23rd after Pentecost 2025

Blessed be God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the Holy God is coming now and forever.

Amen.

Let's pray together.

Almighty God.

You all hearts are open, all sides are open, and from you no secrets are hidden.

Cleanse the thoughts of your hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit.

And we may perfectly love you and worthyly magnifying through our second.

Let us pray.

Blessed Lord who calls all holy scriptures to be written for our learning.

Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.

That we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you've given us in our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you in the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

After being seated, our children are invited to godly play with Father Sean in the back.

A reading from Malachi.

Look here, I am sending my messenger who will smooth the way before me.

And the suddenly sovereign, whom you all see, will come to the temple belonging to the sovereign.

The messenger of the covenant in whom you delight.

See now, that one is coming, says Commander of Heaven's Legions.

But who can endure the day of that one's coming, and who can stand when that one appears?

For that one is like refining fire and like cleaner soap.

That one will sit refining and purifying silver and will purify the descendants of Levi, women and men, and refine them like gold and silver, until they present offerings to the Holy One of old in righteousness.

Then the offering of Judah and Jerusalem will be pleasing to the Holy One of Sinai, as in the days of old, as in former years.

Then I will draw near to you for judgment.

I will be a witness who hastens to testify against those who practice sorcerers, against those who commit adultery, against those who swear falsely, against those who oppress, cheating the wage earner of their wages, as well as oppressing the widow and the orphan, against those who push aside the immigrant, and do not revere me, says the commander of heaven's vanguard.

For I, God, whose name is holy, do not change.

Therefore, you all, the children of Rachel, Leah, Elha, and Zilha, have not been finished off.

In the days of your mothers and fathers who have turned away from my statutes and have not given me.

Return to me, and I will return to all of you.

But you say, How shall we return?

The word of the Lord.

Thank you, God.

Today's Psalm is Psalm 84.

We will read responsively by the half verse.

How beloved is your dwelling place.

My soul longs, and truly she faints, for the courts of the God who dwells above the cherubim.

My heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young at your altar's radiant one.

I am the one and my God.

Blessed are those who dwell in your house.

For ever they praise you, Phil.

Blessed is the child of Earth and Eve, whose strength is in you.

In whose heart of high ways.

As they pass through the valley of Bacchah, springs they make it.

Even more blessings, coming in with the early rain.

They go from strength to strength.

The God of God who leads me in time.

Majesty of the heavens, hear my prayer.

Incline your ear, O God, for that senior son.

Behold our shield, O God.

Look on the face of your anointed.

For better is a day in your courts than a thousand anywhere else.

I would choose to be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, and dwell in the tension of wickedness.

For sun and shield is the resplendent God, the glorious one bestows grace and honor.

Commander of Heaven's legions.

On each side of the river is the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit each month, and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

There will no longer be any accursed thing, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and God's servants will worship God.

They will see God's face, and God's name will be on their foreheads.

And night will be no more.

They need no light of a lamp or of the sun, for the Holy God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.

I, Jesus, sent my angel to you all to testify to this for the churches.

I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.

The Spirit and the bride say, Come, and let those whoever hear say, Come, and let whoever thirsts come.

Let whoever wishes take the water of life as a gift.

The one who bears witness to the point of martyrdom to these things says, Yes, I am coming soon.

Amen.

Come, God born Jesus.

The grace of the Savior Jesus be with all the saints.

Amen.

The word of the Lord.

Thank you to God.

Glory be to you, Lord Christ.

Jesus said to the two disciples, These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you all, because everything must be fulfilled in the teaching of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms written about me.

Then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

Then he said to them, So it is written, the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

You are witnesses of these things.

Now look, I'm sending you the promise of my Father, you all stay in the city until you've been clothed with power from on high.

Then Jesus led them out as far as Bethany.

Lifting his hands, he blessed them.

While he was blessing them, Jesus retreated from them and was carried up into heaven, and they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy.

And they were in the temple every day, blessing God.

The gospel of the Lord.

