lives are chock full of chancy circumstances that we simply cannot control—and that so are everybody else’s? So could it be that patience and gentleness are the only way to handle one another’s lives?

We didn’t ask to be born. Our parents took care of that, but even they couldn’t control that process completely. We didn’t ask to die. But Jesus has already made death safe for us. It’s just going to happen to us someday.

It’s so certain to happen, in fact, that Paul urges the Corinthians to think of themselves—and everyone else—as already dead. After all, there can be no resurrection without death. But Christ is already sharing his resurrected life with every one of us through the Holy Spirit! So in a manner of speaking, we must already be dead, right?

And that’s why this wondrous story of soil and seeds is so useful. Through the Holy Spirit, we are farmers who need not be overly anxious about what’s going to happen naturally anyway. Through the Holy Spirit, we are seeds cracking open in the earth like a dead body, then sprouting into something new. Through the Holy Spirit, we are soil being tilled, and literally everything that happens in this life is part of that process. Everything belongs. The full harvest of our hopes and longings—and the full harvest of our very selves—is assured.

I was pondering this gospel passage while I was also preparing a sermon for Doreen Davis’s funeral on Friday. Today’s reading from Second Corinthians overlaps with and follows on the epistle reading we heard then, so as both sermons were germinating in the soil of my mind and heart, they were helping each other to grow. I said this on Friday:

Paul [stresses] that Christians are those who commit to know nobody from a merely human point of view—“according to the flesh.” We are to approach life with the understanding that literally everybody is eternal, and that not only is God never done with anybody, but we aren’t, either. We’re all together forever.

In other words, Jesus’ death and resurrection change the way we are to live with one another! Having been assured of eternal life, and having been assured that it applies not just to Jesus but to all of us, our work as the church is to till the ground for the irrepressible growth of love. Love is an invasive species that will ultimately grow in spite of us! The only question is whether we want to be a part of it—whether we want to align ourselves with that growth and make a home for others—to allow the birds to make nests.

Eventually the grain will grow to maturity, and then comes the harvest. But in case you didn’t realize it—surprise! You’re dead already! So is everybody else. We have all died with Christ, as evidenced by the fact that Christ is raising us all up like shoots of grain to the sun.

Isn’t that a wondrous story? Congratulations on your birth, and your death, and your resurrection, all of which are simultaneously real. Amen.

Hide and Seek

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 15:55:53 GMT

Sermon: Why would we hide from God? Come out! Come out!

2024-37
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA www.goodshepherdfw.org
by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 5B), June 9, 2024
Genesis 3:8-15 ; Psalm 130 ; 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 ; Mark 3:20-35

The first time I had to go to the doctor’s office for an allergy shot, I did fine. After all, I didn’t know what I was in for, and I trusted my parents.

The second time I had to go to the doctor’s office for an allergy shot, I hid behind a chair. It wasn’t a very effective hiding place.

Sometimes kids hide because they know they’ve done something wrong. That wasn’t the reason for me. I hid because I was afraid of having to do something painful.

Why do you suppose Adam and Eve hid from God?

You know the story, right? The serpent tempts Eve to eat the fruit—no apple mentioned, just some kind of fruit—because it is “to be desired to make one wise.” Who says? Only the serpent. What makes him more trustworthy than God?

Well, this is an etiological fable: it’s not supposed to be historically factual. It’s supposed to help us understand the facts about ourselves. So while we must never expect to find definitive answers to such questions, we do get to play with the story.

What if Adam and Eve had chosen not to hide in the woods? How might the story have gone differently? What if they had said to God, “Here we are! And yes, we ate the fruit. But see, we can explain …” That’s not what happens in the story. Instead we hear that they ate the fruit, realized they were naked, and felt an irresistible desire to hide from God—from whom they had never felt the need to hide before.

Is it because they know they have done wrong? Or is it because they anticipate that they’ll have to go through something painful? Maybe both?

In this story, nakedness isn’t just about having no clothes on. It’s about being exposed before God and having to give an accounting for their actions. It’s also about realizing that the only way forward lies through pain—and not wanting to deal with that.

Now, most folks assume the serpent is Satan, but Satan isn’t even mentioned in the Bible until many books later. Yet, as I said, we do get to play with the story. If you like, Jesus is the offspring of Eve referenced in the narrative. The serpent will strike his heel in crucifixion. Then Jesus will strike the serpent’s head in resurrection! This is a traditional Christian use of the Adam and Eve story. But like my question about Adam and Eve’s other possible options, this, too, is playing with the story to see how it can benefit us.

And it's such a huge story, this story we’re always telling in the church. You can tell it from so many different angles, and oh, how I love to tell the story! Today it’s a story about hide and seek. We hide out of shame, and God seeks to find us and pull us out of shame once and for all. “Where are you?” Sometimes God calls out to me: “Where are you?” When I’m acting in a way that’s contrary to what I know is right: “Where are you?” When I take refuge in negativity, or cynicism, or despair: “Where are you?” When I’m hiding from prayer, hiding from discipline, hiding from doing the next right thing: “Where are you?”

None of us has any need to hide from God—not really. We only think we do because we feel ashamed. And this is why it’s important to differentiate between guilt and shame.

Guilt comes from the feeling of having done something wrong. Our guilt can be misplaced: we may feel guilty over something that was not actually wrong and hasn’t hurt anybody, not even ourselves. But our guilt can also be constructive. God sometimes speaks within us through our conscience, helping us experience guilt so that we can benefit from it. If our hearts are open, guilt leads naturally to confession, learning, and self-correction.

Shame, on the other hand, is never God-given. Shame is imposed on us from outside by the voices of the fearful. Episcopal author and TED Talk veteran Brené Brown puts the difference like this. While properly placed guilt admits, “I did something bad,” shame insists, “I am something bad.”

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is not dealing in shame. He states clearly: “All people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter.” (I don’t know why the word “all” is omitted from our translation, because it’s plainly present in the Greek.) But then Jesus adds a stark warning: “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin”!

