The prophet Micah puts words in the mouth of God that I can easily imagine God saying to humankind today:

“O my people, what have I done to you? In what have I wearied you? Answer me!”

It sounds like something God might actually be saying to us about so many things going on in the world today, especially the way we treat each other. Looking around at the chaotic, cruel state of things in his own day, Micah imagines God’s incredulity at seeing a similar dynamic – people whose ancestors were rescued from slavery in Egypt, who pledged themselves to a covenant with God and handed that covenant down thru generations – a covenant that required them to care for the vulnerable – how could these people turn around and violate that relationship so brazenly?

They seem to have forgotten the main lesson that God keeps teaching us over and over and over again: How we treat each other matters to God. The covenant, the sacrifices, the laws – they were all about two things and only two things: love of God and love for each other. 

“O my people, what have I done to you?” What could cause you to forget these two simple things. The laws are many, but they all point in the same direction. Love God and each other.

They forgot. And we forget. Over and over and over again. 

In Micah’s imagination, when the people are confronted with their betrayal and reminded of all the blessings God has bestowed on them their first instinct is to make an extravagant display of religious fervor. They want to make a burnt offering…of thousands of rams and rivers of oil.

But burnt offerings – or really any offerings – are not a fine you pay for breaking the law. The purpose of a burnt offering was not to placate an angry God or show how religious you were. Burnt offerings – like other kinds of offerings made at the Temple in Jerusalem – were rituals that helped the people who participated in them enact gratitude for all God had given them and had done for them. By offering up livestock from your own farm and olive oil from your own groves, you engaged in a ritual that acted out the reality that what you produced on the land was a gift from God. And you were using a small portion of that bounty to acknowledge God’s generosity. These offerings were burned whole and the smoke from them was a symbol of the people’s thanksgiving rising up to the God who had blessed them. 

In addition to that, the other offerings people made – other animal, grain, wine and oil sacrifices – were not burned up. A small portion was burned, but the rest was shared with the Temple priests, the poor, immigrants, and people visiting the temple during festivals. 

What you and your family and your whole community worked on all year long – the raising of crops and livestock – was tied in to the daily and seasonal worship of God. And that worship, the making of these sacrifices was a physical way of remembering that relationship with God was bound up with two things:

1. Gratitude to God
   AND
2. Our relationships with other human beings

So when the people in Micah’s courtroom scenario are confronted with their cruelty to the poor, to immigrants, and to the vulnerable, and when their first response was to make an extravagant burnt offering, God’s response was, basically, “You still don’t get it.”

It wasn’t the burnt offering part that they were messing up. They were very good at going through the motions. What they got wrong was the whole covenant that the burnt offering was tied to. They had forgotten the link between the ritual and the relationships it was meant to uphold. 

And that is why, when the people said they would offer up thousands of rams, God said, “No.”

What God wants, what Micah reminds them, is for them to reconnect the ritual of offering to the relationships they had neglected. What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.

I wonder if today we might reflect on MIcah’s  words to think about how we connect our own rituals with the way we do – or do not – do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our God.  

Christians meet at altars weekly (except when there is an ice storm) where we perform a similar ritual to the burnt offerings at the ancient Temple. We offer a portion of our bounty – bread, wine, and the fruit of our labors – at this altar. Our Eucharistic Prayer gives thanksgiving to God for all that God has given us and done for us. We share the bread and wine with each other around the table. In our prayers we acknowledge that this ritual is a reminder to us of our obligations to love God and to love each other. 

Our weekly ritual is a reminder that how we treat each other matters to God. Like all those who came before us, we need this reminder. We need recommitment to (in the words of our baptismal vows) respecting the dignity of every human being.  

It is likely that God will again say – and might even be saying today, “O my people, what have I done to you?” How can people so loved and so blessed treat each other they way we do?  When this happens, when we discern a disconnect between our rituals and our daily lives, between our gratitude to God and the way we treat our neighbors…go again to the altar and pay attention to the words and actions we enact there. They are a rehearsal for doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God.