So, I mean, it's got his place, don't get me wrong, but instead of me picking what I want to educate y'all about, because y'all clearly aren't doing what I'm doing, what we do is we have continuity not through five weeks on how to give a bigger pledge.

Instead, we have continuity through liturgical seasons and time.

Now, we're doing an experiment here at St.

Thomas.

We're using an alternate lectionary called the Women's Lectionary for the Whole Church.

We're going to do that one more year, then we're going to return to the revised common lectionary for a three-year cycle.

She's an interesting lady, this Will Gaffney.

I don't know if you know, next Sunday is the last Sunday in the church year.

So we start the new year on Advent 1, which is two weeks from today.

Next week, it's built into our liturgical tradition, although it's only 100 years old.

Next Sunday, the last Sunday of the church year is called Christ the King.

So we have this reminder at the end of the year, not only is Christ the King, but what the kingship of Christ is supposed to be about.

Now, I don't want to ruin what's going to happen next week, but John told me, I think this is the first sermon where I'm going to offend people.

I said, Well, you're giving yourself a little credit there, but uh I hope you're ready to be offended next week on Christ the King.

So, what's going to happen on Christ the King?

We're going to hear the passion story.

Like we're part of the story is where Jesus dies.

So, how weird that today we're hearing the resurrected Jesus float up to heaven.

I mean, he isn't even dead yet, and we're already sending them to heaven.

This is what Will Gaffney has done in comprising the women's lectionary for the whole church.

And the only reason I can think we got it backward is because we need this little line that Jesus says, I think, maybe I need this line.

It's quite interesting.

He says to his disciples, I have to fulfill every teaching of Moses the prophets in the Psalms.

And then here's this hinge phrase, he opened their minds to understand the scriptures.

Now that word mind, it doesn't mean their fact pattern of cognitive principles.

Jesus isn't saying something like, I gave them the cliff notes for the test.

The word mind in Greek is the word noose, and it really means a schema or world view.

So your noose is not disembodied.

Jesus is not imparting to his disciples secret knowledge, so when they get to the pearly gates, they know the proper bubbles on the scantron, and that's how God gets us in.

Instead, really what he's doing is opening a fact pattern to go deeper than facts and transform the world.

Now, I'm going to tell you, because I grew up in a different tradition from the Episcopal Church, and one of the gifts my tradition gave me is we actually read the Bible.

And so when I was a kid, only Episcopalians would laugh at that, okay?

What's amazing is when Episcopalians actually read the Bible, they're like, oh, that sounds a lot like the prayer book.

And uh when Baptists read the prayer book, they're like, oh, that sounds a lot like the Bible.

So from the age of, I don't know, about six, we decided it'd be good clean fun to start memorizing large swaths of the Bible.

And one of our delightful youth group games, well, it wasn't even just in youth group, was something called a sword drill.

So we'd get a prompt like Philemon 21, and the first person who could flip there and stand up and read it out loud got a star on their sticker chart.

And of course, we knew that was a jewel in our heavenly crown because we knew the right passage.

So, saturated in the Bible, but you knew what who else was the disciples.

So it's this interesting thought that we can be saturated in the story and not comprehend it.

You can know the scripture and not comprehend it.

And I'm not pretending like I comprehend it.

I actually think this is a challenge for me.

How is it?

Or in what ways do we use the Bible?

And then how would God have the Bible interface with us?

So let me say it in a different way.

Sometimes we talk about how we've read the scriptures, but I want to tell you more than that, I think the scriptures read us.

So you want to hate on illegal immigrants, you'll find a passage in the Bible that'll let you.

Not today.

Did you hear that passage today about immigrants?

If you want to own and justify slaves, you'll find that in the Bible if you want.

You want to hate your neighbor?

You'll find a passage in the Bible that will read that in you.

And we're a Reformation church.

We are.

And there was this guy called Martin Luther who said the only way we should make decisions morally, ethically, theologically, is based on the Bible.

And he said something else that's kind of charming.

He said the Bible is like a manger.

It holds Jesus, but it isn't him.

So there's this interesting thing that maybe Jesus has to explain to his disciples, and I'm afraid we're going to return here next year, because I still don't get it myself.