Is Jesus trying to shame the scribes for accusing him of being in league with demons? I don’t think so. I think he’s trying to give them a shot of clarity. “You think I recruit demons to cast out demons? If so, that means that the whole demon world is in disarray, fighting among themselves. Excellent news! But,” Jesus adds, taking his tongue out of his cheek, “if you really can’t see that getting rid of demons is a good thing, then you’ve got a much bigger problem on your hands. You’re relabeling good as evil, which means you’re hiding from goodness itself! How can you ever get yourselves out of that fix?”

We see this in the present day, too, whenever a person puts authority and trust in doers of evil and calls the evil good. Then they immunize themselves from actual facts so they never have to withstand the pain of being corrected and having to change and grow.

I think this is far worse than what Adam and Eve did. Adam and Eve hid in their shame and fear—but when the source of all life called out to them, at least they came out and faced the consequences. After all, now they knew the difference between good and evil.

The scribes in this story, on the other hand, are determined never to feel guilt—never to admit they could be wrong about something. Like Adam and Eve, they have the ability to tell good from evil … but they’re choosing not to use it! So what they think is piety becomes willful ignorance—and yes, this hurts real people in the real world.

Forgiveness and new growth become possible once we get outside ourselves and into vulnerable relationship with others. Jesus wants these scribes to hear: If you have become so hardened and afraid that you reject healing for yourselves and don’t want to see others healed either … what hope can there be for you?

This is Pride month, and the whole concept of Pride is about no longer hiding and no longer being ashamed. There’s a certain amount of defiance in this: “I don’t care what the consequences of this are anymore, because hiding was no kind of life!” This is why it’s called “coming out.” The pride in question is fundamentally about the risks of dignity. If you’ve been in hiding and then risked everything to come out—and you’re still alive—good on you. Be proud of all that you’ve endured and conquered.

I frequently hear people talk about coming out, only to be rejected by their families and churches. And then I hear that some other community accepted them. Jesus typically brings hope and healing through a community of people. But so many of our churches have refused to admit they were wrong that Jesus is forced to heal outside the church.

Here’s an example. Lambert House is a community center for LGBTQ+ youth. Real healing happens in this group. It is a helpful community for queer kids with supportive parents, and it also becomes a kind of “chosen family” for young people whose biological families have rejected them. While their Seattle headquarters is undergoing renovation, Lambert House will be temporarily housed at St. Mark’s Cathedral.

Now, you and I may rejoice at this pairing, but it’s likely to be an uneasy one. That’s not because our fellow Episcopalians don’t want Lambert House, but because the youth will have a hard time trusting the church not to victimize them. Many of them have never met a Christian they didn’t have real cause to fear.

I believe that Jesus is at work through Lambert House. “Chosen family” is another theme of today’s gospel reading, after all! Jesus supports and strengthens the ad hoc families that develop based on love and not just genetics. Yet Jesus doesn’t insist on taking credit for this. He’s not into manipulating people.

Still, I would love to make clear to these young people that the church is also a form of “chosen family”—I’ve seen it so many times! Those whose connections with their families of origin are weak or strained can find in the church the family they never had, and those connections can build us up for the rest of our lives. Christian family should be primarily and especially available to those whose blood families have rejected or drifted away from them.

When new families form like this, it’s a little like Jesus healing people on the sabbath: it’s not the pattern historically approved by the culture, so some people immediately write it off as wrong. But they’re refusing to observe what is clearly good: healing from shame. New life. Joy. Generative love! There is no legitimate way to paint these things as demonic.

And this is how you can spot the Holy Spirit at work in the world everywhere: the self-assured are called up short and need to admit they were wrong, and those they picked on are being privileged and honored. I see the fingerprints of the Holy Spirit all over this month’s Pride celebrations.

You can look at your own life, too. How are your wounds being healed? Not through your own piety and holiness, but through the love of those who understand where you’ve been—a family that may be unofficial and messy and weird, but which knows who you are and where you’ve been and consistently holds patient space for you to grow into. These are the ones who call to you in your hiding place in a voice touched by that of God: “Where are you? Come out! Come out! Come live in love with us!”

When the church is doing it right, we help people experience God’s unconditional love and acceptance of them. Where people have actually done wrong, we make space for their guilt and repentance—carefully, because we must never shame those who are sincerely trying to grow. Where people have been wronged, we make space for them to heal—gently, gently, because the church doesn’t manage that healing. Only the Holy Spirit can do that.

The long-range project of the church is that every one of us can be healed and then also become a healing presence for others—a catalyst for human thriving. Have you been hiding? The eternal love at the heart of creation is seeking you—calling out to you—“come out!”

Gems in Tupperware

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Sun, 07 Jul 2024 15:55:52 GMT

Sermon: Paul writes about cheap, disposable containers ...
and the perfection of God they contain.

2024-36 sermon
preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
Second Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 4B), June 2, 2024
Deuteronomy 5:12-15 ; Psalm 81:1-10 ; 2 Corinthians 4:5-12 ; Mark 2:23-3:6

Every time I buy lunchmeat, it comes home from the grocery store in a new, reusable Tupperware container. When we’ve finished the meat, the container goes into the dishwasher and then the pantry. So at the bottom of our pantry is a bin full of Tupperware—a bin too small to contain all that has collected there, so it spills out onto the floor when we open the door. Maybe someday we’ll purge it, but that’s clearly a low priority for us.

I think the church is like a kitchen full of Tupperware—in the pantry, in the fridge, in the dishwasher. Some of it is resting and waiting to be used again. Some of it is holding food to be reheated later. Some of it is in the process of being washed and dried. Some of it has gotten worn out and doesn’t hold its seal anymore.

And in this church full of Tupperware, you’ll find the most amazing things. Because this Tupperware holds not perishable food, but gemstones: garnets, amethysts, pearls. Lapis lazuli and peridot. Rose quartz and sapphires and opals and jasper and even diamonds.

