Sermon Proper 17C St. John’s, Austin September 1, 2019 Luke 14:1-14

"Jesus ate with sinners

And they killed him for it”

That is what

my friend liked to say.

We might add:

Jesus thought everybody

Would be better off

Sitting at table together

Eating together

Breaking bread together

No hay duda

Jesús ama a todas las personas

él comió con todo tipo de personas

Y nos invita a hacer lo mismo

We might say

“the more the merrier”

Jesus would have said

“the more diverse the better”

las personas más diversas

que pueden reunirse - la mejor vida será

Steven Tyler from

Aerosmith Sings:

Give me some love!

We're all somebody from somewhere

Some mama, some daddy,

Some big, some little, some left, some in the middle

Some white, yellow, black or red

Todos somos personas de Dios

Moldeado y creado por Dios.

Aliento dado por dios

Todos somos tipos de la imagen de Dios

Y somos amados

For me

One of the times

When Christianity

is at its best

is when people do just

what Jesus invites us to do

eating

feasting

with

different people

sitting

and knowing one another

deeply enough

to know each other’s stories

with the capacity

to pray for each other

Dios imagina una gran fiesta

con todas las personas

Para toda la gente

Donde estamos familia

Con una mesa donde encontramos

Jesús y la realidad de nuestras vidas

these ideas were so very powerful

so deeply imbedded

in Christianity

that we see them reflected

in the Hebrews lesson

appointed this morning

el libro de hebreos

fue impactado

por la visión de Dios

y las palabras de Jesús

(Written some 50 or so years

After Jesus’ resurrection)

The author reminds the Christians:

No descuides la hospitalidad

con los extraños.

Do not neglect hospitality to strangers

No descuides compartir lo que tienes

Do not neglect to share what you have

No descuides hacer

buenas obras

Do not neglect to do good works

But this is not new

This is not a new theology

Or new ideas

                                    esta no es una idea nueva de dios

This is God’s ancient truth

            una verdad muy antigua

God’s ancient desire

For instance

This is part of what Jeremiah is

Trying to explain to the people

In God’s prophesies

Jeremiah is telling the people

They have been greedy

They had forgotten what it meant

to be a stranger in a strange land

They had forgotten that they were to take care of the

Widow and the orphan

The poor among them

The stranger in their midst

They forgot the hospitality

Required of the people of God

They forgot the hospitality which

We find in Jesus actions

And in Jesus words

de hecho

todos los profetas

le ha recordado al pueblo de Dios

que se meten en problemas

cuando se olvidan

cuidar a las personas

a las viudas y huérfanos y los pobres

The powers that Jesus is addressing

Are political and religious powers

A dangerous combination

And these powers believe

That to be right

To be righteous

You have to leave people out

You have to be separate from others

los poderes en este mundo

mienten

nos dicen

para ser justo

que tenemos que dejar a gente particular

afuera de nuestras vidas

para ser justo

tenemos que tratar a unas personas

en una manera diferente

pero

no es la manera de Cristo

The false gods of this world tell us

To be worthy

We must shut others out

And eat only with the right people

Among the other righteous

Eat only among the godly

the faithful

the pure and the clean

This is not Jesus’ way

Not God’s way

Jesus says

“Be humble”

Humble

Theologian Frederick Buechner writes

“humility doesn't consist of thinking ill of yourself

but of not thinking of yourself much differently

 from the way you'd be apt to think of anybody else.”[i]

antes de que podamos

sentarnos a la mesa

con personas diferentes a nosotros

debemos ser humildes

debemos practicar la humildad

Jesus continues by suggesting

We need to eat with each other

Across class boundaries

Health boundaries

Racial boundaries

Political boundaries

We need eat together

At the same table

We need

invite the poor

invite those

who can never repay what we give

para ser como dios

Jesús dice

Da generosamente

vive generosamente

comer

y cenar

con los que no pueden

volver a pagarte

God in Christ Jesus

Is not a transactional God

God is not making deals

For the faithful

For the righteous

No

God is inviting everyone

Into God’s grace

And to sit at God’s table

La verdad es que

no llegamos a la mesa

haciendo feliz a Dios

Dios es feliz porque llegamos a la mesa

porque ponemos mesas

afuera en el mundo

dentro de nuestros

barrios

donde todas personas

se unan a otros

pero estamos

en una temporada en este país

donde tenemos una gran división

We live in a time of bitter division

A time of distrust in the foreigner

A time of distrust for other citizens

A time of scarcity

A time when we believe

Some are better Americans than others

Some are better Christians than others

vivimos en una época

en la que

juzgamos a los demás

a través de los ojos políticos

o ojos nacionales

            y no con los ojos

                        de Jesus

A time when we all too easily

Try and fit in

Rather than be part of

The unrighteous

The despised

And the unwanted

es lo que es ser humano

deseamos ser aceptados

no queremos ser rechazados

y muchas veces

intercambiar la visión de Dios por el bien de pertenecer

God invites us to be virtuous

Dios nos invita a ser virtuosos

Ejemplos de compasión - compassion

Who respect others – mostramos respeto

Who are loyal to God’s vision of one community

And model grace.

