It Still Hurts, God: A Narrative Prayer

About 22 years ago, someone I trusted and admired turned on me due to my sexuality. He went so far as to suggest that my relationship with his teenage daughter (I was still a teenager too) was inappropriate. He made it clear that I had no business working with kids and cost me the first job I loved by outing me to the church where I was associate youth director. I always suspected he did this out of fear because he intuited that his daughter was struggling with her own sexual self understanding. Nevertheless, his betrayal created a pain in my life that would be reinforced by my internalization of his and other's homophobic ideas. It would be years before I would allow myself to be alone with a child because of the fear someone else might accuse me of something awful. When I was finally able to disentangle that pain from my pain with the church (which included 7 years of never going to church but still feeling a deep faith and sense of call), I tried my best to move forward from the fear and pain. But it would still be many more years before I could imagine working with children. Even as I began my career as a chaplain, I felt timid and fearful about being with children. At this point, I've been a pediatric chaplain for over 8 years living out God's calling and I still take extra measures to prevent even the possibility of someone making a false accusation. Will I ever heal from that experience? I don't know. But I do know that the man who betrayed my trust has changed his stance on homosexuality (thanks to a whim to look him up on Facebook). In fact, he retired from his professorship some years ago and is now an Episcopal priest posting things about love and growing in faith on his Facebook. This seems hopeful to me. But as the recipient of his fearful slander years ago, it strikes me how easy his path past that moment seems compared to how painful mine still is. Holy One, what is true justice? Please release me from the bonds of shame and fear. Amen.

Peace for What?

Peace for What? <–- audio file of sermon. A sermon based upon John 20:19-31

Good morning. First off, let me go ahead and acknowledge that you might have noticed something different about me today. Is it new glasses? No. Perhaps a new outfit? No. The answer is I shaved my head 2 days ago at a charity event raising money for and awareness of childhood cancers. Some of you know that I do this every year and it’s always a wonderful event. Actually, the child we honored at the event was in the hospital and unable to attend. But like I said, it was still a wonderful occasion and such a great cause.

And just so you know, it is okay to ask me questions about it. It is okay to stare. And if you ask, I’ll even let you rub my head. But when you look at my head, please remember all those who struggle with cancer and need our support and then say a prayer for them.

Okay, now back to the task at hand. What do we make of these disciples and of good ole doubting Thomas? This is a story that a week and a half ago, I was going to preach pretty much the same thing we usually do. I thought we were going to look at the struggle between intuition and fact and of the different ways of knowing. I thought we might focus on how Christ comes to us no matter what our needs are so we need not vilify Thomas for being slow to believe.

But then Sunday night our televisions, radios, Facebook pages, and text messages starting buzzing with news that the President would speak. Soon the word came out that Osama Bin Laden was dead. And from that point forward broke a frenzy of praise, sorrow, questions, debate, and doubt. And somewhere in all this, a few people paused to ask, “what should the Christian response be?”

What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who apparently has masterminded the deaths of thousands of innocent lives? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who struck fear in the hearts of so many? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who was also a husband, father, grandfather, brother, and someone’s child? What should the Christian response be to the death of a man who had become so consumed by hate and fear that he could not see the humanity in others?

Sisters and brothers, I’m not going down a road toward telling you what you should believe politically or think about Osama Bin Laden. But I am going down a road that points to what happens when we live behind locked doors.

Let’s take another look at this passage. The passage begins, “When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’”

See, when we think about this passage in time, Jesus had just been crucified and died. That very morning Mary and Mary had discovered the empty tomb. Jesus had appeared to some of them on the road and they were sharing the news. But the general feeling amongst all of them was fear. They were afraid for their lives and afraid for their futures. They closed themselves off and locked the door. But Christ comes through the barriers and says, “Peace be with you.”

Later in the passage, we have the same disciples only this time Thomas is also there and he has not believed that Jesus was truly resurrected. The passage reads, “A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”

Here again we have the closed doors that are presumably locked. Even a week later, the disciples are hiding out rather than being out and about. And Jesus comes through the barriers to once again pronounce, “Peace be with you.”

So, what do we make of this? It would be easy to speed on past these verses and get to the story of Thomas’ disbelief. But I don’t think these verses are here by accident and I don’t think John went to the trouble of noting the closed doors if it weren’t an issue for us to learn from.

