What if I told you that when you walked into church this morning, you were one sort of person, but that when you walk out after the service, you’re going to be someone new? That you will be changed in a basic way? That’s the promise of the Gospel – that in Christ we enter a process of transformation that quickly or slowly changes who we are. St. Paul makes this clear in today’s epistle: “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17). As one writer puts it, “That’s a description of earth-shaking change that goes right to the core of our being – something so fundamental that it changes the axis of our entire bearing.”1
“The Prodigal Son” at the altar of St. John’s, AshfieldIn Lent we’re given forty days in which to look closely at the axis of our lives. Where do my thoughts, attitudes, and choices still revolve around my own small self and the anxious, defensive question, “What about me? What’s in it for me?” And where have I begun to find a new axis in the expansive, never-failing love of God and neighbor? Transformation is what we’re up to in Lent – inner transformation that de-centers and de-thrones our little ego and reconciles us to God and neighbor. As St. Paul cries out in today’s epistle: “We entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5: 20).
I can think of no finer story about reconciliation with God and neighbor than today’s parable from the Gospel of Luke. It’s often called the parable of the Prodigal Son, but of course that title isn’t quite accurate, since the parable is really about a loving father who has two sons. Some folks consider it the greatest short story in the world, and it’s certainly one of the best-known and best-loved parables that Jesus ever told.
This morning, I brought in a reproduction of part of Rembrandt’s painting, The Return of the Prodigal Son, which was given to my husband Jonas and me by Henri Nouwen, probably around the time that he was writing his classic book, The Return of the Prodigal Son2 – a book that has inspired thousands of Christians and countless sermons, including this one. The poster is a bit frayed around the edges, since in the course of leading retreats, my husband and I have carried it to many different places, but you can still make out the basic scene: the father is a bearded, nearly blind old man in a red cloak who has placed his large hands on the shoulders of his returning son. The son – half-barefoot, exhausted, his head shaven like that of a prisoner or a survivor of a concentration camp, robbed of his identity – wears no cloak, only torn undergarments. He kneels before the father, and his cheek is nestled against the father’s chest, as if he were listening to the heartbeat of God.
The original oil painting hangs in the Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg, and it’s much bigger than this poster. In fact, it’s huge – 8 feet high and 6 feet wide – and it includes not only the scene that we see here, the embrace of the father and his wayward younger son; it also portrays the elder son and several other figures standing nearby. It was probably one of Rembrandt’s last works, painted when the artist was close to death.
The story starts like this: “There was a man who had two sons” (Luke 15:11). We don’t know why, but for some reason the younger son decides to go it alone. He’s itching to leave, to hit the road and do things his own way. He asks his father to give him his portion of his inheritance in advance – a quite presumptuous and irregular thing to do in that culture – and off he goes, money in hand, to what the story calls “a distant country” (Luke 15:13), where he squanders it all in “dissolute living” and eventually goes hungry. Desperate, he hires himself out in a job considered shameful: he feeds pigs, which are unclean animals according to Jewish law. Humiliated and close to starving, he wishes he could eat the very pods or corncobs that the pigs consume. That part of the story ends with the awful words that ring like a death sentence: “No one gave him anything” (Luke 15:16). He is entirely alone.
Let’s push the pause button and stop for a moment. I identify with this first part of the story and maybe you do, too. I know what it’s like – as maybe you do, too – to choose the go-it-alone path, the I-don’t-need-God path, the rebellious path that the Twelve-Step program calls “self-will run riot.” I’ve been there, done that, and maybe you have, too. We can do it for brief moments every day, and we can do it for long stretches of our lives. Whenever we choose that path, we leave our home in God – that place within ourselves where we feel seen and known and loved. Renouncing love, forsaking God and neighbor, we seize what we can for ourselves, and we do what we darn well please – the consequences be damned.
There are many ways to wind up in a distant country far from home, knowing we’ve betrayed our better selves. Somewhere along the way we took a wrong turn or made a bad choice, and now here we are, as isolated and desolate as the prodigal son with the pigs, feeling helpless and full of self-reproach. Lent is a good season for reflecting on how we as individuals have abandoned or rejected the God of love and squandered our inheritance – not to wallow in guilt, but to take a frank and fearless stock of our lives in the presence of the Holy One who heals. As it says in a poignant prayer of confession in the Book of Common Prayer, we know what’s it’s like to “[wander] far in a land that is waste.”3
But it’s not only we as individuals who can wander far in a land that is waste – whole societies can do that, too. The path that most of humanity has taken for the last two hundred years has brought us to a situation in which the web of life is unraveling before our eyes. Great populations of creatures – even entire species – have vanished. Global temperatures keep rising as we keep burning fossil fuels, and the current Administrations seems hell-bent on accelerating that deathly process, taking a chainsaw to the norms and laws that maintain democracy and keep the fabric of society knit together.
Is our society like the prodigal son, wandering far in a land that is waste? It sure feels that way. So how sweet it is to reach the story’s next line, its turning point: “When he came to himself…” (Luke 15:17). The young man comes to himself, he turns, and he starts to travel home. That’s such a great line: “He came to himself.” It’s as if he began to wake up, he began to break through the spell, he remembered who he was: someone created to love himself and his neighbor, to love the natural world, to love God. When we come to ourselves, we begin to make the journey home to God. Our basic nature, our truest nature, is found as we turn and head toward God, our divine Father and Mother, the lover of our souls and the source of all life.
What would it look like if we, as a society, “came to ourselves”? Maybe it would mean turning away from the illusion that we are separate from each other and must go it alone. Maybe it would mean taking hold of the truth that we belong to each other, that we belong to the Earth that sustains everything that lives, that we are made for connection and community. I can think of no more beautiful way to spend one’s life than to take part in what leaders like Joanna Macy and David C. Korten call the Great Turning, the epic transition from a deathly society to one that fosters life. That’s what philosopher Thomas Berry called the Great Work: our wholehearted effort to create a more just and sustainable world. And that’s what Archbishop Desmond Tutu called the “supreme work” of Jesus Christ: to reconcile us to God and to each other and to the whole of God’s Creation.4
In a time of such divisiveness and uncertainty, it’s powerful to remember that God loves it when we come to ourselves and begin the journey home to God. God gets happy when we make that turn, even if we’ve still got a long way to go. That’s what we see in the next part of the parable: The father, who seems to have been waiting eagerly for his son’s return, catches sight of him while he is “still far off.” “Filled with compassion” (Luke 15:20), he runs out to greet him. It’s completely undignified, this decisive moment when the old man hikes his robe above his shins and runs, breathing hard, sandals slapping and forehead perspiring, until he reaches his son and catches him up in his arms.
That moment of reunion is the one that Rembrandt portrays. It is a wordless moment, a moment of enormous stillness, in which the gentle arms of the father embrace the repentant son and draw him close. Can you imagine those kind hands on your shoulders? Can you imagine your face sheltered in the shadow of that warm red cloak, resting against the father’s loving heart? Our souls long for that experience of acceptance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We may need to gaze at that scene for a long time until we can really take it in.
The repentant son tries to launch into his long apology, but the father will have none of it. He wants to throw a party. It’s all about joy – the father’s joy and the joy of the repentant son. Meanwhile, in the painting, the elder son, who resents his young and dissolute brother, stands in the shadows. He feels left out of the party, when – hey! – he was the brother who did everything right! He followed the rules! It’s not fair! But he, too, is deeply loved and invited to the table to share in the joy.
“My son,” says the father to the angry elder son, “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31). “Come home,” the father is saying. “I have always loved you, and my love for your brother in no way diminishes my love for you.”
That’s the scandal of the father’s love – and the scandal of the Eucharist, as well – for everyone is welcome to the feast, prodigal and respectable alike, all of us equally needing and equally embraced by the unconditional love of God. It’s a meal that can transform our consciousness and shift the axis of the self, so that we discover our center, our true self, in the unmerited and boundless love of God.
So – as a Celtic prayer puts it – come to the table of Christ, “you who feel weak and unworthy, you who come often and you who have stayed away. Come, you who love him and you who wish you could. Come, you who are hungry for friendship or forgiveness. Come, you who long for meaning or a just world.”5
Come. The Father is waiting for you, arms outstretched.
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1. Ronald H. Love, “Are we willing to throw a feast?”, SermonSuite.
2. Henri J.M Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Meditation on Fathers, Brothers, and Sons (NY: Doubleday, 1992).
3. The Book of Common Prayer (The Seabury Press, 1979), 450.
4. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Foreword, The Green Bible, New Revised Standard Version (New York: HarperOne, HarperCollins, 2008), I-14
5. Ray Simpson, Healing the Land: Natural Seasons, Sacraments, and Special Services, The Celtic Prayer Book, Volume 3 (Suffolk, England: Kevin Mayhew, 2004), 154, based on a prayer of the Iona Community.
Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? (Isaiah 58:6)
When my friend Bishop Mark Beckwith invited me to join him every Wednesday this Lent in a Sabbath fast from food, finance, and media,1 my first reaction was to flinch. I do not fast casually. I am in long-term recovery from an eating disorder that included long bouts of fasting. I know what it’s like to restrict food in a willful, desperate, and ultimately futile effort to regain control. Fasting to punish myself, to compensate for compulsive binges, or to lose weight gave me no path to freedom – quite the contrary. It only tightened addiction’s grip on my body and spirit.
