Sometimes, we’d rather be dirty than clean.

I don’t know if you’ve known any toddlers in the recent past, but my friend Ellen’s daughter, Anna, can’t stand being put in a bathtub. And can’t stand it when Ellen needs to wipe her mouth during a meal – she grimaces (like this) and snaps her face away. Don’t clean me!

Then there’s laundry. And cleaning the house. I have a feeling every single one of you could tell me at least one household chore, and probably more than one, that you dread. I know this is true for kids, too – whether it’s cleaning your rooms or doing the things around the house that your parents ask.

But, of course, I bet you probably feel much better about your house or your body when it’s clean… although I can’t pretend to speak for toddlers, who often seem most happy when they’re covered in mud or spaghetti sauce.

What else is dirty?  Being sick is kind of like being dirty – you feel gross. And if you have to go into the hospital, there’s sort of a sense of dirtiness in a hospital – even though it’s more vigorously cleaned and sterilized than our homes are.

Someone who’s been through a tragedy in life can seem a little dirty to others. The sadness and grief are so strong that it can be hard to approach that person, even though it’s probably the time that they need connection the most.

Someone who’s committed a crime can seem like a dirty person. Or someone who has a sexual past that makes us uncomfortable. Or someone whose body looks broken to us in some way. Or someone who can’t speak very well. We may keep our distance, even if we don’t mean to. In the Bible, the book of Leviticus has a strict code of rules and rituals about all these ways of being “dirty” or “unclean”. Unclean people were actually kept at a distance from everyone else.

We can feel uncomfortable with people who seem dirty to us, and we can sometimes hesitate to want to be made clean, ourselves. It takes some work and discomfort to get clean. Remember Anna not liking her face being wiped? And what a pain it is to clean the house? Sometimes it’s more comfortable to just stay dirty. To just stay stuck in a sin we tend to do over and over. To not see the doctor about that pain you’ve been feeling. Or to keep doing that thing you do, whatever is, that you know keeps you stuck. Something about it feels good, or you wouldn’t keep doing it.

Does anyone else love the story of Naaman? It’s a great story. Naaman has leprosy – a terrible, gross, skin disease. There’s a cure for leprosy now, but for centuries (and even still in some countries) lepers were kicked out of society because it was contagious and because no one wanted to be around such ugly, awful looking people.

Naaman is also a military general. He’s probably used to being respected and listened to. So I bet it was hard for him to admit that someone else could help him.  Then, when he’s traveled all the way to Israel to meet Elisha, and after so many people have helped him get there, he actually has a hard time going through with it — with really choosing to be healed. He says he was hoping for something a little more spectacular that just jumping in the river.

I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot!

But then, he says, on the other hand, why travel all this way just to wash in a river? Couldn’t he have just washed in a river at home, instead of the rivers of this backwater backward country of Israel?

What stands in the way of you choosing healing in your own life?  Do you wish for something spectacular? Do you hold onto all your broken parts and broken feelings, because they’re so familiar? Maybe you’re watching someone else in your life who’s having trouble choosing their own healing. Who’s more comfortable with feeling “dirty” than with the hope and love of God they’d have to embrace if they chose to be clean.

There can be a note of pride in choosing to stay dirty and broken. It’s a way you can always win people’s sympathy, a way you can always have something to complain about. A friend of mine, a Methodist pastor in a rural Midwestern town, after doing a lot of work in therapy, after losing the weight she always wanted to lose, told me she was actually terrified to be feeling so much better and stronger because she wasn’t sure anyone would want to be friends with her anymore if she didn’t need their help the way she used to, if she seemed strong instead of weak. And she realized that this was completely backwards, but there it was. She was like Naaman, right at the edge of the Jordan, afraid to go all the way into the water.

We need our friends and family, in times like these, to help us sometimes. And sometimes we need to be the encouragers – hey, I’ll write a letter for you, says the king to Naaman. The servant girl says, hey, I know this guy. Naaman’s servants say, “If Elisha told you to do something hard, you would’ve done it. So, why don’t you just get in the water and wash?”

And yet, we can’t make someone else choose to be healed. We can point the way, we can support them, we can pray for them, but in the end, they have to choose to get in the water themselves. And for all that our friends might help us, in the end we’re the ones who have to decide to get in the water, too – we can’t wait for someone else to push us, or convince us, or make a little path with Tiki torches on the beach for us to follow.

