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Homely Homilies

A collection of sermons and such written for my Homiletics class at School for Deacons. No actual parishioners were harmed in the giving of these sermons.

Saturday, May 14

Liturgical Sermon

The assignment here is basically to write a sermon that you could adapt to preach just about anywhere, at any time, making only a few changes to shoehorn the lectionary into it if needed. This is for when the Rector calls you at 7:00 a.m. and says you're doing the 8:00 a.m. service on your own. Good to have a Reserved Sermon to go with all that Reserved Sacrament.

The easiest kind of sermon to fit that bill is one which focuses on some aspect of the liturgy. I chose the General Confession, which of course means I'd better not get called to do a last-minute sermon during Easter.

We had to pick an appropriate gospel reading, and then find its Sunday, so I went with the second Sunday of Advent Year A, which has the John the Baptist reading.

As always, this is a preaching text, not an essay. The laws of punctuation do not apply here.

Isaiah 11:1-10
Romans 15:4
Matthew 3:1-12


I've owed my friend Judith a phone call for over a month now. There's no good reason why it hasn't happened; I get busy and I forget, basically.

It's been going on so long, though, that in my mind, it has become a THING. You know, a THING. A block between me and Judith - every time I look at something I bought on our trip to France, or see a dog that looks like hers, there's this little twinge in the back of my head. I have screwed up here, been a bad friend. And it's messing up not just my perception of our current relationship, it's coloring my memory of our past relationship, creating a distance that wasn't there before.

There's a word for that big block between us, which I picture as one of those huge anvils that Wile E. Coyote must have bought in bulk. That big, heavy thing is Sin. Ewww! Bad word!

It's hard to even talk seriously about sin sometimes. I want to draw it out to seeeee-iiiiin like the guys on TV. I want to whittle it down to something manageable, even mock-worthy.

But in today's gospel, we have this wild man compelling the people to REPENT, for the kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent. Another loaded word.

I think the hardest thing about REPENT is that it really works against the way we like to think of ourselves. We're basically good people, with a couple of bad habits that we might be able to knock out during Lent. Yeah, Advent is a penitential season, too, but I think Lent will probably work better with my schedule. It's so crazy around the holidays!

In a few minutes, we're going to get to the part of the service called the General Confession. Some of us will read it out of the prayerbook, others can say it from memory. No matter how we say it, chances are many of us stopped hearing the words at some point.

It starts:

Most merciful God,
we confess that we have sinned against you
in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done,
and by what we have left undone.

Most merciful God! I'm so happy that we start off that way!

One of my friends says that watching her two-year-old have his first major tantrum really gave her insight into the mind of God. Here's this small person, so consumed with emotion that he can't even speak, flailing about on the floor, while the one who could help him waits patiently for him to be in a condition to re-engage.

Wait! She's comparing us to two-year-olds?! BRATTY two-year-olds! We're not LIKE that.

Well, sin is defined as a separation from God, and isn't that what a lot of tantrums are about? Trying to work out that separation between parent and child?

God is merciful, and patient, even as we flail about and insist that it's not our fault, or cry out in frustration that we didn't get what we wanted, or become angry that someone else got it instead.

We confess that we have sinned against this merciful God in thought, word, and deed, and not just by doing the wrong things, but by not doing the right things.

Then we get more specific,

We have not loved you with our whole heart;
we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.

What I love about this prayer is that it just assumes that we're all going to have done things that fit into the above categories. And if maybe we did do ok at loving God with our whole heart this week, notice that there's no I in confession.

Ok, there is an I, but we still pray as WE, all of us, in this soup together. Your sins, my sins, the sins of that other guy are all the same. The details may be different, but it's all the same sin - not loving God with our whole heart, and not loving each other.

We are truly sorry and we humbly repent.

I really want another word for sorry. Not for in this prayer, but I want a word that I don't also use when I run into someone's cart at the supermarket. Because I can't guarantee that my sorry there doesn't actually mean 'get out of the diet coke aisle if you can't drive that thing!'

I just assume I always have some things for the not loving my neighbor part.

But sorry is what we have to work with, and at least here it is not an empty expression of vague regret. How do we know that? Because there's no way that a fake supermarket apology is going to be followed by humble repentance.

We humbly repent. Not, 'we say we're sorry but we're secretly thinking we were right' or 'I think this is a stupid rule anyway.' To repent is to turn towards God and walk towards him, which often means changing paths completely. All repentance comes out of humility, out of giving up the need to be right.

I go back to the idea of God as the patient father waiting for sense to return at the last part of the prayer.