Nevertheless, the forty days of Lent are traditionally a season for “self-examination and repentance,” “prayer, fasting, and self-denial,” and “reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” Over decades of recovery I’ve discovered that fasting with a spiritual purpose can be a powerful tool for personal transformation. What’s more, in this nerve-wracking, bone-chilling, heart-breaking era of cruelty and chaos, with no end in sight, it’s time to reclaim the ancient practice of fasting.
I decided to join Bishop Mark this Lent in a weekly fast from eating, engaging in economic activity, and reading, watching, or listening to the news.
Why do I – why do we, why does anyone – carry out such a fast?
We fast to break out of the habits and routines of daily life and to say that something matters more than business as usual. Business as usual must stop.
We fast to break through the paralysis of disengagement and despair.
We fast to awaken from the trance of daily life and to regain our interior lives.
We fast to see through the illusions of an addictive culture inflamed by pleonexia, the Greek word for “a passion for more, an insatiability for more of what I already have.” Even if we hate shopping, it’s easy to be seduced by the notion that if we feel restless or uncomfortable, we should buy something. The purpose of advertising is not only to persuade us to buy one object or another, but also to create a climate of craving. What if we acknowledged the truth of the poet’s cry, “The world is too much with us; late and soon / Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers”?2 What if we refused to let production and consumption define our lives?
We fast to listen closely to ourselves, to drop below the strident commercialism of the mall and the marketplace, below the cash register’s loud ka-ching! and the quiet click of a credit card sliding into place. We fast to listen to the deeper hungers of our hearts.
We fast to step away from the relentless onslaught of news primed to deliver outrage and shock.
We fast to give ourselves space to honor our pain for the world, which, as Joanna Macy has told us time and again, is how we develop compassion, the willingness and capacity to “suffer with.” She writes, “Of all the dangers we face, from climate chaos to nuclear war, none is so great as the deadening of our response.”
We fast to grieve and to mourn, praying our way through our anger, sorrow, and fear. We fast to admit our mortality and vulnerability, and our radical uncertainty about the future.
We fast to recognize our dependence on the grace of God and on the gift of the next breath.
We fast to listen in silence, with full attention. When the clamor of our minds has stilled, might we hear the silent melody of a deeper, subtler and more enduring song, a love song between God and the whole created order, between God and the soul?
We fast to attune ourselves to the love that wants to be the center of our lives.
We fast to purify ourselves. We fast to express repentance and remorse for the ways we have participated in, colluded with, and benefited from a system that is killing life.
We fast as an act of protest, longing to express in and through our bodies our grief and moral outrage that corporate and political powers are tearing this country and this planet apart. We fast to protest systems that privilege billionaires, crush the poor, and devour the Earth and all her communities. Many social-justice Christians have signed a pledge circulated by Faithful America to join a Lenten fast from pro-Trump corporations. We refuse to buy anything from corporations that have allied with Trump “through political contributions, removing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies, or placing their CEOs in powerful positions of government.” (You can find more information here.)
We fast to proclaim that another world is possible. We fast to share in the yearning of the whole Creation for redemption and restoration (Romans 8:22).
We fast to stand with everyone who is hungry, especially those whose stomachs are empty because of poverty, injustice, or a changing climate, where drought or heat have withered crops or where extreme storms and rising seas have destroyed homes.
We join our hunger to the hunger of every living being, human and more-than-human, that hungers for life and a healthy, peaceful, and habitable planet.
Our hunger pangs invite us to hunger for what really matters.
We fast to prepare ourselves for the work that lies ahead.
We fast because, as Karl Barth once said, “The contemplative who can stand back from a situation and see it for what it is, is more threatening to an unjust social system than the frenzied activist who is so involved in the situation that he [she] cannot see clearly at all.”
Friends, I am glad to be with you tonight as we observe Ash Wednesday and enter the Lenten season. In this time of political turmoil, it is especially precious to step into a season that invites reflection, repentance, and the recognition that we depend on the mercy of God.
Tonight’s reading from the prophet Isaiah makes it abundantly clear that living in alignment with God’s purposes is crucial not only for us as individuals but also for how we live together in society. The passage resounds with moral clarity: a nation may pretend to practice righteousness; it may claim to be drawing close to God; it may try to cloak its acts of injustice under the mantle of religion, but if people are in fact serving only their own interests, if the economic system is unjust and oppressive, if people refuse to share food with the hungry or provide shelter for the unhoused, then society has lost its moral compass and is rebelling against God. By contrast, in a society marked by justice and by the readiness to satisfy the needs of those in need, then – oh, what beautiful words! – “your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly… [Y]ou shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters never fail… Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt… [You] shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in” (Isaiah 58:8a, 11b, 12b).
Winter shadows, AshfieldRepairers of the Breach is a national organization that takes its name from this passage from Isaiah. Inspired by Isaiah and the whole prophetic tradition, Repairers of the Breach aims to “[train] moral leaders and [build] social justice movements” that uplift “our deepest moral and constitutional values.” I’m glad to say that this morning, Repairers of the Breach, led by its founder, Bishop William J. Barber II, gathered clergy and faith leaders at an Episcopal church in Washington, D.C., for an Ash Wednesday National Call for Repentance and Truth-Telling. They called on our nation to “turn away from injustice, apathy, corruption, and oppression and recommit to the path of righteousness, truth, justice, and love.” After lament and prayer, they held a procession from the Supreme Court to the U.S. Capitol. Now that’s a meaningful public way to launch the 40 days of Lent!
But Lent also has a very private and personal side. Because we want to be close to Jesus, this season is a precious time to look closely at our lives and to ask God to help us see where we have not been living in right relationship with ourselves, with our neighbors, with the living world around us, and with God.
I’d like to say a word about two impulses that can spur that vital inner work: guilt and desire. Guilt is that uncomfortable feeling we get when we recognize that we haven’t been true to our deep self. We haven’t allowed God’s love to flow freely through us. In one way or another we’ve blocked that flow, as if piling rocks in a river. It’s easy to see what happens when a society is overtaken by greed, hardness of heart, and the grab for power – we’re witnessing it right now. But what happens when these energies overtake us? Can we stop to look closely at what’s going on? Can we ask God to give us strength to amend our lives?
Facing ourselves in the intimacy of our hearts is interior, solitary, and sometimes painful work. As Jesus observes in today’s Gospel, our spiritual practices are not for parading “before others in order to be seen by them” (Matthew 6:1). When we give alms or fast or pray, we don’t look for admiration and praise and “sound a trumpet before [us], as the hypocrites do” (Matthew 6:2). Rather, in the secrecy of our hearts we come before God in our weakness and need, trusting in God’s mercy.
I have to say that, as difficult as it may be, there is something wonderful – even liberating – in acknowledging our guilt. Admitting one’s sin is a great relief to the psyche, for at last we are released from the exhausting effort to keep presenting ourselves to ourselves and to others in the best possible light. At last, we can stop working so hard to shore up our self-image and can instead admit to ourselves, to others, and to God that in some ways we’ve failed, we’ve blown it. We are mortal, we are fallible, we have limits, and we’ve made mistakes, even dreadful mistakes. The more we grow in spiritual awareness and maturity, the more we will likely become even more sensitive to the darkness within ourselves. Teresa of Avila suggested the image of a glass of water held up to the light: when the light is bright, the motes of dirt in the water can be seen clearly. In the light of God’s presence, we can see more clearly how we’ve not been acting in loving ways.
But if Lent is motivated only by our failings, then we risk becoming increasingly self-hating, self-rejecting, and self-absorbed. Dwelling only on our guilt can slide us into a kind of depressive swamp, in which we become tempted to self-centeredness and despair. That’s why in some circles Lent has gotten a bad rap as nothing more than a morbid season in which to beat ourselves up.
So, alongside guilt, I want to highlight the other great motivator of the spiritual quest: desire. “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth,” Jesus tells us tonight, “but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. . . For where your treasure is, there your hearts will be also” (Matthew 6:19a, 20a, 21). Jesus is speaking here in the language of desire. What is most precious to you? What do you love most? To what, to whom, do you ultimately want to give your life? Jesus is seeking to arouse desire is us, to make us restless with the puny identity that our culture gives us: consumers who want only to be entertained, distracted, well-fed, and comfortable. Jesus longs to generate in us a kind of holy impatience, a longing for real transformation. Deep down, something in us wants to awaken, to come alive, to fall in love with life and with the divine Source of life. Something within us wants us to grow. Sin is sometimes defined as the refusal to grow, as the stubborn insistence on staying the same and on separating ourselves from the love that is always available to us.
I invite us to take hold of these forty days as a gift to strengthen and support our journey of transformation. Some Lenten practices directly address guilt: we can ask God to guide us in fearless, honest self-examination. We may want to make a sacramental confession and to make amends. Yet some Lenten practices may be better framed in terms of desire. From a yearning to draw closer to God, many of us will renew our intention to set aside time for daily prayer. To sharpen our desire for God and to open ourselves to the flow of God’s love, some of us will fast, since every pang of hunger can remind us of our deeper hunger for God. Of course, fasting can take many forms, such as fasting from gossip or complaining, from carbon or from single-use plastic.
Some of us in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts will carry out a particular kind of Lenten fast this year, inspired by the work of Walter Brueggeman, who is one of today’s most influential Old Testament scholars. In his book Sabbath as Resistance, Brueggeman critiques a society in which production and consumption define our lives. So, our plan is to step out of that production-consumption economy every Wednesday in Lent and to fast from food, media, and finance.1 Maybe you’d like to join us.