(Based on a sermon preached at St. Elizabeth’s Episcopal Church, Buda, Texas on 2.1.2026)

Bear the Light, 1.21.24

In the Midst of Chaos, 5.26.24

This doesn’t look like much. It’s the root of a tree poking up through the soil and then back down again. On a recent trip to old family stomping grounds, I stepped on and over this root dozens of times as I headed in and out of my cabin.

It occurred to me on about the fourth day that likely hundreds of people had stepped on that same root. It is on the grounds of a church conference center that has hosted generations of families, including mine, for almost a hundred years.

This place connects me to my family and faith roots, my great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, siblings and children have all been here as visitors or staff over the decades. It is the place we all think of for gathering, it is home even for those of us who don’t live there. So the idea of this actual root being in my path as I was connecting to these metaphorical roots captured my attention.

The trees, of course, have been there longer. The root I stepped on and over wound its way across a small hill and it was connected not only to the trunk of the tree, but to the other tendrils of root stretching in all directions. Spread out, but enduringly linked to its origin. Very like me and my own family,

It is a blessing to have a place that connects you to family. Not just events – like births and deaths and weddings – but a piece of the earth that nourished the people who nourished you. No matter how many generations pass or how far apart we spend most of our lives, it is comforting to know that this place will bind us. And it is also special that so many other families have roots there, too. We are a veritable forest of families, new ones are planted all the time.

Of course, the place is beautiful and peaceful, yet it isn’t the place itself but the experiences we’ve had there that make it a place of rootedness. Experiences of joy, acceptance, trust, and comfort. It might have been any place, but for us those experiences happened here.

The root that I stepped on and over doesn’t look like much. But for the tree it is connected to, it is everything. Very like me and my own family roots.

When I was in 4th grade, I found out what an architect was. I saw my first floor plan for a house (don’t remember where) and was intrigued. It had never occurred to me that you could make something like a map of a house! I started drawing house plans for myself – all of them featured a very large room for me and very small rooms for my siblings. 

This professional ambition lasted for at about a year; the dream shifted when I decided to be an Olympic gymnast instead. But I retained a fascination with architecture and architects. It interested me that someone could use art and math to create a home out of an idea, bring it to 3-D reality. The outcome was visible and tangible, but it started with nothing but thoughts and wishes. 

Years later, my sister married an architect and I would love him anyway, but the fact that he’s an architect has always endeared him to me. He does what I once dreamed of doing and I get a glimpse of the secret world of creating worlds. 

The Letter to the Hebrews includes an image of God as an architect that captures my imagination. I love the idea that, like my brother-in-law and his colleagues, God creates a reality for us that is based both on things you can see – wood, metal, stone – and on things you cannot see – plans, dreams, hopes. There is a link between what we have now, which is like a floor plan and a dream, and what the unseen future holds.

The link is called faith.

Abraham is the model how we can live in this time between the dream and the fulfillment, between the floor plan and the house. Abraham left his home and lived in a tent because God told him to – and, as the letter to the Hebrews says, “he set out not knowing where he was going.” All the time he lived in that tent, he was hoping for a more settled life, not just a solid house and some land, but also some kids. He wanted these things in part because God promised them to him. “Leave your home, everything you know. I will eventually give you land and as many descendants as there are stars in the sky,” God told Abraham. And even when the evidence was pretty thin, Abraham had faith that God would come through for him. 

“He looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”
(Heb. 11:10)

The letter makes clear that the city is a heavenly city. We might call it the Kingdom of God.  

Now, in ancient times, architects were a bit different than the ones we have today. Today, architects make technical plans that others carry out, but in the ancient world, in the world of the first Christians, architects were also master builders. They were artisans who worked with stone and wood and all the solid aspects of a building, but who also knew in their minds what the thing would end up looking like. They worked with a team, not alone. Most of the other workers wouldn’t know how the end result of their labors would end up, they trusted the architect and followed directions. 

