Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

Wrestling with God: The Journey of Faith and Transformation - The Rev. Dr. Herschel Wade

There was a time when my own body became a battlefield. My skin burned, ached, and itched and rebelled without explanation. At first, it seemed like something that would pass a temporary trial, but it did not pass. And soon my skin and I went to war. My doctors grew tired. Their compassion began to fade. I became an insolvable riddle.
 
I was untreatable, then mysterious, and then they stopped acknowledging it at all, and I shrank from the world. I stopped talking. I stopped existing for a while. I learned the geography of shadows. I learned to hide my skin. Became both a shield and torment. A constant reminder of what I could not fix. I was raw with pain, ashamed and utterly alone.
 
But Jesus has a way of reminding us that we are never forgotten at first. The presence is only a flicker. Something I felt when I prayed or I sang gospel songs or read scripture in the middle of the night, my prayers were not elegant. I didn't have the strength. I only had groans in half form sentences, but still I kept at it.

Voices from the Margins - The Rev. Dr. Herschel Wade

 So we hear in urgent truth, the very act of speaking, of raising one's voice becomes an act of survival, an act of life. And as such, the voices of the marginalized carry a life-giving power. Even when the world tries to silence them. Their words can be keys to hope, healing, and liberation. But who is listening?
The life giving potential behind the voice of the powerless is something I believe as rarely considered. In fact, history tells us that societies often go to extraordinary lengths not to hear the words of the marginalized. Their voices are valued even less than their human bodies and what they say and think even less.
But I tend to believe that God created each of us with unique voices for the good of creation, the world, and for the good of each other. So much so that our lives, our very lives depend on it. Hearing every single voice, even if it makes us uncomfortable, even if they make us feel ashamed of our privilege, even if they speak of injustice, even if they make us change.
Even if they make our lives fuller and even if they speak for God, today's reading features the voice, the words of a marginalized servant. She is the very picture of vulnerability and she also has something to say in this reading. I believe that God is speaking to us and has something to say 

Cultivating Hope Amidst Despair - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

God's intent to bring us all into a unified connection and harmony, to a reconciled reality in which peace and justice prevail, and in which every single human being is honored as being made in the image of God, that vision has not been impaired, has not been delayed, but in fact belongs to us. That hope is real.
 
Now has anyone here ever heard of the term toxic positivity? Toxic positivity? Toxic positivity is the idea of insisting on having a positive attitude about everything so much that it's actually kind of toxic, that it's actually kind of gross.
 
The person who's like, you know, we gotta find the silver lining in this, and you're like, can you just let me be miserable for a second? There are times when we are sad, there are times when we grieve. And toxic positivity is that thing that sort of tries to shame us out of experiencing the fullness of our feelings by insisting that we only have a sunny disposition, that we pull our socks up and get moving and not worry about the sorrow and the sadness within.

Grieve for the Indifferent - The Rev. Brooklin Taylor

In this passage, it does not seem to me that Amos is railing here against food or music or comfort. But here Amos is grieving a people who have grown indifferent, who have numbed themselves to the suffering around them. Luxury becomes dangerous when it shields us from sorrow.
 
Comfort becomes violent when it is gained at the expense of others' misery, when it severs us from responsibility and when it dead ends the pulse of compassion within us. Here in our text today, Amos Mourns a people who have grown indifferent. He mourns a people who have forgotten the holy work. Of grief for when your life is padded enough to protect you from sorrow.
 
You refuse to share in the heartbeat of God. And when you refuse to grieve, when you refuse that heartbeat, you refuse to become human. And so Amos cries out not to scold. But like someone who is singing a funeral dirge or reading an obituary in the middle of a party, alas, Amos cries. Your comfort will not last.

Make Us Human - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

They would worship God and make sacrifices, but they would also have a party and not work. And of course, we know that the Sabbath was a time that was instituted by God. This was one of the great commandments. It made it to the top 10 friends. As God was forming the people of Israel in the wilderness after they had left captivity in Egypt, one of the commandments was, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.
 
Now, I was taught growing up that that meant that you go to church on Sunday, so congratulations, you all have fulfilled the commandment. But that's not actually what God talks about at all when he institutes the command to remember the Sabbath, to keep it holy. When God institutes the commandment about the Sabbath, he tells these people for one whole day not to do anything.
 