First of all I think we need to have grace and compassion in our hearts just as Christ did when we look at this story otherwise we get caught up in judgment. These people were scared. Jesus had been their companion and champion. They believed he was going to restore justice in the land. They hadn’t yet realized his justice would be of a more far reaching kind. So in their fear, they retreated to a home and hid out.

But Jesus came in and didn’t speak harsh words or judgment. He wanted them to be at ease and to release their fear. He greeted them with a wish and hope for peace in their lives. Christ wants them to not fear or to feel worse for their struggle. He wanted them to heal. His words were about understanding their experience and knowing that more than anything, they needed to let go of the fear and receive peace and the hope that springs from it.

This is truly an amazing model for our lives. It is an orientation toward people that begins with saying, “I want to know and understand you and your needs.” To have a starting place of grace and compassion in our hearts is a starting point of love rather than assessing, judging, categorizing, or any of the other countless ways we sum people up without first seeking to understand them and their experience.

When we are scared and either literally or metaphorically close ourselves off, what would it be like if someone who loves us came on in and spoke love and peace into our hearts, minds, and spirits? How would we react if that person looked at us with eyes of compassion that told us that our experiences and feelings are safe with them?

And looking outside of ourselves, what if we were the person who could be that voice of peace, love, and healing for the one who has walled themselves off? When we’re dealing with the person who lashes out at us, what if our starting place was that of looking into how someone got so overrun by fear rather than lashing back at them? What if our priority was to truly know and understand people and their experiences instead of quickly assessing what category they fit into?

Now coming back to where I started with the death of Bin Laden, I’m not saying that there isn’t a time to make people stand accountable for their crimes or that understanding why someone is fearful is an excuse for the way they may have hurt others. There is a time for that accountable justice. There is even a time and a place for those categories like liar, cheater, greedy, selfish, terrorist, and murderer. Those classifications can help us as a society understand who has been hurt and how to exact justice. But those categories should never be a substitute for seeking to know and understand one another. That’s just not what the Christian life is about.

The Christian life is found in our second point today. Christ’s peace and calling are to fling open the doors and live out in the world as agents of love and healing. Jesus said, “Peace be with you” not only as a way to still their anxious spirits but to clear the path to move beyond the fear and anxiety. Next, he breathed the Holy Spirit upon them and told them to go out and spread the Good News and extend the gift of the forgiveness of sins to all. Their job, their calling was to be out in the world. They had received the Spirit and the Spirit should not and cannot be contained behind closed doors.

So what does this mean to us? Well, more often than not, our fears come out in more subtle ways that are not directly damaging to others but cause harm we will never see. We wall ourselves off from certain “kinds” of people or places thereby cutting of relationship after relationship after relationship. We convince ourselves that our fears are actually wise judgments or well thought out beliefs so we don’t need to bother with this person or that group. We tell ourselves that “they” are sinners or liars or too uneducated to understand or too far beyond help. We convince ourselves that we need not worry about them because they don’t want our help anyway. We use words terms like “crazy liberal” and “snooty” to feel better about not looking at them as a whole person.

But maybe that’s just the problem. The message of Christ doesn’t start with figuring out what category someone fits in to or how to fix them. It starts with understanding. Instead of seeing “they” and “them” we need to see a person struggling or striving or searching and look more deeply into how that journey has shaped their life. When our starting point is that of trying to understand someone, the issue of helping will then naturally into place. And you know what else? We often find that we were helped in some way too.

Now, I’m not saying living the Christian life means to blindly walk up to a person who’s fear may have built to the point of violence. But I am saying that it means unlocking the doors of fear we’ve constructed for ourselves. It means gently challenging the fears of others by seeking to understand them and being open so that they can understand us. It means challenging our own fears by trusting in the peace of Christ to overcome all.

Does all this sound too big? Well, it starts here. The church is the proving grounds for how we’ll live in the world. We start with the people around us and let go of seeing the labels and the judgments and the walls that keep us from seeing the whole person.

