God’s Harmony

4th Sunday of Easter (Year C)
May 11, 2025
Grace Church, Great Barrington, MA

22 At that time the festival of the Dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter, 23 and Jesus was walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. 24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered, “I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; 26 but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. 27 My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand. 30 The Father and I are one.” – John 10:22-30

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

                  If you’ve ever attended an orchestra concert, perhaps you remember what it is like in the moments right before things get started. The audience members are all chatting which creates a dull roar in the room. The musicians are all running their own individual  warm-ups – scales and little passages from what they are about to play – creating a cacophony of sound that clatters over the dull roar of the audience. Then the lights dim, the concertmaster walks on stage, the roar of the audience quiets to silence. At the nod of the concertmaster the oboe sends into the hushed silence one, clear, loud A. The clarion call for each instrument to tune together to that note. 

                  I often long for that kind of clarity in our lives. Out of the cacophony of our world and clear tone that draws us all together as one. As I read the gospel passage this week, I kept coming back to Jesus’ shepherd voice. The one that all the sheep recognize. 

                  In our world there are so many voices that claim to speak for God. I’ve heard a lot of conversations again lately about who gets to the be voice of Christianity in our public discourse. Is it the voice of those who claim God for their political ideology on the right? Or claim God for their political ideology on the left? Is it the voice of those who assert a God of welcome or those who assert a God of judgment? Is it only Christians? Only the Abrahamic traditions? Is it those who speak of God in nature or in music or in contemplation or in justice work? Which voice of God is the one we are all supposed to recognize? 

                  Add to that the cacophony of voices in our world. How will the voice of peace prevail over the loud intractable violence in the holy land, between India and Pakistan, Russia and Ukraine, among factions in the Congo and Sudan? How will we tune in to a voice for justice in a world where so many needs demand our attention and sometimes seem to compete with each other for priority, pitting the marginalized against each other while those in power prevail? How will we tune in to a voice that shares truth in a world with so much deception, falsehood, and for good and ill the development of artificial intelligence? How will we tune in to a voice that speaks life when the power of death continues to resound in our lives with every turn? 

                  I would love to give you a definitive answer this morning. I would love to have a definitive answer to give you. You and I know that any attempt to do that is to claim our own perspective on the world as God’s and puts us in dangerous territory. Too many have claimed God for their own. Even when used at first for positive transformation in the world, it too quickly becomes a means of power and control. 

                  I don’t think that’s the kind of voice God offers us. I wonder if the voice God offers us is something more akin to what comes after the tuning. The concert itself. Multiple instruments, each with their own part, their own tone quality, their own voice, speaking in interwoven harmonies. It’s a voice that can play jazz or classical, pop or gospel. It’s a voice that can take form in Western-style harmonies, in old Eastern-European melodies, in the percussive harmonies of an Indonesian gamelan, the polyrhythms of some African music, and so much more. Distinguished as music by the common purpose of instruments and voices working together. The voice of God is really a harmonized song of love for creation. 

                  It is still not easy to hear. We live in a time when celebration of diversity and harmony is not a universal sentiment. We live in a time when anxieties run high and our instinct is to turn to voices that speak clear, single notes that draw people in. Even those of us who value the beautiful harmony of people in this world find ourselves sometimes othering people out of God’s song. What is Jesus’ voice calling us to in this moment and how will we discern? 

                  In the Anglican tradition we speak sometimes of the 3-legged stool that supports our approach to faith and life. As we seek to discern God’s voice we tune in to what Scripture has to say. Scriptures that point us again and again to healing, liberation, and welcome. We tune in to tradition – listening to those who have gone before us, not because they got it right but because they, too, were seeking to discern the voice of God and may have something to teach us. And we tune in to reason – using our God-given gift to sort through the many voices and determine where to tune in. 

                  We do this not alone, but in community. That is the gift of gathering together for prayer and song, to feast at the table, to serve others and speak for justice together – in that we learn to listen to one another, and there find the voice of God harmonizing with us.  

                  I want to offer you a practice that we were invited into this past week as the clergy of our diocese gathered for prayer, community, and renewal. Your nearby neighbor the Rev. Michael Tuck shaped our morning and evening prayer and invited us to one old way of praying together in community. He asked us to quiet our usually assertive voices – we clergy are sometimes bad about that – and when we recited psalms and prayers together that we might listen deeply to one another. To attempt not so much to listen to our neighbor, but to our neighbor’s neighbor. It’s a fascinating exercise, and one that takes weeks of communal effort to really live into. To listen across your neighbor means that everyone must continue to speak but gently enough that their own voice does not drown out those around them. It’s harder than it sounds. But the image he offered us was not of a cluster of people praying, or a chain of people praying, but with the overlapping listening, more of a woven tapestry of prayer, so that each voice is offered in just the right way that all the voices have a place and all the voices are held together in sacred relationship. The strength is in the interconnectedness of the voices. Perhaps today if even just a little, as we speak together we can practice embodying that careful listening. 

                  What I know is that we will sometimes get it wrong. Sometimes we will follow other voices. Sometimes those will be the voices of others leading us astray. Sometimes those voices will even be within us, calling us to question our belovedness. But much as I want to listen carefully for Jesus’ voice, that isn’t what Jesus asks of us in this passage. Instead he reassures that we will know it, and, more importantly that Jesus will know us. The truly miraculous thing is that God will know us, our individual part in the harmony of all creation. God will draw us together into the common song. 

                  It always boggles my mind that we celebrate a God who created each of us, called each of us, loves each of us. Made to be exactly who and what we are. Loved just as we are, no questions asked. Jesus’ love is fierce and protective, gentle and caring. Jesus sings that harmony to us in ways that comfort us in sorrow and rouse us to courageous action for the sake of the world. It resonates in us until our bodies join the song of creation, God’s voice singing harmony for all. 

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Pastor Steven Wilco

A Sturdy Table

5th Sunday in Lent
April 6, 2025
Atonement Episcopal Church, Westfield, MA

A recording of worship including the sermon is available here: https://www.youtube.com/live/3pspQn7vIz4?si=2TLohMBJS1X_uTmm

1 Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2 There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3 Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” 6 (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8 You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” – John 12:1-8

                They had a dinner for him. 

                  It seems like such an ordinary line in the gospel reading, an ordinary kind of thing that happens all the time. Their friend was in town, so they had a dinner party. Mary and Martha, their brother Lazarus, their friend Jesus…his closest 12 friends, a few others, perhaps. A few dishes prepared, maybe some simple comfort foods, nothing too fancy. A chance for friends to talk, relax, be themselves. 

                  But this isn’t an ordinary dinner party. If we were reading along in John’s gospel we would be fresh off the story where one of the dinner guests – Lazarus – got ill and died. He was four days in the tomb before Jesus arrived to weep with his friends. Four days gone when Jesus called him out of that tomb, graveclothes and all. Now the once-dead man is sitting at the table, at this dinner table. 