Now, on the other hand, the leper who comes to Jesus in the gospel is ready! He walks up to Jesus and says, “You can make me clean.” He doesn’t ask — maybe he didn’t dare to. But he recognized Jesus, he says – “I know who you are. I’ve heard about what you’ve been doing. You can help me.” He’s ready.  And Jesus heals him. There’s no list of things to do. He doesn’t say, “Go wash in Lily Cache Creek fourteen times.” Or, “well, you haven’t been taking care of yourself, so no, I’m not going to heal you. You need to quit smoking first!” Or, “What are you going to do with yourself, once I heal you?”

He says, “I do choose.” He says, “yes,” with no questions and no conditions. We Americans don’t like that; What?? No personal responsibility? No liability clause? No justice? Just yes? (The one condition is not to tell anyone, although Jesus must’ve known that the man would ignore that.)

It’s hard to decide to get clean. Hard to offer to Jesus our broken parts, so familiar to us, for healing. And yet the bible seems to tell us it’s also the easiest thing there is. Just jump in the water. (There’s some, right in the font by the door!) Look for Jesus and recognize he has that power. That he wants to make us clean, to make us whole. That we don’t have to deserve it.

“If you choose, you can make me clean,” the leper said.

Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, “I do choose. Be made clean!”

Amen.

In the gospel reading today, we hear about Jesus hitting the road, setting off on his travels all through Galilee. Have you ever noticed that Jesus doesn’t have a home church? I mean, he was a Rabbi, of course, so he wouldn’t have had a church at all. But all his work as a Rabbi– the teaching, preaching, healing prophetic work we see and hear in the gospel—it’s always mobile. Jesus doesn’t set up camp in any one synagogue or even in the Temple. When we see him in Scripture he’s visiting people’s homes as a guest; he’s traveling from town to town. His message doesn’t emanate from a single location; and He never summons people to a single destination.

Keeping that in mind, I want to think a bit about how we do church. The early, first-century Christian churches weren’t what we think of as churches at all. They weren’t grand structures with vaulted ceilings; they weren’t suburban boxes with sound systems and fellowship halls and cafes. They were small, borrowed, temporary spaces. In fact, the first Christian churches weren’t buildings at all. They were makeshift gatherings in people’s homes. Christ-followers, like the ones Paul was writing to in the epistle today, would collect in someone’s house for a meal—a real meal, with things like meat and olives and goat cheese on a table we’d call an altar. Like the crowds that gathered to listen to Jesus in the gospel reading, the early Christians would listen to scripture and a message explaining what the Scripture meant. They’d pray. And then they’d disperse out into the world.

Our idea and practice of church is recognizable, but some important things have changed since then. Now, we talk about having a “church home,” but we don’t mean the sort of house church the first Christians experienced. Church is a permanent address, a place where we settle in. It’s usually a building that we worry about, a structure that needs lots of care and attention. There’s stuff in it that takes time and energy to manage. It’s a place we want to make bigger, a place we like to decorate, renovate, and landscape. We want our churches to be places we can live in for generations.

This sort of permanence has been the vision of the church for a long time. We didn’t make it up ourselves. We inherited it and have been carrying it for hundreds of years. For medieval society, being close to God meant being safely enclosed within a wall or a fence. The church was a refuge, an escape from the dangers of a chaotic world. Then came the great missionary impulses, when Christians traveled the globe to build churches for the people living in the outer darkness, outside of civilization. Building a church meant conquering the wild landscape, subduing it for God. That’s how we got here, to America, when the first Anglican settlers built a permanent settlement in Jamestown, VIrginia. That’s how we became the Episcopal Church.
As church-going Christians, we haven’t envisioned ourselves as travelers or guests, like Jesus or Paul, for centuries now. We the churchgoers, we the choir, we the deacons, we the lay readers and lay preachers, we the clergy and diocesan structures— we’re permanent residents, and we are waiting inside our church home, ready to receive and heal the crowds, ready to welcome them into the fold. We don’t call anyone a heathen anymore; we call them “the unchurched”. Linguistically, that means we expect to “church” them. I wonder what that means?

Did you know that all Episcopal churches (and probably other denominations, too) are required every week to count the number of people sitting in the pews? It’s an important number. It’s called an ASA (Average Sunday Attendance). That number can mean success or failure. Every church reports that number to the diocese. And the diocese reports that number to the national church. I wonder if Jesus or his disciples ever counted the crowds at each stop. Or if Paul ever asked his church plants for their numbers.

For a long time, when the whole Western world, it seemed, was Christian, we could sit safely inside our churches, and the world would come to us, to the church. But now there are no crowds gathering at the doors. In fact, for every person that joins a church today, three leave. So here we are, sitting in the pews, doing our church work, waiting. I think, sometimes, it feels as if we’ve been had. We’ve been told that the world needs the Gospel, that as Christians we have the key to life. How come no one’s interested? We’re here where we’re supposed to be, right? We’re friendly and welcoming. We have a beautiful, rich liturgy. We have Sunday School and Altar Guild and choirs and potlucks. What went wrong? How could they not want to join us? Our church home is a wonderful place. We love it here.