God loved us into being and God longs to draw us close. When guilt or sorrow spur us to repentance: Thanks be to God. When desire for fullness of life pulls us forward: Thanks be to God. And for the God whose love embraces us every day of our lives and who will gather us home at our journey’s end: Thanks be to God.
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“Love your enemies” (Luke 6:27). That’s got to be one of the most distinctive, startling, and difficult things that Jesus ever said. The whole first sentence of today’s Gospel passage is worth re-reading: “Jesus said, “I say to you that listen, ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.’” What happens inside you when you hear Jesus make this appeal? How do you receive this message in such a chaotic and frightening time? It’s not so easy to love our enemies these days – not that it’s ever been easy, but the new political reality into which this country has suddenly been plunged makes Jesus’ message even more demanding.
A sign at the Presidents Day rally held in Springfield, MA, February 17, 2025Over the past four weeks the impact of the current Administration has been compared by critics and supporters alike to a natural disaster. With approval or disapproval, people in this country and abroad have compared our newly elected leaders to a tornado, a tempest, a flood, a tsunami, a volcanic eruption, and an earthquake. This Administration is forcibly pushing aside whatever stands in its way, breaking down and emptying out the structures in its path, and rapidly re-shaping the landscape. Just about everything we care about is under threat: clean energy and a stable climate, public health, public education, medical and scientific research, immigrants and refugees, racial justice, gender justice, economic justice, human rights, the rule of law – the list goes on. I’m guessing that many of us in this room know someone who’s already been affected.
Love your enemies? Our response might well be, “I don’t think so! That’s an impossibly high bar, and not even a desirable one, when people and communities I care about, and values I hold dear, are being trampled and cast aside.” What’s circulating in many of us – including me – are feelings like anger, shock, anxiety, overwhelm, maybe even despair. Being asked to love our enemies can sound hopelessly sentimental, naïve and weak, out of step with the world’s harshness, out of touch with reality.
Research tells us that we humans react like other animals when we perceive danger. When we’re in a stressful or traumatic situation, our nervous system quickly – almost instantaneously – triggers one of four defense mechanisms to protect us: fight, flight, freeze, or fawn.1 When we fight, we feel intensely angry, we act aggressively, we fight fire with fire. Cut me off in traffic? I’ll cut you off. Insult me? I’ll insult you back, but louder. Tit for tat, an eye for an eye, and before long the whole thing escalates into the world we see before us, the dog-eat-dog world of violence and war. I can’t help thinking of the anecdote about a parent who hears the kids squabbling and asks, “Hey, what’s going on? Who started this?” One child looks up, righteous and aggrieved, and says, “It all started when he hit me back.” That’s how it works, right? We’re practically hard-wired to react with aggression when someone threatens us, and it’s a snap to blame someone else for starting the fight.
Rather than fight in the face of danger, we may instead feel an instinctive impulse to flee – we just want to get out of there, to leave, to run away. When fight or flight doesn’t seem like an option, we may freeze in place, as threatened animals sometimes do – we “play dead”; we shut down emotionally; we feel numb or confused or as if we can’t move; we hold our breath. Or, as a fourth reaction, we may feel the impulse to fawn: that’s when we try to placate and please the one who is threatening or abusing us; we play “nice”; we do what we’re told; we pretend to agree; we kiss the ring.
Fight, flight, freeze, or fawn are all normal, involuntary, and immediate reactions to stress, triggered by fear and the wish to survive and stay safe. Much of our country is experiencing trauma right now, so it’s no wonder that many of us are freaking out and getting stuck in emotional reactivity.
Jesus was just as human as we are, and I’m guessing that he experienced these reactions, too, and with good reason: he was living in a time even more dangerous than ours, when the Roman Empire was occupying his homeland and ruling with an iron fist. Yet Jesus showed us another way. He could see that bouncing around on turbulent waves of fear and emotional reactivity left people adrift, thrashing about and drowning in a sea of endless suffering and violence. Jesus learned to live below those waves, from a deeper, quieter, calmer place, in union with the God he called Father. Love your enemies, he said – don’t go after them tooth and nail. Don’t be overcome by fear.
Why should we love our enemies? Because God loves them. Because God’s love is expansive, extravagant, and (to our possible annoyance) all-inclusive.2 As Jesus puts it in today’s Gospel text from Luke, “[God] is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked” (Luke 6:35). Jesus makes the same point in Matthew’s Gospel: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you… for [God] makes [the] sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:44-45). Like sunshine and rain, God’s boundless love is freely offered to everyone, without weighing their merit. God’s love embraces not only the people we love but also the people we reject and hate. As Anne Lamott puts it, “You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.”
But loving our enemies doesn’t mean that we passively acquiesce to evil or injustice and become pious doormats. Far from it. What it does mean is that our activism and our efforts to heal and transform the world, our efforts to stop the harm and redress the wrong, come from a deeper, more grounded place. That’s where all the world’s great nonviolent movements for social justice have come from – from the discovery that beneath those agitated waves of fear and anger, there is a holy Love that is infinitely greater than our own small selves, a Love that bestows dignity on every human being and that sets us free from our own reactivity. Rooted in that love, we find strength for creative, nonviolent moral witness. We are less tempted to demonize each other and less prone to mirror the behavior of our enemy. We don’t have to react so automatically and blindly to anger with anger, to hatred with hatred. We learn not to react but to respond.
How do we live from that deeper, freer place? We learn to listen. I find it interesting that at the beginning of today’s Gospel passage, Jesus says explicitly that he is speaking to those who listen: “I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you…” Listening to his voice inside us is a discipline, a spiritual practice, as we pause to notice the impulses and the feelings that are swirling through us, give them space and a good hearing, and keep listening for the inner voice of love that is always sounding in our hearts. Because “[God] is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked,” we can feel free in prayer to be real with God: to confess and to share not only the parts of ourselves that we like and are proud of, the parts that we consider noble and good, but also the parts of ourselves that we’d much rather project onto our enemies – our murderous rage, for instance, our greed, our desire to dominate. Everything that we see outside us is also inside us – there is a Hitler inside us, and, yes, there is likewise an inner Trump – and our spiritual work is to keep making those parts of ourselves conscious, to keep offering them to God for healing, and to keep letting Love shape us and guide us and order our steps.
A banner outside St. John’s Episcopal Church, Ashfield, MA, reads “Immigrants and refugees welcome“For those of us who’ve been reeling with anger and fear, today’s psalm is worth praying through slowly, with its wonderful refrain repeated three times: “Do not fret yourself because of evildoers… Do not fret yourself over the one who prospers… Do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil” (Psalm 37:1a, 8a, 9b). How do we learn not to fret? The answer is hidden in verse 7, in the center of the psalm: “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him” (Psalm 37:7). In stillness and silence, we wait for God to speak. We place our trust in the One who is always with us and who will never let us go, no matter what happens. When our actions spring from that kind of inner assurance and security, what we do is more likely to be effective and wise.
Whether we know it or not, God is at work behind the scenes and can take what was meant for harm and use it for good. That’s the crux of the story from Genesis: Joseph’s brothers did something evil when they sold him into slavery in Egypt, but now, years later, Joseph can see that God overcame their evil, setting Joseph on a circuitous path that resulted in his being able to provide plenty of food amidst a famine. When Joseph encounters his enemies again – in this case, his own brothers – rather than seek vengeance and retribution, he can love and forgive them, because he trusts in the providential care of God.
That’s how God’s love works, surprising us with the power to forgive, and blessing us with the longing, as John Wesley put it, to:
Do all the good [we] can,
By all the means [we] can,
In all the ways [we] can,
In all the places [we] can,
At all the times [we] can,
To all the people [we] can,
As long as ever [we] can.
There will be plenty to do in the days ahead as we look for ways to express the love of Christ and respond to the forces that have been unleashed in this country. The push for social change has historically included economic boycotts, and a campaign is building on social media to urge Americans not to buy anything from major retailers, online or in-person, this Friday, February 28, for 24 hours.3 This one-day, nationwide economic blackout is particularly aimed at large corporations that rolled back their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. It will be followed in March and April by several week-long boycotts of national chains like Amazon and Walmart.
Are we witnessing the first stirrings of a massive movement? I don’t know. What I do know is that we are children of God, made in God’s image, and that, with reverence for ourselves and for all created beings, God’s love can flow in powerful ways through our hands and eyes and words and choices.
To stay centered, day by day we can give ourselves the gift of stillness. We can listen inwardly and ask to be guided by what Dante calls “the love that moves the sun and the other stars.”4 Let’s take a moment of silence now, to rest in that love.
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1. Sarah Schuster, “The 4 Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, and Fawn,” updated October 17, 2023.
2. C.f. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 266-267. Wink calls loving our enemies “the acid test” of Christianity.
3. Ashley Parks, “Will Nationwide Economic Blackout on February 28 Work?”, Newsweek, February 13, 2025.
4. Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy: Cantica Three, Paradise, trans. Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds, Canto XXXIII, line 145 (Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1962), 347.