                  And, John tells us, it is 6 days to the Passover. The stage has been more than set for the events we ourselves will revisit once again in the coming Holy Week. The raising of Lazarus has finally pushed the authorities over the edge – they are now really coming for Jesus. Preach love, heal the sick, ok…but raise the dead? They were afraid of Jesus and his power. So they were plotting. The story immediately after this one is the one we will read next Sunday in our churches – the parade on coats and palm branches as Jesus enters Jerusalem one final time, a servant king, a different kind of leader. This dinner party is right at the moment where things are rolling quickly to their inevitable end. Their end on the cross. Jesus is nearing death. And they threw a dinner party for him.                

                  At this dinner party sits both the newly resurrected one and the one about to die. Not only that, but the one who will betray him. We assume the one who will deny him is at the table, too. And several who will run away at the hour when it counts. The poor are named at this table, too, even if they aren’t physically present. Judas, for reasons of his own, raises the issue of poverty and the need that exists in the world. 

                  I think you’d have to be a pretty gifted host to make this all work. I’m not sure there’s a seating chart, an etiquette list, or a menu that can fully hold all that is present at this dinner table. And in comes Mary, motivated, I always think, by some deep spiritual pull to offer with incredible generosity and care a gift to the one she loves – the one who even though he raised her brother will himself go to die. It’s quite the dinner. 

                  But then, I’m not so sure it’s that unusual, when we think about it. I’ve no doubt that all of us at some point or other have found ourselves in the midst of an awkward meal. Thanksgiving dinner when not everyone agrees about what’s going on in the world so there is either awkward silence or all-out arguments. The first Christmas dinner after a loved one has gone on to God’s heavenly embrace. A family wedding when two sides just aren’t getting along. A work dinner where power dynamics can’t be erased by everyone sitting down to a meal. A community gathering where everyone is invited and one just can’t quite find the right thing to say to someone who comes from such a different walk of life. 

                  I don’t have any real sage advice for how to handle awkward meal conversations. Listening more than speaking is often a good start. Honoring the humanity of the person or people before us is another. And because our modern context is quite different and requires different acts of generous love, I wouldn’t recommend pouring oil on the feet of your guests. But we aren’t going to eliminate awkwardness at our tables. 

                  We’ve been called into relationships with one another. The whole human experiment is about learning to be community together. In God’s great wisdom, which I honestly sometimes question, we were made to live in community. And that means living with people who are different. People who don’t think like us. Yes, I mean politically, but also just who think differently – those who organize their thoughts in mental spreadsheets and those whose creative ideas weave in and out in a beautiful pattern that only makes sense to that person; those who come from great privilege and those who come from not; people from different places of the country and different parts of the world; people who all carry their own trauma and pain. Human community is difficult work. There is a lot going on and a lot of people sitting at the metaphorical table trying to have a meal together. 

                  Church at its best is a place where this meal, hard as it is, can happen. Church is community. As such we hold a lot. Every time we gather someone is likely celebrating some great joy and another some great sorrow. Every time someone is probably in pain and someone feeling the joy of recovery. And all of us carry with us all the weight of our lives – the stressful daily tasks, the big, deep hurts, the breadth of human feeling. No wonder we sometimes bump up against each other. Sometimes it feels as if our tables might not be sturdy enough to hold it all. 

                  You know something about that here at Atonement. You have found a way to support the community farmers’ market – a place that draws together the people who tend the earth and grow our food, the people who long for fresh and healthy nourishment, and people who need financial assistance to get that nourishment. You know what it is to invest in a community meal for people in recovery and for people in need of food. You know what it is to set a broad table, where those on the edge of life and those full of new life sit together and break bread. 

                  The foundation of that table is this one, where you gather each week to receive Christ’s very flesh again. This table is the one that gathers you the living saints of this community with the beloved saints who have gone before you here and throughout the generations of the earth. This table is where we meet Christ – Christ who has died. Christ who is risen. Christ who will come again. This is an extension of that table set long ago in the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, where Jesus is present. Where our broken and imperfect selves sit down for renewal and nourishment. This is the table where death looms and where new life has already sprung forth. This table is strong enough to hold it all. 

                  But this table is not just for a good meal, not just for a moment of comfort or a pause from the hard things beyond. It is also a table that stirs things up in us. This is where Mary’s beautiful gift comes in again. I always imagine that this action is more or less unplanned. Something happens in the meal that stirs her to action. Something in this coming together of life and death, this strange and magnificent meal, something stirs her to an action that maybe she herself doesn’t even fully understand. The meal moves her to give something precious for the sake of the other. She offers something we don’t even fully understand. It’s an action that Jesus himself will emulate on his last night with his friends when he bends down to wash their feet. An act intended to show us the way of serving our neighbor. 

                  That’s what sitting together at this incredible table does. It may stir things in us beyond our understanding. It may open our hearts to a radical love for the ones we have defined as other. It may open our hearts to questions about why poverty persists and how we might reorient our communities to actually serve one another in a deeply relational way. Eating at this table may stir us to acts of generosity that serve the one in need, the one facing death, the one facing pain, suffering, rejection, and exclusion. 

                  So come, eat again at this table, where life, death, and resurrection are joined in Christ and all our complicated communities are not only held but transformed and resurrected. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Welcome Home

4th Sunday in Lent
March 30, 2025
Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, Oxford, MA

1 Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to [Jesus.] 2 And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.”
  3 So he told them this parable: 11b “There was a man who had two sons. 12 The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. 13 A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. 14 When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. 15 So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. 16 He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. 17 But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! 18 I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; 19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.” ’ 20 So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. 21 Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. 23 And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; 24 for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate.
  25 “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. 27 He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ 28 Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. 29 But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. 30 But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ 31 Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. 32 But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.’ ” – Luke 15:1-13, 11b-32

Sometimes we just need to be welcomed home. 

Maybe we imagine a big giant bear hug enfolding us back into whatever place we call home. 

The child who has been at daycare for what to her seems far too long and her dad walks in the door. He opens his arms wide and she comes running into his embrace to be scooped up and held. 

The foster child who has struggled to know what home really means finds a place of love and welcome and stability and just enough space to be himself, and he knows he’s at home, at least, home for now. 

The college student who is too cool to admit his homesickness and he comes home that first fall break with a basketful of laundry to the smell of his favorite meal wafting from the kitchen and his mom running out at the sound of the door opening to reach up to him and squeeze him. His embarrassment causes him to wiggle out before he’s really ready, because that embrace is just what he needed. 

The partner whose spouse of decades is just waking up from a risky surgery and the embrace is just their hands gently squeezing each other, the small gentle embrace saying, you’re home.             

For me it’s the smells – the smell of Christmas dinner just the way my family makes it; the old-wood, incense-tinged smell of my college chapel where so much of who I am as a minister was formed; the smell of our family’s house, which is hard to define, but I know I’m home when it’s there. 

Today we hear the beloved story of the prodigal one welcomed home. The lost is found. In the story Jesus tells he gives us enough detail to get the general sense of what has happened. An inheritance demanded before it’s time. A youth gone off full of ideas of what living life to the fullest might mean. The discovery of brokenness – the hardships of the world, the consequences of our mistakes, the isolation that too often plagues our lives. 