que somos leales a dios como comunidad de gracia

God has invited us

Into God’s great narrative

Dios nos ha invitado

a la gran narrativa de Dios

God’s great banquet feast

And to that feast

God has invited all people

El gran banquete de Dios

Y a esa fiesta

Usted y yo estamos invitados

a ser un nuevo tipo de comunidad

We have an opportunity

tenemos ante nosotros

un momento de gran desafío

In the year that is before us

We have an opportunity

To live into the great

Invitation of God

To be different

To be a community

Of humble brothers and sisters

Sitting around God’s table

And in God’s house

In this way what we discover

As Jesus says,

Righteousness is not something

Attainable in this world

But in the world to come

el camino hacia la justicia

es solo pasando

por este mundo

alrededor de una mesa común

And the only way to get from here to there

Is to participate in God’s story

And join in what God is doing

here and now

So it may be Steven Tyler’s song

But it is God’s message:

Give me some love!

We're all somebody from somewhere

Some mama, some daddy,

Some big, some little, some left, some in the middle

Some white, yellow, black or red

Give me some love!

---

[i] "Humility," sermon discussion from Frederick Buechner, Frederick Buechner Blog.

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Bishops of all six Episcopal dioceses in Texas issue statement decrying the inhumane conditions at our country’s borders

To our state and national leaders,

We are bishops of the six Episcopal dioceses in Texas. All but 700 miles of the almost 2,000 miles of the US-Mexico border are in Texas. All of Texas feels the impact of anything that happens on our southern border.

We feel it through our families, many of whom have ancient deep roots in lands south of the United States. We feel it in our economy, as Mexico is Texas’ biggest trading partner. We feel it in our culture, since Texas was part of Mexico before we were part of the United States. Most of all, we feel it in our souls, for these are our neighbors, and we love them.

We write to decry the conditions in detention centers at our border because we are Christians, and Jesus is unequivocal. We are to pray without ceasing for everyone involved-refugees, elected officials, and law enforcement-while also advocating for the humane treatment of the human beings crowding our border as they flee the terror and violence of their home countries.

We call on our state and national leaders to reject fear-based policy-making that targets people who are simply seeking safety, and a chance to live and work in peace. The situation at the border is, by all accounts, a crisis. Refugees come in desperation; border personnel are under stress.

We call on our leaders to trust in the goodness, generosity and strength of our nation. God has blessed us with great abundance. With it comes the ability and responsibility to bless others.

We do this because Christians are commanded to love our neighbors as we love ourselves. And how we are to treat our neighbors, especially the children, could not be any clearer than it is in Matthew 18:2-6:

“He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.”

We are to care for the children, cherish them, protect them and keep them safe.

But what if they are strangers, foreigners? The message of God in the Hebrew Scriptures, Leviticus 19:33-34, also is very clear: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.  The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”

And again, in Matthew 25: 31-40. “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”  And, in Matthew 25:40: “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, youdid it to me.”

This is not a call for open borders. This is not saying that immigration isn’t complicated. This is a call for a humane and fair system for moving asylum seekers and refugees through the system as required by law. Seeking asylum is not illegal. Indeed, the people at our border are following the law when they present themselves to border authorities.

Asylum is “a protection granted to foreign nationals already in the United States or at the border who meet the international law definition of a ‘refugee,’ which is ‘a person who is unable or unwilling to return to his or her home country, and cannot obtain protection in that country, due to past persecution or a well-founded fear of being persecuted in the future ‘on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.’”

Congress incorporated this definition into U.S. immigration law in the Refugee Act of 1980. The Refugee Act established two paths to obtain refugee status—either in the United States as an asylum seeker or from abroad as a resettled refugee.

As Christians, we seek to follow the biblical and moral imperatives of our Lord.In addition, the United States has legal obligations through international law as well as our own immigration law to provide protection to those who qualify as refugees.

And while the border authorities can detain asylum seekers, courts have ordered them to do so in “safe and sanitary conditions.” Credible news reports documenting unsafe conditions, especially for children, have made it clear this is not happening in consistent and sustained ways, as resources and personnel are overwhelmed by the situation.