For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in Your will, and walk in Your ways, to the glory of Your name. Amen

The end is like a coming-to, opening our eyes to a different way of being, a different kind of relationship. It's a re-aligning. Note that we ask that we may DELIGHT in God's will. Not slog along on the path, walking in his ways because someone says it's the right thing to do. Not giving up something grudgingly, but seeing clearly that God's will for us is the source of true joy, and following with a grateful heart

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Proper 17 Year B

forgot to post this one before

Deuteronomy 4:1-9
Ephesians 6:10-20
Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23

Proper 17 Year B

Do you like making lists? I do. I like listing all of the things I have to do, and it's really satisfying to check them off one by one as each task is finished. I think I would have made a great Pharisee.

Imagine how comforting it would be if you could look at a list of tasks every day and give yourself a grade on the God Scale. Wellll...let's see...I washed all the bronze kettles in the correct ritual manner, didn't touch anything that might defile me, and I said all of my prayers...ok, most of my prayers. I may have rushed through that last one. I guess I get a B for prayers today, but I still have a B+ average and that should be enough to get me into heaven, right?

Or, better yet, I did everything I was supposed to do today, and now I'm God's favorite person! Seriously, I'm all he ever talks about. The saints roll their eyes in boredom as he goes on and on about how great I am.

See, the easy first reading on today's gospel is, 'oh, those crazy Pharisees, with their rules and traditions and doctrine! I'm so glad I am not like them.'

Except, you know, when I am. Left to my own devices, I can easily slip into observing the letter of the law, blindly following ritual and tradition. And maybe tut-tuting at those who disregard the CORRECT way to hold the chalice at the altar, as it was taught to me.

I do this because I need to keep God in his cage, where I can control him. If I have a list of small actions I can do which please God, whether it's a magic way of washing things, or wearing specific jewelry or colors, or lighting candles in a certain place at a certain time with certain specific prayers, then I take away a bit of his power. Reducing God to a petty tyrant who is easily appeased by outward form makes Him into something familiar. I've worked for this kind of boss before, and I know how to coast by.

Jesus isn't going to let us get away with this, of course, saying,

'This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.'

Then he lists the REAL sins that defile a person, none of which involve doing or not doing pretty things to show God how much we love him. Each word is, for someone in this congregation, a cause to cringe, to feel that inward contraction of recognition and shame.

Of course, even as I say that, my first reaction is to go back to the list of sins and try to see how many of them I have to answer for, and once I do that I will probably try to figure out where that ranks me among the congregation as a whole. I suspect that being a Pharisee involved a lot of that sort of thing. If you're giving yourself a Holiness Grade, it's a good bet that you're giving one to everyone else, too.

Do you see how quickly that sort of thing leads us away from being a community of believers and closer to being a Junior High School gym class? Can you be in community with people you're looking down on? Can you build trust and fellowship in that kind of environment?

Hint: the answer is...no.

What's going to happen if we let God out of the cage, though? What if we take away his job as Chief Handwashing Inspector and let him reveal himself to us in his fullness?

What if we step up and admit that our sins are real and serious? What if we - stay with me here - admit that we are broken and in deeply in need of healing and grace? What kind of environment is that going to create here? What if you knew the secret, inner broken-ness of the person sitting five seats away from you, and that person knew your secret, inner broken-ness?

Assume that moving away and changing your name is not an option.

What would that look like for our common life together? See, here's my theory - the Pharisees were most concerned with how they treated God, with gaining God's favor. Jesus is telling us that the way that we are with each other is what matters. When we stop worrying about whose bronze kettles are clean and start trying to uphold one another, we do God's work, and we encounter the risen Christ. God blesses us through other people. And that can't happen if we're using our own petty rules to keep us separate.

Try letting God out of the cage just a little bit this week. Ask God to take away some of your misguided ideas about who he is and what he wants. Try to see people the way that God sees them. Let him soften your eyes and your heart.

Try letting yourself out of the cage a bit this week, too. In fact, start at coffee hour. Here, let me help you get the obvious discussions out of the way.

My, the price of gas is high.
I can't wait for the kids to be back in school.
The flowers today were lovely!
Yes, I think you should have another donut.
How about those [fill in sports team].

See, all the small talk has been used up, so now there's nothing to do but be real. Sit down with someone and talk about what is really scaring you right now, or what is really inspiring you right now. Talk about your hopes and plans. Talk about - talk about where you see God moving in your life. Talk about things you're struggling with as you try to follow Jesus.

THAT is what we're here for. We're not here to make sure that everyone kneels when they are supposed to kneel and stands when they are supposed to stand, we are here because we have been told that when we gather in Christ's name, he is among us. And that there is healing and wholeness and joy in his presence. Let him out of the cage!

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