One of the key aspects of a sturdy building both then and now is a good foundation. It is included in the passage from Hebrews. From his tent, Abraham “looked forward to the city that has foundations.” From temporary to permanent, from tent to city, from desert floor to good foundation.

Now a literal foundation has some important qualities. I asked my architect brother-in-law about this. “What makes a good foundation,” I asked? His first answer was, “#6 rebar and a concrete slump value of 3”.” But then we got more philosophical and he said this :

“A good foundation takes into account the natural conditions around it like weather and soil conditions, as well as proper care while it is curing.”

In layperson’s terms, a good foundation includes important components like rebar and concrete, but also requires knowledge of the environment in which it will be built. And crucially, it also takes time and care. A good foundation is not something that is put together hastily. 

If Abraham is looking forward to the city that has foundations, and that city is not a literal brick-and-mortar city but a God-built city, what are the conditions that God takes into account? What are the components that make the foundation stable and durable? The Letter to the Hebrews tells us over and over that it is by faith that we and our ancestors “understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.” 

Abraham had faith in God and God was faithful to Abraham. 
Abraham didn’t have concrete or rebar, he had faith. 
He didn’t have doctrines or scripture, he had faith. 
He had a relationship with God and God had a relationship with him. 

It was faith – not facts, but trust – that became the foundation for the city whose architect and builder is God. In architectural terms, the natural conditions, the weather and soil conditions, if you will, for the city God is building is Abraham’s faith. As the heirs of Abraham, our faith is also part of that building. If God is the Master Builder, then we are God’s team helping to construct the foundation with our faith. We are co-creating. 

And as with any good, stable foundation, it takes time and proper care to become strong and durable. Eternally durable. It is the element of time that makes faith a challenge. Like Abraham, we trust that God has made promises to us and we cannot see evidence that the promise is being fulfilled, at least not yet. It is hard to hold on. We might feel like we are living in a tent on unstable ground. We long for a solid foundation. 

No one is sure who wrote the letter to the Hebrews, or even to whom it was written, but it is clear that they needed encouragement, it seems they may have been experiencing serious doubts about their faith. Most of us need encouragement, too, especially these days. 

Here’s some encouragement:

“All of these (meaning Abraham and Noah and Abel and Enoch) died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.” (Heb. 11:13-16)

We are facing of challenges to our faith right now. For early Christians, the challenges included the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem and Roman persecution, questions about who and how to include people in their new faith community, disagreements about what kind of Messiah Jesus was. 

Like early Christians, we struggle with who to include and how. But for the most part, we are on the other side of the power imbalance. Our challenges now are how to reconcile a religion born from oppression with a religion that now has access to political, military, economic, and social power. Some of us are on both sides of that power divide – we can see the distortion of Jesus’ messages when so many are denied Love by the very followers who should be giving it. 

Having faith in God’s promise takes endurance and hope. It requires trust in God even when things look bleak and we don’t see tangible evidence of the promise. “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen,” says the letter to the Hebrews. 

So even when we see people kidnapped off the street and sent to secret prisons, even when we watch the rights of transpeople and parents of trans youth stripped away, even when food designated for the hungriest people on earth is allowed to spoil and go to the landfill, even when lies are peddled as truth, the architect and builder is at work. We can have faith in that. 

The communities in which we live and work – and even in which we worship – are more divided than ever along lines of gender, gender expression, race, ethnicity, economic class, immigration status. There are some even within our own worship communities that want to cast others of us out.  

Be encouraged. What we have already, our communities and each other, was once a thing hoped for and yet unseen. It was made from faith. 

Abraham didn’t live to see the fulfillment of God’s promise, only the beginning of it. He and Sarah lived as strangers in the land until their deaths. Yet the promise came. 

Our confidence in God, our faith in God’s promise, is part of the foundation. That foundation is curing right now, becoming stronger and more durable as we live into our trust in the architect and builder. God is making for us a home out of a promise. And we can have faith in that. 