The Christian Church in the West, the Episcopal Church, St. Benedict’s, we are all facing some hard, uncomfortable realities. And what do we human beings do when we face tough changes? We look for ways to avoid them, ways to turn back time and keep things stable. I was reading in the paper about how the CEO of Sony just got pushed out of his position because the company couldn’t keep up with the changing business landscape. In an interview he pointed out what we all know: people resist change. He said it this way, “Love affairs with the status quo continue, even after the status quo has lost its status.”

I think it’s safe to say that the Christian church has lost its status.

So many things have lost their status—religion, civility, modesty, self-control. I’m middle-aged and I’m already tired of all the changes in the world — technology that never stops; people wearing pajamas in public; music videos; people who never get off their cell phones; the fact that no one writes thank you notes anymore or R.S.V.P.’s to an invitation; the commercialization of Christmas… Think of the list we could all put together here!

I am cranky and old. And the fact is, the world around me keeps changing until I don’t even recognize it as my world anymore. I’m old enough to know in my head that that’s the way it goes for every generation, even though in my heart it surprises me every day. And sometimes the changes are little things like manners or everyday products, and sometimes they’re big, overwhelming changes, like the death of someone we love, divorce, getting sick, losing a job, relocating. Our lives are not permanent. Our lives are not permanent. When change means losing something or someone you love, it hurts. Who wouldn’t want to avoid it? If I could wave a magic wand and put it all back—the churchgoers back into their pews, pajama pants back in bed, my mother, who passed away four years ago, back to life—I would do it. And so I am learning what every generation learns, eventually. I can not hold back the tide. The world swirling around me is always changing. Sometimes I feel sad about it. Sometimes I feel afraid. Can I survive? Can the Christian church as we know it survive? Can St. Benedict’s survive?

And here, I think, is where it matters most what I’m counting, how I’m measuring my life and my purpose. When God is calling me to a Christian life, inviting me to be part of God’s people, what are the things I can count to show that I’ve taken on that life, accepted the invitation? Can you measure a church’s life and purpose by the number of people in its pews? If not, what should we measure?

I wonder what it would be like to take that ancient, original idea of a house church and re-imagine it in today’s terms. Maybe we could think of church as a gas station, or a rest stop. What would that look like? Some things about church would stay the same. It would still be a place where we’d find people and prayer to refuel us; a place where we could turn to others for help and directions; a place where we could stretch our legs with lots of standing and kneeling; a place where we could have a meal that feeds our hungry souls. But it might be something different, too, from what we’re used to: church might become a launching pad, a place to recharge and to get us ready for striking out onto the road, toward those purposes God has given us.

Maybe , if I started thinking of church as a rest stop instead of a destination, it would mean that my Christian life is really out there—with that wide range of people Paul talks about in the epistle: the religious and the non-religious; the uptight moralists and the loose-living immoralists; the defeated; the demoralized. Maybe it would mean that when Jesus says to his disciples, “Let’s move on,” he’s talking to me, too, sending me out of familiar territory to rub shoulders with people I wouldn’t necessarily find in my usual circle, people I have to work hard to understand and relate to.
In his recent book, “Breathing Under Water,” Richard Rohr points out that in all of the gospel Jesus never once says, “worship me”; but Jesus does say, over and over again, “follow me.”
I don’t know my destination. Jesus never told me where we’re going. But when I listen to the gospel, I hear his “let’s go” loud and clear. I hear Paul saying “Keep your bearings in Christ, but enter the world and try to experience things from their point of view….Become just about every sort of servant there is… Don’t just talk about the Gospel; be in on it!” I love church. I’ve grown to love this church. But I don’t hear Jesus inviting me to move in and make my life here. Instead he’s at the door, ready to go.

I don’t know if our world is any more fragmented, any more full of lonely, hurting people than the worlds of Jesus and Paul. But I know that Christ and Paul didn’t sit at home waiting for the crowds to find them. They sought out the kind of people their friends and family rejected. They showed up wherever people were having trouble seeing God’s ruling power at work, and they made that love crystal clear. They did that through words. They did that through actions, through touch, through food. “Become just about every kind of servant there is,” says Paul, “to lead those (you) meet into a God-saved life.” Can we find a way to measure our Christ-following lives? I honestly don’t know. That’s a tough question. But the world has already taken its measure of Christianity and, more and more, the verdict is not good. What is our own assessment of ourselves? I think what we choose to count, what we measure, what we focus on, makes all the difference in the world. So I’m going to start thinking about that question. After all, if my Christian life doesn’t make a difference to a single person outside this church, what difference does it make, really, that I’m sitting in the pews? Every Sunday that I am here, I am counted. But what I want to know is this: every week, every day I am living my life outside these walls, do I count out there, too?

