Sermons from the Episcopal Church of the Redeemer

A Spectrum between Selfless and Selfish - The Rev. Melanie W. J. Slane

While coming down the hill into Hyde Park on Ridge, I noticed a car stopped in the middle of the intersection, and a man standing at the back of his car. Without thinking it through, I pulled off to the side, saying to my sister, hold on, a guy is stuck in the intersection. I'll call you right back. And as I jumped out of my car to see what was going on, I heard her yell through the speakerphone of my car, It's not safe! Don't be a martyr, Melanie! The intersection was filled with honking cars.
One guy flew around us full speed and then only one other man, a guy driving a semi-truck, got out to help me push this other guy's vehicle to the curb so that everyone else could get back to what they were doing before someone's bad luck completely inconvenienced them.
When was it lord that we saw you in need and did not come to your aid? And Jesus answered, just as you did not do it for one of your fellow humans in small things, you did not do it for me. The voice of our shepherd showing up, even in small things.
I got back in the car, and as promised, I called my sister. What happened? I'm glad you're alive. I laughed too. A guy just needed a little push. It wasn't until then that I realized how silly I might have looked pushing a car in my collar, or how annoyed I was that only one other guy got up to help us.

Recognizing Resurrection - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Our hope rests in God. When God shows up and does the
work of transformation, and resurrection in our lives, our part is to recognize
God. And if you're not sure how to recognize God, look for love. And I mean, every time. Look for the love in
your life. And when you look there, you see God and you recognize that God has
been at work in resurrection all around you all the time.

This is when you begin to believe. When you cut someone off in traffic, because
you're thinking about something, you didn't mean to do it, you're a very good
person, we all know, but you cut someone off, and then you realize you do it,
and then that person drives by you, and instead of giving you the finger, waves
at you, and is like, I get it, it's okay. Recognize God's presence, please. That's
God.

When you're at the airport, and you see two people that
you have no idea who they are, and they clearly haven't seen each other in a
while and they grab each other and embrace when they see each other, recognize
God's presence.
When you're coming off the highway, and you see that man
who's standing on the side asking for money, you know, that guy, maybe you give
him a dollar and maybe you don't, but when you see him, you make eye contact
with him and you say, hello. And when he looks at you and you look at him and
you see each other's eyes, friends, that's God at work.

Trust God - The Rev. Dr. Herschel Wade

How many of you have been through hell with God by your
side, through the trials of your life, possibly testing you? How about when you get to the other side and
God is still there? You know in your
heart that you've made it through the hard times and hardships because of that
presence that you can always count on.

The presence that always seems to provide, you know that
very well. How many of you know in your
hearts, in your bones, in your body that without God you couldn't, you wouldn't
survive? For us, our belief and trust in
God does not result from merely pondering or meditating on God, but on having a
relationship with God.

It's important to know that if your faith and
relationship doesn't look like Abraham's, that's okay. But what is important is that you pursue a
relationship. And our journeys with God
are going to be different. We're going
to experience God differently. That
doesn't mean your faith is not as strong as someone else's faith.

It just means that they're different. And as long as we're working on our faith and
relationship with God, I don't believe that God is going to look at a gauge and
say whether or not you have enough faith that you pray enough. God knows each and every one of us, and meets
us where we're at.
We experience God, we sense God, and we need God. And we know that we can trust God with our
dreams, with our successes, and our failures.
During our lives at every stage, God has proven to be faithful and
steadfast. Even when we know we haven't always been. We know that we can count on God without full
understanding or complete knowledge of what God is doing.

God’s strategy is forgiveness and healing - The Rev. Joanna Leiserson

People were getting healed. There were rumors of a savior. We would overthrow our oppressors and be our true selves again under our true ruler. There were some disagreements among us at first, and some confusion, and some people got pretty belligerent, and they started arguing against us. And then, at the end, it's as if they got carried away with their inflammatory extremist ideas, and here we are.
But it wasn't that sudden. There were signs. We just didn't pick up on the signs, because the signs were warning about us, not about them. So we kept going, and then we crossed the line, and we couldn't go back. We always assumed we were the good guys. We are the good guys. So then how did I end up holding these nails and this hammer in my hand?
How did we get to be the executioners instead of the saviors?
Like I said, it seems so sudden, but it wasn't really. There was a road we went down, an imperceptible slide down the road towards that cross. And at some point, we made a turn down the conventional path that tells us to conform to the empire's moral code.

Hospitality without Condescension - The Rev. Melanie W. J. Slane

Hospitality is also an integral part of our story
tonight. And it's the one that surprised
me. I consider myself a pretty great
host. I love when people come to my home
for dinner. I'm Greek, so there's always enough food to feed a small army. And I've crafted my own signature
cocktail. And I've brought brightly
colored linens home from my travels so I can tell the story of the amazing
people I've met along the way.

Hospitality, though, has another side, the surprise
side. It turns out that I'm terrible at
being a guest. I actually had a friend
once grab me by the wrist and bring me back to the dining room so I would stop
washing her dishes.

I rarely allow myself to be the recipient of the service of others
because that level of vulnerability
might remind me that I might actually need someone to take care of me
from time to time.
Jesus shows us this night that if we are going to share hospitality
without condescension, then we first
have to allow ourselves to be the guest
in someone else's home. Jesus begins this
act of service, and only by receiving it
can we know how to share it with others.

The Riddle of Jesus and Judas - The Rev. Gary Lubin

Having his last supper with the disciples a troubled
Jesus announces that one of them is his betrayer. And do you know, if you read that carefully,
every one of them is bewildered.

