10th after Pentecost 2025

Let us pray.

Almighty God, you've given your only Son to be for us, the sacrifice for sin.

Also an example of godly life.

Give us praise to receive thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work, follow daily and the blessed steps of his most holy life.

To Jesus Christ, your son, our Lord, the community with the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever.

You know, the school year has just started with DCI and colleges or following.

And we're really excited to share with you is something we've been working to revive and take dominance, and that is the between children's chapel program that's called Godly Play.

So Godly Play is a monta story-based curriculum that has informed Episcopal children's youth for a long time.

And we want you to experience it not because, not only because we want you to see what we're investing in for our children at youth, but because we believe in it.

And the truth is, if you've taught, or if you are a teacher, or if you've been around pedagogy at all, good pedagogy is good pedagogy.

Good pedagogy is good pedagogy for all ages.

And so you're going to get to be part of a godly play lesson this morning.

And then our kids are going to get invited to go and see the new godly play room that we've been working on this summer.

And next week, during the sermon a lot, our kids will be invited to go do the godly play lesson in the godly play room.

But we want you all to experience what it is so that you can tell your friends and neighbors and also enjoy the excellence of the program yourself.

And then you'll also get a five-minute sermon.

So you may want to look at your watch and say, Wow, what five minutes for me, that's it.

So Courtney's going to come up and share our story, and I'm going to invite anybody, and this is not just young kids, but especially young kids, but children of all ages are invited to come and join on the floor or the carpet or whatever feels comfortable because you probably will want to see as best you can.

So by children of all by children of all ages, we also need a children.

Can you just give it that way?

Just four inches.

Are you all ready to hear a story?

This is the desert bag.

So many important and wonderful things happened in the desert that we need to know what it's like.

We can't fit the whole desert in the church.

So this is just a piece of it.

The desert can be a dangerous place.

It's always changing, so it's easy to lose your way.

There's not a lot of water in the desert, so you can get thirsty, and you can die if no water is found.

There's also not a lot that grows in the desert, so there isn't very much food.

During the day, the sun is very hot and it burns your skin.

And at night, it can be very cold.

And when the wind blows, the sand stains your skin as it hits you.

People wear a lot of clothes to protect them from the sun and the blowing sand.

And they don't go into the desert unless they really have to.

After the Great Flood, the creatures moved out in all four directions to fill the earth with life again.

Often, they settled near rivers.

And the people lived in towns and villages and cities.

And one of the most important and ancient of those cities was called Ur.

Now the people in Ur believed that there were many gods.

There was a god for every flower and every tree and every rock.

There was a god for the desert and the river and the sky.

The world was alive with gods.

But there was one family who believed that all of God was in every place.

They didn't know that this was true, but it's what they thought.

And Abram and Sarai were part of that family.

When the time came for them to move to a new place, they didn't know if God would be there, and they wondered what it would be like.

They set out to a new place called Herod.

They took all their goats and donkeys and sheep and their tents, and even the old people and the children went with them.

At night they camped in tents, and during the day they journeyed next to the river.

It showed them the way, and it gave them water to drink and water for their animals.

It took a very long time.

And finally they started to see people coming out of Aaron.

And they knew that they were getting close.

And then they were there.

Sometimes Abraham, Abram would go out into the desert to pray, and he would look across the sand, and he would look up at the stars, and God would come very close to Abram, and Abram would come very close to God, so that he knew what God wanted him to do.

And God said, I will make you a great family, and you will be a blessing, and I will bless you.

And it's time to move to a new place.

So this time, Abram and Sarah, with all of their animals, and all of their helpers, journeyed out into the desert.

And this time there wasn't a river that they could follow because it would give them water and drink and show them a clear path.

After a while, they came to a place called Shadow.

And Abram climbed up a hill and he prayed to God, and God was there.

So he built an altar to mark that place.

Next, they came to a place called Bethel.

And again, Abram prayed to God, and God was there, and so he built an altar to mark that place also.

And God wasn't just here or here or here.