There is so much treasure here. But how could you tell? It’s all being kept in Tupperware.

OK, where is he going with this, right?

They didn’t have Tupperware in the first century, but they did have clay jars: containers that eventually wear out. When Paul writes to the Corinthians about “treasure in clay jars,” he’s talking about human beings. God’s perfection can be found within imperfect creatures that eventually fall apart. Is it careless of God to put gems in Tupperware? Or is this part of the genius of God?

The clay jars that Paul speaks of were not typically repaired when damaged; they were thrown away because they were cheap. The same goes for Tupperware. But here’s where the metaphor breaks down, because humans, despite any evidence to the contrary, are not cheap and disposable. Humans wear out—yet we can be repaired. Humans die—yet we are eternal, and through Christ, we are resurrected into eternal life. In the meantime, life is hard work, and we all find ourselves in need of rest and renewal.

Today’s other readings are about the command to the people of Israel to keep sabbath. It’s one of the Ten Commandments, and it’s reiterated in Deuteronomy, which was written centuries later during a time of significant reform. Since God rested on the seventh day, we hear, we also are to rest one day per week. All of us. Yes, all—from the king all the way down to the enslaved people, and even foreigners living among us. Everybody gets a day off. Because God knows we need it.

Has any of the Ten Commandments been so frequently broken? Indeed, those who insist the Ten Commandments should be installed on courthouse lawns might do well to read them sometime and take another glance at their employment practices.

What if we all kept sabbath as a society? We wouldn’t expect any business to be open seven days a week. We would be content with our own businesses being closed one day a week—we would just do without the profits we could have gained on that day. When Christianity was more of the assumed norm in the United States, it was a little more like that. We still don’t have open banks or federal mail delivery on Sundays.

But it was never like this for everyone. It’s always been the case that some people have to work seven days a week. The woman who cuts my hair is stuck in this reality. She can’t pay rent on the building that houses her business unless she makes as much money as humanly possible. She can’t afford to hire helpers. So she is the business, and literally every day, she’s cutting hair. This is fundamentally unjust. I tip her very well, but I remain concerned about how she’s doing in the long run. She always says, “It’s fine! I like to work.” But I can tell it is wearing her out.

We don’t and we can’t keep sabbath as a society—not the way we currently construct it. We’re too insistent on the pipe dream of perpetual economic growth, and that fantasy falls on the backs of the hardworking poor and middle-class. Many small business owners feel they can never afford a sabbath. And many other people find they must work two or even three jobs to make ends meet. There’s rarely a sabbath for them, either—and when there is, it’s because they couldn’t get enough hours, or they lost a job, or they had to stay home with a sick child and surrender part of their pay. A sabbath accompanied by worry is not a sabbath. The situation is terrible for the well-being of our society.

Now, for Jews, the sabbath is still Saturday, the final day of the week. The weekly service of Shabbat takes place Friday night at sundown, the beginning of the new day in Jewish tradition. In Christian history, in many places and times, Sunday has been kept as a sabbath, though ironically, clergy have never been able to adhere to this practice! My own declared sabbath is Friday. I don’t reply to your texts, emails, or voice mails on that day unless it’s an emergency.

Now, I am not consistent in the observance of my own sabbath. I have access to all of this on my phone, so when a message comes in, I get a notification. Often I can’t resist peeking. But when I do peek, I’ve stuck myself with the burden of deciding whether to reply right away, or wait until the next day. And then, boom, I’m back at work, because I’m thinking about work.

Truly keeping sabbath is an ongoing learning for me. It means trusting that I’m not as needed as I think I am. I’m just a parish priest, after all, and this community is full of highly skilled lay people who see to the vast majority of the church’s needs from day to day. Ideally, we all get to rest from that work as well.

Pope John XXIII once said that he concluded his prayers the same way every night: “Well, I did my best. It's your Church, God, so I'm going to bed now.” The pope! He knew he needed rest, and he took it. We all want to be needed, of course, but I also need my rest. And I think there’s something here about Paul’s insistence that “we do not proclaim ourselves.”

Even so, the sabbath has its necessary exceptions. I have chosen to allow for funerals on Fridays, because it’s difficult to schedule them on weekends. I often make exceptions for other reasons as well. As Jesus says to the Pharisees, we don’t get to use the sabbath as an excuse to avoid doing good.

When I do need to work on Fridays—and I have quite a bit lately—I try to remember to take other time off. I track my own work hours in a spreadsheet so I can see when I’m overdoing it. And now that Sarah is home from college, I will cash in some of that extra time. I’ll be out of town this week from Wednesday through Saturday as our family goes to Eastern Washington to tour some geological sites. I will do less work than usual this week. And that will be OK.

Not all vacation time is the same, either. Sometimes it’s great just to lie on the couch, but I tend to be more of a do-er. I will take the final week of June off as vacation time so that I can serve as chaplain at the annual Royal School of Church Music camp in Tacoma. Kids from church choirs in many states will gather at the University of Puget Sound for some intensive singing, and I’m excited to be with them, to lead Evensong, to preach and teach, and of course, to sing in the choir. This may sound like work to you, but I’m happy to call it vacation time because it will feed my soul.

We all need weekly rest. We all need vacations. Without these times, we wear ourselves out like Tupperware. If we’re going to hold God’s treasure in us, we need renewal. And beginning after Christmas Eve, I’m going to take a sabbatical for four months.

This isn’t news to most of you; preparations are well under way. When I became your rector in 2018, my Letter of Agreement stated that I was entitled to a sabbatical lasting three to six months after my first five years. Now it’s been six years, and I’m going for it. Why now? Because we’ve come out the other side of a pandemic, and frankly, I’m exhausted.

I know how I get when I need more rest. I can get snippy and exacting. I can get too wedded to the outcomes I most want instead of listening for what the Holy Spirit might have in mind. I can identify times just in the past week when I’ve acted in ways that may not have been the most helpful. So I intend to use my sabbatical well: to rest, to recharge, and to explore possibilities I don’t usually have time for. More about that later.