No work. Don't be useful for a whole day. Be useless. It's a commandment from God. Who are you to resist this? Right? And I'm not even kidding, because when you think about it, right, the people of Israel have been in captivity for over 400 years. They've been slaves in Egypt. Their whole identity for the last 400 plus years has been wrapped up in their productivity in what they accomplish for the empire...

Proclaiming God's Love: A Vision for Our Mission - Tym House

Students from our afterschool program here at Redeemer consistently ask things like, why are you doing this? Why do you believe in God? Or, how could you even love crazy kids like us? Or things like this past Thursday in youth group, we were reading words from the Gospel, reminding us of things like love your enemies.
 
Do good to those who hate you. Give to anyone who asks of you, do to others as you would have them do to you. Be merciful as your father is merciful. Now remember on that very same day this past Thursday, the death of Charlie Kirk and yet another school shooting weighed heavy in the news, the reality of violence and division in our country.
 
I was sitting in the room with these students and their questions were raw and unfiltered. Asking things like, how do we even love in the middle of so much hate? Those are moments I love most, even though my heart grieves at the circumstances that shape them. Because those questions are unashamed and unafraid.

A Polar Reversal - The Rev. Brooklin Taylor

Today's Gospel is in the middle of that whole chapter of disruption, where Jesus critiques the seating chart and the guest list. Now imagine the scene: appetizers are being passed around the room, and with his cocktail in hand, Jesus watches as people try to find their seats for dinner.
 
Oh, the choreography of it all. The subtle dance of elbows and eyes as guests angle for the best seats in the house. You know how it works. The closer you sit to the host, the more important you appear, the better the seat, the better your reputation. Everyone knows the rules and everyone knows where they fit.
 
And then our favorite dinner guest pipes up. "Don't do that, he says, don't scramble for the seat that makes you look good. Don't assume that you belong in the place of honor. Instead, leave room. Make space." You can almost feel the air go still in the room. Forks frozen in mid air, someone coughing into a napkin and the host wishing that he had invited really anyone else.

Making Exceptions - The Rt. Rev. Wendell N. Gibbs, Jr.

 Jesus didn't just heal a body that day. He exposed a system that needed healing too. My friends, we live in a world full of systems that are bent out of shape. Religious systems can exclude. Cultural systems ignore suffering. Political systems can demand and expect compliance while disregarding the beauty and importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Hearts would rather be right than be loving, and yet Jesus is still calling people forward. He's still setting people free. And he's still asking us, do you cling to rules or do you open your hands to mercy? Do you see people or do you see problems? Do you look at the unhoused and think addict, or do you see a fellow human in need?
Do you look at a coworker and think problem?
Do you look at someone who hurt you and think enemy? Mercy looks deeper. Mercy sees a child of God in need of freedom and restoration. 

Fiery Peace - The Rev. Dr. Herschel Wade

It is not the peace of silence and not the peace of compromise. Instead, it is a fiery peace, a peace that upends false order, a peace that demands you align your life fully with Jesus. And that will bring division. That will bring division because the world prefers its false peace to God's true one. It is here now that we must slow down and listen because this is where Jesus confronts us directly.
 
We love peace. We long for it. And there's nothing wrong with longing for peace so long as we are longing for the right kind of peace. And friends, there are two types of peace, and Jesus came to draw a line between them. There is false peace. The peace that Dr. King Dec condemned as negative. Peace, the absence of tension.
 
It is the peace demanded by oppressors who say, don't stir up trouble. It is the peace demanded by politicians who condemn protests, but not the death dealing and justices that provoke them. It is the peace that we sometimes practice when we say, let's just keep the peace, rather than face hard truths.

Practice - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

 You know the old joke, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice. Practice. How do you get to Carnegie Hall practice? It's a good joke. It's a good joke, right? It's based on the idea of one person coming, asking for practical directions, and the other person is giving them some aspirational idea, and that's sort of the foundation of the misunderstanding.
It's that same misunderstanding between one person trying to be practical and another person trying to be aspirational. It's that same misunderstanding that so often is at the heart of our disconnect from God and our work that Jesus gives us to do. We. Keep trying to make our lives about some aspiration towards heaven, about being a specific, perfect kind of people.
And we turn the Christian life into some ineffable mystery, some intangible thing that we will never be able to do because we seek some sort of perfection, some elusive thing. 'Cause I could practice all day and never get to Carnegie Hall. I just want directions right? But the reality is this is exactly what Jesus is trying to work on.