And the family left at home to tend the fields. The father, and maybe other members of household, longing for the empty seat at the table to filled again if only for a day, missing the sound of his voice, his quirky laugh, his rebellious spirit. Waiting, always, ready to embrace. 

The older brother, too, in his own way. The hard-working, dedicated, sometimes resentful one. The one who takes up the slack of the one who left. The one waiting in his own way for the presence of a brother. Maybe one who had a sibling rivalry, but who loves his only brother, resentment and all. 

In the journeys of our lives, we are so often looking for and longing for home. Or longing to be reunited to a home made whole again. Our world is hurting and broken. We live in a time when so much comes flying at us, more information and images than we can possibly process or understand much less feel with any kind of stability. 

Everyone I know right now is feeling a little on edge. There is economic uncertainty, still recovering from the pandemic. Wars rage on such that we are mostly numb to the existence of violence too inhumane to comprehend. We long for stability in our own lives when people we know and love get sick and die. We long for something to hold on to, something unchanging, something unsteady. 

Some things we certainly bring on ourselves, but much of what drains us is from things larger than us, things beyond our control. Whether we think of ourselves as the older brother or the younger one, the goody-two-shoes or the wandering prodigal, the repentant sinner far away from all he knows or the resentful one whose righteous anger keeps him from the party: all of us are longing for home. We need a hug, or some other sign that we are welcomed and at home. An embodied sign that we have come home.

Sometimes that’s what church can be at its best. Church can be one place where God’s love is ready and waiting. We come every week to this place expecting, longing for a reminder in word and song, in bread and wine, in the peace shared in community – a reminder that we are welcomed home into God’s love. 

We use this parable every time we share the results of a congregational assessment tool. It’s especially apt for congregations who have a hearth and home culture, but I think it’s actually true to some extent for most of our churches. Our churches at their best are an extension of the welcoming father, a feast set and waiting, the best rolled out for those who have been away for too long, truly living out “All are welcome!” And, we say, sometimes our churches at our worse moments are like the elder brother. The ones who have worked hard to keep our churches open, the lights on, the roof from leaking, the table set, the Sunday school staffed. Much as we might want to extend that grace, sometimes our tiredness and resentment keeps us from the very party we mean to throw. 

But I don’t think Jesus tells parables primarily as warnings to us or teaching us what we should do. There is learning there for sure. A call to welcome and a call to set aside resentment. But I think first and foremost Jesus tells parables to help us think creatively about the presence of God in our lives. 

But here’s the thing: if we think God is just sitting at home waiting for us to wander back, waiting for us to realize our own stupidity and brokenness, and come home repentant and ready to start again. God will be waiting a long time for some of us, most of us, maybe all of us, to fully make it back home. And we, wandering ones that we are, will be hungry, burned out, and standing in the pigsty throwing slop and jealous of the pigs. Or standing whatever mess it is we find ourselves in. Because we don’t always come to our senses and we can’t always make it back to the home we once knew.

But what God does is wander out into the world and make home with us in the midst of the mess. In just a few short chapters of Luke’s gospel and in just a few short weeks in our own liturgical cycle, we will meet Jesus on the cross. There Jesus will make a home for us in the midst of death, cruelty, oppression. A home in a place where things get thrown out and people get forgotten. That’s where Jesus opens his arms wide, in the language of our collect for mission “Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace.” This is God’s giant embrace of all the world into a new home with God forever. Right in the midst of the worst life has to offer, God’s embrace. 

It’s Luke’s gospel that tells us the story of the criminals crucified next to Jesus – the one who longs for paradise and the one who separates himself the best he can with jeers. The loving father opening his arms with the repentant wandering one on one side and the resentful worker on the other. And to them and to us Jesus says “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

God is here today. Taste the familiar bread and wine. Take in this sanctuary. Notice your dear siblings gathered in this place – the ones you know well and ones you might not yet have met. And know you are home. Know God loves you. Even more, know that when this worship ends and you find yourself in difficult moments, in difficult times, in distress and worry, in pain and anguish, in grief and despair, when you come at last to death, know that God has already made a home there, too, with arms open waiting to embrace you, call you by name, and welcome you home.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Transformation not Transaction

Third Sunday in Lent
March 23, 2025
St. Luke’s, Lanesboro, MA

 1 Ho, everyone who thirsts,
  come to the waters;
 and you that have no money,
  come, buy and eat!
 Come, buy wine and milk
  without money and without price.
 2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
  and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
 Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
  and delight yourselves in rich food.
 3 Incline your ear, and come to me;
  listen, so that you may live.
 I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
  my steadfast, sure love for David.
 4 See, I made him a witness to the peoples,
  a leader and commander for the peoples.
 5 See, you shall call nations that you do not know,
  and nations that do not know you shall run to you,
 because of the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel,
  for he has glorified you.

 6 Seek the Lord while he may be found,
  call upon him while he is near;
 7 let the wicked forsake their way,
  and the unrighteous their thoughts;
 let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
  and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
 8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
  nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
 9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
  so are my ways higher than your ways
  and my thoughts than your thoughts. – Isaiah 55:1-9

1 At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.2 [Jesus] asked them, “Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans?3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did. 4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did.”
  6 Then he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came looking for fruit on it and found none. 7 So he said to the gardener, ‘See here! For three years I have come looking for fruit on this fig tree, and still I find none. Cut it down! Why should it be wasting the soil?’ 8 He replied, ‘Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. 9 If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’ ” – Luke 13:1-9

               They say, “There’s no such thing as a free meal.” 

                  Well, in our world, that’s more or less true. Unless you are the beneficiary of a fluke seed sprouting in your yard that bears edible fruit or vegetable that you just happen to pick, food comes at a cost. It must be grown or hunted or gathered – it costs time and energy. In our modern world most of our food is purchased with money – from a supermarket, farmer’s market, or neighbor. Some of us, myself included, spend more than we intend each year to plant an edible garden. 

                  And churches among others have been leaders in providing food to people in need often at little or no cost to them. Food collections, monetary donations to food programs, community meals, gift cards for groceries and other needs. We have tried where we can to follow God’s commands to feed the hungry. But those of us who have been around church a while, or really anyone paying much attention at all, knows that while those meals might be free to those who eat them, they are not, in fact, free. I did a little research this week and while any kind of estimate is difficult to come by, it seems that the cost of food donated to those in need by churches across the country is measured in the billions of dollars – that’s billion with a “b.” 

                  So we would be right to be a little skeptical when God’s word to Isaiah is an invitation to a free meal. “Come! You who are thirsty, drink. Come! You who are hungry! Eat – without price.” A meal, truly without cost. I think it’s something we can’t even imagine, because we live in a world that exists on transactions. Why don’t we have an accurate number of how much food churches give away? Because most don’t really write it down anywhere. It’s intended as gift, not transaction. 

                  And yet so much of what we do in our lives is transactional. Not just buying goods and services, though certainly that. Not just employment and paychecks and taxes, though certainly that. But even gift giving which is often a relational transaction even when it’s not intended as such. We expect to put in a vote for a candidate and get back what we want from the government. We expect sometimes that if we show up to church and put in our time, church will be there in the ways we want it to be. We put good out into the world and hope that our communities are transformed for the better. Input – output. And those of us who plant trees, plant them in hopes that they bear fruit. 

