Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

A Story About People - Guest Speaker

And I'm standing here today because of this place. It's very significant, but ultimately because of you, the people. The story today of the naming is a very important story about names and Jesus's name, and there's so much to unpack and what his name means. There's so much to unpack about Jesus' life and how this marks the beginning of a new kingdom.
In a new age, in a new era. There's so much to unpack about this story of the Holy Name, about Jesus's circumcision. We can tie it, Jesus being circumcised, God's salvation is in the here and the now, in the physical, in the flesh, in our every day. We can do all that. But the story of the name is about people being faithful to God and to each other.
I think that's the story of Church of the Redeemer. I know it's been the story. I know it will continue to be the story of Redeemer, and I thank you personally for being faithful to that story.

The Birth of Salvation - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

We have this idea of how God should save us. We as a people,
we pray for salvation, and on tonight we celebrate the birth of Jesus, which we
say is the salvation of the world. The people who are begging for salvation in
Jesus' story, they're not talking about wanting to go to the right place when
they die.
They are hoping that the place where they live in the here
and now will be saved. They're not praying for something special and magical to
happen to their souls later. They are praying for peace now, for justice, now, for
reconciliation and healing for people to get past the ways that we harm each
other, now.
So, if God's going to save us in that way, God should send
someone in who's going to really clean house and take care of business. And I
mean now. And God sends a baby, the audacity of God.

Love Letters - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

...maybe one of the most frustrating things for me about God, and I mean genuinely something I really get frustrated with God about is that God's existence and presence is always deniable if you want it to be. It is a matter of faith. God shows up in Jesus Christ and you can look at Jesus and go, nah, I don't buy it.
You can have a moment of deep and utter spiritual clarity and understand that you belong to God completely, and then the next day you can go, ah, I was just in a good mood, I don't know what that was about. We are completely capable of denying God's presence as it changes our lives because we want everything to be perfect when love shows up, it needs to feel exactly the way I expected it to feel and look exactly the way I want it to look. That's how I'll know when love shows up.
Maybe this is why we have such a hard time with Christmas. I'm one of those people who loves Christmas season. I've got my Christmas playlist all queued up and ready to go, and day after Thanksgiving I put it on and I drive myself nuts all until Epiphany. Don't forget, Christmas season goes for 12 days, right?
So I just go and go and go and get the tree up and do everything. And yet, each year. I'm like, that was it. Was that it? Did it happen? Was it Christmas? Was I joyful enough? Did I feel it? Did I feel it? Did it happen? I better get teary-eyed during O Come All Ye faithful, or it's not really Christmas.
Did I feel the love from the right people? Did I love the right people? Call the right people, text the right people. Was the steak cooked the right way? Was it all perfect?

A Reexamined Past - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Paul believes that the Messiah did not just show up to bring
justice to Israel, but in fact to the whole world, to every single person and
all the inhabitants and all of the creation. God has brought justice through
Jesus.

This creates tension, not because Paul's Jewish siblings are
bad, but because they're human and humans, we don't like change. We don't like
when people mess with us. And we
definitely don't like when people tell us to reexamine our past and have a
different relationship with our past than we've had before.

We get really protective of our history. We get really protective
of how we became what we are. I remember when my wife and I had our first child
and we were
talking about how to actually raise this human in real life, not abstractly. Now here it is, what are you going to do? And I was the
person who was saying, well, my parents did it this way and I turned out all
right... I found myself being very protective of the things that I
had been raised with, and the ways that I understood, because I felt nervous. If
I was going to treat my child differently, what did that mean about my past?
Was there something wrong with it? Was there something wrong with my parents
and something wrong with me? You get nervous.

We're seeing this played out in our country as we reexamine
our history. There are people who think, don't look at our history like that, that
makes me uncomfortable when you look at the breadth and the wholeness of the
things that are true about us, let's just focus on the parts that make me feel
good about myself.

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Wake Up to the Opportunity of Love - The Rev. Joyce Keeshin

Maybe some of you have relationships that are troubling if we're ever going to encounter them. It can be over the holidays. Maybe Some of us have situations in that we're just stuck. We just don't know where to go. And I think in those situations we can become something akin to sleepwalking. We just go through it. We just show up, but we're not awake. Sometimes we need to recognize our own sleepfulness to wake up to the opportunity to love...
I found myself reflecting on how the term woke is frequently heard in political and cultural discourse. Today I found myself looking it up, in the dictionary. Webster had a full page of definitions online because it is used in different ways. Sometimes it's a positive descriptor of someone aware of and seeking to respond to injustice in our culture. Sometimes it's used as a challenging descriptor of someone who expresses woke views but does not follow through with them with action.
Sometimes woke is used with harsh judgment against individuals and systems who challenge old systems and values. Yet being awake is inherent in our baptismal vows, it is inherent. Shortly, we will be asked, will you see and serve Christ in all persons loving your neighbor as yourself? Will you strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being and we will respond, I will with God's help.
We couldn't do it otherwise, but we can with God's help

Forgive and Remember - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Are we capable of forgetting the things that have harmed us? Honestly, if we're being real? No. So then we actually just go, well, forgiveness is this thing I'd like to be able to do, but it's not going to happen. And then Jesus, instead of being a person, we're meant to follow down the way of love. Jesus just becomes some religious superhero that can do things we couldn't possibly imagine, like forgive people. Except that we are meant to forgive people. Even when forgetting is not part of the picture, we are meant to forgive. What then is forgiveness if it's not about forgetting?
The reason I'm harping on this for us is it damages our relationship with God if we think that God needs to forget everything we've done in order to forgive us. Think about that for a moment. God can only love me if God forgets all of the things I've done wrong. Or God loves me so much that God just forgets all of the ways I've harmed God and my neighbor and my world.
If we think like that, then that's how we will live in our relationship to forgiveness with others. I don't know how to forgive them because I can't forget it completely. They will never be able to love me fully unless they can forget the terrible, stupid things I've done to them.
What an impossible place we've placed ourselves.