All of God was everywhere.

So they continued on their journey, and they made their home in a place called Ebrahim, near the oaks at Albre.

One night, God called Abram out into the desert.

And Abram looked at the sand across the desert, and he looked up at the skies and the stars, the stars from the sky.

And God came very close to Abram, and Abram came very close to God so that he knew what God was saying.

And God said, I will make you the father of a great family.

And Sarai will be the mother.

And you'll have more descendants than there are stars in the sky or grains of sand in the desert.

Abram thought this was silly and black because he and Sarai were so old.

But God told them to change their names anyway.

So Abram would be called Abraham, and Sarai would be called Sarah.

One day, three strangers came out from the desert, and Abram saw them, Abraham saw them, and invited them into the tent.

And Sarah mixed three measures of flour, which was a lot, and she fed them bread and meat to eat and milk and water to drink.

And the strangers told Abram, Pam, that Sarah would have a child.

And Sarah was standing at the front of the tent, and she laughed because she thought she was far too old to have a child.

But the strangers went on their way, and you know what happened?

Abraham and Sarah had a son.

And his name was Laughter.

And in their language, the word for laughter is Isaac.

When the boy was grown, Sarah was very tired and old and full of ears, and she died.

And she was buried in a cave near the Oaks at Mulray.

Abraham was very sad and lonely without Sarah, but he knew that there was one more thing that he had to do.

So he sent his most trusted helper back to the place of his people to find a wife for Isaac.

One evening, the helper saw a young woman named Rebecca.

She gave him water from the well and helped him get water to all of his animals.

She was very courageous and kind, and she invited him back to meet her family.

And the helper told the family all about Abraham and Sarah and Isaac and the great family.

And Rebecca thought this was something she wanted to be a part of, so she decided to go back with the helper.

And they got close to Hebron, and Isaac came out to meet her, and they were married.

After this, Abraham was very old and tired and full of ears, and he also died.

And they buried him in the cave with Sarah near the oaks at Albre.

Then Isaac and Rebecca had children, and their children had children, and their children had children, and this kept on happening until I was born, and you were born, and you were born, and you were born.

And now we're all part of a great family.

And there are as many of us as there are stars in the sky and grains of sand in the desert.

So now I wonder what part of the story did you like the best?

And it doesn't for you.

God was important.

I wonder if you see yourself in a story, where would you be?

Is there part of a story that seems like it's about you?

So thanks for listening to the story.

Now we're gonna go and see our new group.

All of you raise a king to the royal seed of Israel, saying, What a lioness was your mother among lions.

Along young lions she lay raising her cubs.

She raised up whatever cubs, who became a young lion, who had to catch prey, who devoured the woman.

Your mother was like a vine and a vineyard planted by lions, full, and full of branches for abundant water.

She had fighting branches for rulers, except her.

She grew tall, her height among the clouds.

It was seen because of her height and because of her many branches.

Then she was upwarded in a rage and she was thrown to the ground.

They were stripped off.

Her strongest stem was withered and consumed by fire.

And now she was planted in the wilderness.

And it died first land.

Now fire has gone out of her staff and is empowered of branches.

Now there is an iron branch with the second.

This is a keen event, and it is used for limitation.

The word That's all for today.

Singing praises to the faithful God, you are faithful.

For her fury is a moment, her favor a lifetime.

Now I, I said my prosperity.

Majestic one, by your favor you established me as a mighty help.

Do you vote by my call?

What profit is there in my checkboard, in my decision to be done?

Here, only one, and have mercy upon me.

You have turned my wailing into dancing.

I worry my lesson.

Rejoice with the ones who rejoice with the ones who be with one another in harmonious.

Do not hear anything.

Do not make yourself out anyway anymore.

Evil or evil, you shall not remain anyone.

Considering your time is good in the idea.

Impossible from your ability with every human person.

Do not avenge yourselves.

Rather space with around.

To me, a long avenue is a holy one.

If your enemy hungers, if they thirst, give them something to drink.