Most of all, I’m hopeful that my time away, from Christmas season through the Day of Easter 2025, will be good for Good Shepherd. Yes, really! Clergy who take sabbaticals do their congregations a big favor: the opportunity to explore their identity apart from the rector. We’ll have a priest here on contract to fill in for me—more news about that later as well. And if there are ways that I customarily get in my own way and in the way of the congregation—because of my own growing edges—well, this will be a time for those to come clear through my absence. And it’s work I’ll be dealing with on my own time as well. One thing I can promise you: I will definitely return from my sabbatical, tell you all about it, and continue to be your priest!

Every one of us carries within us the gem of our God-createdness. Is it careless of God to put gems in Tupperware? Or is this a genius move? Jesus tells us that the Sabbath was made as a tool for our benefit; we were not made to worship the Sabbath. We are commanded to rest, but as communities and cultures, we get to construct the ways we rest. So how can the Church of the Good Shepherd help you take care of your Tupperware? And how can Good Shepherd open up opportunities for rest for those who rarely get enough?

Reunite ... and Belong

rector@goodshepherdfw.org (Joshua Hosler) — Thu, 13 Jun 2024 21:39:44 GMT

Sermon: Where Do You Belong?

2024-35
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday (Year B), May 26, 2024
Isaiah 6:1-8 ; Psalm 29 ; Romans 8:12-17 ; John 3:1-17

On my way to Good Shepherd, I drive past the shopping area on 320 ^th and Pac Highway. Recently I noticed a sign there that urges people to rent space for their business. It says, in large, friendly, sans serif letters:

“You belong here.”

Somebody’s marketing department worked very hard to arrive at that phrase. It tugs at me. It makes me wonder, “Do I? Do I really belong here?”—even though I have no desire to rent space in a strip mall. Nevertheless, the phrase stokes my sense of longing.

So it should have come as no surprise to me the other day when I was driving elsewhere in Federal Way and I passed a church with a large banner proclaiming, in friendly, sans serif letters—you guessed it—“You belong here.”

I had a very different reaction to that banner. I could regard the strip mall’s marketing with interested detachment because I had no investment in what was being offered. But when it comes to the church … well, I already know where I belong! So to be told that I actually belong somewhere else triggered suspicion. How dare they try to manipulate me?

And then I remembered that I had programmed the sign outside our building to display a new, modified version of the Episcopal shield with Pride colors, and a phrase only slightly different: “You belong.” Not “You belong here,” though that’s always my fervent hope for people who come into contact with Good Shepherd, but just … “You belong.”

And I remembered that a few years ago, we used a similar phrase to talk about Good Shepherd during our annual pledge campaign: “A place to belong.”

Is belonging a manipulative idea?

One thing’s for sure: those who say “You belong here” are saying it because they recognize that a lot of people in our community fear that they don’t belong. We know that so many feel isolated and lonely. To insist, “Oh yes, you do belong, and you belong here!” can be a real, earnest response—a genuine desire to connect. Or it can be a cynical ploy to get people to give you their money.

When I invite people to belong to Good Shepherd, it’s not because I expect them to turn in a pledge card. I make that invitation, to be sure, because money actually gets things done in this world, and when we pool our money, we help take care of real human needs. I also invite people to get engaged in the ministries of the church, because church isn’t merely a place to belong to. The church is what we become as we come to know God as the source of all our longing.

So in the church, we are never consumers. Human beings are not a means to an end, but an end in ourselves. That’s one way that things are supposed to work differently in the church, as opposed to the rest of the world.

Interesting: I just noticed for the first time in my life that that the word “belonging” contains the word “longing.” To belong is to be … and to long. One of the main things we do in the church is to trust that even our longing to belong reunites us with our Source. The eternal home we long for is separate from this world but somehow intersects with it, because of who God is and what God is like. So belonging to God is our default setting.

When Paul writes to the Romans, he wants them to know this. If it could ever have been said that we didn’t belong to God, says Paul, that is no longer the case. Paul talks about shifting from a spirit of slavery and fear … to a spirit of adoption. We are not God’s free labor; we are God’s children.

The prophet Isaiah, in his famous call story, has a direct encounter with God’s divine holiness and survives—not because Isaiah is strong and powerful, but because God has decided he belongs. Isaiah can stand in God’s transcendent presence and not die, because God wants him—Isaiah specifically. In response to this fundamental experience of belonging, Isaiah chooses to dedicate his entire life to whatever God asks of him.

And when Nicodemus, a leader of the Pharisees, comes to Jesus in the dead of night out of genuine curiosity, Jesus gets poetic. He says, “No one can see the Kingdom of God without being born from above.” Many Christians say “born again,” but Nicodemus only phrases it that way because he misunderstands! No, stick with “born from above,” but don’t fall into thinking it’s a code to be cracked. It’s not. It’s poetry.

John’s whole gospel is steeped in poetry. I imagine his little struggling community of first- and second-century Christians trying to wrap their brains around the concept of Christ and being told by their catechists: “Stop trying to think your way into it! This isn’t algebra—it’s wisdom. You need to feel it.”

“The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but do you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” To be born of the Spirit is not only to belong, but to know and understand that we belong, ultimately, to the One who created us. If we have ever felt that we don’t belong, the time has come to hear the Good News that this has never been the case. And it’s not just because God arbitrarily needs creatures to do something for God. God doesn’t actually need us at all. God creates us because God wants us.

Today is Trinity Sunday, the day when we acknowledge—though we’ll never fully understand—the proclamation that God is three persons in one, a community of being and belonging. God has always been in relationship with Godself: not lonely, not needy, but overflowing with love. I tell the story like this: God wanted to share the love God shares within Godself, so God created a whole universe of individual consciousnesses to experience love from their own perspective. But my explanation isn’t an objective fact. It’s poetry that can help point us toward the objective fact—the Source of ultimate belonging that we have longed for all our lives.