7:00pm, Ashes and Eucharist (Rite I, music and choir)

Appropriate for children ages 7 and up. Childcare will be provided for younger kids.

Tuesday, February 21
6:15, Children’s Liturgy of Palm Burning
5:00-7:00pm, Pancake Supper
Come eat pancakes and join in a liturgy to “bury Alleluia” and burn palms into ashes with our children.

Last week, I preached a sermon about how times are tough for churches these days.

I became a priest because, when I was in middle school, I fell in love with God and I fell in love with the potential of churches. Church felt like a place of stillness in the midst of a lot of chaos. A place of love in the midst of a lot of cruelty, something I saw a lot of in middle school!  A place of wonder and mystery, when I lived in a neighborhood that was home to a lot of cynical, sarcastic people. In a world where media, politics, and even everyday conversation are still marked by sarcasm and negativity. Church was a place where I felt respected when I was a kid.  Where I saw that others, who the world outside the church walls didn’t respect, were treated as children of God. Where everyone was welcome, but not “anything goes.”  Church was a place that seemed different from the world I saw during the week, and it helped me face some tough stuff in my life. Maybe you also have a story about how church became a meaningful place for you to encounter God.

I believe that church can be an amazing place. Four years ago, I first came to St. Benedict because I had a feeling that the people I met here believed that church could be something amazing, too: that it wasn’t just a social club, or a museum dedicated to the past, or a place to have a liturgical pageant every week.  A church really was a place to meet God, a place to be a community of the friends of God, a place that can change lives.

The first thing Jesus does in his ministry in the Gospel of Mark is walk into a church – it was technically a synagogue, there in Galilee, but for all intents and purposes, we can call it church – he walked into a church and he drove out a demon.  Now, whether you believe in demons literally or figuratively, the first act of ministry Jesus does is to set someone free from a harmful power that was possessing them.

We all walk around in life with something that puts chains around our heart – we all have something that possesses us. A central mission of the ministry of Jesus, especially in the gospel of Mark, is to free people from what traps them, and to face down the powers of evil he encounters as he walks from town to town, and then to Jerusalem and the cross. That’s heavy stuff, but that’s part of the work of the church – to be part of Jesus’ ministry of healing and transformation. To turn death upside down. To point out that love is stronger than evil. That Jesus has the power to break the things that possess us.

Church can be amazing.  Church can be a place we meet Jesus, where God can drive out what holds us back from fully experiencing God’s love, where our lives can be changed.

I’m happy to report to you, that although times are tough for churches, things at St. Benedict are… well, pretty amazing.

Worship and program life are vibrant. Sunday attendance has grown 28% in the past four years, growing from 59 to 76.

Energy and spiritual vitality are strong – the results of the church vitality survey the congregation took last spring were astounding.  Nationally remarkable, even.

Now we can always deepen our community’s grounding in God. We won’t rest on our laurels.  There are always more ways to ensure that Sunday worship and church programming really help you meet Jesus, and help you serve God and God’s people in your life outside this building. Which is much more important than what you do inside this building.

The one burden we at St. Benedict carry continues to be the mortgage (for $850,000), which we and the diocese still owe on this building.  In 2013, our mortgage comes up for refinancing, as it does every five years, and the diocese has asked us to raise some money together to pay directly down on our principal, instead of just keeping up with our monthly mortgage payments. The diocese is also working on ways to help us pay down that principal, and they’re hoping some real estate they’ve had on the market will be selling as the economy picks up. So add diocesan real estate to your daily prayers! As their real estate starts to move, they’ll also be able to help us knock some of the teeth out of that mortgage.  We share the mortgage with the diocese, and they’ve been generous in helping us making our monthly payments and offering us support as we grow as a congregation.

As a matter of fact, the bishop has called us “one of the lights of the diocese”; and the diocesan Congregations Commission consistently holds us up as a congregation able to thrive and grow at a time when most mainline churches are shrinking. We’re doing something right here. And as we pray for those diocesan properties to sell, whatever we can raise together to put a dent in that mortgage will be an investment that means this community will be able to thrive and continue as a spiritual community into the future.

Because this is an important church in this community. We offer something not many churches in our area do: liturgical, catholic worship, a diverse community of folks, a church where baptismal ministry is real – not just the ministry of the priest, a church with a vibrant spiritual life.