By doing so, burning coal showing on their head.

Do not be overcome by people.

Rather overcome people with good.

The word of the Lord.

Glory to you, Lord Christ.

Now Jesus came down with his apostles and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples, women and men, and a great multitude of people, women, children, and men, from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyrae and Sidon, who had come to hear him and be healed of their diseases.

Those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured.

And all the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and cured all of them.

Then Jesus looked up at the women and men who were his disciples and said, Blessed are the poor, for yours is the majesty of God.

Blessed are those who are hungry now, for you all shall be fed.

Blessed are you who weep now, for you all shall laugh.

Blessed are you when people hate you all, and when they ostracize you, revile you, and spit out your name on account of the Son of Woman.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is what their ancestors did to the women and men who were the prophets then.

Woe to you who are rich, for you all have received your consolation.

Woe to you who are full now, for you all shall be hungry.

Woe to you who laugh now, for you all shall mourn and weep.

The gospel of the Lord.

Please be seated.

And one of the reasons I really like Godly Play, and if you've ever been to a funeral here at St.

Thomas, you've heard a godly play lesson that caught my fancy, and I've adapted.

It's about how the light, when we put a snuffer over a candle, doesn't go out.

It's about how the light changes.

Oh, that's for children.

I think it's pretty glorious.

And if you've ever been to a funeral, I'll tell you, I can't come up with a better sermon, so I tell that one every time.

Because I think that's our Christian hope.

So good pedagogy is good pedagogy.

And quite frankly, sometimes, if you've grown up like me, when we read the scriptures, we don't bother to think, where are we in the story or what did we look like?

We live in our head and say, okay, just tell me what it means.

Tell me what it means so I know the rule.

And this Montessori method of, I wonder where you are, or what did you like, or where were you free, or where were you captive in the story, is really, really old.

Like it's much older than the Montessori method.

It goes back, well, probably most notably to Ignatius and Loyola in the spiritual exercises.

Has anybody read that before?

The spiritual exercises say when you read scripture, you have to take time.

Like you have to waste time.

You have to try to imagine yourself physically present, like the salt skin, the salt air on your skin, or the dryness in the desert, hence the whole diorama, right?

Because when you talk to kids about deserts, they usually have no idea what to imagine.

Lo and behold, the first time I went to Israel, I was really surprised it didn't look like Florida.

Because that's where I grew up.

So I imagined it where I was, which is really sweet.

But in other ways, it's a desert.

So having time to imagine the desert and how that influences the meaning, well, that's what Christians faithfully have been doing for a long time.

And one of the things we rarely do when we read the scripture, especially when you're a clergy person and you've gone to higher institutions that tell you it's all about what it means, and don't get it wrong, is wondering where am I in the story?

Where am I in the story?

And what part of the story seems most important.

So I'm just going to do that for five minutes.

In Ezekiel and the Psalms, we heard this thing that is a powerful corrective that Sean mentioned to you two weeks ago.

You know, quite honestly, sometimes I look at the problems just in my own life, but particularly the problems of the world, and I realize I can't solve them.

Like yesterday I was at HEB and I was buying groceries, and I was going to carry them all in my cart because I forgot to bring my tote bag, but I never could let that get in the way.

You know, I just card them out.

Before I could get there, they'd already like bagged them in plastic bags, and they were even putting like three bananas in its own bag, and I just was crying inside.

And my wife was like, just calm down, like you work hard, like you can just let these five bags go.

And I can't stop the fact that people put, you know, one apple in a plastic bag that's going to outlive me by 40,000 years, and it drives me crazy, and I can't stop it.

I don't have the power.

I can't stop racism, and I can't stop ageism, not by myself, right?

So what can I do?

Well, I can do nothing and say, that's just the way it is, so who cares?

Or, quite honestly, I often could try, and I want you to say, stop putting the bananas in the bag! Like, what are you doing if you want the banana to get some money through?

I can do that, right?

I could do like Moses and I could murder the Egyptian to try to stop slavery.