With Christ’s peace, we can let go of seeing the person who snubbed us when we needed a friend or the person who complains instead of helping or the person who boasts instead of listening. And when we let go of the categories of judgment we might understand that we weren’t actually snubbed because the other person was deeply depressed at the time. And those complaints are just a mask for loneliness. And the boasting was just a mask for fear. If we can let the walls we have between us down long enough to understand one another, we’ll cultivate such a deep community we’ll have the strength to go out into the world and do this with others.

And we already do. Look at the Kairos ministry. That’s an amazing example of understanding that leads to healing. And I could stand here and name ministries and individual actions in this congrigation that over and over reflect the triumph of Christ’s peace and the healing of understanding. But today’s passage reminds us that there’s always more to be done.

The Christian response to Bid Laden’s death is not as simple as cheering or grieving. We must seek to be thoughtful and compassionate, appreciating justice yet seeking greater reconciliation. Christ’s call in the world always begins with peace that breaks down fear. That peace leads to understanding. And understanding leads to healing.

Sisters and brothers, whatever fears we are hiding behind or keep locked away, Christ breaks in past them and says, “Peace be with you.” As we leave here today, let us be bold to hear and receive that peace. Let us be brave to understand and be understood. Let us be trusting in Christ’s calling and be agents of healing and reconciliation in the world. Amen.

A Daily Walk

A Daily Walk <-- Audio file of sermon based upon Revelation 1: 9-19

Good morning. I am glad to see so many of you here safe and sound from the weather this week. And let us continue to hold in prayer and help those who are still limited by ice, snow, and cold.

When I was last here, we had 3 straight weeks of sermons from biblical texts that are “apocalyptic” in nature. I use that word as a literary form, not it’s translation which simply means “revelation.” We looked at a text from Matthew, one from Revelation, and one from Daniel. We left Daniel by asking the question “what is faith?” and I invited us to mull that one over for a couple of weeks.

What is our faith individually and collectively? What does it mean? What difference does it make? Now, we’ve circled back around to the book of Revelation for one final apocalyptic text in this sermon series. And I hope we’re going to flesh out some of that question of faith. Well, let’s jump in and find out.

You see, until now we’ve looked in very intellectual terms at these texts. We’ve deconstructing where we’ve gotten overly emotional or interlaced them with other stories of our culture. But as we’ve said before, these apocalyptic texts are to “jar” us out of our everyday thinking. So, applying an intellectual lens to them is not the only tool we have. We are still faithful when we look in more emotional terms too. Many of these writings are truly for the purpose of creating an emotional response that impresses upon us a feeling or ideal that can’t be taken lightly. Nevertheless, that does not mean the stories have to be taken literally either. Herein lies the conflict that’s often hard to balance. And herein is our connection to faith.

As the book of Revelation opens, we are immediately told this book is to signify truths about God. As Oxford University professor of biblical studies Christopher C Rowland put it, this book “calls us to move through the letter to the spirit, not to become so bogged down in the minutiae of symbolic detail that we fail to experience these words as an organ for further imaginative insight into the ways of God and the world.” You see, we’re called to look at these texts not as a code to be cracked but as a story that reveals something, something that might be difficult for us to see or believe otherwise.

Jesus taught using parables or stories that could be applied to the way people lived. The book of Revelation tells a story using jarring images to weave together the truth of God’s ongoing relationship to the world, a relationship where justice and love triumph over institutional and individual sin. So applying one of Jesus’ parables to our lives might be as simple as saying “the good Samaritan helped someone he didn’t know because it was the right thing to do and so should I.” But applying the story told in Revelation is not as simple as applying it to a literal situation because it’s breaking across time, the Alpha and the Omega. It’s a “big picture” point of view where we can apply the truth to our faith but not exactly to the circumstances. Nonetheless, what parables and apocalyptic stories have in common is that they are both rich in meaning and keep telling us more and more if we keep looking into them.

But let’s get back to what the text says. The narrator is having a vision of Christ who is preparing him to write down what is to be revealed. From what John has already seen, we get the foreshadowing that he’s in for a wild and bumpy ride. But from the very beginning, John was asked for something he could do… to be a witness.

To be a witness and write down exactly what he sees, nothing more, nothing less may seem simple. But how often do we really live our lives that way? We anticipate, try to make sense, categorize information, and so on. It’s in our nature. Even now, I bet many of you are trying to figure out where I’m going with this. And ultimately, it’s John’s nature too because he did more than witness throughout this book. He interacted, asked questions, and did want to make sense of it. But all he was asked to do was witness.