You may be used to regarding the Trinity with some degree of detachment: “Yeah, that’s just one of the weird things we say in church, but it doesn’t have anything to do with me, really.” On the contrary, I think our Christian faith falls apart without the Trinity. It’s the only way I can make sense of the story of Jesus. If God merely sent or appointed a human being to be among us and teach us and love us—even a human being endowed with divine power to work miracles—but then that person somehow had to die to reunite us with God? That would be a form of divine child abuse—the Son is forced to suffer to pay a huge outstanding debt to an angry, bloodthirsty deity.

But if that human being is God, we’re talking about something very different. God doesn’t send someone to die. God actually chooses to die, to interrupt the whole system of debt and repayment, to grab our attention and shout, “Hey! I’m here, and I love you, and you belong!”

If God dies, then God exposes the forces of evil for what they really are. They are a cynical, manipulative marketing department. They teach us that we can only belong if we fall on our knees and grovel in fear, turn our lives over completely to something others tell us about, give up our will and our very nature because they cannot be trusted. The forces of evil fundamentally disrespect human beings, calling us dirty and worthless. If a human being dies for us to repay a divine debt, what’s left for it except to feel forever guilty that we didn’t do life better, surrender more fully, follow all the rules, so that Jesus wouldn’t have had to die?

But if God is born, and God goes to death willingly, and God is buried, and God comes back to us again, something very different is going on. God has addressed the infinite power dynamic between human beings and their creator. God has affirmed for us: “I don’t want you to grovel before me. I don’t want you to hate yourselves. Yes, you exist within a limited and limiting realm because I want you to keep your independence and agency, to make your own choices. It’s the only way you can truly learn what love is. But this world is too painful and terrifying for me to leave you comfortless. I am not above going through everything you go through. I am here in your world with you!”

It’s all well and good to say to someone, “You belong here.” But don’t expect anyone to believe it unless you’re willing to belong here with them, to try things and fail, to apologize and grow, to learn from them and allow them to change you. That’s what relationship is for. Maybe as a result of creating us and coming to be among us, even God has changed and grown! Without this possibility, what would be the point of God having a relationship with each and every one of us?

When God addresses the seeming division, steps into the gap, accepts all the consequences of human life from birth to death and beyond … God shows us that we truly belong. When God comes back from the dead and sends the Holy Spirit to strengthen us, God shows us that our fear and pain, as horrible as they may become, are temporary.

Maybe that little bit of encouragement will be enough to reunite us with God, not just from God’s perspective, but also from our own. Maybe then our newfound understanding that we belong will help us address the isolation and loneliness in the people all around us—to gather the courage to step into the gap between us and them, so that there is no longer an “us and them.” That we all may be one with God.

Yes, you belong. I pray that you may belong here at Good Shepherd, though none of us is perfect, and yes, sometimes we do hurt each other. But I pray that you never lose sight of your ultimate belonging, and that this reassurance will strengthen you to help others know they belong as well. Amen.

Renew and Replenish

Sun, 19 May 2024 17:03:00 GMT

Um ... are you aware of your tongue?

2024-34
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Day of Pentecost (Year B), May 19, 2024
Acts 2:1-21 ; Psalm 104:25-35, 37 ; Romans 8:22-27 ; John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15

Yesterday, hundreds of Episcopalians from all over Western Washington descended on St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle to elect our next bishop. And the winner is …

… wait. What’s this “winner” stuff? This wasn’t a presidential election; it was a discernment process. I know, the distinction might be invisible to most. But that difference matters, because properly understood, this bishop election was not a competition. It was about listening for the presence and movement of the Holy Spirit and then responding.

But we’ll come back to that. First I want to share a classic Charles Schulz Peanuts cartoon with you.

Lucy comes into the room and sees Linus, who looks alarmed. “Oh, no!” he bursts out. “Not again!”

“What in the world is the matter with you?” Lucy asks.

“I’m aware of my tongue!”

“You’re what?!”

“I’m aware of my tongue …” Linus explains. “It’s an awful feeling! Every now and then I become aware that I have a tongue inside my mouth, and then it starts to feel all lumped up …”

“That’s the most stupid thing I’ve ever heard!”

“I can’t help it … I can’t put it out of my mind … I keep thinking about where my tongue would be if I weren’t thinking about it, and then I can feel it sort of pressing against my teeth … now it feels all lumped up again … the more I try to put it out of my mind, the more I think about it …”

“Good grief!” Lucy groans and walks away. But I’m sure you know what’s coming. Lucy stops in her tracks. “Oh, no!!”

She rushes back to Linus in a rage: “I oughta knock your block off!” [1]

Our mouths are never empty. We just don’t tend to think about it all the time. But if your tongue were missing … you’d know.

I guarantee that no preacher has ever made this comparison before, but I think the Holy Spirit is … like the tongue in our mouths. She is there all the time. She is functioning all the time. Without her we’d be in big trouble. But most of the time, we don’t think about her presence.

(I’m choosing she/her pronouns for the Holy Spirit today, but as I’ve pointed out in other sermons, you can use any pronouns you like for her. Others have done so as well, all the way back!)

You know, when many people look for evidence of God’s existence, they’re looking outward. Where is this celestial old man in the sky with a big beard and lightning bolts in hand? I don’t see him. But over the years I’ve stopped looking out there for God. When I look out there I see lots of wonderful things and lots of frightening things, but none of it necessarily points to an outside deity working to create all that is.

Over the years I’ve begun looking … well, inside myself to some degree, but that’s not a good enough image. More like … underneath. Behind. As if the universe in all its dimensions were a tapestry being woven by someone we can’t see. Theologian Paul Tillich talked about God as “the ground of all being.” We’re here, aren’t we? We’re aware, aren’t we? And becoming aware of God’s presence is a little like becoming aware of my tongue—it brings wonder and awe, and it’s not always comfortable!