And it didn't work for him either, right?

So there's this middle ground that I've heard in these prayers and, my gosh, I wish I would live in the middle ground most of the time, which is between doing nothing and saying, that's just the world, and taking it all into my own hands and delivering the world by my own power or shame, and saying, God, I lament.

Lament may sound like not much, but I want you to say, Lament is where we go before God and we say, God, there is a problem in the world and I don't know how to solve it, and it's still a problem, so I won't let it go.

What I will do is I will put it at your door and I will leave it there, and I will knock frequently because something's got to happen.

That may not sound powerful, but you know, when enough people actually lament and they hold on to a problem, all of a sudden maybe we start to make connections, and there's people who start to realize that microplastics are going to destroy the planet, and there's something, in fact, we can do about it.

It's not giving up, and it's not becoming bitter.

It's coming back to God again and again and again, saying, I can't solve this problem by myself, and it's still a problem.

It is still a problem.

I think there's a lot of middle ground I failed to live into as a dad, as a husband, as a priest, as a driver in the Costco parking lot.

Costco is really where you see the rest of the world driving.

Okay, all right.

Love the store, the parking lot.

Yeah, okay, all right.

That's where I hurt myself to begin with.

And then I hear this advice in, you know, if you don't hear anything else in church in Romans, I mean, God, this is probably the most powerful part of the whole uh letter of Romans to me today.

This is where I hear myself, because talk about that second part where I'm gonna deliver slavery with my own hand.

Do not be overcome by evil, rather overcome evil with good.

You ever looked at somebody who did you wrong and thought, I hope you get what you deserve?

Wow, Paul just identified me as wishing evil upon evil.

Have you ever seen somebody with a lot of bluster who was flagrantly wrong and wished that they would fall or be humiliated or make their demise or be defeated?

I mean, have you ever wished that?

Welcome to humanity, Paul says that's not gonna work.

Where am I in the story?

Waiting for people to get their just rewards.

Often.

Not even waiting, but hoping.

And what does Paul say to me?

Why don't you overcome evil with good?

I grew up as a kid hearing that dumping cold on their head means that's how you get real satisfaction, you'll be good, and it'll drive them crazy.

And there's nothing further from the gospel than that.

Paul doesn't say to do that.

Paul says in the ancient world, give them some more light so they can see.

Don't punish them with goodness.

Attract them with it.

Your priest isn't good at this.

I'm just going to tell you.

Your priest isn't good at this.

And then comes this little bit, right?

The sermon on the plane.

It's not the sermon on the mound, it's on the plane.

And then Luke, this is whole Jesus' whole idea is Jesus isn't above us, he's with us on the plane, and he calls us to live together.

Like that godly play lesson reminded me poignantly.

Hey, they had children and children and children, and your one and your one and your one, and doggone it, I sure do treat most of God's children like my brother when I was a kid, which means we fight all the time.

And I'm really dissatisfied with that relationship as I've grown up.

So why am I dissatisfied that I fight with, why aren't I more dissatisfied that I fight with my brothers and sisters who go to the Lutheran church and who go to the mosque and who live in, well, I don't know, the Kremlin.

Why aren't I more dissatisfied that I fight with my brothers and sisters that God has given me?

Because damn it, I wish I hadn't fought with my brothers so much as a kid.

It's driven us apart, and I don't know if we're going to get together.

That's where I am in the story.

And you know, woe to me, because quite frankly, I am often bloated with my own ideas about what's right.

I am usually just gorged on my plans for the day and the fact that I have done all of this good work and left myself no margins.

Because I'm going to do these things, and sure they're all good.

But you know, if you come in front of me and I've got my schedule, I may not have time for you.

Woe to me.

Woe to me that I am often so concerned about being right that I don't make room for being happy.

Now, look, I'm going to tell you, Jesus is looking at people who are literally hungry.

And I don't think he's trying to say, what a sweet thing to be hungry, but I do think Jesus is reminding us, quite frankly.