So, I want to set forth witness as an essential part of faith. What we believe, how we define our theology, and all the different ways we’ve made intellectual sense of our faith are not really what’s fundamental. What’s fundamental is simply witnessing God.

Just as we saw last time we looked at Revelation, this book will go on to tell of a God of real power, creativity, and love that is beyond time. It weaves together the work of overthrowing the injustice in the world and beyond and offers assurance that God’s work will come to completion. It also shows how the restoring of creation as an ongoing work right now that’s hard to see from the inside out. But here we are, even today, on the inside looking at God’s work all around us. Can we see it? Do we stop to see it? Or are we too busy trying to make sense of it rather than witnessing it?


When we look at this text the next thing Jesus asked John to do was share what he witnessed. Now we may be tempted to look past just how deep this is. What we see is a book written by a man almost 2000 years ago that we don’t know, have no connection to, and quite frankly have a hard time understanding. But at that time, Jesus was asking him to write this letter to 7 churches. The Christian churches at this point were small and people knew people. They were in relationship with each other. This was not Jesus asking John to publish a book for folks unknown to him. This would be more like me asking you to write a letter to an elder in this church who has made a difference in your life. You know them, if not personally, you still know a good deal about them.

So the second thing I want to hold out about faith is that it’s relational. Faithfulness is in how we connect with others and share what we’ve witnessed. Sharing our experience of God is not only foundational to faith but foundational to the cultivation of a deeper faith. It is by seeing how God has been present to other people that we see God more fully in our own lives and vice versa.

A few weeks ago when putting the question of “what is faith?” out there, I quoted Hebrews 11 saying, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” I said that faith is that quiet utterance within us that tells us something more is going on here than what we can understand. Faith is that most foundational piece that calls to us and beyond us. It is not definable and it’s more emotional than intellectual. It is purely spiritual.

I raise this because I believe this is God’s message to us today, for our daily walk in life. The church as an institution has gotten very good at intellectual arguments about belief. We spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and money trying to out argue one another’s beliefs while missing that God is present with each of us. And our society spends a great deal of time trying to see who can out talk the next person. Politicians, news commentators, and corporate leaders want to secure their power by making sure we believe they are sharing an absolute truth. And meanwhile, congregations, communities, and individuals hurt and long for something of real substance that speaks to their very core… a faith full of “assurance of things hoped for.”

I’m not saying that we should not use our gifts of intellect. On the contrary, it is a gift and we should apply it with gratitude. But as a gift, we should honor God, the giver, by rooting it first in faith.

So, what do I mean by this? I mean that our primary concern should be with making sure God is glorified in what we believe, say, and do. As we do make statements of belief, we should ask if it makes our experience of faith richer. When we are in a public forum, we should seek to make our engagements spring from our faith. As Sara Little, professor emeritus at Union Theological Seminary said, “when belief is equated with religion or supersedes faith, when it becomes a control mechanism or a test for salvation, it is a prison rather than a home.” So we need to make sure our beliefs are not only supportive of our faith but of other’s faith too, lest we be creating a prison of limitations rather than a home of flourishing.

You see, just like Jesus did not want John bogged down in the symbolic details of his vision so he would not miss God, we too must not get bogged down in the minutiae of trying to outthink our faith or we might reduce our own faith and the faith of others. In similar fashion, last week the president of Louisville Seminary said last week that, “A good theologian walks past the establishment and into the fresh air of faith.” I would argue that it isn’t just a good theologian that doesn’t get caught up in establishment and doctrine. I think it is a good Christian whose daily walk is in the fresh air of faith.


Sisters and brothers, faith is our most core gift from God. It ties us to God and to one another. It gives us the vision to see and understand. Just as John had this vision and sought to know more of what it meant, so do we seek to make greater sense of the world and God. But we need to keep faith as our foremost concern, a faith full of witness and sharing of God’s presence and love. When we are concerned more with seeing and sharing in our experience of God than we are with convincing others we are right, the words of belief will flow naturally and with truth. Our words of comfort to one another will ring true. And our experience as children of God will be forever enriched and transformed. Let us take a daily walk in the fresh air of faith.

Thanks be to God. Amen.