                  Which brings us to the gospel parable. A vineyard owner plants a tree. Three years later he walks by and says, perhaps as much to himself as to the gardener, “Three years – and nothing!” Then, perhaps with anger quickly growing he does speak to the gardener directly: “What good is this fig tree if it doesn’t produce anything?! Cut it down.” And the gardener, for reasons the parable does not explain asks for one more year. One more year to care for it, tend to it, perhaps coax out some fruit from it. Whatever the reason, the gardener is not ready to chop it down just because it hasn’t produced the expected output. The gardener, like so many who till the soil, love the plants dearly, even the ones that don’t seem to do what was expected. 

                  Jesus tells this parable not so much as a warning to bear fruit, but in response to people asking the age-old question: did bad things happen to people because they did something bad? Did the tower of Siloam fall down and just the right moment to punish some egregious sinners who were drawn by cosmic karma to stand right there at the wrong-or depending on your perspective, right – moment? 

                  We might, I hope, be a bit skeptical of that kind of theology. The kind that posits that bad things happen to people who break the rules and good things happen to people who follow the rules. Life just isn’t that simple. We could read thousands of pages of debate about this from any number of world religions, and at the end of the day I think we’d be hard pressed to draw any real correlation. All of us have saint and sinner within, all of us sometimes experience rewards and consequences of our actions, and all of us sometimes experience bad things through no fault of our own and good things through no merit of our own. 

                  And yet, even if our thinking is more complex than that, we are so mired in the world of transactions that we often approach our lives with the expectation that we’ll more or less get what we deserve, good or bad. And we bring that to church, where sometimes we think we’ve got such a good thing going why don’t more people come, or more money flow in. 

                  Our texts today have God reminding us, that life is just more complicated. Sometimes towers fall down and people get hurt. Sometimes fig trees don’t bear fruit. And sometimes the world just doesn’t make sense to us. God’s ways are not our ways says the Lord to us through Isaiah. We don’t have answers to why these things happen, and we aren’t going find them in trying to add up the points. 

                  That’s our mistake, I think. We sort of know the world doesn’t work that way, but we’re so used to counting money, counting votes, counting power, counting compliments and slights, counting, counting, counting… that we keep trying to rerun the numbers and make it all add up. 

                  But God steps into our world of counting and says, “Just one more year.” And “Come, eat and drink, truly a free meal.” God just doesn’t operate in our world of points and accounting and transactions. What God does isn’t about transaction. We don’t come to church to become good or just to get what we need or only to give what we have. It’s about being with God. It’s about our lives being upended into something more Christlike. It’s about transformation from beings whose lives are marked by death into beings who live in resurrection. We don’t get to resurrection by adding things up, by counting fruit, or finding the best deal on a meal. We get to resurrection because it’s a party God’s gathered us up into. Transformation, not transaction.

                  So come again today to this table. Where, yes, there is a budget line item for bread and wine, but where God’s very flesh is offered freely to us. Come, eat and drink and be transformed. Not in the consuming as much as in the communing with one another and with God. Be transformed into people whose lives reflect God’s point-free feast. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Shaping Dust

Ash Wednesday
March 5, 2025
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, East Longmeadow

Recording of the service: https://www.youtube.com/live/y4lWGaLPJAs?si=m1PI2_Ed-MejKgB9

Isaiah 58:1-12

 1 Shout out, do not hold back!
  Lift up your voice like a trumpet!
 Announce to my people their rebellion,
  to the house of Jacob their sins.
 2 Yet day after day they seek me
  and delight to know my ways,
 as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness
  and did not forsake the ordinance of their God;
 they ask of me righteous judgments,
  they delight to draw near to God.
 3 “Why do we fast, but you do not see?
  Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?”
 Look, you serve your own interest on your fast day,
  and oppress all your workers.
 4 Look, you fast only to quarrel and to fight
  and to strike with a wicked fist.
 Such fasting as you do today
  will not make your voice heard on high.
 5 Is such the fast that I choose,
  a day to humble oneself?
 Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush,
  and to lie in sackcloth and ashes?
 Will you call this a fast,
  a day acceptable to the Lord?

 6 Is not this the fast that I choose:
  to loose the bonds of injustice,
  to undo the thongs of the yoke,
 to let the oppressed go free,
  and to break every yoke?
 7 Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
  and bring the homeless poor into your house;
 when you see the naked, to cover them,
  and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
 8 Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
  and your healing shall spring up quickly;
 your vindicator shall go before you,
  the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.
 9 Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
  you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.

 If you remove the yoke from among you,
  the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil,
 10 if you offer your food to the hungry
  and satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
 then your light shall rise in the darkness
  and your gloom be like the noonday.
 11 The Lord will guide you continually,
  and satisfy your needs in parched places,
  and make your bones strong;
 and you shall be like a watered garden,
  like a spring of water,
  whose waters never fail.
 12 Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
  you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;
 you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
  the restorer of streets to live in.

Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21

[Jesus said to the disciples:] 1 “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.
  2 “So whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 3 But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your alms may be done in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
  5 “And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, so that they may be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 6 But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
  16 “And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, 18 so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
  19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”   

               Today we sit in the ashes.       

                  We sit in the ashes of our lives. Lives filled with decisions we regret and dreams shattered. We sit in the midst of death and illness that looms in our lives. We sit in the ashes of war and violence. We sit in the ashes of so many systems that have failed us and institutions that no longer thrive in their original purpose. We sit in the literal ashes of wildfires that have destroyed whole communities. We sit in the ashes of our brokenness. 

                  Beloved of God, some of this is our own brokenness. We are imperfect beings on our best days, sometimes deeply destructive on our worst. We participate in injustice and then wonder why communities have lost the bonds that hold them together. And, we are also people who most of the time are doing our best, offering love, sharing our bread with the hungry, praying and acting for the good of the world. Work that is, in the end, not enough to fix our lives or save the world. And so, when the fires have burned, the searing pain is past, the gut-wrenching rupture is complete, we sit and acknowledge the truth. That despite our best efforts, we are dust and to dust we shall return. 

                  But today is not a day of mourning, simply a day of truth telling. A day when we set aside the ambition, the pretense, the illusion of having it all together. I don’t know how it has been with your soul lately, but nearly everyone I talk to is feeling burned out and on the edge these days. It’s partly the tense political climate. It’s partly the economic challenges. It’s the end of a winter with lots of illness and lots of snow and ice. It’s partly the frenetic pace of 21st century life that seems to be ever speeding up. And in part, for all I know it’s just something in the air. Today we name the truth that we cannot keep it all together. In fact, we name the truth that all of us, one day, will die.                   