Sermon for the Third Sunday after the Epiphany
January 26, 2025
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Ashfield, MA
Psalm 19
Luke 4:14-21
Fulfilled today in our hearing
Friends, before I say anything else I want to say how blessed I am to be with you this morning as preacher and celebrant. I’ve worshiped at St. John’s on and off since 1998, when my husband Jonas and I bought a house in Ashfield and began spending part of our summers here. When I finally left parish ministry and began serving the diocese as Missioner for Creation Care, this church gradually became the place on Sunday mornings where I most wanted to pray when I wasn’t on the road. And now I’ve retired, so here I am! It is good to be with you.
I especially treasure the opportunity to preach sometimes over the next few months because things are changing fast. It’s been quite a week. We’ve entered a new era in our life as a nation. In this uncertain time, filled with so much worry and woe, I am grateful to have an opportunity to reflect on how God is calling us to live out our faith. As we just sang, “I want to walk as a child of the light. I want to follow Jesus.”1 How do we follow Jesus in “such a time as this” (Esther 4:14)?
Our readings this morning have a thing or two to say about that. Let’s begin with the psalm. As you know, I’ve devoted much of my ministry to speaking about God’s love for the whole Creation and about our Christian calling to protect the web of life. So, I rejoice that the opening lines of today’s psalm proclaim the sacredness of the natural world (Psalm 19:1-4):
“The heavens declare the glory of God,*
and the firmament shows [God’s] handiwork.
One day tells its tale to another,*
and one night imparts knowledge to another.
Although they have no words or language,”
and their voices are not heard,
Their sound has gone out into all lands,*
and their message to the ends of the world.”
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Ashfield, MAThe psalmist knows that the living world declares God’s glory and conveys God’s presence. We’ve been trained by our culture to view the natural world as little more than objects or resources for us to use and exploit, whereas the Bible insists that the Earth belongs to God and is alive with God’s presence. When we gather to worship God inside this building, our worship is joining the worship already going on outside, in the wind and sunlight, in trees and streams. God comes to us through the natural world, so it’s not surprising that many of us, in times of anguish or stress, find solace in turning our attention away from the noise of human chatter and conflict and toward the silence of wild creatures and landscapes. The other night, when I couldn’t sleep, I got up and spent a long time watching the moon rise over the ridge beside our house. In her calm and silvery light, I felt God’s presence and I felt God’s peace, and I praised God with a grateful heart.
Because our faith and experience link God to the natural world, it’s deeply disturbing to witness its destruction. It hurts. When a new Administration comes to power and immediately withdraws from the Paris Climate Agreement; when it rolls back climate protections, ramps up domestic drilling, and spurns clean energy; when it turns a blind eye to the signs of Mother Earth’s distress, spoken in the language of massive wildfires and droughts, flooding and heat, my heart breaks with outrage and sorrow. Maybe yours does, too. The web of life upon which all our lives depend is fraying, and so, too, is the social fabric that knits our country together.
So, let’s turn to the passage from Luke’s Gospel, which comes like medicine to our weary souls. Jesus, “filled with the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14), returns from forty days in the wilderness and begins to teach in the synagogues of Galilee. You’ll remember that he was baptized just weeks before in the Jordan River, where the Holy Spirit descended upon him and a voice from heaven told him, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). The same loving Spirit drives Jesus out into the wilderness to face his temptations and to renounce the self-centered patterns of thought or behavior that could pull him off course. By the time Jesus returns to his hometown of Nazareth, he has purified his intention to give himself wholeheartedly to serving God.
The Gospel passage tells us that in Nazareth Jesus goes to the synagogue on the sabbath day, “as was his custom” (Luke 4:16). It’s clear that Jesus was a faithful Jew who shared in the liturgical life of his community. Synagogues generally had no professional rabbis; instead, the person presiding at the service would ask some respected person in the congregation to speak. Jesus was invited to teach that day, and so our scene unfolds.
The congregation watches as he stands up and receives the scroll. They watch him unroll it and find a passage from chapter 61 of the prophet Isaiah. The congregation listens as Jesus reads aloud. Maybe we can imagine the quiet authority in his voice as he reads: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4:18). The congregation watches as he rolls the scroll back up, hands it back to the attendant, and sits down – as was the custom of the time – before he begins his sermon. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue are fixed on Jesus as they wait in silence for him to speak.
What does he say? It’s probably the world’s shortest sermon: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). I suppose I could have spoken that sentence from the pulpit this morning and left it at that. I imagine something like a surge of energy being released around the room when Jesus said those words. Today the Scripture has been fulfilled, he says – not some other day, not some distant day, not some moment in the far-off future, but today, this very day, the Scripture has been fulfilled. To fulfill is to make actual, to bring to completion. Today this Scripture has been fulfilled, a fulfillment that his listeners have been ardently awaiting for years, for decades, for generation upon generation. The people of God – and the whole Creation – have long been waiting for the Messiah to come, waiting with expectation for the anointed one who will come at last to heal the broken-hearted and bring good news to the poor, to liberate the captives and give sight to the blind. Our weary, weary world has been longing forever for fulfillment – “groaning,” as St. Paul says in Romans (Romans 8:22-23) – as it waits to be made whole and to be set free, suffering like a woman in childbirth as it waits for an end to brutality and injustice, to war and natural disaster, and for the coming of peace, for the sounds of harmony and laughter.
“Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” I take this as Jesus’ mission statement, as Jesus’ announcement of who he is and why he’s come, in essence the same declaration which he expresses in the Gospel of John as “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly” (John 10:10). Jesus has been anointed by the Spirit to bring good news to the poor, to give sight to the blind, to proclaim release to the captives. He knows who he is – the Beloved of God – and he knows why he’s here and what he’s been sent here to do. Everything he does from this point on – preaching, teaching, healing, standing up to the unjust powers of this world, suffering, dying – everything he does will be for the sake of his mission, following that true north on his compass. His whole ministry will flow from this inaugural sermon and its vision of carrying out God’s mission of healing and reconciling and setting free.
Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing. Today is our day to claim our identity in Christ as the beloved of God, our day to affirm that we, too, have been anointed in baptism and are filled with the same Spirit with which Jesus was anointed and filled. We listen to the same inner voice of love to which Jesus listened. And we are sent out, as Jesus was sent out, to embody and make real the healing and liberating presence of God. It’s in dark times like these that we pray, “Shine in our hearts, Lord Jesus,”2 and, with whatever light we’ve been given, we find a way to serve and to set free.
I’ve never been prouder of, or more grateful for, the Episcopal Church than I’ve been this week. Shortly after the new President took office and began issuing executive orders related to deporting undocumented immigrants and restricting asylum, the top leaders of our Church sent a letter to the church affirming our Christian commitment to welcoming the stranger and protecting the most vulnerable among us. And I don’t think I will ever forget the moment when Bishop Mariann Budde paused on Tuesday during her sermon at the Washington National Cathedral, took a breath, looked directly at the President, and made a heartfelt appeal for him to have mercy on gay, lesbian, and transgender communities and on undocumented immigrants. If you haven’t yet watched her sermon online, I hope you will. It’s available on the National Cathedral’s YouTube channel This is what following Jesus looks like. This is what nonviolent resistance looks like.
Snow in forestLiving out our Christian calling can be risky and can be costly – indeed, just moments after Jesus finishes his sermon, the congregation runs him out of town and almost throws him over a cliff (Luke 4:28-30). But Jesus is undeterred. God willing, we will be, too. We can do difficult things when we feel led by the Holy Spirit.
I’ll close with three brief suggestions.
Here’s one: protect your inner stillness. Guard the peace within your heart. Do what you need to do – gaze at the moon, study the hills, feel the wind on your face. Listen to music. Breathe in the love of God. Taking time to pray is countercultural, even revolutionary work. As theologian Karl Barth once said, “The contemplative who can stand back from a situation and see it for what it is, is more threatening to an unjust social system than the frenzied activist who is so involved in the situation that he [she] cannot see clearly at all.”
Next, make space for grief. Welcome God into what you’re feeling just now, whatever it may be – fear, sorrow, outrage, numbness, overwhelm. The God whom we know in Jesus loves us utterly and sits with us as we mourn or rage or rejoice, holding us in love and helping us see what we need to see, accept what we need to accept, and find courage to change what we need to change.
Finally, take your own next right step. Maybe you’ll reach out to someone who is lonely or to someone who is fearful of attack by the new Administration. Maybe you’ll join me in an activist group like ThirdAct.org, which is for folks over 60 who want to protect democracy and the climate. Maybe you’ll sign up for action alerts from the Episcopal Public Policy Network. These are just a few of the many ways we can offer healing and justice in a perilous time. The main thing is this: we know who we are, and we know why we’re here. For today this Scripture has been fulfilled in our hearing.
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1. Hymn #490 (words by Kathleen Thomerson) in The Hymnal 1982.
2. Ibid.
Sermon for the First Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of Our Lord
January 12, 2025
Prepared by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas for Preaching for God’s World
I can’t think of a better day than today to speak about our Christian calling to care for God’s Creation. Today, on the First Sunday after the Epiphany, we hear, as we always do, the story of Jesus’ baptism. It’s one of the few events in Jesus’ life that is recorded in all four Gospels. Jesus is plunged by John the Baptist into the waters of the Jordan River. When Jesus emerges from its depths, the heavens are opened, the Spirit of God descends on him as gently as a dove, and a voice says: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).
We return to this story year after year because Jesus’s baptism is one of the basic stories that reveals who he is. It’s also a foundational story of our life in Christ, a story that reveals who we are, too. Most of us probably can’t remember our baptism and we may not give our baptism much thought. Yet today’s Gospel invites us to explore the power of Jesus’ baptism, and of ours. We live in challenging times, and I wonder if tapping into the power of our baptism can help us to live with clarity, compassion, and moral courage.