Saints Right Now - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

That's the most interesting thing to so many people about
children, the promise of what will be. I hear people who think they're well
intentioned say, oh, the children are the future of the church. No, they're the
present of the church. They're not the future. They're here right now. They're
not our future. They're the present. But we have this tendency to look at
everything as what could be, or might be, or will be, when right here and now these
people are blessing us. The people that we love who have died that we now call
Saints. Did they walk around on Earth acting like what we would consider Saints
acting like then?

Be honest, we love them in their death. When they were alive,
were they perfect? That's not how sainthood works. It's not about perfection.
It's about responding to the love that God has placed within you and sharing
that love with the world around you, however imperfectly you can. However
imperfect you are, we recognize our sainthood.

Every single one of us. We proclaim it. Not as saying we're
all good, but as saying, we are all, every single one of us loved. Snd we are
set apart in this world to share and spread that love to help it grow, to
participate with God in the reconciliation of this world.

What would it look like if we saw these ones around us as
not as what they will be, but what as they are right now, how they bless us
currently?

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Through the Eyes of Jesus’ Love - The Rev. Joyce Keeshin

Our narrow views limit us, imprison us. When we allow ourselves
open to God's view, we can see each other's humanity. We can respond in love
and open to the possibility of God's healing grace, for all. Undoubtedly, many
of us have strong feelings about what's going on in our world today.
At this time nearing elections, political rhetoric is
fierce. Words that are calling out hatred, that are calling for violence, that
are disrespecting and wanting to take away the freedoms of people are said loudly.
And this is not to condone any of those words. It's not to condone them. They
are not respectful of human dignities, individual rights.
Those expressions of hatred and cause to violence clearly
run counter to Jesus's teaching to a baptismal covenant. But it is to say that
the views we hold may also be very limited views of fellow human beings.
Labeling individuals and groups, treating them as outcasts, are also directly
counter to Jesus's teaching....
These very folks who we want to label sinners may very much
be the lost Jesus seeks to save.

Contempt - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Jesus told this parable to some who trusted in
themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt. I'd
always thought of this story as how we approach. Do we stand before God proud
of ourselves? Or do we stand before God humbly asking for mercy? And that is
part of the story, but I'm reminded today when I hear it that Jesus felt the
need to tell this story because he saw so many of his siblings, so many people for
whom he cared so deeply, holding others in contempt. And I realize how capable
I am of somehow thinking that my relationship with God is one thing and my
relationship with everybody else is another thing entirely. That I can have a fantastic relationship with God regardless
of what my relationship with you is like.
What Jesus reminds us of over and over
again, but especially today is that the way we love one another is the way we
love God. The way we treat one another is the way we treat God. It's become
another cliche in our time to talk about what a divisive time we live in. And
like many cliches, it's true.
I have noticed in myself, in my own deep conviction of what
I believe to be true and right in this world, that as I am feeling this strong
sense of conviction about what justice looks like, about what is right, about
how to treat one another, what rises up alongside that clear understanding of
what is right, is a bunch of contempt. A bunch of hatred, not just anger, anger
is something else, but contempt. How could other people be like this? Don't
they know better? Jesus is speaking directly to me today and reminding me that
the way that I love others is how I love God.

Will We Pray - The Rev. Melanie W. J. Slane

Food, as it turns out, is one of those things that often
elicits prayer between strangers and friends. And aside from praying some short prescriptive
verses over meals at dinner parties, I can't think of many times when my friend
and I prayed together and realized that we were praying.
But several years into our friendship when they came to stay
for the weekend... Since
they're Lutheran and we're Episcopalian, we picked something we thought the
kids might all know, something Jesus taught us. Our mother who art in heaven,
hallow would be thy name. All the kids joined in, thy kingdom come. That will be
done on Earth as it is in heaven. Here comes the food part. Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our trespasses, sins, debts, and all that bad stuff as we forgive
those who trespass against us. They were really on a roll by this point and
lead us not into temptation but deliver us from emails.
For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever
and ever, amen. Marjorie and I looked at each other and giggled a bit and
silently decided not to correct them. Emails after all had recently become the
bane of my existence, and with their words, the mundane had become sacred. The
reality of life had become a prayer.
As I look back over the many years of our friendship, I
realize we've actually been praying together all along for companionship, for
sleep between feedings. For kindness, for non-judgment, for guidance for
strength, and for liberation, for breaking the mold on what it means to be a
mom.
Looking to Jesus' parable today, I'm struck by the reality
that if we are to pray always as Jesus asks, then we need to allow everything
to become a prayer.