On top of this, my specific experiences of love and joy have convinced me that we are not mere robots working out a predetermined program, but individual creatures with free will. I perceive that we are being urged, from behind the tapestry, to be in relationship with one another, to reach out beyond our fears, to provide for each other’s needs. Those needs include basic love and acceptance. They also include food and safety—the things that keep us alive and functioning in the universe as it is. We are to provide these for one another.

Today is the Day of Pentecost, known colloquially as the birthday of the Church. We hear that on this day, the Holy Spirit swept into Jerusalem with fierce purpose. And we hear apocalyptic language, as Peter quotes from the Prophet Joel. The language of apocalypse can be dire and frightening, or it can be uplifting and hopeful … or even both at once. We might see Ezekiel’s vision of the dry bones this way … if the valley is full of bones, that means everybody’s dead. But if the bones come back to life, how can we even rely on the laws of physics anymore? What wondrous new things might God have in store for us? As today’s psalm puts it: “You send forth your spirit and they are created—and so you renew the face of the earth.”

And so we find on Pentecost that the Holy Spirit is the one who destroys all our carefully crafted stories. We show up with our own agendas, only to find that the Spirit has a completely different agenda that none of us could have imagined! The Holy Spirit is the chaos that clarifies. When she shows up in force, she will replenish us—and that literally means “to fill us up again.”

Why does this not happen all the time? Why does God not smooth out the universe immediately and make everything perfect? I don’t know. We don’t know. As the disciples waited for the Holy Spirit, so do we wait. We hope for what we don’t yet see, and we do our best to wait for it with patience.

Maybe, during our times of waiting, the Holy Spirit sits with us. Maybe as the disciples waited for the Holy Spirit, they simply weren’t aware of their tongues.

Maybe if we make a regular practice of quieting ourselves, we’ll come to recognize the Holy Spirit right here among us, as present as the tongues in our mouths.

Maybe then we won’t be able to keep our tongues still. Because they won’t feel all lumpy if we’re using them to speak!

Maybe sharing our experience of the Holy Spirit’s presence is exactly what the world needs right now, for renewal and replenishment. When we trust the Spirit to give us words, we’ll find we’re able to speak in ways that others can understand—even when their experience and culture and language are very different from our own.

And maybe, as we mature in our faith, we find ourselves better able to recognize the presence and action of the Holy Spirit not only in chaos, but also in moments of calm. We may find an increased tolerance for God’s kind of chaos as well, because it brings joy even through uncertainty—love even through times of great upheaval and pain and loss of control.

Ideally, we Christians spend all our lives getting better at exactly this sort of thing: recognizing the Holy Spirit’s presence and action. Yet no matter how much we say—and believe—that the Holy Spirit is working through the Church, that doesn’t mean that everything the Church does is blessed by God. Instead, it means that God decided, in all that odd divine wisdom, to involve us human beings in the salvation, reconciliation, and sanctification of the world. And we have every right to disagree with God’s judgment and trust in our abilities.

But from where I’m standing, it appears to be exactly what’s been going on all this time. God created a world that just keeps on changing. We didn’t ask to be born into it, but here we are. With every breath and every heartbeat, we are riding the waves of change—of a temporary world splashing through the sea of God’s eternity. There’s a beginning and end for every one of us and for the entire project. But here we find ourselves today, with a newly elected bishop. It is a time of new beginnings.

And—oh yeah—I haven’t said who we elected yet. I’d like to invite all of you to pray for the Rev. Phil LaBelle, who with his wife Melissa will move to Washington State over the summer. The consecration of our bishop-elect is slated for September 14 at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue … and everyone’s invited!

May this time of rapid change bring us through uncertainty and into renewal—through fear and into replenishment. May we all be filled with the Holy Spirit, as the original apostles were on that Day of Pentecost. And may the Spirit make us aware of our tongues—so that we, too, may use them to speak Good News to all who have ears to hear! Amen.

[1] Charles Schulz, Peanuts, February 3, 1963.

Reassure

Sun, 12 May 2024 17:01:27 GMT

Have you ever been bored, confused, or even appalled by the Bible?
There's nothing wrong with you.

2024-33
sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA
www.goodshepherdfw.org
b y the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector
The Seventh Sunday of Easter (Year B), May 12, 2024
Acts 1:15-17, 21-26 ; Psalm 1 ; 1 John 5:9-13 ; John 17:6-19

I remember sitting in church as a kid and listening to the readings. Sometimes they held my attention—sometimes not so much. Now, here I am, a grown man with a child in college, and a priest no less, but I have to confess something to you: today’s readings don’t really hold my attention. I find them obscure and hard to grasp.

Not everything in the Bible is equally compelling, of course, but this set of readings … well, what can I say? We have the eleven remaining apostles, trying to figure out after Judas’s death who will take his place, because obviously there have to be twelve of them, right? The verses that have been omitted from our selection today describe the gruesome death of Judas; at least that would have been more interesting than what seems to amount to the minutes of a committee meeting.

On the other hand, maybe even meeting minutes could be more exciting:

John nominated Justus. Andrew seconded. Bartholomew nominated Matthias. James seconded. Discussion followed. Mary Magdalene called the question. Thomas informed Mary that she couldn’t call the question because she had voice, but not vote. Heated discussion followed about Robert’s Rules of Order; the consensus of the group was that Thomas was correct, but that Mary should be allowed to second the calling of the question because she was, after all, the Apostle to the Apostles. Joanna asked why, then, Mary didn’t have a vote. Peter wrestled back control as the chair of the meeting and brought out the official flipping coin. Peter flipped, Matthias called it in the air. Matthias won the flip.

See? The early apostles were already holding vestry meetings!

Then there’s Psalm 1, which I’ve long felt is the most naïve of the psalms. It seems to suggest that good people always prosper and bad people always fail. If only that were true! Indeed, if you read on to Psalm 2, you can see that it immediately debunks the whole premise of Psalm 1.

The author of the first letter of John appears to be tying himself in knots. How many times can he use the word “testimony” in one short paragraph? And the dualism! He seems to be saying, “Either you’re with Jesus—and, by extension, with our little group—or you’re dead,” and that strikes me as a little extreme. I also think this passage smacks of circular logic, though I can’t follow it well enough to tell you how.