Before I reflect on baptism, I’d like to say a few words about the challenges that confront us. Just to look squarely at those challenges without tuning out or turning away is an act of courage. It takes courage to see clearly what human beings are doing to our precious planet. It takes courage to hold a steady gaze and to witness the melting glaciers and bleaching coral reefs, the withered fields and bone-dry reservoirs, the flash floods and massive downpours, the record waves of heat. It takes courage not to look away but to hold a steady gaze as climate change makes sea levels rise and islands disappear, as oceans grow acidic and full of plastic, and as vast populations of our fellow creatures disappear.1
Last October, a group of top scientists published the 2024 State of the Climate report.2 They were clear about the predicament in which we find ourselves. They wrote, “We are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is imperiled.” They went on to say that “For half a century, global warming has been correctly predicted even before it was observed – and not only by independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies. Despite these warnings, we are still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an all-time high, we are failing to avoid serious impacts, and we are witnessing the grim reality of the forecasts as climate impacts escalate, bringing forth scenes of unprecedented disasters around the world and human and nonhuman suffering.”
This is the world in which we live today, a world created and cherished by God, yet reeling from the heavy burden of human activities. So, as we return to the story of Jesus’ baptism, I consider it with a deep sense of seriousness and curiosity. Is it possible that in our baptism we’ve been given more power than we know? Is it possible that in this perilous and precarious time, we can draw fresh strength from our baptism? Is it possible that in our baptism God has given us great riches – riches that can give us strength to rise to the occasion and to act with compassion, clarity, and courage?
Image by falco from Pixabay
I’d like to name three of the riches that we receive in baptism. Maybe you can think of others – but here’s what I’ve got so far.
First, baptism gives us the power to live in love, to be rooted in love, to belong to a love that will never let us go. When we are baptized into Jesus Christ, we are baptized into the same compassion that led Jesus to step into the waters of the Jordan River and to be baptized by John. If you think about it, you’ll notice that Jesus didn’t need to be baptized. John the Baptist was preaching repentance from sin, but Jesus had no sin. He had nothing to repent, nothing to confess. He could have skipped the baptism and held himself separate from everyone else. He could have kept his distance and simply watched the masses of people crowding down to the river to confess their sins and receive forgiveness. And yet – he took the plunge. In an act of radical solidarity with all humankind, he stepped into the river and claimed the truth of interconnectedness.
Jesus chose to identify with all human beings, to identify with you, to identify with me. And not only with human beings but with the whole of God’s Creation. As John the Baptist said, those who are baptized into Christ are baptized “with the Holy Spirit and fire” (Luke 3:16). And you know what? The fire of God’s love keeps burning away all the chaff (Luke 3:17). Quickly or slowly, it burns away everything in us that is not love, opening our eyes so that we come to see the world as God sees it: as precious, sacred, and filled with God’s presence. The divine love into which we were plunged in baptism extends not only to us, and not only to human beings, but also to every sparrow and whale, every earthworm and orca, every maple tree and mountain.
So, baptism into Christ isn’t about joining a club or belonging to a tribe. It isn’t about affiliating with people who look like us or think like us. Baptism into Christ is a radical act of humility and compassion that joins us to the One who identifies with every human being and with the whole community of Creation. It joins us to a love that will never let us go.
Here’s a second gift of baptism: it puts our death behind us. In baptism, we are immersed in the waters of death. We have died in Christ; we have died with Christ. In a sense, our death has already taken place. It’s done. It’s over with. In baptism, we have died and been buried with Christ, and through the power of his resurrection, we are raised, here and now, to live with him. What this means is that we can acknowledge and face bad news without being overwhelmed by fear. The water we splash on a child at the baptismal font may seem inconsequential, but it’s a sign that we have nothing to fear from the death of the body. In fact, in the early centuries of the Church, Christians were called “those who have no fear of death.”3 To whatever extent we understand and trust that our death is behind us, we are set free from anguish and anxiety. We are set free to love without grasping, without possessiveness, without holding back.
And here is gift number three: baptized into a love that extends through all Creation and knows that life and not death will have the last word, we arise as healers and justice-seekers, as prophets and activists, as people unafraid to confront the powers-that-be. That’s what the early Church was known for. Remember the complaints that were lodged against the first followers of Jesus? They were charged with “turning the world upside down” and “acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus” (Acts 17:6-7). As Christians we obey a higher authority. We refuse to settle for a killing status quo.
So – watch out, world! Wherever Christians are found, you will find people working – sometimes in difficult circumstances and against terrible odds – to bear witness to the love that has set us free. There are countless ways we do this, beginning with listening to the voices of Indigenous peoples, racial minorities, and the poor – the communities that are hurt first and worst by a changing climate. Some of us will resolve to ease back from a high-consuming lifestyle and begin living a more climate-friendly life, to cut back strongly on our use of fossil fuels, to switch our households to clean sources of energy, to eat less meat and to shift to a plant-based diet. Some of us will plant community gardens and pollinator gardens and find ways to support local land trusts that protect forests and farmland. Some of us will push big banks to quit funding fossil fuel expansion. Some of us will press elected officials to advocate for strong climate legislation, renewable energy, and good, “green” jobs. When speaking inside the halls of power isn’t enough, some of us will join the growing numbers of faith-filled people who bring our message to the streets, carrying out disruptive, peaceful civil disobedience and putting our bodies on the line.
Baptism gives us more power than we know – the power to attune ourselves day by day to the divine Love that created, redeemed, and sustains the whole Creation. If ever there were a time to bear witness to our faith and to the power of our baptism, now would be the time. If ever there were a time to hold fast to our vision of a world in which human beings live in right relationship with each other and with all our fellow creatures, now would be the time. Now is the time to take hold of the prophetic power of our baptism and to confront the forces within us and around us that are unraveling life on Earth.
How will you live out your baptism in the year ahead? How is God calling you to tap into the power that is yours in Christ?
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1. This paragraph is from Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, “Spiritual Practice and Sacred Activism in a Climate Emergency,” published in Buddhist Christian Studies, https://revivingcreation.org/spiritual-practice-and-sacred-activism-in-a-climate-emergency/
2. William J. Ripple et al, “The 2024 state of the climate report: Perilous times on planet Earth,” BioScience, Volume 74, Issue 12, December 2024, pp. 812–824.
3. Olivier Clement, The Roots of Christian Mysticism (first published in French as Sources, Paris: Editions Stock, 1982; first published in English, London: New City, 1993), p. 107.
This sermon is published here at Preaching for God’s World.
This morning, the day before the 2024 election, I awoke feeling immobile, almost paralyzed. It wasn’t fight or flight today – it was deer-in-headlights freeze. Curious, I listened for words that might arise from within. I heard “petty,” the tempting tug toward avoidance and distraction. I also heard “immensity.” The immense waves into which our country has been plunged are too vast to be seen clearly. Full understanding will come later.
Image by pinkzebra from Pixabay
Meanwhile, politicians, pundits, and opinion-purveyors rush to explain what’s going on and what’s likely to happen next. How did our country reach this degree of internal division and distrust? How much chaos and violence will erupt in the days ahead? To what extent will brutality and cruelty become official policy? How many lies will be spoken and driven like nails into a crucified Earth? Drill, drill, drill. Climate change is a hoax. I haven’t even mentioned the looming threats to the separation of church and state or to democratic norms, national security, immigrants, women, racial minorities, those who are gender nonconforming, or the poor.
With so much hanging in the balance, we search for signs in polls, focus groups, and interviews. I empathize with the ancients who scanned for messages in tea leaves and stars. Until the polls close, some of us will valiantly knock on doors, join phone banks, or plead for last-minute funds. Yet even after all the votes have been cast, the election won’t be over. We await the unspooling of conspiracy theories, along with claims of election fraud and stealing. Our nerves are taut. We brace ourselves. We try to breathe.
I turn to the poets. In “The Second Coming,” written shortly after World War I, Yeats gives us words to express our dread as we shiver at the brink of a harrowing election. The first stanza reads like a news report from the AP wire. It rings true. Whoever wins, contests, or unjustly seizes the election, we recognize that things are falling apart. The center does not hold.
I walk with the narrator into the second stanza, yearning with him for breakthrough and transformation, for the release of justice and mercy, for the triumph of goodness and truth. Indeed, I long with the narrator for Christ’s Second Coming. But no – what the poet sees emerging from the collective unconscious, from the Spiritus Mundi, is something else entirely: not God’s reign of mercy, love, and truth, but a terrifying Beast with vacant, pitiless eyes, slouching towards Bethlehem to be born. Resistance is futile – the desert birds may be “indignant,” but they are merely “shadows” that “reel” helplessly against the Beast’s inexorable approach.
I sit for hours with the poem, which means sitting with the possibility that the human experiment has failed. Have we indeed lost forever any sensitive attunement between what is human and what is wild, between falconer and falcon? Is everything flying apart and breaking down? Was human innocence nothing more than a “ceremony,” a superficial performance now drowned once and for all by the bloody reality of our lust for violence and power? Are we in the process of experiencing what some students of history consider the collapse of our civilization?