                  We might easily despair in that truth. But we are gathered today in the light of a second truth. We do not, in fact, sit in ashes as was the custom of some cultures when truly deep repentance was needed. We do not smear ashes around. We mark ourselves not in a meaningless smear of ashes, but in the sign of the cross. We remember that though we are dust creatures, we are dust creatures formed and shaped by God, dust creatures filled with the very breath of God to bring us to life. We are dust creatures that God washes in baptismal waters and who have been marked with the cross of Christ forever.                                     

                  Today’s truth is that God took on our dusty ashes and lived among us. Today’s truth it that God put God’s very own treasure where God’s heart really is – among us. Today’s truth is that Christ walks the way of death that we might not be alone in our ashen lives, that we might not be alone when the world crashes in around us, that we might not be alone when, one day, death does come.    

                  Today we remember these two fundamental truths. That we are creatures of dust and ash and that God loves us with the full power of the universe anyway.

                  I think this fundamental truths is one of the hardest to grasp in our lives of faith – the depth and breadth of God’s love for us in spite of our utter frailty. As another image to ponder, as another way of trying to understand this incredible truth, I share with you something from the Hindu tradition. The Kumbh Mela festival just concluded in India. It takes place every few years, with every 12th year, as this was, marking a particularly important one. People gather at the confluence of the rivers Ganga, Yamuna, and the mystical third river, Saraswati. Millions gather to bathe in the sacred xwaters. 12 years ago, Sadvhi Bhagawati Saraswati, who is what we might call a nun in the Hindu tradition, said this of the festival: 

“Drops of the sacred nectar of immortality actually fell upon this land and into these rivers, and so people who have come have come to bathe in the nectar of immorality. But nobody thinks that what it means is that cells of their body won’t die. Of course they will. Everybody knows that. So we go home from here with an awareness of our divine and eternal nature. And that’s what the nectar of immortality is.”

                  That is what today is about. Today is about the divine poured out into a land of dust. Today is about the divine coursing through our lives. Today is about the dual awareness that our lives are dust and we are loved into God’s eternal life. 

                  And so our readings and our invitation to the season of lent speak to us of how we might seek to shape our lives anew.  Not because it will change either of those essential truths. It will not make us something other than dust. And on the flip side it will not make God love us any more, for God already loves to the fullest. But we are invited to actions that might call our mind and our communities back again to these fundamental truths. 

                  We are invited to pause from our frenetic consumption, to dialogue with the divine, to share the abundance we experience, not for our gain, but that we might remember the ways God is always reshaping our ashen mess into something holy, something cross-shaped, something that becomes a means of God’s pouring out love for the world. 

                  So come, fellow travelers along the way. Bring your ashen lives again to the table of mercy and walk the pilgrim way of Lent. And discover anew the incredible things that God can do with dust. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Strong Back, Soft Front

7th Sunday after Epiphany
February 23, 2025
St. Michael’s-on-the-Heights, Worcester, MA

A recording of this worship service is available on the congregation’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/live/oeSVsoxSPWY?si=O0YplK0foQTkWRJO

[Jesus said:] 27 “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. 29 If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. 30 Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. 31 Do to others as you would have them do to you.
  32 “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. 33 If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. 34 If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. 35 But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. 36 Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
  37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.” – Luke 6:27-38

Oh, dear people of God, sometimes the words of Jesus are difficult. Turn the other cheek, pray for your enemies, extend mercy, share even the shirt off your back, and don’t judge anyone. 

These are likely familiar admonitions, even for those who might not have a long history of Bible reading. And certainly we manage to do them some of the time. But to really live a life this way – to really follow the way of Jesus, the way of love, the way of mercy. That is a radical way of life that I struggle to even come close to. In part, so much of it seems to mean sacrifice and giving up. But maybe today we can look together at these difficult commands of Jesus and see what life they might offer not just others but to us who seek to live in this way. 

In part I think Jesus is urging us into a way of living that author and speaker Brene Brown calls strong back, soft front. To have a strong back means having a clear sense of who you are and what you stand for. It means you’re confident in who you are and you’re going to stick to it when someone challenges what’s really important to you. At the same time to have soft front means that we make ourselves vulnerable and open to others. 

But as she herself points out, some of us – maybe most of us? – want to have a strong everything. Strong front, strong back, strong top and bottom and everything in between. The culture we swim in teaches us to stick to what we think is right, to struggle to get ahead and hold on to power, wealth, and success, to put forth an image of being together, confident, and independent. Strong at everything, show no weakness. If asked in a job interview what your greatest weakness is, we’ve learned to play off some theoretical weakness as something that is actually a strength. And sometimes we put all this on God as if God is asking us to buck up and stay strong, power through. What it does is leave us tired, afraid, and isolated from others. 

Today Jesus is inviting us into something different. Jesus invites us to stay present in conflict – not ever to suffer abuse, let me be clear – but in the regular conflict and disagreement that exists in our relationships to stay present to those we love and care about, to be open to learning, growing, and changing. Jesus invites us to offer to those in need what we can give, to know that we are people rooted in community, love, and grace and from that place allow ourselves to share something of ourselves that might even open us up to hurt or pain. Jesus invites us to set aside our judgment and make room for others. Again, a tall order to live up to, yet something that might be life-giving in ways we might not expect. When we take such a stance, we might even feel it in our bodies. A fighting stance is one that is tense, often curled forward. But a strong back soft front allows us to pull our bodies up tall and take in a deep breath, strong but relaxed.

Yesterday, three of you from St. Michael’s joined 50 others from across this part of our diocese to talk about our mission together. We have long thought of ourselves as a set of connected outposts of mission. Individual churches who each do their own thing. We’ve perpetuated a narrative that we’re strong when we can fund our budget on our own, call our own clergy person, maintain our own building, and call the shots on our own ministry. There’s nothing wrong with any of those things in and of themselves, but as someone from this congregation pointed out, none of those things are actually our mission as Jesus people. And they tend to push us into the corner of “we’ve always done it that way.” We’ve tried to be strong in the way the world defines it and that has sometimes worked ok. But if it ever was, it’s not now a time that it’s working well for the church. Maybe Jesus intends not a word of law but a word of grace in teaching us to open ourselves up. What if all of us found a softer front that allowed us to name our challenges and seek strength in working together, trying new things. This is work you are doing now at St. Michael’s. In this challenging time of transition, taking time to tune in to who you are as a parish and naming what you need. 

If what Jesus suggests is actually more along the lines of what Brene Brown calls strong back, soft front, then we have an opportunity to find strength in returning again and again to our core values as God’s people. We can find a strong back in knowing who we are as Jesus people, as people called to the way of love. We can find a strong back in renewing again our baptismal covenant: 

To continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers; persevere in resisting evil, proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves; and strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being. 

We can find a strong back in knowing and calling each other’s attention to the constant presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives, comforting, challenging, calling, enlivening. These, not our own achievements or even our own ministry and church accomplishments are where we find real strength – God’s strength shared in and through our lives. 