(based on a sermon preached at St. Joan of Arc Episcopal Church, August 10, 2025)

As we slide through the last week of Easter and into Pentecost, the lectionary gives us stories of post-Pentecost, of Jesus followers spreading the word and showing what they’ve learned about love.

One of the things they learned about love was that it isn’t always easy! The story we heard in church on Sunday had Paul and Silas beaten and tossed in jail for excising an enslaved girl and preaching the Good News. Not only jailed, but put into the equivalent of maximum security. They were in a dark, underground dungeon with no promise of being released.

I’ve never been imprisoned, and although I know some people who have, most have not. But I wonder if many of us experience circumstances in the 21st century that feel as harsh as a 1st century jail?

For some it might be persecution for sexual orientation or gender identity. In Texas right now, that threat is very real and very dangerous. Those who are able are finding ways to escape, those who can’t probably feel like they are in a dungeon. 

For others it could be their immigration status or even their inability to prove their citizenship. Hiding from authorities who might send you to a very real modern-day equivalent of the Roman jail is a scary way to exist. Hiding from unfair imprisonment might feel like it’s own kind of prison sentence. 

I also wonder about situations that are less political or less obviously dangerous – for instance, the isolation and hopelessness of mental illnesses. I know that for many, depression and anxiety can impose a sense that one is inaccessible to companionship, assistance, or comfort. Those who experience personality disorders or substance abuse or trauma can be imprisoned by shame or physical and psychic pain. 

It is not hard for me to imagine some of the present day circumstances that might be represented by that innermost Roman cell, circumstances that seem inescapable, cruel, and unfair. What may be harder to imagine and identify with is how they responded.

Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them. (Acts 16:25)

In the middle of the night, wounded, in a strange city, they were praying and singing. 

Ok, praying I can understand. In their position I would certainly pray! But singing? What an image! In their agony and isolation, they respond by reaching out to God. Their actions seem instinctive to me, not overly thought out, but from the gut. Not a wail or a complaint or a strategy for getting out of the situation. But songs and prayers. 

And the other prisoners were listening to them. Paul and Silas may or may not have known other prisoners could hear them. But they did. 

The theologian Willie James Jennings writes of this passage, “Praying and singing are acts of joining that weave our voices and words with the desperate of this world who cry out to God” (Jennings, Acts, p 163-164)

That’s what Paul and Silas were doing with their songs, joining their voices with the desperate. And that is what we do when we sing about our faith. Singing in the dark, in prison, in hopeless times is a sign of hope. The songs we sing are handed down to us from generation to generation, passing that hope along. And the songs we sing today offer hope to those who aren’t ready to sing yet, who have not found their singing voice.  

There are times in each of our lives separately or all of our lives collectively that we will be oppressed by powers that are greater than our own. Powers of government and empire, powers of violence and poor health, powers of racism and sexism and homophobia. Even powers of self-loathing.

In those times, God is with us. In those times there is a power greater than our, but also greater than that which oppresses us. And in those times we might summon the strength to connect to God through prayer and song. To lift up our concerns to the One who loves us all the time and in every circumstance. We can latch on to the words we say every Sunday and the tunes we repeat throughout the year as a way to remember that Love. 

But if we are not able to summon the will to sing and pray, then we can listen. Listen like the prisoners in jail with Paul and Silas. 

At times of great duress, you or I might be the ones who hear hope in another person’s prayer or song. That song might be lifted up from a jail cell or on the lawn of the Capitol or the side of a highway or the waiting room of a hospital. It might be a song on the radio in your car or the kind greetings of a stranger. It might even be birdsong or the wind through the trees. 

But if you listen you can hear hope in the reminder that God is with with you, is with all of us through the toughest times. 