Just as I turn to the poets, so, also, I turn to Scripture. Less than four weeks from now, on the First Sunday of Advent, Christians will hear Jesus speak about his second coming – that last, great day sometime in the future when everything will be gathered up in love, when all that is broken will be healed, all that is estranged will be reconciled and forgiven, and the Lord of life will return at last to reign in glory.
This is the Second Coming that Yeats called into searing question even before human beings carried out and endured the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust, even before all the other instances of genocide and injustice enacted in the hundred-plus years that have passed since Yeats wrote this masterpiece of a poem. Beset by despair, do we sense already the hot breath of the Beast against our neck?
Yet to followers of Jesus, the promised Second Coming does not overlook or minimize the reality of social and ecological breakdown caused either by random forces or by human ignorance, malice, or greed. Biblical texts about the Second Coming sound a tragic note, for Jesus is bracingly realistic about the human condition. In several Gospel passages he foretells “wars and rumors of wars” (Mark 13:7); in mythic terms he speaks of earthquakes, famines, and persecution; he describes “distress among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Luke 21:25-26).
As we head to Election Day and beyond, I hear three messages in passages about the Second Coming that give me strength. The first is: Don’t be surprised by suffering. Jesus warned of social breakdown and conflict. He anticipated natural and even cosmic disruption. Don’t be surprised by suffering, these texts remind us. Don’t take your suffering or the world’s suffering to mean that God is powerless, doesn’t care, or has abandoned us. Everything we experience is held within the loving gaze – indeed, within the embrace – of a just and merciful God. So, don’t be surprised.
A second message: Don’t be afraid. Although many people “will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world,” we should take heart. “Now when these things begin to take place,” says Jesus, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:28). “Stand up!” he says. “Raise your heads!” What bracing words to hear when we may feel like curling up in a ball or ducking our head under a pillow! It’s easy to feel hopeless about ecological collapse and climate change, easy to feel overwhelmed amidst a society being rent asunder. What can I possibly do? We may say to ourselves. What difference can I possibly make? But here comes Jesus, telling us to stand up and not be afraid. Our redemption is drawing near. He is very close (Luke 21:27).
And here comes message number three: Don’t fall asleep. Stay awake, says Jesus. “Be alert at all times” (Luke 21:36). Look for the small but telling signs that God is among us, bringing forth something new. Just as the branch of a fig tree becomes tender and puts forth its first, soft leaves, assuring us that summer’s abundance is near, so Jesus urges us to notice that even amidst chaos, violence, and endings, God’s kingdom (kindom) is drawing near. Even as some things collapse and fall away, something beautiful and new is being born.
As I hear it, Jesus is calling us to stand up and take part in that birth – the birth of a new community, the birth of a new society that lives more lightly on God’s good Earth and treats human beings and our fellow creatures with reverence, compassion, and respect. Here we are, in this perilous time, being called to stand up, raise our heads, and bear witness in word and deed to God’s never-failing love, which embraces the whole creation.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 19B)
September 15, 2024
Delivered by the Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at the closing Eucharist for “Spiritual Resilience in Days of Trouble,” a conference and retreat for Provinces IV & V, held in Nazareth, KY
Isaiah 35:1-7, 10Proverbs 1:20-33Psalm 19Mark 8:27-38
Who are you? The ecological self
We’ve spent the last few days praying and reflecting on how God speaks to us in and through the natural world. On this Sunday morning in the very center of Creation Season, I wonder which of today’s readings most quicken your heart.
Maybe it’s the opening Song of Praise from Isaiah, where the prophet holds up a vision of the wilderness rejoicing and the dry land bursting into life, bursting into song. The God we love promises to come in glory, and although all of us shiver in fear sometimes when we consider what lies ahead as the Earth continues to warm and as eco-systems tremble on the brink of collapse, the poetry of Isaiah dares to set before us a future shaped by hope: we place our trust in a God who is with us and who comes to heal and save not only human communities but also the whole of God’s Creation. Because we are eager to align our actions with that longed-for future, we join the prophet in saying, “Strengthen the weary hands, and make firm the feeble knees… Be strong, do not fear!” Our liberating, life-giving God is among us and will give us strength day by day to serve the divine love that encompasses every person, every creature, every leaf and tree, every grain of sand. Like all the prophets, Isaiah reminds us that God planted within us an unshakable longing for justice, for kindness, for the Earth to be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14). That’s the future the prophets hope for, and when that God-fueled hope awakens within us, we feel God’s energy. We are pulled off the sidelines and into the holy struggle to save everything we can as we work to build the more beautiful world that we long for.
The low wall of a gazebo served as our altar. During the service we gazed at the trees and felt the breeze.Or maybe it’s the passage from Proverbs that speaks to you, with its poignant image of divine Wisdom as a woman wandering the streets and public squares. She is crying out in search of someone who will listen to her counsel. She is warning that panic and anguish will be upon us if the wayward and the complacent refuse to listen, refuse to change course (Proverbs 1:20-33). I’m guessing that today’s prophets feel a lot like that – I know I sure do, and maybe you do, too – for scientists tell us that we have only a short span of time in which to change direction, to make a swift and just transition to clean renewable energy like sun and wind, and to avert the most catastrophic level of climate change. The reading from Proverbs is a piercing call to repentance for the sake of God’s Creation.
Or maybe you want to linger on Psalm 19, with its breathtaking opening line: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows [God’s] handiwork.” Those words are uttered by someone whose eyes are open to the presence of God in the living world, and we know what that’s like: we’ve spent time reflecting on how we meet the living Christ not only in the pages of Scripture, but also in the natural world. We’ve felt the quiet joy that can come upon us as we roam the gardens and trails of this place, as we listen for God in the wind and the birds, as we lift our eyes to gaze at an expanse of trees or look down to examine the smallest twig. And I haven’t even mentioned the moon and the bats and the fire! Psalm 19 reminds us that the crucified and risen Christ is at every moment giving himself to us in and as the living world around us.
All these passages reward contemplation, but it’s the Gospel passage that caught my attention. It begins with Jesus asking his disciples an easy question, “Who do people say that I am?” The answers come quickly – oh, some say you’re John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the prophets. Then Jesus sharpens the question: “But who do you say that I am?” There’s nothing like a good question to put us on the spot and shake us awake! Peter, like a good student, supplies what is presumably the correct answer: “You are the Messiah.” Yet it quickly becomes clear that Peter has no idea what that means. He doesn’t understand that Jesus is a Messiah who freely shares in our suffering and death, who endures humiliation and rejection, and who calls us to take up our cross and follow.
My point is that Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” can’t be answered glibly. We’re all on a journey to discovering who Jesus really is, who God really it. Even a supposedly “correct” answer must be held lightly and patiently re-examined. Some questions are best kept open and lived into. As poet Rainer Maria Rilke famously advised in his Letters to a Young Poet, “Try to love the questions themselves… The point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.”1
That reminds me of how Francis of Assisi prayed. He spent most of his life outdoors, and I learned somewhere that when he prayed, he simply opened himself to God’s presence and contemplated two questions, “Who are you? And who am I?” Holding those questions changed him: he began to experience himself as interpenetrated with the rest of God’s Creation, so that eventually he could speak of Brother Sun, Sister Moon, Brother Wind and Air, Sister Water, Brother Fire, Sister Earth, our Mother. Francis came to experience himself as kin with everything – he didn’t imagine that human beings were separate from the rest of the world that God created, much less that humans were “above” or “better than” the other creatures that God cherishes, or that we had any right to dominate or oppress them.
We began the retreat with a contemplative meditation on weeds, leaves, and wild flowers.So, let’s do what Francis did – let’s ask Jesus the same question that he asks us, “Jesus, who do you say that I am? Who am I, in your eyes?” We could explore who we are by considering passages from Scripture, but instead I suggest we take a moment to pray with a guided meditation from Rooted and Rising.2 Who are you? That’s a great question to ask as we close out this retreat.
If you like, feel free to close your eyes. I invite you to bring awareness to your body and to notice that as you breathe in, you’re taking in oxygen, which is released by trees and all green-growing things. As you breathe out, you exhale carbon dioxide, which in turn is being taken up by trees. Breath by breath, you are exchanging the elements of life with plants. . . As you follow your breath, let yourself feel your connection to the air, and to trees, the grass, and everything green.Now let yourself feel the weight of your body in the chair…. Notice your connection to the earth. You are as solid as the earth, and made from the same atoms of carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen that make up the earth. To the earth, in the end, your body will return – earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust. . . As you feel the weight of your body in the chair, feel your kinship with the earth.Now let yourself sense the inner motions within your body…. Maybe you’re aware of gurgling in your belly or the throb of your beating heart. Maybe you sense the circulation of blood as it moves through your body. Most of your bodyweight comes from water, just as most of our planet’s surface is made of water. Your blood is mostly water, and the saltwater content of your blood’s plasma is the same as the saltwater content of the sea. It’s as if within your body you were carrying rivers, lakes, and the ocean. Let yourself savor your body’s kinship with all fresh waters and with the sea.Now scan your body. Get a sense of your body as a whole. We’ve considered how your breathing connects you to the air and to plants. . . how you’re your body connects you to the earth. . . how the waters inside your body connect you to the planet’s waters and seas. . . Now consider this: all the elements that make up your body come from stars that exploded millions of years ago. . . Your body is made of the same elements – the carbon and nitrogen – that circulated through all the creatures that have ever lived, far into the distant past, and that will circulate through any beings that inhabit the world far into the distant future.Our bodies connect us to the air and to plants, to the earth, to waters and the sea, to the animals, and to the stars. Let yourself appreciate the goodness of the amazing body that God has given you and feel your kinship with the whole creation. Amen.