So often we don't have any room in ourselves for anybody else.

And what a lonely way to live.

So eight years ago I was training for a triathlon because, you know, I had temporary insanity.

And I was sort of exercising three hours a day, and it's really a lot.

And before I'd done that, you know, I had to be really careful when I exercised, and like I had to really think about my food intake.

Because the worst thing you can do really is have a big meal and then go jogging.

You ever tried this?

It's extremely unpleasant.

The other thing that's really bad, I mean, exercising at all when you're full is really bad.

I mean, the other thing that's really bad, of course, as you know, is like not having any fuel in a tank and trying to exercise, like it's debilitating.

So, curiously enough, as I was doing this triathlon, like I was burning so many calories that that whole condition got reversed.

I literally could have eaten a pizza while I was running and been grateful for it.

Like I was not gonna have, sorry, I don't want to be too specific.

I was not gonna have the runner's trots.

I was gonna be like, mmm, I can run more.

I was not gonna fall off my bike, I was gonna bike better.

I mean, if I could have figured out how to eat while I was swimming two miles, I would have, it would have been great.

I'm not there anymore.

I'm not there anymore because quite honestly, now I can still am coming back to, well, I've eaten, I can't run for three hours, or okay, I'm I, you know, I'm starting to get weak, so I can't run, so I better eat and then run in three hours.

Did anybody play this calculus in their head about exercise?

Like it's critical.

You know, and quite honestly, where I hear myself in this story thinking about lament is that there is this sort of middle ground, and lament is this middle ground, and to be honest, if I'm not willing to put in enough work, I have to live between these two extremes of being so emaciated in spirit that whatever you say I'll do.

I just don't want to have to think, I don't want to do the work, or being so full that I can't even listen to you.

No, what it takes is extreme training in the road of discipleship, where all of a sudden I live in the middle and I can take you in without swallowing you up and making you mine, or without following you endlessly as your leader.

It just takes a little bit more time on the road and in the pool and in the bike.

It takes a little more time in prayer and scripture and making room.

You know, it takes more time avoiding my favorite sense of humor as a kid.

Gosh, I'm so hard to let this go.

Somehow I mistook that the most, the highest form of humor was sarcasm.

That's what I was told.

Turns out it's irony, which is really different.

So I love sarcasm.

Of course, don't use it on me because it'll hurt my feelings.

But you should love it because it's the highest form of humor.

That's the difference between irony and sarcasm, by the way, right?

Irony is not at your expense and sarcasm is.

So I've realized in the last two months how full I am of this idea that the highest form of humor is sarcasm, and I won't let it go, and I'm so full of it.

But I will sometimes delight and being supercilious for making jokes at other people's events.

Of course, the opposite of never laughing, that doesn't sound really good, does it?

And those are false binaries.

They're false binaries.

I wish that just the realization was enough.

Unfortunately, it's the start of a training regimen that I'm going to need to embark on for my own side because the truth is as a teacher, they tell you there's no room for sarcasm in the classroom.

And I always thought I'm the one that can make the exception because I can use it right.

And I've been wrong most of my life and I've hurt myself.

So, how is it that we live between being a void and having that on and being some stuff that we can't possibly run?

I return to a moment.

Because I'll tell you my own sense of humor and how twisted it is and how hurtful it is.

I can't do it on my own.

It sounds really funny because I can do a lot of things on my own, but to transform what I think is funny means breaking some of the things I have held most holy in my life that have been idols all along.

I don't expect God's going to give it to me, no, but I do return to God day after day the last two months and say, God, this is a problem I don't know how to solve.

I don't know how to solve.

So I'd be grateful for your help.

You've been mighty to save me in the past.

And I'll tell you, this is why I keep coming back here, because I find you agents of salvation in my present and future.

God is giving you the ability, tools in my workshop of how I can be delivered from a way of rising the highest form of humor and getting it dead wrong to being able to laugh and love you and myself as God does.

I wonder where you are in this story.

I wonder what the most important thing I wonder what God tells me.