This nation has the resources to handle these refugees humanely. We call on our leaders to find the will to do so swiftly.

 The Episcopal Diocese of DallasThe Rt. Rev. George Sumner

The Episcopal Diocese of Fort WorthThe Rt. Rev. J. Scott Mayer
The Rt. Rev. Sam B. Hulsey
The Rt. Rev. Rayford B. High Jr.

The Episcopal Diocese of Northwest TexasThe Rt. Rev. J. Scott Mayer

The Episcopal Diocese of the Rio GrandeThe Rt. Rev. Michael Buerkel Hunn

The Episcopal Diocese of TexasThe Rt. Rev. Andrew Doyle
The Rt. Rev. Jeff W. Fisher
The Rt. Rev. Kathryn M. Ryan

The Episcopal Diocese of West TexasThe Rt. Rev. David Reed
The Rt. Rev. Jennifer Brooke-Davidson

For more information contact:In the Diocese of Texas, Communication Director Tammy Lanier, tlanier@epicenter.org
In the Diocese of the Rio Grande, Canon to the Ordinary Raymond Raney, rraney@dioceserg.org
In the Diocese of Fort Worth, Communication Director Katie Sherrod, katie.sherrod@edfw.org
In the Diocese of Northwest Texas, Diocesan Administrator Elizabeth Thames, ethames@nwtdiocese.org
In the Diocese of West Texas, Director of Marketing and Communications Emily Kittrell, Emily.Kittrell@dwtx.org
In the Diocese of Dallas, Communication Director Kimberly Durnan, kdurnan@edod.org

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God's Song is About Looking Up- The Ordination of The Rt. Rev. Kai Ryan

Ordination Sermon

The Rt. Rev. Kathryn Ryan

By

The Rt. Rev. C. Andrew Doyle

Feast of the Visitation

June 1, 2019

Heavenly Father, as I offer these words this morning, I beseech you to see before you a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, and a sinner of your own redeeming. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: Amen.

Award winning journalist Eric McCrossen was loved and despised for his editorials. From time to time, though, there was an odd article that veered from usual political insights. As I sorted through them and read them, there were articles about airbags, and about a local man of his fondness celebrating his 100^thbirthday, and he always seemed to have something to say about Christmas.

But one of those editorial jaunts hailed a man that he ran across at a local “flop” house in 1972. A migrant worker, a union organizer for musicians, a student of Chinese history, an unsuccessful senatorial candidate, a story and song collector, and guitar picker: Bruce “U Utah” Phillips.[i]Famous – you’ll know this – for the song “Pig Hollow,” which I think he actually sang to Mr. McCrossen, and the song “If I had a Mule,” borrowed by Bob Hope in the movie The Young Americans. (Borrowed without permission, I might add).

Phillips claimed that hanging out with the poor and the wanderer, the migrant worker and the laborer, helped him to “learn how to look at the world from the bottom up instead of the top down.” Phillips described his music as “music of the people. If you have an ear for it,” he said, “You soak it up and finally do something with it. [And] Then you ask is this song really yours?” He paused and thought: “Or is it theirs?”

Kai, Mr. McCrossen – your dad – ended his article about Phillips’ putting his own spin on the journeyman’s wisdom. He wrote, “Songs,” you see, “Songs are about people looking up instead of [people] looking down.”

God invites us into God’s story to sing God’s song – a song of God and God’s people. God spoke to Mary[ii]and rehearsed the same that he had spoken to Abraham: “be a blessing,” he said, a messenger of peace,[iii]a vessel of “grace.”^[iv]Mary accepted her role as a citizen prophet in this God’s kingdom-making. Echoing the response of God’s people at the foot of Mount Sinai, sealing that covenant she said, “Let it be done.” 

Mary is God’s singer-songwriter.

That young woman’s “yes” turns the mighty cult of Roman Imperial authority and the worship of powers and principalities and demigods and economies and sacrifices on its head. Mary’s call narrative rejects the violence of worldly gods and those that support their thrones, all in favor of the peace of God^[v]and the Prince of Peace.

This comes, of course, to a high point at the visitation, the feast of which we celebrate today. Mary’s visit to Elizabeth is revelatory. For in this moment God’s song seems to crescendo. Mary is God-bearer. But we discover in her own way, like all of us, Elizabeth is God-bearer, too. As is her child, John, bearing a Godly hymn, a word of salvation for desperate people.