It’s not an accident this church was named for St. Benedict. St. Benedict wrote a whole rule of life about how to live as a healthy community of prayer.  A Benedictine monastery isn’t only about the abbot, and a church isn’t only about the priest. A monastery is a community that finds its identity by praying together regularly.  So does a church, I believe. A monastery welcomes all visitors as Christ.  We seek to do the same.

St. Benedict’s rule also includes a lot about balance, something I’ve tried to focus on this past year for myself. In my first few years as a priest, I felt like I had to do everything well. I felt I had to do everything perfectly – or as perfectly as I could – for you and for God. I think some of you noticed that. And many of you let me know that I didn’t have to do everything perfectly. Thank you. Finally, after all this time, I’ve spent the last six months intentionally rebalancing my ministry – sharing more of the leadership responsibilities, just letting some things go, and focusing more on the things that I really feel called to – teaching kids and adults, preaching, prayer, creating great worship, and being available to each of you as a pastoral counselor or spiritual director, or just a friend in Christ.  And when I’m not trying to do everything, other people can share their gifts and talents and enhance the ministry of this church all the more.

One of the vows Benedict asked monks and nuns to take was a vow to what he called “conversion of life.”  He meant that a community of faith should constantly be open to what the Spirit might do next.  A healthy faith life isn’t about always being the same; it’s about being open to growing and changing.  What’s next for us?

I don’t like strategic planning.  I think it’s too much like forcing our ideas on reality.  What I do plan is to ask you to continue to strive with me to make church an amazing place.  On Sunday mornings, for adults, for kids, for visitors, for our surrounding community.  That together, we make church something that changes lives.  Your life, my life, the lives of our kids, the lives of our neighbors, the lives of the sick… a place to let him break the chains off our hearts and drive out whatever possesses us, that your heart and the hearts of the people you meet are changed because we’re able to meet Jesus here together on Sundays.

That’s the only plan we need, I think.  If that’s at our center, the Spirit will guide us in the rest.

Amen.

Less than 1 in 5 people in the United States are attending a religious service this weekend.  OK, some studies say it’s 1 in 4, but regardless, whether you’re 1 in 4 or 1 in 5, you’re a bit strange.

You’re even stranger because, even though you’re in church, you’re not sitting in a Roman Catholic church or a nondenominational church.

Only about 655,000 people attend Episcopal churches on an average Sunday morning. That doesn’t sound too bad.  Except when you hear that 200,000 more people were worshipping with us ten years ago, but aren’t around any more.

Membership across the Episcopal Church has declined 16 percent since 2000. Now, if we want to make ourselves feel better, membership in the Southern Baptist church declined 2.2 million people between 1996-2006. They basically lost the whole Episcopal Church in those ten years, so at least there’s something we can feel good about.

When people leave the Roman Catholic church, they tend to join a non-denominational church or to just stop going to church at all.

When people leave almost any other kind of church, they don’t tend to find another church to join; they tend to stop going to church at all.

Finally, although statistics show that a substantial number of Episcopalians aren’t entirely sure they believe in God, the number of people in our country who don’t identify with any religion, much less a denomination, grows larger every year. Right now, it’s at about 16%.

So, although St. Benedict is a growing church, most Episcopal churches aren’t growing. Most churches aren’t growing, period.  Even large, nondenominational churches, are losing their membership.

Here’s another interesting statistic: St. Benedict is actually bigger than over 50% of all Episcopal Churches. The average attendance at most Episcopal churches on a Sunday is about 65, and we’re at about 76.  And 286 out of a total of 6,794 Episcopal churches have 10 or less people attending on a Sunday morning. 286!

Why do you still come to church?  (I realize by asking this I risk you that could sit down and start thinking and then I won’t see you next week.)

You can see God at home.  You can eat much better tasting bread at the Olive Garden.  You could find better wine, better coffee, better interior decorating, elsewhere.  The stories at the movie theater are easier to follow and more engaging, aren’t they?  Maybe you sing along to the music more often on your iPod or your favorite radio station than you do here.  And at Caribou Coffee or David & Busters or the gym or the library, they don’t pass a plate and ask you to make a donation.

Church isn’t a store or a café. It shouldn’t be a club or a museum. It’s not exactly like your family, or a sorority or fraternity, or even a group of your best friends. No wonder we’re losing membership. We don’t really have anything for people to buy, first of all.

When Jesus gathered his first followers – his first church, you might say – his marketing was limited. He didn’t say much. In the gospel of Mark, no one says very much but everyone seems to move very quickly. Jesus also didn’t offer them anything to buy, or anything fantastic. The fisherman, Simon, Andrew, James, and John, meet Jesus, hear his invitation, and leave their work to follow after him. There’s something so compelling about Jesus that they don’t even hesitate.