Thanks for sharing in this. Did you feel it? Did you glimpse your intimate connection to our brother-sister beings and to the Source of life itself? Joanna Macy calls this the “ecological self,”3 the self with a wide-open identity who knows we are part of the living body of Earth and of all that is. Joanna Macy may be Buddhist, but her deep insight into the nature of things shouldn’t surprise Christians. If we asked Jesus, “Who do you say that I am?”, I wonder if he’d say: “You are members of my body, you are members of each other, you are beloved members of the living world that I create, redeem, and sustain. You are never separated from me.”
That’s why he gave us the sacrament of Holy Communion, a core practice to sustain us and to strengthen our resilience and resolve to take bold climate action and join in the great work of building Beloved Community and healing God’s Creation. In a few moments, we will gather at this holy table so that everything in and around us can be lifted up and blessed – not only the bread and the wine, but also we ourselves and the whole creation. When the celebrant lifts up the bread and wine, all of Creation is lifted up. When the celebrant blesses the bread and wine, all of Creation is blessed. Christ meets us in the bread and wine, and once again God gives God’s self to us through the natural world. When we stretch out our hands to receive the bread, we take in what is natural and we take in Christ.
In the strength of the blessed and broken bread and of the blessed and poured-out wine, we dare to hope that we humans will respond with grateful hearts and come to treat the living world not as an object to exploit, but as a gift to receive, as something perishable and precious, utterly loved by God. We dare to hope that we will remember who we are and become at last who we were meant to be, a blessing on the earth.
After the post-communion prayer, we will hold a simple ceremony of commissioning as we bless each other on our way.
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1. Rainer Maria Rilke, “I want to beg you… to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer,” in Letters to a Young Poet, revised, transl. M.D. Herter Norton (NY: WW Norton & Company, 1934, 1962, 1954), 34-35.
2. Leah Schade and Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, ed., “Kinship with Creation,” Rooted and Rising: Voices of Courage in a ClimateCrisis (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019), 76-77.
3. Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self, foreword by Thich Nhat Hanh (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1991) and Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone, Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2012). See also the work of Thomas Berry, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and Brian Swimme.
Imagine watching a wave of commitment to honor God’s Creation sweep across The Episcopal Church. It would be a thrill, right? That’s what it’s like for me, anyway, as I note that fifty dioceses – almost half the dioceses in our Church – have now authorized the 2024 edition of Season of Creation: A Celebration Guide for Episcopal Parishes.
Dioceses that authorized the 2024 Season of Creation worship guide as of August 29, 2024. Graphic by John Buterbaugh from the Diocese of Central New York.
On June 20, when the worship guide was officially released, Episcopal News Service reported that 42 dioceses had approved it for use during this year’s Season of Creation (Sept. 1-Oct. 4). Over the summer, eight more dioceses authorized it, too:
The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Reddall, Diocese of Arizona
The Rt. Rev. Paula E. Clark, Diocese of Chicago
The Rt. Rev. Robert Skirving, Diocese of East Carolina
The Rt. Rev. John H. Taylor, Diocese of Los Angeles
The Rt. Rev. Marty Stebbins, Diocese of Montana
The Rt. Rev. Barry L. Beisner, Missionary Diocese of Navajoland
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Jonathan H. Folts, Diocese of South Dakota
The Rt. Rev. Dr. Shannon MacVean-Brown, Diocese of Vermont
It’s been a joy to see how an effort I began two years ago with my gifted colleague the Rev. John Elliott Lein has borne fruit! The first version (2022) of our worship guide was authorized by a handful of dioceses; last year’s version (2023) was endorsed by 28 dioceses; this year, a full 50 dioceses have stepped forward.
“Earth Icon” is based on Andrei Rublev’s icon, “The Trinity” (also known as “The Hospitality of Abraham”). Watercolor and gold leaf, copyright 2022 Edith Adams Allison. Used with permission.
Not only that – delegates at the Episcopal Church’s 81st General Convention voted this summer to pass a resolution that supports the adoption of an ecumenical Feast Day of Creation in our liturgical calendar. This resolution sprang from the ecumenical summit held in Assisi last spring, where, as part of the Anglican delegation, I learned about this mighty effort to incorporate an ecumenical Feast of Creation into the lectionary of Western Churches. I helped to draft the resolution, and I live in hope that progress on its fulfillment will be announced next year, when Churches around the world mark the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE.
In this perilous era of climbing heat, massive floods, and widespread drought, when the web of life is faltering and Americans are locked in a razor-thin contest between Presidential candidates with wildly diverging views on climate change, environmental justice, and what it means to be a caring, responsible human being, I give thanks that our Church is proclaiming with fresh energy the fullness of our salvation in Christ, which includes God’s whole Creation.
May our prayers for Earth and all her communities be strong, and may they ignite resolute, effective, concerted action – including voting – to protect and heal the world that God entrusted to our care.
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The new 2024 Liturgical Guide may be reviewed and downloaded here: https://newcreationliturgies.org/season. Bishops may authorize the materials all the way to Sept. 1. The names of endorsing dioceses listed on the pdf file will be updated until Sept. 1.
To authorize, contact season@newcreationliturgies.org.
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When does a funeral become an act of resistance? When we come together to mourn everything we’ve lost because of a rapidly changing climate. When we dare to disclose how much sorrow and dread we feel every day as we watch the living world being destroyed. When we use the power of ritual to pull us out of fear and isolation into solidarity, courage, and the resolve to act. When our broken hearts impel us not only to grieve in private but also to protest in public.
Photo credit: Ken Schles
On July 8, two hundred people gathered on a sultry summer morning at the Manhattan headquarters of Citigroup, the largest funder of fossil fuel expansion to the tune of $396 billion in the last eight years alone. Our memorial service was organized by ThirdAct.org and one of a series of nonviolent direct actions being carried out this summer to protest Wall Street’s ongoing financing of climate chaos.
This was perhaps the most moving and memorable climate protest I’ve ever attended or helped to lead. Unlike the multitude of climate rallies whose mood is almost predictably defiant, this one was somber. After listening to speakers, of which I was one, we walked in slow procession around the massive, glass-fronted headquarters of Citigroup, led by a bagpiper. The stream of mourners included eight people dressed in sackcloth and ashes, walking single file and wearing signs such as “Ocean acidification,” “Hurricanes,” “Heat domes,” “Bleached coral.” When we reached the area in front of the building, mourners transformed the plaza into a cemetery, setting up tombstones that named individuals killed by heat and other climate stressors. Many people lay down as if dead, while others outlined their bodies in chalk: this wasn’t just a mass death, this was a crime scene. Instead of exchanging familiar chants (What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!), we kept silence and listened to bagpipes and to the wail of a single voice, a woman’s anguished keening – “Can you hear the Earth? She is crying. She is dying.”
When the gong was sounded three times, the people risking arrest crowded the doors of Citibank, lying down or locking arms. Forty-six people, including Bill McKibben, were arrested, adding to the hundreds already arrested this summer in a variety of direct actions that, whether playful or solemn, family-friendly or intense, aim to disrupt and defy the ongoing corporate greed that drives fossil fuel expansion.
What strikes me now, looking back, is that actions like these remind me how to live well in a perilous time: we find friends, we link arms, we open our hearts, we stand with the trees, we stand with the suffering, we stand with the poor, we pray for the dead, and, yes, we fight like hell for the living.
I was the closing speaker before the procession began. Here is what I said:
I know it’s hot – but let’s pause for a moment to appreciate the living world around us, to notice the gift of sun and sky overheard, to notice the trees and green-growing things which give us oxygen that fills our lungs and with whom we exchange the elements of life as we breathe in and out. Let’s notice the good Earth beneath our feet, supporting our every step.
We are here today to stand up for life and we are not alone. We breathe and speak and march in the company – and with the support – of all the creatures and elements with whom we share this planet. We affirm our kinship with them, our interdependence, our mutual belonging.
With every religious tradition and with people of faith and good will everywhere, we renew our insistence that the Earth is holy and that it was given to us to cherish and protect, not to destroy.
Some of us are here because we’re frightened. Big banks like Citibank which finance fossil fuels and fossil fuel expansion are pushing the planet to record levels of heat, causing massive droughts, floods, monster hurricanes, wildfires. It is frighteningly clear that unless we change course fast, we won’t be able to leave our children and our children’s children a habitable world.
Some of us are here because we’re sad. Big banks like Citibank which fund fossil fuels are unraveling the web of life before our eyes, and we weep to acknowledge what we have lost and may soon lose, from coral reefs and glaciers to predictable seasons and moderate weather.
Some of us are here because we’re angry. We’re morally outraged when big banks like Citibank continue to pour money into building new pipelines and new fracking wells, although climate scientists around the world and organizations like the International Energy Agency and the United Nations have called for an end to any fossil fuel expansion. We’re outraged when big banks like Citibank continue to exploit and pollute frontline communities and to devastate the lives of Brown, Black, and Indigenous people.
Fear, sorrow, anger may have brought us here. But above all, we’re here because we love. We love this beautiful Earth. We love its creatures. We love each other. We love our children. The spirit of love that connects us to each other and to the land compels us to call upon Citibank: Quit propping up fossil fuels! Quit funding climate chaos! Invest instead in clean energy, and climate resilience, and healthy communities!