The new community, even in that moment, begins to emerge. A new re-creation is a God bearing, God saving, God singing community that leaps for joy. Following in the footsteps of Moses and Esther, both of whom brought about dramatic social change; and the footsteps of Abraham, who was the first to be a blessing along with Sarah; and Isaiah and Jonah, who offered transformation to estranged people.

Humbled, Mary sings on, a song from below.

Perhaps, reflecting upon the words of Hannah,[vi]she sings with head raised to the heavens. She sings about God’s mighty acts. And she lays out for us salvation history, locating herself and her child to be – Jesus – squarely at the crossroads. She claims for herself its benefit. This is God’s story, but it is her story. And it is her song. And no one will take it from her. To Elizabeth and us, she invites us to sing along, for we know the harmonies. The words of Jonah come flashing forward in those first verses. Mary sings them out loud: God is a God of mercy, quick to forgive, swift to rescue. 

She sings in the voices of every child and woman and man under heaven. Listen, you who have your heads bowed low, this song is yours. So, traditionalists and progressives, and white, black, brown and yellow, LGBTQ+, rich, poor, and everything in-between, by whatever moniker you label yourself or are labeled by others, know this: God labels you beloved. And if you are hanging your head down low, then lift it up high, for this song is your song. Hearken, brothers and sisters, to the gospel song and listen to God’s comforting words.

God is going to feed us with good things. God hears the cry of God’s people. God is bringing the valley up to meet us and the stumbling blocks down below our feet. Friends, this is what Mary sings about. This is what Christians sing.

Now, Mary does tell it like it is…

She also sings about how God lays low the powers and the authorities of this world, but not in the way you might think. God lays them low by Jesus’ becoming lower than they are. By Jesus’ own defeat on the cross. By emptying himself. By giving himself up. Jesus lays the powers low by the very event of his resurrection. God lays the powers down. The kingdoms of man and death are defeated – and gloriously so – by the work of his body. And in that moment the world will be made new.

Cosmic change is afoot in Mary’s song.

Those who wish for the ways of the world to prevail, the human ways of rivalry and greed: she sings for them. The gospel of grace is difficult. If you are a counter of other people’s sins, a tracker of other people’s wrongs, or a taker of other people’s inventories, then most likely you will find this good word empty and the melody strange.

Mary keeps singing. She sings out that this is a new chapter and a new dawn for all whom God has made.

Some call Mary’s song the most concise statement of the gospel. It is a radical statement of God’s in-breaking peace and love and grace and forgiveness and the and restoration of all humanity into relationship with God. It is a song that is feared by powers and authorities, often outlawed because it delegitimizes the violent structures of human power and desire.

When the British colonial powers ruled in India, the recitation of the Magnificatin worship was outlawed. The same was true in Guatemala during the 1980s. Believing that the song of Mary was a rallying cry for the revolutionary and the poor, the government banned it. In Argentina, too, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo placed the words of Mary’s song on posters in the city to mark the disappearances of family and friends. Those women sang Mary’s song out boldly and in the face of power, and the military junta was so afraid of that song they responded by banning it from public display for years.^[vii]

Mary is a singer-songwriter of engagement. She bears Christ into the world that it may be saved, and that it may be restored. But let me be clear: this was categorically not an individual pietistic event.

To view Mary in such a way – to view this event as something between Mary and God alone – is to read Enlightenment and contemporary ideas of affection back into the text.^[viii]Making the conception of Christ and the message of salvation and the good news of Mary’s song into a private event of piety is to capitulate to the worldview that Christianity itself is a private affair.

Rather than a radical statement about God’s intent and God’s imagination and God’s vision for God’s creation, this is about all human flourishing. It is about creation’s restoration and the salvation of God. This is God’s reconciling and resurrecting mission.

Kai, God has invited you into God’s story of salvation. Claim it as your own and find yourself in the midst of it. See your place in the great arc that it is. Listen. Hear. Watch. And learn.

Now, you will have plenty of “bishopy” things to do. You’re going to have some new clothes to wear, and hats, and sticks to master, and services to navigate. But such novelty does not God’s singer-songwriter make.

You have to hang out with people. Serve, and be with the poor. Know the emptiness of the poor in spirit. Walk with the wanderer and be curious with the wonderer. Reap with the migrant laborers. Sit with the students. Organize for the good of the whole and learn the story of the foreigner. Memorize the stranger’s name. 

You are meant, Kai, to sing: To those who are far off and to those who are near. To those who have found their way within God’s garden wall’s protection and those who do not yet know God’s gospel.

In your episcopate, never forget to look at the world from the bottom up instead of the top down. Do this in order – for the sole purpose – of making music by collecting stories and people’s songs. And then, Kai, reflect them back to us, because all people need to be reminded of the words of God’s song. 