But here, truly following Jesus, let’s admit, is a very tall order.  Here’s where it’s hard to enter into this gospel passage, because most of us can’t really pick up and leave everything for a life on the road, living on the generosity of strangers and the grace of Jesus. We have things we can’t really leave behind: financial obligations, safety-nets, refrigerators with food in them, warm beds!  But those fisherman just picked up and left the only life they’d known to follow Jesus. Did they leave children or wives behind? I don’t like to think about that, although we don’t know. But Jesus was that compelling. That irresistible. He talked about God’s kingdom, about repenting – turning your life around, he said that he would show them how to fish for people – and they wanted to know more. So much so, that they left everything behind.

Can you think of anything that could make you walk away from your life like that?

I wonder if Jesus offered them something that nothing else could, that their society couldn’t, their jobs couldn’t, that maybe their families couldn’t… a way of understanding the world and themselves and who God is that changed everything.

Is Jesus still able to speak to us like that through the church today? It doesn’t look like it, does it? The church as an institution is declining. The church and the world aren’t what they were, when church attendance was at its height in the 1950s. Things have changed. Instead of looking backwards, how we will change, too? How can we change and be compelling to the community around us, without also becoming another consumer institution. We’re not supposed to be like the Olive Garden or Starbucks or the movie theater.

How can we be part of the call Jesus made along the seashore that day? How can we be a place that makes real Jesus’ words “Follow me” for you? A place that offers something that the world can’t? So that being a weirdo is worth it. So that being an oddball, sitting in church on a Sunday, is something you love to do, in the midst of all the other demands on your life, because it speaks to who you are, what your life is like, and what you need to remember God’s love for you, every week? What does that look like?

There will be folks talking about this in the Sunday Seminar today after worship. Each year, the Bishop’s Committee and I think about these things and set goals and projects for ourselves every year to try to be more relevant as a community. What do you think? I’m curious to know, if you’re willing to share with me.

I believe that, whatever form Christianity will take in the future – if somehow, we shift from something that looks like a church as we know it, to a way of doing Christian community and worship that is somehow different (which is what’s happened throughout history) – regardless, that call of Jesus to “Follow” is what’s real. That going out, instead of staying in, to seek and care for the people around us – to fish for people – is what teaches us about who God is. And God’s vulnerable, self-giving love for us is what never ends and is always with us.

Amen.

Some churches talk a lot about sex. In some churches, the word used most to talk about it is: “NO.” No no no no no. In some churches, sex is never talk about, as if to say that it’s none of the church or God’s business. I don’t think either of those approaches are true to what it means to be members of the Body of Christ.

A professor of mine took her first job, as an assistant pastor, in the early 1980s. A group of parents in her church wanted the church to offer something to their kids’ youth group on “safe sex.” And so, one of the first jobs (!) her senior pastor gave her was to create and lead that class. Let’s just say, that among other things, a banana was involved in one of her demonstrations of how to use protection. At the end, when asked if there were any questions. There was a pause, and then a particularly precocious, but insightful, kid raised his hand and said, “But Pastor Katie: bananas can’t get their feelings hurt.”

I saw an article recently about a college professor who taught a senior seminar in philosophy on moral reasoning and dating. She found that her students would take the class and sadly, know nothing about dating because of the “hook-up” culture that’s so predominant on most college campuses. Instead of questions about philosophy, her students asked how you asked someone out one date and then what you should talk about on a date. She started giving them actual assignments: ask someone out on a date; here’s what you do on that date; here’s how you just get to know somebody. She says, “I detected both wistfulness and anxiety among the students over the thought of graduating without having developed the basic social courage to go on a date.”

Sexuality is more than mechanics; it’s about our relationships, and it’s about our hearts, souls, and bodies. Sexuality can make us uncomfortable but it’s so very important. It’s so very crucial to who we are as human beings. And yet, I don’t think as Christians, we connect our bodies with God and sacred things very easily.

Our bodies are sacred places. And I want to say that to you here, in church, on Sunday morning:

Our bodies are sacred places. Or, as the more traditional translation says, “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit.” Paul reminds us that Jesus had a body, just as we have a body. That our bodies were created with the same dignity as the body of our Master, Jesus Christ, that our bodies are part of the Body of Christ. Your body is a place where you meet God. A place of holiness. A sort of church.

Your body is a place where you meet God. And so sexuality is also a way we meet God; a way we can feel loved by God and can share God’s love with another person.