I was a parish priest for 25 years, and I’ve officiated at many funerals. I’ve prayed over, and laid to rest, the bodies of young and old. Today we’re going to participate in a funeral for the world we love. That breaks my heart. And it puts steel in my spine. I stand with you to proclaim that life, not death, will have the last word – to proclaim that love, not hatred or indifference, will have the last word. I stand with you to say that together we will fight for a better future.
We gather not only with fear, sorrow, and anger, but also with the fierceness of love, as we demand that Citibank quit funding dirty oil, gas, and coal, and turn with us toward life.
People of faith and good will cry out: Let it be known. Let it be known. The Earth is sacred, and we won’t stand idly by and let it be destroyed.
ThirdAct.org, the community of climate and democracy activists over 60 that was founded by Bill McKibben, was the lead organizer of this event and produced an excellent two-minute video.
Rev. Margaret is quoted in Common Dreams, “Elders Arrested Protesting Citibank Funding of Planet’s Destruction” (July 8, 2024), saying: “Citibank is destroying the world that God loved into being and entrusted to our care. At this decisive moment in history, we teeter on the brink of climate chaos. Now is the time for Citibank to choose life and to stop financing fossil fuels.” The article includes photos and a good short video.
Is our society like the prodigal son, wandering far in a land that is waste? It sure feels that way. So how sweet it is to reach the story’s next line, its turning point: “When he came to himself…” (Luke 15:17). The young man comes to himself, he turns, and he starts to travel home. That’s such a great line: “He came to himself.” It’s as if he began to wake up, he began to break through the spell, he remembered who he was: someone created to love himself and his neighbor, to love the natural world, to love God. When we come to ourselves, we begin to make the journey home to God. Our basic nature, our truest nature, is found as we turn and head toward God, our divine Father and Mother, the lover of our souls and the source of all life.
What would it look like if we, as a society, “came to ourselves”? Maybe it would mean turning away from the illusion that we are separate from each other and must go it alone. Maybe it would mean taking hold of the truth that we belong to each other, that we belong to the Earth that sustains everything that lives, that we are made for connection and community. I can think of no more beautiful way to spend one’s life than to take part in what leaders like Joanna Macy and David C. Korten call the Great Turning, the epic transition from a deathly society to one that fosters life. That’s what philosopher Thomas Berry called the Great Work: our wholehearted effort to create a more just and sustainable world. And that’s what Archbishop Desmond Tutu called the “supreme work” of Jesus Christ: to reconcile us to God and to each other and to the whole of God’s Creation.4
In a time of such divisiveness and uncertainty, it’s powerful to remember that God loves it when we come to ourselves and begin the journey home to God. God gets happy when we make that turn, even if we’ve still got a long way to go. That’s what we see in the next part of the parable: The father, who seems to have been waiting eagerly for his son’s return, catches sight of him while he is “still far off.” “Filled with compassion” (Luke 15:20), he runs out to greet him. It’s completely undignified, this decisive moment when the old man hikes his robe above his shins and runs, breathing hard, sandals slapping and forehead perspiring, until he reaches his son and catches him up in his arms.
That moment of reunion is the one that Rembrandt portrays. It is a wordless moment, a moment of enormous stillness, in which the gentle arms of the father embrace the repentant son and draw him close. Can you imagine those kind hands on your shoulders? Can you imagine your face sheltered in the shadow of that warm red cloak, resting against the father’s loving heart? Our souls long for that experience of acceptance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We may need to gaze at that scene for a long time until we can really take it in.
The repentant son tries to launch into his long apology, but the father will have none of it. He wants to throw a party. It’s all about joy – the father’s joy and the joy of the repentant son. Meanwhile, in the painting, the elder son, who resents his young and dissolute brother, stands in the shadows. He feels left out of the party, when – hey! – he was the brother who did everything right! He followed the rules! It’s not fair! But he, too, is deeply loved and invited to the table to share in the joy.
“My son,” says the father to the angry elder son, “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31). “Come home,” the father is saying. “I have always loved you, and my love for your brother in no way diminishes my love for you.”
That’s the scandal of the father’s love – and the scandal of the Eucharist, as well – for everyone is welcome to the feast, prodigal and respectable alike, all of us equally needing and equally embraced by the unconditional love of God. It’s a meal that can transform our consciousness and shift the axis of the self, so that we discover our center, our true self, in the unmerited and boundless love of God.
So – as a Celtic prayer puts it – come to the table of Christ, “you who feel weak and unworthy, you who come often and you who have stayed away. Come, you who love him and you who wish you could. Come, you who are hungry for friendship or forgiveness. Come, you who long for meaning or a just world.”5
Come. The Father is waiting for you, arms outstretched.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
1. Ronald H. Love, “Are we willing to throw a feast?”, SermonSuite.
2. Henri J.M Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Meditation on Fathers, Brothers, and Sons (NY: Doubleday, 1992).
3. The Book of Common Prayer (The Seabury Press, 1979), 450.
4. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Foreword, The Green Bible, New Revised Standard Version (New York: HarperOne, HarperCollins, 2008), I-14
5. Ray Simpson, Healing the Land: Natural Seasons, Sacraments, and Special Services, The Celtic Prayer Book, Volume 3 (Suffolk, England: Kevin Mayhew, 2004), 154, based on a prayer of the Iona Community. 
Is our society like the prodigal son, wandering far in a land that is waste? It sure feels that way. So how sweet it is to reach the story’s next line, its turning point: “When he came to himself…” (Luke 15:17). The young man comes to himself, he turns, and he starts to travel home. That’s such a great line: “He came to himself.” It’s as if he began to wake up, he began to break through the spell, he remembered who he was: someone created to love himself and his neighbor, to love the natural world, to love God. When we come to ourselves, we begin to make the journey home to God. Our basic nature, our truest nature, is found as we turn and head toward God, our divine Father and Mother, the lover of our souls and the source of all life.
What would it look like if we, as a society, “came to ourselves”? Maybe it would mean turning away from the illusion that we are separate from each other and must go it alone. Maybe it would mean taking hold of the truth that we belong to each other, that we belong to the Earth that sustains everything that lives, that we are made for connection and community. I can think of no more beautiful way to spend one’s life than to take part in what leaders like Joanna Macy and David C. Korten call the Great Turning, the epic transition from a deathly society to one that fosters life. That’s what philosopher Thomas Berry called the Great Work: our wholehearted effort to create a more just and sustainable world. And that’s what Archbishop Desmond Tutu called the “supreme work” of Jesus Christ: to reconcile us to God and to each other and to the whole of God’s Creation.4
In a time of such divisiveness and uncertainty, it’s powerful to remember that God loves it when we come to ourselves and begin the journey home to God. God gets happy when we make that turn, even if we’ve still got a long way to go. That’s what we see in the next part of the parable: The father, who seems to have been waiting eagerly for his son’s return, catches sight of him while he is “still far off.” “Filled with compassion” (Luke 15:20), he runs out to greet him. It’s completely undignified, this decisive moment when the old man hikes his robe above his shins and runs, breathing hard, sandals slapping and forehead perspiring, until he reaches his son and catches him up in his arms.
That moment of reunion is the one that Rembrandt portrays. It is a wordless moment, a moment of enormous stillness, in which the gentle arms of the father embrace the repentant son and draw him close. Can you imagine those kind hands on your shoulders? Can you imagine your face sheltered in the shadow of that warm red cloak, resting against the father’s loving heart? Our souls long for that experience of acceptance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. We may need to gaze at that scene for a long time until we can really take it in.
The repentant son tries to launch into his long apology, but the father will have none of it. He wants to throw a party. It’s all about joy – the father’s joy and the joy of the repentant son. Meanwhile, in the painting, the elder son, who resents his young and dissolute brother, stands in the shadows. He feels left out of the party, when – hey! – he was the brother who did everything right! He followed the rules! It’s not fair! But he, too, is deeply loved and invited to the table to share in the joy.
“My son,” says the father to the angry elder son, “you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours” (Luke 15:31). “Come home,” the father is saying. “I have always loved you, and my love for your brother in no way diminishes my love for you.”
That’s the scandal of the father’s love – and the scandal of the Eucharist, as well – for everyone is welcome to the feast, prodigal and respectable alike, all of us equally needing and equally embraced by the unconditional love of God. It’s a meal that can transform our consciousness and shift the axis of the self, so that we discover our center, our true self, in the unmerited and boundless love of God.
So – as a Celtic prayer puts it – come to the table of Christ, “you who feel weak and unworthy, you who come often and you who have stayed away. Come, you who love him and you who wish you could. Come, you who are hungry for friendship or forgiveness. Come, you who long for meaning or a just world.”5
Come. The Father is waiting for you, arms outstretched.
______________________________________________________________________________________________________
1. Ronald H. Love, “Are we willing to throw a feast?”, SermonSuite.
2. Henri J.M Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Meditation on Fathers, Brothers, and Sons (NY: Doubleday, 1992).
3. The Book of Common Prayer (The Seabury Press, 1979), 450.
4. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Foreword, The Green Bible, New Revised Standard Version (New York: HarperOne, HarperCollins, 2008), I-14
5. Ray Simpson, Healing the Land: Natural Seasons, Sacraments, and Special Services, The Celtic Prayer Book, Volume 3 (Suffolk, England: Kevin Mayhew, 2004), 154, based on a prayer of the Iona Community. 