Now I promise you the busyness of this office will tell you differently. But you will have to go deep, dig deep. Read scripture. Drink in the well of it. Pray it. Wrestle it. Let it rename you. Have an ear for it, Phillips says. Soak it up.  All so that you will help us hear the words again. 

Help us remember. Help us remember how to leap for joy 

at the sound of the song. To serve and share God’s good news of Jesus and his love. Listen such that you can do something with your episcopate. And help us remember, because God knows this world needs some remembering. Help us remember God’s song is about people looking up – it’s not about people looking down.

In the name of the Father, and of Son, and of the Holy Spirit: Amen.

---

[i]Eric McCrossen, “Composer Looking Up,” Albuquerque Journal, February 28, 1972, A4.

[ii]Luke 1:26

[iii]The messenger used words of peace (shalom) and said that she was to be a blessing.

[iv]I typically use NRSV in the texts from scripture. Here, I am translating and using my own word study.

[v]Girard, Hidden, 221. Girard writes: “No relationship of violence exists between those who take part in the virgin birth: the Angel, the Virgin and the Almighty. . . . In fact, all the themes and terms associated with the virgin birth convey to us a perfect submission to the non-violent will of the God of the gospels, who in this way prefigures Christ himself.”

[vi]1 Samuel 2:1–11

[vii]Jason Porterfield, “The Subversive Magnificat: What Mary Expected the Messiah to Be Like,” Enemy Love, January 19, 2013, http://enemylove.com/subversive-magnificat-mary-expected-messiah-to-be-like/.

[viii]Protestant theologian and activist during Hitler’s Germany, Dietrich Bonheoffer, wrote from prison in 1933:

The song of Mary is the oldest Advent hymn. It is at once the most passionate, the wildest, one might even say the most revolutionary Advent hymn ever sung. This is not the gentle, tender, dreamy Mary whom we sometimes see in paintings. . . . This song has none of the sweet, nostalgic, or even playful tones of some of our Christmas carols. It is instead a hard, strong, inexorable song about the power of God and the powerlessness of humankindDietrich Bonhoeffer,The Mystery of the Holy Night, ed. Manfred Webber (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 6. The text was translated originally by Peter Heinegg from Bonhoeffer, Werke,vol.  9.

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Kerrville Plane Crash

With many others around the world, the Episcopal Diocese of Texas mourns the deaths of those six persons killed in the plane crash outside of Kerrville yesterday.

We pray for Jeffrey Weiss, Stuart and Angie Kensinger, Mark Damien Scioneaux, Reagan Miller and Marc Tellepsen.

In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our friends Jeff, Stuart, Angie, Mark, Reagan, and Marc and we commit them to you. The Lord bless them and keep them, and the Lord make his face to shine upon them and be gracious to them, the Lord lift up his countenance upon them and give them peace. Amen.

The Church bears witness to the lives of people at birth and death and everything in between. After completing Easter services where people across our church and diocese celebrated newly baptized Christians, we find ourselves grieving the loss of four dear friends: Jeff Weiss, Marc Tellepsen, Stuart and Angie Kensinger. These families remembered Holy Week and celebrated Easter in our church communities and are known to have had a lovely weekend with close friends. I can imagine it was with joy and hope that they gathered together to make their tragic flight Monday morning. Laughter and joy were so much a part of their mutual friendships just as it was with all those they knew so well.

Jeff Weiss was known by many friends at St. Martin's Episcopal Church. By now, many know how he volunteered his time for charities by providing flights for medical and humanitarian missions and for special needs kids. Angie was known as a beloved mentor and coach, Stuart as a mentor and visionary for peace. Marc was known as a beloved member of his family and talented garden designer. I knew Marc and both Angie and Stuart personally, and they loved and cherished their family and their church communities. I was shocked and truly grieved by the news of their loss. My heart and prayers go out to all of their families. I will miss them, the church will miss them, their wide circle of friends will miss them. The lives of these individuals affect many across our diocese and church who knew them personally. For instance, Stuart’s ministry with Jerusalem Peacebuilders and work with the The Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem meant that prayers were sent early this morning from Jerusalem by Archbishop Suheil Dewani as they join us who mourn the loss of a gifted and generous friend.

Even in the midst of our sadness at these sudden and tragic deaths, we hold onto the promise of hope given in Christ’s resurrection from the dead. We remember that Easter is upon us and upon them. Taken too early from us all we proclaim their life is not ended. And we go down to the grave with all our sadness and grief remembering our Lord’s resurrection. We grieve, we pray, and we remember that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39, NRSV)

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