But our sexuality is bigger even than that. Our bodies can experience the sacred in the many many ways that God shares physical love with us: hugs, conversation, sharing a meal singing, spending time with your children, watching TV with your cat, going on a walk with your dog, exercise, or even just taking a shower. Our bodies are part of how we enjoy our lives as God’s children.

Unfortunately, there’s a long history of Christian belief that the body is bad; that anything the body wants must not be good. But our bodies and our desires are invitations from God that can lead us more deeply into God’s love for us. We can also become slaves to our body’s desires, of course. Our bodily desire can play powerful tricks on us, taking us away from God and from true intimacy. We have to keep them in balance.

Sexual desire, as Paul says, is about becoming one flesh with another person. For some, that may mean only in the context of a married relationship, but I don’t want to get too legalistic about what the exact boundaries of a sacred, sexual long-term commitment are. Sex was very legalistic in the Old Testament, where women were more like property than wives. However you draw those boundaries, it’s not arbitrary stuff. If our sexual desire isn’t rooted in the sacred, in God’s love, in respect and honor for ourselves and the other person, it will lead us into loneliness, false intimacy, self-deceit, and separation from God.

If the Church hasn’t always done a good job of teaching Christians a balanced view of the sacredness of our bodies, our culture hasn’t done a very good job either. Popular culture presents sexuality as though it’s a product for sale, or something that’s a toy. Walk into Abercrombie and Fitch, or drive over to the Tilted Kilt, or log onto an internet dating site. Human bodies can be made into objects, rather than sacred places. I don’t mean to be a prude, but there’s a line that can get crossed where people are no longer children of God with hearts and souls but just become skin and muscle, legs and chests. And that can get a little spirit-numbing.

And what’s the purpose of the body, if not to partner with our spirit to help us love one another? The Bible puts human bodies at the center of its stories and teachings. God creates human beings with his own hands, forming us out of mud, and creating us, male and female, in God’s image.

The psalm for today sings about God creating our bodies: I will thank you because I am marvelously made.  Leviticus is a book of laws that makes the body and everything it does into something sacred, something that marks the body as belonging to God: from sexuality, to clothing, to eating, to farming, to butchering. The prophets call out to us to remember and take care of the poor: their bodies and physical needs, not just their souls.

And people’s bodies mattered to Jesus. He healed sick bodies, he touched people, he fed them, he brought Lazarus’ body back to life. Jesus suffered death in a human body, and the last gift on earth he gave to his disciples was the Eucharist, a way we can still be connected to Christ, to all Christians throughout time, and to one another, through our bodies.

“Since the Master honors you with a body, honor him with your body.”

“Didn’t you realize that your body is a sacred place,” “a temple of the Holy Spirit?” Our bodies belong to God, Paul says.

And so, I think we need a sexual ethic more complex than just “No. No. No.”: an understanding that our bodies and the bodies of other people are precious and sacred things, that our bodies are members of the body of Christ, that our bodies are a place where we meet God.

Amen.

I started coming to St. Benedict’s about four years ago when Rev. Heidi was gracious enough to answer an e-mail from a complete stranger who was curious, but had never been to an Episcopal church before. In that time I’ve gone from a curious stranger to a received Episcopalian committed to two years of service work in the Church. So I owe a big thank you to this congregation for the loving help it gave me along the way.

Today, we recall the love of God made known to us in the sacrament of holy baptism. And in this morning’s gospel, we remember Jesus’ baptism by John in the river Jordan. This moment was the starting point for all of his public ministry on this Earth. It presents one of the more puzzling questions in the bible: Why did Jesus need to be baptized at all? After all, according to Christian dogma Jesus is without sin. And doesn’t John baptizing Jesus imply that John is actually superior to Jesus. In fact, some gnostic groups survived for several centuries that believed that John the Baptist was the messiah. We’ll have to explore this question more.

That Jesus deigned to be baptized by a human being should be a mystery to us, since it’s indeed a mystery to John himself; as he says, he “is not worthy even to stoop down and untie the thongs of his sandals.” And why pick John? He is, after all, kind of an eccentric guy. All the details Mark gives us about John stress how strange he is. We’re told he lives in the wilderness, wears camel hair, and eats locusts. I think he picked John because, from the word go, Jesus is throwing his lot in with the nobodies and outcasts. This ministry is going to be something different. This man is going to draw these outcasts towards him. He’s joining his voice with John’s counter-cultural voice, saying, Repent! Things can’t go on the way they are. And isn’t John’s voice valuable even today.