At the same time as we find strength in those things, we might also find a soft front. To live as Jesus suggests in today’s reading, to live as Jesus himself lived, is to be vulnerable. This is the only way to stay connected. When we spoke yesterday of what is making our hearts sing in ministry, I was not surprised to hear Marie’s Mission lifted up. This is a ministry born out of a moment of deep pain, grief, and vulnerability. It has encouraged you to open your doors to people in this community, to see the deep need that exists in a way that I know continues to break your hearts even as you meet those needs with generosity and kindness. You have a found a soft front that has allowed you to be in relationship with the community and, I daresay, allowed you a deeper experience of God at work among you. Do good and expect nothing in return, Jesus admonishes in today’s reading – you have done this incredible work not because Jesus said, or because you thought it was right, but because your hearts were open to God and neighbor and you have stayed rooted in who God has called you to be. Strong back, soft front. 

 The way of Jesus is difficult, no question. Turn the other cheek, pray for your enemies, share what you have, hold back your judgments. These things are difficult. And if we approach them of things we must force ourselves to do, we will find the yoke of Christian life challenging. But if we see them as an invitation to strong back and soft front we may find ourselves discovering new and abundant life, which is ultimately God’s deep desire for each of us and for all of creation. 

The most incredible gift God gives us in this is walking the way ahead of us. These are not just things that Jesus tells us to do. These are things Jesus lives out in his ministry and ultimately in his death. Jesus remains through every moment of his ministry both committed to his values and clear on his purpose but also radically open to relationship in a way that makes him vulnerable. He is deeply in touch with the needs of the people he encounters and the incredible and unique giftedness of the people he encounters. It is his strong back – his commitment to love above all – that leads him to the cross. In an act of true strength that required deep vulnerability – his soft front – God in Christ offers himself to death. And from that comes resurrection and new life. 

Dear friends, walking the way of Christ is hard work. It always has been and always will be. But Jesus comes again and again to us in scripture, prayer, wine and bread, to call us back to who we are as beloved children of God and to invite us more deeply into open and vulnerable relationship with one another. We may wish some days – maybe many days – to be strong in all the ways the world tells us we should be. I’d love to have all the answers and the power to make things happen. But the call we have from Jesus is different: reconnect with the way of love and stay open. Who know what then God will do among us next?

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Embodied Vulnerability

Presentation of Our Lord
Sunday, February 2, 2025
St. John’s Episcopal Church, Ashfield, MA

22 When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, [Mary and Joseph] brought [Jesus] up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), 24 and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”
  25 Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. 26 It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. 27 Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, 28 Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
 29 “Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
  according to your word;
 30 for my eyes have seen your salvation,
  31 which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles
  and for glory to your people Israel.”
  33 And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. 34 Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed 35 so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
  36 There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, 37 then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. 38 At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
  39 When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. 40 The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him. – Luke 2:22-40

            Many of you are probably familiar with the old story that goes around about a Christian who is facing a looming disaster – often the story is about rising floodwaters at his house. He prays to God to be saved. Along comes a car offering to help him evacuate before the roads are cut off. “No,” he replies, “God will save me.” The waters continue to rise and he continues to pray. Leaning out a window he sees a boat go by, and the people in the boat offer to rescue him. Again, “No, God will save me.” The floodwaters reach the roofline and terribly desperate, the man climbs onto his roof, praying all the harder. A helicopter comes by to rescue him. “No! God will save me.” Finally he is consumed by the floodwaters and arrives in heaven asking God, “Why didn’t you save me?” God replies, “What do you mean?! – I sent you a car, a boat, and a helicopter!” 

            Now usually this story is told as a bit of a mockery of the man who missed God’s practical interventions in favor of waiting for some supernatural fix that is more clearly – in his mind – divine intervention. Those of us who grew up in certain faith traditions, like the Episcopal church among others, that have long had an emphasis on God’s embodied action in the world, might easily fall in the category of those who are smugly judgmental of this silly man caught in the flood. 

            And yet, I wonder…how many of us have missed moments of God’s saving grace placed right in front of us because it didn’t match our expectations of what God can or should be doing? 

            What makes the presentation of Jesus at the temple one of my favorite biblical stories is that Simeon and Anna, through the wisdom earned by years of life experience, or years of prayer, some innate sensibility, or some combination of the above, recognize the divine salvation embodied in front of them in a tiny newborn infant. I am struck the by the faith it requires to see God’s salvation fully realized in this moment when very little has been revealed about what lies ahead. 

            Growing up I imagined that they had been somehow granted a holy vision of what was to come. If not the full picture, then some clear understanding of what Jesus would become, how he would die and be resurrected, and how this incarnation of God would transform the world. As an adult, I think…well, maybe that could be the case. 

            More and more, though, I am drawn to the dimensions of God’s salvation that are already fully realized just by God inhabiting a vulnerable human body. Not by any means to discount all that is to come and the importance of our being an Easter people. But that we have a God who takes on vulnerability and weakness, a God who joins the weak and disempowered ones, a God who gives priority to the stranger, the widow, the orphan, and the oppressed – that in and of itself is salvation. 

            I think that’s what Simeon and Anna see. Maybe they are primed because they themselves inhabit bodies that have become more vulnerable with age. Though they carry deep wisdom and a lifetime of prayerfully nourished spiritual depth, they know, too, the fragility of life and the impermanence of being embodied creatures. They recognize that an infant, though full of possibility, is vulnerable just by virtue of being at the other end of the life spectrum. This, this infant who cannot even sit up much less walk or talk or feed himself, this is God’s salvation, now, in this moment. This is holy. 

            We sit now, as we honestly always have, in a world that defines itself by power over others, by success measured by physical strength and financial wealth. We are in a time when the struggle to be in control outweighs the collective work toward a common purpose. We are in a time when winning is celebrated and losing is mocked. Even as many of us ask what we can do to counter that kind of power, we, too, are deeply steeped in the culture of power and all too often contribute to its misuse. 

            In the midst of all that God comes to be embodied among us. God is embodied among us in the immigrant who is dismissed because they do not speak the dominant language or do not have the right papers. God is embodied among us in the people whose homes and schools and hospitals have been destroyed and whose loved ones have been killed as nation-states fight for land and resources and power. God is embodied among us in fragile ecosystems already tipped far out of balance and species on the brink of extinction. God is embodied in the very young and very old and the ones society has written off for their illness or for their different way of existing in the world. God is embodied among us in those who have lost their jobs and lost loved ones. Here is a hard one for me – God is embodied in those with whom we vehemently disagree, for they, too, are God’s beloved creations. And dear people of God, I dare say God is embodied here, in you and me, broken people imperfectly seeking to live out our faith and transform the world toward God’s kinship community here on earth. 

            That is a risky move on God’s part, because all the people I just listed including you and me are vulnerable. Some even more extremely so than others. And God chooses not only to love us all deeply anyway but to be physically present in that vulnerable space with us, in us. 

            I think as we figure out where our calling is in this moment – in any moment – we would do well to model ourselves on Simeon and Anna, prayerfully looking to discover what God is doing. I do not mean that we ought to be passive and simply pat ourselves on the back for identifying God’s presence in very real suffering. But I do think we do well to approach every situation with their openness to the unexpected presence of God. I suspect that too often God shows up in our lives in ways we miss or dismiss. 