The question is not how much you know, the question is how much your knowledge opens you to God and to your neighbor.

And I'll say this if you're ever not sure, between taking a passage in Leviticus literally, like stoning your children when they disobey you, and following the resurrected Christ who bids the children come to him.

Follow the resurrected Christ.

Let the letter go.

So you can follow the resurrected Jesus.

See, there's this word we have called bibliolatry, and that's called making an idol out of the Bible, because the truth is the word of God is not the scriptures, it's the resurrected Jesus.

The disciples didn't even get that.

So there's hope for us.

There's hope for us that all of this learning is not supposed to just be intellectually satisfying, it is supposed to break us open.

Now, Sean's going to talk about the kingship of Jesus next week.

And look, I just got to say, when we read this book of Malachi, I mean, Christ better be a different king than the ones we've settled for, don't you think?

Or God help us all.

I almost think Malachi is saying, you want God to be the king and punish people who are wrong.

Who can abide by that?

You can't.

The people in Malachi's day were saying, we want God to open up a can of whoopbud on our enemies.

And Malachi says, you won't abide it yourself.

So here's what the day of the Lord is going to look like.

God is going to come and scrub you with cleaner soap, fuller soap.

Let me tell you what that's like.

Anybody been there Turkish bath before?

Really?

Nobody?

A couple folks.

There's Turkish baths and there's Turkish bath.

So sometimes they're really pleasant and they're like a spa, and they give you this, although typically the person doing it is very hairy, will give you like a massage.

And then there's the one I got, the last one, which will probably be the last one.

You sit in some warm rooms and some pools and you pay a little extra for a massage.

And then comes this man who comes to give me the massage, and he uses Fuller's soap, which is a brilliant pad.

And he starts a scrubbin'.

Now look, of course, I know the scrubbing is gonna clean me up on my dead skin, and I'll be grateful later.

And I sort of thought there were limits to where he was gonna scrub.

And I was wrong.

What a surprise I got, and that was when it was on my stomach.

Then he said flip over, and I thought, but really there's limits.

And there weren't.

And I want to be clear that the Turkish Basus wasn't trying to torture me.

I was very surprised both times.

Of course, that was meant to be to clean off the dead skin.

It was meant to actually be beneficial.

And we hear this image of purification and refiner's fire because anytime you hear fire in the scriptures, it's not an image of torture in Dante's inferno.

It's God burning the trash to purify you.

It's God heating up.

Anybody made soap, by the way?

I make soap sometimes.

Let me tell you the best thing about soap is the immersion blender.

Because you can make a batch of soap in about five minutes with an immersion blender.

If you don't have one of those, it takes you six hours.

Because you heat and clarify animal fat, and you keep scooping off the dross until it becomes clear and there's nothing floating on the top, and then you stir it and stir it and stir it.

And this is what fire is like in the Bible.

It's about a touchstone, it's about purification.

Not so God can make you worthy, but so that you can enjoy God in your neighbor and in yourself.

And boy, when you hate the immigrant, there's a whole group of people you're not enjoying.

So God would like to purify us not to make us worthy, but so we can enjoy the life that we get.

Jesus had explained that to his folks.

I don't know if you noticed the heavenly vision in Revelation.

I mean, look, maybe the Bible's reading me.

Maybe I'm misreading that, but boy, the Spirit and the bride say come, and let whoever hears say come, and let whoever first come.

Doesn't say let whoever increases their pledge 10% come.

Doesn't say whoever prays five times a day, come.

Doesn't say whoever has enough blank, come.

It says, whoever wishes to take the water of life as a gift, come.

You might be thinking to yourself, well, who wouldn't want to drink from the water of life?

Anyone remember the 80s when we had Diet Coke?

It's pretty clear Diet Coke is poisonous.

Now, if you drank Diet Coke about three times, you were addicted to it.

Somehow, the first time you're like, this is not like Coke at all, it's kind of gross.

And then the third time you've had it, you're like, this is better than Coke.

In fact, I need four of these a day.