We still need to think about our question: Why did Jesus get baptized? What does it mean for us? Baptism has meant many different things down the ages. It was already present in the Judaism of the time as a purification ritual. To St. Paul, it’s a way of dying and rising again with Christ. John’s baptism is about confession of sins and repentance. It is a Christian initiation rite, an incorporation into the life of the Church. When I was a Catholic boy in CCD, they told me baptism gets rid of original sin. In our time it has become a rite of passage; an occasion for all of the family to get together, dress up, take pictures, and celebrate a new life in their family. And those are joyful moments for any parish. Clearly, our sacrament is rich with meaning, but do any of these understandings touch on Jesus’ baptism in the gospel of Mark?

The baptism of Christ conveys a more fundamental message. As Jesus rises out of the Jordan waters something remarkable happens. The skies open, the spirit comes down, and he hears a voice calling to him from the heavens, “You are my Son, my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.” At this baptism something fresh breaks through, God’s love in the form spirit, coming down like birds out of the sky. John realizes that all his preparation, prophetic work and baptizing has culminated in this person. I baptized with mere water, he says, but this baptism is something greater. So why did Jesus get baptized? There’s plenty that remains mysterious about it, but I think we can say for sure that he wanted to open up God’s love in a new way. This baptism gives God’s very self in the form of the spirit. And only God himself can give that, and so he does in his beloved Son. It was a launching pad for his public and a taste of things to come.

When I read this story, I’m moved by John’s faithful response to God; his “Yes to God‘s action. He spends so much time preparing, working to make the paths straight, to get the message out, hoping for something great to come. And then suddenly something fresh happens. God’s love breaks onto the scene in a new way in this mysterious person Jesus of Nazareth, and he recognizes it. It’s the same “Yes” that Mary gives to Angel, in the Advent we just celebrated. “Let it be unto me according to thy word.” And something fresh happens. They open themselves up, and God sends His love in a new way. The apostles discover the same thing in today’s reading from Acts: they discover that God is present in a new way in their baptism. The Spirit has come.

God is still to this day pouring out his love in Holy Baptism, and the church still sends out the message to all persons regardless of wealth or status, You are the sons and daughters of God. God loves you, and is pleased with you. As the Baptismal Covenant in the prayer book states, you are marked as Christ’s own forever. This baptismal message is what the Church, at its best, tries to tell the world; you are loved by God, and he wants to bring you into His family.

Being a part of Episcopal Charities I’ve been lucky enough to see some places where the Church is trying its hardest to get that message out. As part of the Julian Year we work 4 days at different service sites. I work at Holy Family Elementary School as a teacher aide. The School is in the North Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s west side. It’s one of the city’s so-called “rough neighborhoods” where police sirens are as much a presence as school bells. The families we serve are often low-income; many of the parents face the challenges of systemic unemployment. The children are mostly happy, normal kids. But many of them face things I never really had to consider in my suburban childhood: they see gangs, violence, and drugs. One student told me he can’t even go outside to play because his mother’s too worried that the area isn’t safe. But the school is a bright light in the community, offering a decent education and Christian formation.

Every Wednesday afternoon, I pull out the bleachers and the entire school gathers in the auditorium for our weekly Chapel service. We pray and sing songs of praise to God; we dance and shout (I‘ve done all the moves in front of the student body from Michael Jackson‘s “Thriller“ to Beyonce‘s “All the Single Ladies“); we even have contests to see which grade can shout the loudest. Then school’s chaplain preaches lessons in the Christian faith that always make the kids roar in laughter. One bemused visitor told me it seemed like a pep rally for Jesus, which I suppose I take as a compliment.

At the beginning of each Chapel, everyone turns to the person next to them and tells them, “Neighbor, God loves you, and I do too” and then gives them a hug or a high five. A few of the students I say this to in Chapel have lost their father, or never really had a father figure around to tell them this; What must it feel like for those children to hear that God the Father loves them? For most kids, though, its just a chance to share love with a friend. And it makes the teachers look something like human. No one leaves Chapel without being reminded that we are all beloved sons and daughters of God.

I’ve seen the baptismal message get out in the work of some of my colleagues, Julians, as we are called. They help feed hungry people, shelter those without homes, and tell young people who never considered it possible that they can go to college. In short, they try to keep the baptismal covenant. We fail, like the Church, all too often. But we must take seriously the charge to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves.”

I remember, the first Easter service I went to in the Episcopal Church was here at St. Benedict’s. Rev. Heidi walked through the sanctuary, and with a small branch flung holy water on the congregation. After I got whacked in the face with holy water, I obediently crossed myself but not without cracking a smile. And with each fling she commended us, “Remember your baptism.” Alas, I have no water to discharge at you today, but still I implore you to remember your baptism, and remember our Lord‘s baptism. Recall that you are beloved sons and daughters of God. And if you love God, feed His sheep; seek and serve Him in all people. Amen.