            I find myself too often convinced I know what God is up to. I have lots of opinions about how the church should meet the needs of the 21st century. I have opinions about how our society might run better. And those all get in the way at times of my seeing God’s salvation, of recognizing God’s transforming love showing up in my life and the life of the world around me. When I stop and listen, when I honor the humanity of the person before me, when I try to remain open to connection, those are the moments I most often find myself caught up in the work of the Divine. Whatever the circumstance, I long always to pause to recognize the face of God in the person in front of me. 

            Wherever we find ourselves in that this morning, God is embodied here – in this gathered community and in the bread and wine we share. In the Eucharist we experience again the body of Christ made vulnerable to our human need, broken apart that we might be joined together. It’s that feast that might again open our eyes to the presence of God unexpectedly appearing in our midst. 

I share with you in closing the words of a hymn but Lutheran pastor and poet Susan Briehl. In the stanzas she highlights for us that God’s way of being in the world turns things upside down, the ways that God shows up often counter to what we expect – with glory in the ordinary, power in weakness, beauty in that which is despised, wisdom in folly, and ultimately life found in death: 

(As the text is copyrighted, I share it here as a video and the text can be viewed here: https://digitalsongsandhymns.com/songs/6547)

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Wicked?

3rd Sunday after Epiphany
January 26, 2025
St. Andrew Episcopal Church, Longmeadow, MA

Worship at St. Andrew was streamed to Facebook here: https://fb.watch/xnYyC1DvNs/

1 All the people [of Israel] gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. 2 Accordingly, the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. 3 He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. 5 And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people; and when he opened it, all the people stood up. 6 Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lordwith their faces to the ground. 8 So they read from the book, from the law of God, with interpretation. They gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading.
  9 And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. 10 Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord; and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” – Nehemiah 8 (selected verses)

14 Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15 He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.

  16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
 18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
  because he has anointed me
   to bring good news to the poor.
 He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
  and recovery of sight to the blind,
   to let the oppressed go free,
 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” – Luke 4:14-21

            My family and I are big fans of the musical and now motion picture Wicked, nominated this week for 10 Oscars. I have always liked it, but a few years ago my daughter really, really got into the music, which we now know by heart in our respective assigned parts. Besides the delight of magic, the wonderful costumes, and well-composed music, there is something absolutely captivating about the story. 

            In some ways, that because it’s an intentional retelling of an older story. The old Wizard of Oz story has clear good and evil and the wicked witch of the west is the enemy who must be destroyed. The good witch, Dorothy and her crew, and the residents of the land of Oz all join forces and defeat the enemy, sending Dorothy home, getting the heart’s desire of the lion, the tin man, and the scarecrow, and all live happily ever after. 

            In Wicked, however, though it opens in the context of this rejoicing at the death of the enemy, the whole narrative shifts as we come to understand Elphaba, the so-called wicked witch, as a marginalized outsider who cannot seem to control her passions and her rage at injustice. Over time she tries over and over again to right wrongs from outside the system sometimes with unintended disastrous consequences. And we meet Glinda the so-called good witch who presents as bubbly and shallow, but who underneath has and further develops deep empathy and kindness and tries to fix things from within the halls of power, sometimes also with unintended consequences. The two are forever changed by their unlikely friendship which develops in the face of confronting the Wizard, who, we discover, is just a simple man trying to do good but radically messing things up in the process. The characters are all just so…human. 

            It’s an saying, but still true – history is written by the victors. Who you see as the hero in the story depends on who you are and where you sit in the narrative. Wicked highlights that in delightful ways, inviting us into different perspectives on the story, different points of view, and ultimately a story about being deeply human.

So, beloved ones, much as I love to talk about Wicked, what I really want to ask is what story do we have to tell as the people of God in this time and place? How will we tell the story of our life with God? 

Today we have two scripture stories that are themselves about the story-telling. In the too-rarely quoted book of Nehemiah, the Hebrew people are gathering again in Jerusalem. Decades ago their kingdom was split and ultimately defeated, their temple destroyed, and many of their people sent into exile in a foreign land. They now find a remnant gathering again at what they hope will be the beginning of their rebuilding. They are not gathered to create and action plan and start rebuilding. First they gather to tell their story. They read the books of the law, the Torah, the story of God’s coming again and again with promises and covenants and new life in the face of slavery, exile, destruction, and death. They tell the story of God walking with God’s people. The story of God with us. The story of imperfect people stumbling along the path of faith with a God who never tires of walking with them. 

I cannot help but think of the people facing the rebuilding of their whole lives after devastating wildfires in California, after any of our natural disasters, or the smaller scale but no less devastating individual losses that come to our lives. In the face of this destruction I’ve seen people blaming God, blaming government officials, insurance companies, fire prevention methods; arguing about how much is related to climate change. We are looking for a story of fault. We could tell this story as one of right and wrong, good and bad, saved and not. While there are clearly things to learn and things to do differently in the future, I wish instead we could tell the story of God with us, with all of us, in the challenges we face that are beyond any of our capacity to overcome. 

Though hardly the same thing, you here at St. Andrew are also facing a rebuilding after a challenging few years of COVID, rebuilding, and the departure of your priest. You are standing at new threshold of what comes next. And part of the question you are being called to ask is how you’ll tell your story? Is it one of heroes and villains? One of winners and losers? Of success or failure? Or is it a story of how God has been with you as you travelled the long, winding, and often difficult journey of faith together as a community? Where have you seen God at work in the midst of hard moments? Where have you experienced God’s grace in this place and out in God’s wonderful world? 

            That’s the story we have to tell about where we’ve been. 

Fast forward several centuries from Ezra and Nehemiah to another congregation gathered to hear the stories of God’s people. The hometown boy turned preacher is prepared to share the word of God. Jesus unrolls the scroll of Isaiah. “Today! Fulfilled in your hearing, good news for the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, the oppressed set free, and here, now, is the year of God’s favor.” He is telling the story of God’s liberation of old, those centuries of stories of God’s people living their lives of faith and telling it in a way that brings it to the present moment and invites them into a new way of living going forward. It’s not a story only of the past, but a story of God working miracles then and there in the presence of Jesus. 

I think that is in part what Bishop Mariann Budde of the Diocese of Washington was speaking in her now well-known sermon from this past week’s national prayer service. She called for unity based not in superficial niceties or political posturing but in the dignity of all people, honesty in public and private discourse, and humility to recognize our own fallibility. She quoted Solzhenitsyn, “The line separating good from evil runs not between states, nor between classes, nor between political parties, but right through every human heart.” We are in a time – by which I mean not this week, this month, this year, but this millennium when injustice reigns, where people are pushed to the margins, where people’s lives and livelihoods are at stake. And we can tell a story of heroes and villains – one in which we the tellers of the story are inevitably the heroes and the other people inevitably the villains. We are surely sometimes participants in God’s liberating work, sometimes the ones being set free, and sometimes, too, the ones who oppress others. But what Bishop Budde spoke was the story of God’s call for mercy that resounds not just today but in every age. In all the years to come, part of our story as baptized people of God is to call forth that good news to the poor, release to the captive, and the setting free of the oppressed in ways that allow us to see God’s bringing that to life in our own community. 