This past week, the daily lectionary has been allllll about bread. So here I go: 

My love affair with bread started early and blossomed when I learned how to make it in 6th grade Sunday School. I took the recipe and enthusiasm home and got my mom and siblings hooked on baking bread. At church, we had real bread for communion every week and I now knew how it got there. And I was old enough to get the various metaphors bread is for the Christian community – the body of Christ, the many gathered into one, something to be shared. 

When I hear Jesus say, “I am the bread of life,” (John 6:35) I am on board with that image! Yet I also know that, standing here in 2025, there is a lot more to that image that the original audience understood. Ways in which Jesus saying, I am the bread of life, might have had more power. 

Bread is at the root of civilization as we know and experience it. It was the growing and gathering of grains that led humans to settle into villages. Planting, harvesting, milling, and cooking with grains became the heart of family and community life in cultures around the world. Grains became so central to life, in fact, that when we make peace with each other, we say we are breaking bread. In English, when we say we are eating a “meal,” literally, we say we are eating grain. 

When Jesus says, “I am the bread of life” he is tapping into something that was more urgent for the people of his time than for many of us in the developed world today. In the first century, more than 90% of people lived at a subsistence level – constantly in danger of hunger or starvation. Bread literally was life for them. They didn’t have the luxury of being on a low carb diet. 

Jesus makes reference to another way bread was life-giving for his community – he is like manna, the bread from heaven that fed their ancestors in the wilderness. So, bread for the people in Jesus’ community saved their ancestors in the past, and saves them when they eat it in the present. It sustains their bodies, and because it is a gift from God it nourishes their spirits, as well. 

And now, Jesus is taking bread to another level of meaning. If manna from heaven fed their ancestors in the past, and their daily bread feeds them in the present, Jesus now says he is bread that will keep us fed forever. 

This is where the image gets tricky – certainly for me and maybe for those who first heard it. I have a hard time thinking about forever, about eternal life. And I get hungry every day – physically and spiritually. So making those two things meet is hard. 

Forever is an extraordinary concept. It is beyond my capabilities to understand. When I googled “forever is hard to understand” I got a message that said, “An AI Overview is not available for this search.” But while eternity is hard to grasp, bread is not. So, while it might be impossible to understand what eternity is, when Jesus links the bread we share to him and then him to eternity…it becomes, if not easier, more real. 

Maybe that’s why Jesus used the image of bread to talk about forever, about eternal life. Jesus uses this ordinary image from daily life to point us to the extraordinary. Bread contains some of the most common, basic ingredients – grain flour, salt, water, and leavening. When it all comes together, you can share these ingredients in a way you could not before. 

Bread sustains life, for many (even today) it is a matter of life and death to have bread. Yet bread is perishable and so are we. You will perish if you don’t get enough bread, and bread itself perishes if it is not eaten. 

“I am the bread of life,” says Jesus. “I have come down from heaven…”

When eternity comes to us, it looks like bread. Ordinary. Basic. 
When eternity comes to us, it is from creation- grain and salt and water.
When eternity comes to us, it is for sharing. 
When eternity comes to us looking like bread, it becomes part of us and nourishes us. 

Jesus is bread and Jesus is eternal. Therefore – eternity is within our grasp because it has come to us. We don’t have to “get” it. It is not an intellectual concept.

Bread, of course, is a central image in Christian worship – the bread of life broken for us, blessed on the altar and shared. There has been a lot of complex reflection over the last 2000 years about the meaning of the Eucharist and the meaning of the bread we share at the table. But I think it is important to remember how simple and basic this meal is. To remember that bread – one of the oldest foods known to humans – is necessary to our lives. To remember that gathering to break that bread together IS the meaning of it. 

When Jesus says, “I am the bread of life,” he reminds us he is as basic to our wellbeing as bread. We remember that it is in the ordinary things of life that we will encounter the holy and the eternal. And conversely, we remember that when we are looking for the eternal, we can turn to the ordinary things in our earthly life. The gifts of the earth, the people we know. 

When we gather at the table to break bread together, the bread from heaven shows us how necessary we are to each other as we become the body of Christ. We become that bread, we are unified in that bread. By calling himself bread, Jesus links the past with the present with forever. 