Finally, there’s our reading from John’s gospel, a snippet of Jesus’ farewell discourse at the Last Supper. That speech takes up nearly a third of the book. Those who’ve compared and contrasted the gospels can easily observe that Mark’s Jesus says relatively little, while John’s Jesus can’t seem to shut up. What is all this? “They were yours, and you gave them to me, and I gave them your words, and they received my words, and now they have my words. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and they’re in the world, but I’m not in the world, but don’t take them out of the world! Sanctify them in the truth, which you are, since you sent me into the world that I am not part of, but they are, but they’re really not, so we’re all sanctified in truth and it’s all good!”

Come again?

All this is to say that if you’ve ever tried to read the Bible and found it just plain boring, I want to reassure you: there’s nothing wrong with you. No, the Bible isn’t objectively boring—that’s not really a thing. It’s just that the Bible is highly varied and contextual: it’s a sprawling library of texts of all different kinds that don’t speak with the same voice. So the more you know about it, the easier it is to understand—and, honestly, the more fascinating it becomes. We get bored by things that don’t interest us. But by definition, the minute the Bible piques our interest, it becomes significantly less boring.

When we’re trying to read the Bible, we can so easily be held back by our assumptions about what the Bible even is … and what we can expect it to do. So in the past week, after going over these readings a few times and rolling my eyes a little bit, I had a realization. Maybe it was fitting that that I, on this particular Sunday of the year, was struggling with my sermon preparation. Maybe I wasn’t any worse off than the apostles were at that time.

On Wednesday night, we celebrated the Eve of the Ascension. We told the story of Jesus blessing his apostles and then disappearing from their sight. We noted his instruction to them to go back to Jerusalem and wait—wait—wait for the Holy Spirit. More than any other Sunday in the year, this Sunday is about waiting. And anytime we’re stuck waiting, it’s possible to get bored!

Maybe during those ten days of waiting, the apostles sat and read their Bibles. I know, they didn’t actually have printed Bibles and most of them were probably illiterate. But maybe they compared their understandings of the ancient stories of Israel, reviewing what the risen Christ had taught them about how he could be found even in the centuries-old stories of Moses. Maybe they went back over their knowledge of Isaiah’s writings and rediscovered ways that he might have been inadvertently talking about Christ all along.

After forty days back with them, I hope the risen Christ had left the apostles with some tools for prayer and theological reflection. But maybe it was enough that they just needed to wait. Maybe in these ten days between the Ascension and Pentecost—sitting there in a room together without their teacher—they finally came to understand that they couldn’t force the creator of the universe to change the script. Everything seemed obscure and hard to follow, so they were just going to have to wait and see what happened next. The most they could do was pick somebody to take Judas’s place—so they did that, and then they kept waiting.

I can totally relate. Sometimes our lives seem stuck in the middle. Sometimes our world seems stuck in the middle. In our own time, change has happened so quickly that it’s sent us spinning into fear and mistrust of one another. We look around at a badly broken world, and we might even get so exhausted that we stop praying entirely—for Gaza, for Sudan, for Congo, for Ukraine, for Hong Kong, for the United States of America. We feel helpless to change the scene ourselves, and maybe that’s true. No matter how much we recycle and compost, we can’t singlehandedly stop climate change. No matter how much we donate to the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, we can’t prevent famine in Rafah. We can’t stop Vladimir Putin or other dictators from carrying out their programs. We can’t assure a presidential election unmarred by violence. We can’t even provide housing for the people living in our woods, because the rent is too high!

Yet there are two kinds of waiting: active waiting and passive waiting. Passive waiting might look like filling all our time with mindless entertainment—not bothering to have any positive effect even on the situations where we do hold some power! Do you know the term “doomscrolling”? That means becoming addicted to all the atrocities our mobile devices can show us, and feeling worse and worse but somehow never looking away. Scroll, scroll, scroll.

Active waiting is different. It means working intentionally to change what we can, and then turning the rest over to God. You know you’re involved in active waiting when you get up in the morning and decide what you will do. It also means engaging in spiritual practices that can prepare us to meet the critical moment with energetic decisiveness, so that others will benefit from the gifts we offer.

What if we stopped trying to save the world? What if we just looked at our own little sphere of influence and decided not to be paralyzed by fear? What we if did one little thing every day or every week, such that we could come back to Good Shepherd the next Sunday and tell each other what one faithful action we took for the good of the world? That would be worthy conversation for coffee hour, wouldn’t it? “Hey, everyone—this is the one thing I did to walk the way of Jesus this week!”

Friends, the world is indeed badly broken. It has always been such—that’s why we have the weird, complicated Bible we have! Even the ancients knew what we know now about human sin and the fear that drives it. It’s in every one of us. Today I just want to reassure you: you’re doing OK.

Today is Mother’s Day. Mothers, you’re doing fine. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Parenthood is all about the long haul, and God is mother to all of us. Hang in there—we see you, we love you, we appreciate you. Hopefully, with prayer and friendship and insight, this can be a community where you feel supported as mothers and can share your anxieties and joys with us.

Today we’re preparing for a bishop election—this coming Saturday, in fact! Be not afraid. All the candidates look like different kinds of wonderful to me. I know whom I plan to vote for, but I think we’ll be fine whichever way this goes.

Today the world is in a very bad way. I can’t do much about that—but I can do my little part. I can commit to be here for all of you, as your priest, your spiritual life coach, your cheerleader—even when the assigned Bible readings for the week don’t exactly inspire me.

What commitment can you make today—to those you love, and to those you don’t know well? To those at Good Shepherd, and those beyond our walls? What reassurance can you offer while you wait for the Holy Spirit to sweep us up into something new?

Return

Wed, 08 May 2024 17:00:13 GMT

A lot can happen in forty days.