Nobody else had Diet Coke.

I mean, that's just me.

Good, you missed that.

Let me tell you, when you're hooked on Diet Coke, which, sorry, is like not good for you, you don't want water anymore.

You want Diet Coke.

I know this is a silly example, and health is like, oh God, the priest is gonna talk about our health.

But truth be told, we all have habits that we know are killing us, and we love them.

We love them.

You ever met somebody who starts smoking right now, and you're like, Jesus, it's 2025! How can you start smoking?

I would never hurt my body that way.

While we super but super size, whatever meal, right?

I mean, just think through this.

I mean, part of what I think we don't want the water of life is because we've confused and poisoned our taste buds for what is good, that we'll take a substitute, which sounds a lot like my way is right and so you're wrong.

We love to drink that beverage.

We like to drink the beverage of earning our salvation and being made worthy, so much so that I'm afraid many of us in church, include myself, don't even want the water of life when we see it.

We don't want to drink grace, we want to drink judgment on ourselves.

Truth be told, some of the people who raised me, and I'm not immune because I've lived this life too.

God, I still do it sometimes now.

Some of the most biblically literate, affluent people are some of the most homophobic, hating people I've ever met in my life.

And I just have to wonder, where is the water of life in hating your neighbor who God loves?

Where's the life in that?

And truth be told, when I leave here today, I'm gonna go back to drinking some form of poison.

I just am.

I almost think Will Gaffney has got us set up so that next week, when we do Christ the King and we end the year, and Sean's gonna tell us how Christ's kingship is different from the kind we want.

I hope you're gonna realize with me that my life is out of control to some sort of poison, and I'm gonna have to turn it over to a higher power if I want to live, which means I need Jesus to come again.

And what do you know?

That's called advent.

It's like this week and next is getting us ready to do the first step, which is to say, I do not have the power to save myself from death.

I need Christ to come again.

Now, look, I've heard a lot of people say if the church was like alcoholic anonymous, people would go.

Because people are honest.

And you know why they're honest when they're alcoholics?

Because they know that if they're not, they'll die.

And we delude ourselves, us non-alcoholics, into thinking we have enough life.

But the truth is, we're all dying from something.

And it's about time we got honest about that and chose to drink the water of life instead of the swill that we settle for.

I think that's what Will Gaffney is asking us to consider today.

Now I want to talk about the second coming of Jesus, because you know, if you were like me, you might know this famous book that came out in 1988 called 88 Reasons Jesus is coming back in 1988.

And there were groups, including the church we ended up at, I mean, I wasn't there in 88, I joined in 90, that had like a prayer meeting on this particular day, because we knew Jesus was coming back to end the world and call the faithful so we wouldn't suffer, and we were going to be gathered in prayer when he came.

And then, like an hour into it, we thought, oh, maybe he's on like Central Standard Time.

And then, like, by the time we got to Hawaii time, I mean, everybody was gone, right?

Like, and disappointed because we were already.

See, we knew the scriptures, it's just that we didn't understand that.

We knew them and we didn't understand it.

So, you know what's amazing, right?

I mean, boom, we won't shame on uh shame on you.

In 89, the book got re-released called 89 Reasons.

Jesus is coming back in 89.

Reason 89, he didn't come back in 88.

So we thought the Bible was some kind of roadmap to spare us from suffering because God owes us luxury and pleasure and happiness.

Boy, did we misunderstand what the Christian life is all about.

Did Jesus come out with luxury and happiness?

Nope, he came out dead, but with joy.

And he came out giving his life so other people could have more.

I don't know why that's a controversial gospel, but it's the story.

Now, all of us are waiting, and we say the creed every time.

We look forward to him coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead.

And here's this really interesting thing.

Oh, let's see, Mike, Jesus is gonna judge us, so we better be right.

But do you notice the next phrase?

And God's kingdom will have no.

Oh my God?

You mean God's kingdom is gonna include people with bad theology?

We say it every week.

We say it every week.

Because the difference in coming with wrath and coming in glory is where your kingdom is.