Forever, is a hard concept to grasp. So, God comes to us in ways that are accessible. God comes to us in and through the creation that we are part of. At the communion table, and with Jesus’ words, we are asked to consider how fundamental bread is. The necessity of the fruit of the earth that God gives us – for the wellbeing of our bodies. The necessity of Jesus, the bread at this table, for the wellbeing of our spitis.

This is a lesson I began to learn – and continue to learn – when making bread. Grain from the earth is mixed with water and salt. It is enlivened with leavening. It is worked with the hands and after time and heat is transformed into something to nourish and share. I remember seeing all those tiny particles of flour – so powdery and separate that the smallest puff of air would scatter them – become one solid thing. I remember all the individual ingredients with little or bland taste become something savory and substantial. I remember seeing the loaf on the altar and distributed to hundreds of hands. 

If I never understand anything more about what eternity is, that is enough. 

(Based on a sermon preached at Seminary of the Southwest on 5/7/25)

There is an organization in Austin that takes advantage of two of our region’s unique assets: our relatively large number of professional musicians and also our relatively large number of people who want to be professional musicians. Anthropos Arts, the organization I’m talking about, matches professional musicians with low-income band students for instrument lessons and opportunities to perform in public. It is a genius idea that yields amazing results – because if you are learning to play a musical instrument, having a good teacher who believes in you is important.

And just as important is practicing. You know the old joke: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. So these pairs of adult mentors and students practice regularly – scales and technique and songs. And one of the distinctive things about their program is that they also practice improvisation. 

Now, it might seem counter-intuitive to practice improv. When you improvise you are creating something on the spot, out of the blue, and you will never do that particular thing again. You might think, there is no way to practice that, but there is. You learn to improvise by doing it. And every time you do it, you get better at it. 

That sounds like some kind of crazy, circular logic, but it’s true. You do need to know the basics of how to play your instrument, what musical notes are, and all that. But the only way to really learn to produce a unique musical expression with no notice is to do it. And that is what these students do. 

They practice and know their instruments – and when they perform in public they know that their director might point at them in the middle of a piece and they will be expected to improvise. And in fact each of them performs at least one solo improvisation in public each year. They never know when it will happen. 

There’s something compelling and beautiful that happens when musicians improvise. They get out of their heads and into the music. The rest of the band and the audience root for them. It turns out the beauty of improvising – in music or acting or even in ministry – is that it requires you to be connected to those around you. You have to listen because what you do is connected to what came before and what comes after. Improvisation is all about what you DO, not what you KNOW. And at the same time, when you do it, you will understand what you are doing better. 

I’ve seen this happen with the students in that program. Knowing their own part is not enough. They want to know what all the other kids on stage will play because they might be called upon to take that tune to the next level with a riff that they cannot anticipate. All their preparation individually and as a group prepares them to create something novel at the drop of a hat. 

I think being a disciple of Jesus is a lot like this kind of musical improvisation, and it is the way Jesus models for us what a life following him is like. Certainly no one expected him to get up in the middle of dinner and start washing their feet. But that is what he did, at the drop of a hat, out of the blue. And he told them, 

“You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 

Surely there are lots of times in the Gospels that the ones closest to Jesus, the ones who know him best, don’t understand what he is teaching or what is going on right in front of them. Why does he flip tables in the Temple court? Why does he talk to that Samaritan woman by the well? What did he mean when he said all those things about being bread, a shepherd, a gate, or a vine? 

Jesus confronts their lack of understanding on a daily basis, yet instead of getting frustrated he improvises a way to show them who he is and show them how to follow him. And on their last night together before his arrest, he does it by getting on his knees and washing their feet. Then he tells them to do for each other what he has done for them. He tells them to love one another.

There is no other way to understand what it is to be a follower of Jesus that to do this. Just like there is no other way to learn a musical instrument other than to play it. 