2024-32

sermon preached at Church of the Good Shepherd, Federal Way, WA

www.goodshepherdfw.org

by the Rev. Josh Hosler, Rector

Eve of the Ascension (Year B), May 8, 2024

Acts 1:1-11 ; Psalm 47 ; Ephesians 1:15-23 ; Luke 24:44-53

Forty days is a long time. A lot can happen in forty days. You could quit a job, move, and start a new job in forty days. You could take and pass a one-quarter class at a college. You could recover from a serious illness, or conquer a video game. The gestation period of a squirrel is about forty days.

Forty days is a period of time that comes up a lot in the Bible: forty days and forty nights, especially. It’s a holy amount of time, overflowing with symbolism. The church decided centuries ago that there are forty days in Lent, not counting Sundays. Many of us took on some sort of spiritual practice during the forty days of Lent. But now it has been forty days since the Day of Easter.

For Jesus’ disciples, the first forty days after the Resurrection were a sort of anti-Lent. They moved from confusion to joy as Jesus appeared to them at different times and in different ways. Now the most important thing in the world was to tell everybody that Jesus was alive.

But they weren’t ready to do so on the very first day. I imagine there was still as much fear as joy during that time, as Jesus came to be among them, blessed them, ate with them, but just as often mysteriously disappeared again. It wasn’t like before, with all of them trooping around the Galilean countryside, following the call of their teacher and healer. He still bore the wounds of crucifixion—nothing in the past had been undone. He had not come back so much as gone forward, and somehow he was beckoning the disciples forward with him.

It may be that by the fortieth day, they were finally starting to get used to the new situation. They would think he was gone, and then he would call to them from the seashore, urging them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, and then sharing breakfast with them on the beach. They would think he was gone, and then they’d realize he’d been walking beside them for seven miles and they just hadn’t recognized him. He was different. His very body was different, like a hologram that you might mistake for something else if you looked from the wrong angle. You had to shift your vision to see him. You had to want to see him. Sometimes believing is seeing.

Maybe they were finally getting used to this new Jesus, this resurrected Christ, in all his characteristic strangeness and overwhelming reassurance, when the Day of the Ascension came. It had been forty days. Jesus was raised from the dead. But he wasn’t finished yet. Jesus had more to do, and this meant that he would leave them yet again. He would have to return to God’s very being, from which he had come.

“Is this the time?” his friends asked him. “After all your earthly ministry, and after your brutal murder, and after that horrible Friday and Saturday, and after your returning to be with us again, is it finally time for you to reclaim our country for us and be our king?”

As usual, even after forty more days and after everything that had happened, the disciples were still asking the wrong questions. They had forgotten that it wasn’t the same anymore. Not only was it not the same as before Jesus’ death … it wasn’t the same as it had been in previous generations. There was to be no return from this exile, no exodus across a river, no reentering the Garden of Eden. There was to be no retaking of the land from the Romans. Jesus was not going to suddenly transform from a man of peace into a conquering warrior. Still, they clung desperately to the way things “should” happen.

But the risen Christ was patient with them—maybe even more patient than he had been before his death. “You don’t need to know,” he said. “You just need to follow these instructions. I must return to God, and you must return to the city and wait until the Holy Spirit comes upon you.” And then he was gone.

It took two angels to pry them from that spot. “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” they asked. “Are you looking for shapes in the clouds—the shape of things to come, perhaps? If you must know something of the future, we can tell you that he’ll be back. He’ll return again the same way you saw him go.”

Well, I don’t know what that means. Do you? It’s very mysterious. But that’s OK. Jesus had just told them that it wasn’t their job to understand. That’s so hard for us! In our day and age, we feel we have a right to understand. We’re entitled to an explanation, and if we don’t get one, we jump to the conclusion that it’s a lie, or that it’s historically outdated, or that we can just ignore it. Or worse, we feel compelled to develop our own story that says exactly what we think it means, and then urge people to subscribe to it!

I hope we won’t insist on doing either of these things with the Ascension—neither explain it away, nor throw it away. Some things can be left as mysteries. That doesn’t mean we stop thinking, pondering, imagining about them, either. We need to let the imagery seep into our hearts. The question is not, “Is this story true?”, but, “What is this story for?”

Jesus died, descended to the dead, rose again, and then ascended into heaven. This is how we talk about it in the Nicene Creed. I hear these theological doctrines pointing to a savior who is always on the go. The Son of Man has no place to rest his head. He came to be with us, to teach and to heal. He descended to the dead to be with those who feared they were lost. He burst the gates of hell and bore it up on his back, releasing all those who were trapped within. He appeared to the people who had known him best and loved him most. He spent forty days with them. Why?

A lot can happen in forty days. In forty days, you could benefit from a diet, quit smoking, quit biting your nails, or take a forty-day pilgrimage to a place that’s important to you. If you didn’t have a day job, you could watch all nine seasons of Seinfeld.

Forty days is a short time, but it’s a long time. It was enough time. During that forty days, Jesus helped his disciples move from fear to faith. He appeared to them enough, and reassured them enough, that they were ready to move from that hill outside Bethany—with a little prying from two angels—and return to the city to wait.

In the meantime, Jesus moved from his temporary spatial location on earth to complete the work of resurrection—to ascend—to go from being Somewhere to being Everywhere. Resurrection does not mean a return to the way things were, but a going forward into a future that’s better than we could possibly imagine. And Jesus brings us along with him into that future.

Ten days from now, on the fiftieth day, we will celebrate Pentecost. That’s when the resurrection went public, when the disciples harvested the first fruits of the reassurance and strength Jesus had given them for forty days. Indeed they did return to the city, and they waited. And when, to their strength and reassurance, God added to them the power of the Holy Spirit, they were ready. They were ready to go out to the ends of the earth and set the world on fire with the Good News that Christ is alive, that the exile is over and we can go on up to the new Jerusalem, that our exodus is accomplished across a new, eternal river, that a new Eden awaits us, and that the entire universe has been delivered from death and saved forever. Amen.

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