I don't know when Jesus is gonna come again in time as we know it, but I do want you to know, and this isn't original, Christians for a long time have talked about how it is Jesus comes again.

Bernard of Clairvaux, Christian mystic, said every time we have the Eucharist, Jesus comes again.

I think he's partially right.

I think if we have a Eucharist and I say, you need to have been confirmed, you need to have been baptized, and know the day you prayed the sinner's prayer, then you'll be admitted, I don't think Jesus came again.

I think when God says, You want the water of life, come get it, and we come, I think Jesus comes again.

I think when we drink or share a common cup, knowing the person to our left or right may not have a home, and we say, My brother, here we are at God's table.

I think Jesus came again.

Our lesson talks about the most vulnerable, and it talks about immigrants and widows and orphans.

And I'm not sure that they're not, I don't know that that's changed.

I'd add to the list foster kids, right?

And I'd add to the list people with dementia.

You want to talk about somebody vulnerable?

How about someone who can't advocate for themselves?

How about somebody the first time they repeat themselves, you don't have time for them anymore?

Because you've already had that conversation.

You ever had a robocall?

Some of us have even been scammed.

No one advocates for somebody with dementia who gets scammed.

It's not that they're dumb, it's that they have no advocate.

I don't know.

I mean, I just think people with dementia should be on the list.

So when do I see Jesus come again?

At respite every Tuesday?

When people who say, there isn't any fixing what's going on in your brain, and you're a beautiful child of God, and I'm gonna spend five hours with you.

I see Jesus come again every Tuesday.

I see the Lord come again when working professionals give up five hours of their work day and commute 45 minutes to sit with somebody who has dementia and help them enjoy their day.

I see Jesus come again when our seven-year-olds put gallons of milk in people's cars that they don't know, but they're here to receive some food.

I see Jesus come again when we do that.

And let me tell you, I see Jesus come again in some really wacky ways.

Like last night we had this scholarship dinner for our respite program, and it was really sweet.

And look, every church has its own culture, and here at St.

Thomas, we love wasting money on cake.

And one of the ways we do that, right, is we sort of say, come with a gift in mind and pick a souvenir.

And you know, when you've already got a gift in mind, you can waste it on any souvenir you want.

I hope you hear this the right way.

So when we have two teenagers bake cakes that sell for respectively$850 and$1,000, I see Jesus come again.

We didn't say, we'll bid on your cake when you've gone to the Culinary Institute of America.

We say, you've got a gift and a talent, we'd love to use it, and look what it did.

It paid for one of our friends to come receive respite care four hours every week for a year so that they don't have to pay.

I saw Jesus come again when our kids made cakes that paid for somebody to come for a year.

Let me tell you how else I saw Jesus come again.

Somebody came and they decided they were gonna give their gift and they happened to like the cake they made, so they were gonna buy their own cake.

And here's what that looked like.

I'm gonna start the bidding at$100.

They bid on their cake.

How about$150?

I'll bid one.

I mean, the same hands went up.

How about$300,$350, and then their spouse said, I'll bid$400.

I mean, they bid themselves up, and if you were there, you saw they did it with the deepest laughter and joy.

It was the joy in giving that allowed them to be generous.

It's almost like we give until it feels good.

And when we give until it feels good, we see the Lord come again.

Now, maybe that'll happen once and for all definitively.

Between now and then, I can't say 26 reasons it's gonna be next year.

What I can say is every moment we open ourselves to the resurrected Christ and dare to follow, he's come back.

So Christians aren't called to be nice.

Christians are called to be the second coming of Jesus Christ.

And I think if we'll spend the next two weeks meditating on that, hopefully we'll be ready for the fuller soap.

And hopefully we'll be ready to say, Jesus Christ, I cannot do this by myself.

I need you again this year to deliver me from the ways of sin and death that I have acquired a taste for, but that are poisoning the one life that you've given me.

Well, maybe that was the ending.

It's not really a cliche.

It's not a great reminder except this.

We are literally called in a dying world with a political system full of death to be the second coming of Jesus in the smallest of moments today.