“You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.” 

We might or might not “get” why Jesus washed the disciples’ feet or told them to wash each others’ feet. It’s possible that we don’t understand why we wash each others’ feet each year on Maundy Thursday. That’s okay. 

The world will know us by how we love one another. And we will show our love for one another in ways large and small that are like washing each others’ feet. 

The love we show by washing each others’ feet is sort of like practicing for musical improvisation. We need to know the basics of how to play our instruments, as it were, our scripture and tradition. We should spend time in worship and fellowship with other believers. We practice sharing a table together and wishing each other peace.

This helps us practice improvising acts of selfless love. Because at any moment Jesus, our band director, might point at any one of us and say,

“You! It’s your turn to improvise! It’s your turn to create an act of humble service at an unexpected place and time!”

To be ready for that time, we practice. We practice by washing each others’ feet so that we know what it feels like to be tender and caring for another and what it feels like to let them take care of us. We practice so we know what it takes for us to be vulnerable and reveal our calloused, ticklish feet that have carried us through this day, this week, this Lent, this lifetime. 

None of us is born knowing how to love this way, we learn it. We learn it from Jesus and we learn it from each other. We practice loving each other as much as we can. At an unexpected time in an expected place you will have the chance to show that love in an unexpected way. At the time, you may not understand why, but it’s okay to understand later. For now, the most important thing is to love others as Jesus loved us.

Have you ever been to a really bad dinner party. Like, really bad. 

One where the guests won’t eat your food – maybe they even insult it! Or the host spends the whole evening bragging about the impressive people they know and business dealings they are part of.  Or someone has too much to drink.  There’s always the classic American dinner party nightmare of the crazy Uncle who ruins Thanksgiving with inappropriate jokes. 

Well, let me tell you about a dinner party that’s worse than any of those. Imagine someone has done your family a really big favor – literally saved the life of your brother – so you invite him over for a thank-you dinner. He arrives with his friends – which is fine because they are a package deal and you were expecting them. 

You cook a nice meal, your now-healthy brother is there, the mood is warm, everyone is feeling grateful. So grateful, in fact that your sister has splurged on some rare imported oil and while everyone is watching she lavishes it on the guest of honor. Now, at our houses, it might be strange to pour oil on your dinner guest, but for this crowd it is a sign of respect and honor of the greatest magnitude. It might be like breaking out the champagne you’ve been saving for a big celebration. 

Just when everyone is feeling the love, one of the guests ruins it. He trashes your sister’s fancy gift and says her money could have been put to better use by giving it to the poor. And then the guest of honor, who you really admire because of his wisdom and his compassion, says, “First of all, leave my friend alone. And second of all, you’ll always have the poor with you, but you won’t always have me.”

Mood. Killed. Some people just cannot let a good time go unspoiled. 

This story is, of course about the dinner party Mary and Martha of Bethany gave for Jesus soon after he raised their brother Lazarus from the dead. (You can read all about it in John 12:1-8) The one worried about the poor, the one who could’t let a good time go unspoiled was, of course, Judas. And the one who said the poor would always be with us and he wouldn’t always be with us was Jesus. 

I wonder which part of the friction at this dinner bothered you the most? It’s clearly upsetting that Jesus refers to his death. We know how this story goes from here— toward Jerusalem and the cross. But do the people in the room know this? What a way to find out! 

Maybe it is because I do know the story that the comment about the poor bothers me more. After all, a huge part of Jesus’ earthly ministry, teaching, and preaching is about serving the poor, lifting them up, seeing their humanity. How am I to take this comment that seems to place their needs behind an extravagant show of love for just one person – even if that person is Jesus?

And, because I know the way the story ends, I also know how these words have been used to keep the poor poor. These words of Jesus, “You always have the poor with you” have many times been used to say that poverty is inevitable so we might as well focus on other things. 

Well, I don’t think that’s what Jesus meant at all – it goes against the whole scripture he came to fulfill. I’m also betting that the people in the room at that super uncomfortable dinner party knew what he really meant. 