They have no clue. And their uncertainty suggests that it
could be any one of them. A notable
example is Peter, who refutes that he would ever deny Jesus, but then does so
three times, cock a doodle doo. And speaking of Peter, he's the one that
beckons John, the beloved disciple, reclining right next to Jesus to ask for
the name of the traitor.

Well, and Jesus answers, kind of vaguely, It is the one
to whom I give this piece of bread, he says.
Well, Judas may have gotten the first piece of bread, but he didn't get
the last piece of bread. They all share
the very same communal bread and wine.
And then we will do that very shortly together. And I take great comfort in doing that with
you because I confess that I too have betrayed Jesus selling him out to
suffering and death in this time and place by failing to love as I should.

Here's the question before us in this day and age, isn't
Jesus among us even now as the other?
The last, the lost, the least, the lonely, and the left out. Jesus beckons us to love God and to love one
another. And you know, fortunately we all have a community to do that, but many
others do not. Now paradoxically, I
think we can look to Judas for answers.

Intimacy, vulnerability, and steadfast love are interwoven - The Rev. Joyce Keeshin

Jesus is describing his own death, a death he understands as necessary for our salvation. So, there's intimacy, vulnerability, and there's deep commitment born of love. We see all three of these in this Gospel reading.

In our own lives are there moments we want to shy away. We want to turn away. We want to turn inward and avoid intimacy, avoid vulnerability, avoid any soul-deep commitment to love. I certainly know I've been in those places of avoidance. It's part of our human condition. And part of our conditioning.

Intimacy may be interpreted as dependence, as vulnerability, or as weakness, as commitment to love may raise up the strongest sense of vulnerability. And yet we know love needs intimacy, of being willing to be present and close to another. Love requires vulnerability. Being willing to be seen, to be transparent in our moments of fear or struggle.

Love needs steadfastness to endure the challenges and complexities of individuals, families, of communities. Intimacy, vulnerability, and steadfast love are interwoven.

More Intimacy than One can Handle - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

Intimacy is connection. Knowing one another. Care and
vulnerability. And what Mary shows to
this man who is not only her teacher, but her friend, and who we were reminded
in this story is the one who literally raised her brother up from the dead.

She drops to her knees and she pours perfume all over his
feet and she takes her hair and wipes it off.

And you can imagine how uncomfortable everybody else was
in the room. Judas, of course, is the one to say something because of course
it's Judas. And John really makes sure to let us know what a dirtbag Judas is
as if we didn't already remember, right? We know Judas, hot mess, we get it.
But in this moment, we totally, there's something about
Judas is like, oh, she, she shouldn't be doing that.

You know, that money could have gone to the poor. Right? Which is no different than the kid being
like, change the channel, they're kissing. It's the same thing. It's a reaction
to intimacy. He has to change the
subject because the intimacy on display is more than he can handle.

Here is the Messiah - The Rev. Joyce Keeshin

We know that the pain and the suffering is still to come.

Thinking about the disciples more, are, are they walking along Jesus, flanking him? Might that be something we would have done? Or are some of them acting almost as an advance team, drawing the crowds, letting them know about Jesus, letting them know that here is the person they have been waiting for. Here is the Messiah.

Way back when I was in my 20s I was very involved in political campaigns and I can remember being part of an advanced team and our whole job was to arrive early and to get people excited about the candidate who was to come, to get them excited about meeting them and to give a preview of their message. It was a very exciting time. I wonder what it would be like to be an advanced team for Jesus, to be able to tell people who Jesus was, why it was important that they meet him, know him.

And we might ask, what are the disciples telling people to draw them to Jesus? In Matthew's gospel, they talk of how the city was stirred, the whole city was stirred by Jesus's arrival. And people were asking, who is this? And the crowds were responding, this is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth of Galilee.

But what are the disciples telling people? How are they getting the people to turn out? How are they getting this incredible celebration? What would we tell people if we were the disciples? What do we tell people when we seek to introduce them to Jesus? When we want them to meet the Jesus we know?

Go where Jesus is - Guest Speaker

And often this change that we really want is to
desperately go back to when we remember what we remember as simpler or better
or easier times. We want our churches to be like they were. And of course, they
were wonderful. We want them and our
world to slow down and stop changing.
But unfortunately, staying static or spending all of our energy and
words pining for what was or what could be, really isn't the way of Jesus.

What is it Jesus says after he tells us to lose our
life? He says, if any of you wants to
serve me, then follow me, then you'll be
where I am ready to serve at a moment's
notice. Follow me, be where I am. Be
ready to go where I am going. It's a
challenge for us personally, but also collectively. We have to look for where Jesus is going and
ask if we are willing to go there too.

In January, 2020, just two months before COVID, before we knew what was coming our way, I was sitting in a room a lot like this
with Bishop Michael Curry, and he was talking to young adults in Washington,
DC, and he said something that I had never heard him say before. He said, what
people forget is that the institution of the church exists in order to serve
the movement of Jesus, not the other way around.

The institution exists to serve the movement of Jesus.
The movement of Jesus does not exist to serve the institution. I think that's a lot of what Jesus is talking
about today, especially here in the year 2024.
And I think we're being asked collectively if we are willing to lose the
church we want in order to follow Jesus to go where he is reckless in our love.
A love that has an internal impact. Are we willing to lose the church we want
in order to be the church he's calling us to be? If we were to go where Jesus is, then we have
to ask, so where is Jesus, right?
Guest Preacher: Jerusalem Greer