The first clue is where they are: Bethany.  Bethany means “house of the poor.”

Judas and Jesus have this face-off about how to treat the poor in a town called the “house of the poor.” So Jesus is speaking his words about the poor in the town of the poor. He is with the poor, the poor are with him. 

And the second clue, which those in the room would know but we might need help remembering, is that Jesus didn’t make these words up as a comeback to Judas. He was actually quoting a passage from Deuteronomy that was specifically about how to treat the poor. 

Deuteronomy chapter 15 describes the traditions of sabbatical and jubilee, which were the means by which the people of God were to address poverty. Every 7 years, according to this tradition, the people of God forgave the debts of everyone so that, “there will be no one in need among you.” 

There were no mortgages or credit cards in those days; the debt people accrued in the ancient world covered the costs of living and fees charged by the government. Between the time of planting and the time of harvest, for example, people borrowed money to buy food and get drinking water, then paid it off when their farm yielded its crop. If the weather was bad or they got sick, they stayed in debt for another year. 

During the time between Sabbath years, everyone who had enough to share, did so. Farmers left crops at the edges of their fields for the poor to glean. (Which we read about in the story of Ruth, for example.) Animals sacrificed at the Temple were used at shared meals with the poor. 

The logic of this tradition is that God provides and so that we can share. God provides the land, so we share the fruit of that land with those who need it. And there will be those who need it. The passage says, “since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore commend you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land.”

This is the passage Jesus quoted. 

There is an important difference between the way Judas suggests addressing poverty and the way Jesus does. We are told that Judas is a thief and his concern for the poor is not authentic – but even if we take him at this word, what he is advocating is a system in which some people earn or acquire wealth and then give a portion of that wealth to the poor. This way of addressing poverty doesn’t end it, it relies on some people to choose to donate and other people to be dependent on those donations. In that kind of system, there is no way out of poverty and any relief from it is contingent on the voluntary generosity of donors. 

That sounds really familiar to us, because that is the way, by and large, we address poverty in our society today. If that is what Judas is advocating, then how is Jesus’ idea different? Or better? 

What Jesus reminds his friends – and especially Judas – is that if you observe the plan God has set out, there will be no lifelong poverty. Poverty exists because we have not followed God’s commands. 

When Jesus referenced the Sabbath and Jubilee traditions, he and everyone in the room knew the whole passage. They knew that it was not God’s plan for the poor to rely on the sale of our expensive perfumes in order to eat. God’s plan isn’t for us to give from our largesse, it is to give from God’s largesse. We are supposed to set up our society in such a way that this happens. 

Because the poor will always be with us. After you forgive all the debt in the land, there will again be widows and orphans, famines and wars. So we forgive the debt again. And we feed the hungry and shelter the vulnerable. 

What God asks of us, expects of us, hopes for us is that we establish justice, not charity. And we don’t have to – indeed should not – engage in charity at the expense of worship. Because it is only by acknowledging our God that we will be pointed in the right direction. Generosity is not an either or choice for people of faith – God’s generosity to us begets our generous return of that generosity to God and to each other.  

What does this mean for us? As Christians, we honor Jesus with a dinner party every Sunday. This dinner party – the Eucharist – is in a place like Bethany, it is the house of the poor and yet a place of great generosity. In this house of the poor, we offer the very best we have, wine, bread, and our very selves to Jesus who has literally saved our lives. 

We are not going to sell the candlesticks and vestments to give money to the poor. Instead, we’re going to use these special things to remind us of how blessed we are, how much God has done for us. And then, because God has been so generous to us, we CAN be generous to others. All others. We will take from this dinner party the reminder that we can aim for justice instead of charity.

The poor will always be with us. And so will Jesus. So we will open our hand to share what God has given to us all. We will go in peace to love and serve the Lord.

(Based on a sermon preached at St. Joan of Arc, Pflugerville, 3/6/25)