And so again I turn to you, beloveds of God at St. Andrew, how will you tell the story of the people you are becoming in this moment? Are you people focused on what you once were or where you’ve been? Or are you a people curious to see what new thing God is setting free in your midst? You are a people through whom God has accomplished a great deal in this past year – your church school, your creative arts ministry, your adult formation, your fellowship, your music and worship life, your support of the community through Lydia’s Closet, and so much more. Are you a people who tell the good news not just of a thriving parish but of a place where people encounter a living God who has the power to transform our lives, breath life into our bones, and gather us to resurrection here, now and forever? Because the ministry is not about St. Andrew’s successes or failures, but about experiencing God’s breaking into the life of our community and doing something new.

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I fail to tell the story in that way. Sometimes I’m stuck – stuck in a story that is too simple, a story that is ultimately divisive or makes me and my side out to be the hero. Or I despair because I see the ways I fail to live out the values I believe or the liberation I long for or simply just fail to achieve what I intend. Sometimes I’m still in the black-and-white that begins the Wizard of Oz movie or the black-and-white thinking that persists in that story even when technicolor sweeps across the screen. But we are a people of a God who brings a new story to life, one full of beautiful complexity, broken humans swept up into God’s incredible work of liberation for all creation, and the opportunity always to live into new life after death. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Mom, Really?!

2nd Sunday after Epiphany
January 19, 2025
Trinity Episcopal Church, Milford, MA

1 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. – John 2:1-11

                  I know it’s a cold winter weekend, but my mind is on vacation. I’ve been starting to plan a family trip for April school vacation week. Since my father’s death several years ago, my mom has joined my husband and daughter and I for some kind of trip together every year. It’s a wonderful time together, we share the costs, rent a place where we can cook our own food, and visit some interesting destination near or far where all of us can enjoy something fun. I look forward to it every year. 

                  But…if you’ve ever traveled with family, you probably know that no matter how wonderful and how much we look forward to the time, there are inevitably moments of conflict. Whether it’s with a spouse, a child, a parent, a friend – it’s rare that I’ve taken a trip without at least one moment of conflict. Too hungry and irritable about where we’ll eat dinner, judgy about how someone else is packed in a tightly shared space, introverts over-stimulated and extroverts longing for more engagement, or just general bickering when sharing close quarters and there’s lots of togetherness. I’ve noticed that even though my mom and I have a fantastic relationship, talk regularly, and see each other often despite living several hours drive apart, when she’s with us on vacation there are moments where I suddenly revert to being a rebellious 18 year old wanting to make my own way, thank you very much. 

                  So I’m feeling sympathetic to Jesus and to his poor mother as they attend the wedding of some dear family friend at Cana. No doubt Jesus is looking to be there on his own terms as a fully grown adult, despite what must be plenty of connections to people who still see him as the precocious 12-year-old boy who ran around playing among them. They are well into the multi-day celebration when his mother comes running up to him, “Do something! They are out of wine!” 

                  This would be considered a bit of a crisis at many a celebration – not enough of whatever the guests need. But there was a particular culture of hospitality that would bring shame on the couple and the family and even perhaps foreshadow bad luck for the marriage ahead. Mary, of course, knows her son and knows something about the divine presence in, with, and under his humanity. Even so, it is a little unclear the way John relates the story to us just what it is Mary expects Jesus to do. 

                  Besides, Jesus is not ready. Whatever his reasons in the moment, Jesus is suddenly again the rebellious teenager again – “Ugh. Moooommm…. What is that to me and to you?!” And Mary, squelching the anger at his response and channeling her mom energy, turns to the servants and tells them “Do what he tells you.” Jesus, now committed by his mother, has no choice but to come up with a plan on the fly. I imagine with a big sigh, he commands the servants to fill the water jugs. And so happened the first of his signs, done at Cana in Galilee, revealing his glory, and instilling belief in those who witnessed it. 

                  I hope I am not offending anyone’s piety by imagining the scene this way. Please know that I do so with a deep reverence for the full humanity of Jesus as much as the full divinity of Jesus. And because it just feels so deeply relatable to be trapped suddenly back in a pattern with our families that we thought we’d long overcome. 

                  This is what we do, right? We suddenly let out on the ones closest to us the burdens we carry of stress at work or at school, our anxiety about health, our grief about what has been lost, our fears about the future. All of that weighs on us, and sometimes it’s the ones we love the most that get the brunt of our frustration. Perhaps because of that deep love we are suddenly confronted with something in ourselves that we don’t actually want to see. So we blame, lash out, or shut down, we return to old patterns where we push each other’s buttons. We don’t mean to, we don’t – hopefully – set out to hurt anyone. But we do. We’re human. And in this little exchange between Jesus and his mother we see a bit of their closeness of relationship and their humanity. 

                  One of my ongoing challenges as a person of faith is to actually lean in to God with that same kind of deep and abiding trust. To actually fully trust God to be in charge, fully trust God to lead me out of tough spots. That’s a trust that Mary models in this moment. Not in a pious, well-worded prayer or in a well-thought out process of partnering with God in the work of ministry. Just in everyday relationship, one so close she can call him out to be fully himself, close enough that he can bristle a bit about the well-work pattern, close enough that she can keep rolling even when he is brusque in return. 

                  We long for that kind of closeness with God. And perhaps some of us some of the time find that kind of closeness. The kind of closeness with which we can bring our deepest yearnings, fears, hopes, and also just the ordinary stuff of our days. And what a gift that is in those moments to be in relationship with a God of such abundance, a God who transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, who joins us in our celebrations, who desires for us abundance and joy. 

                  But there are times, sometimes much of our lives even as people of faith, when we fail to lean fully into that level of trust. Maybe you find yourself in one of those times now. We are in a time when the world is in turmoil – perhaps you know people devastated by the wildfires in LA, perhaps you know people who have ties to the devastating violence in Israel and Gaza or to violence that happens in cities and towns closer to home. Maybe you are living your own grief at the death of a loved one or at illness and aging that strips away parts of ourselves, or things are clouded by anxiety or depression. Maybe you are simply exhausted from trying to hold things together. And all of us are in a time when churches as institutions are struggling to make ends meet and the future of our ministries requires a different kind of investment than we know what to do with. 

While these difficult challenges will sometimes bring us to deeper faith, often they leave us feeling the weight of scarcity, of not enough. The wine has run out. What will we do?     

Here, I think, is of the deeply beautiful things about this story: very few people know what happened. The servants, Mary, Jesus, perhaps a few of his brand-new disciples. But nowhere does it indicate that anyone else is in on the mysterious sign. The lowly ones – they are invited to see. But everyone – everyone! – present at the party gets to experience God’s abundance. They aren’t all aware. Many of them will miss, at least for now, the deeper things this sign points to about Jesus and the presence of God in their lives. But they experience the abundance all the same.

So come again to the table of mercy. Experience today God’s abundance poured out for you – the body of Christ the bread of heaven, the blood of Christ the cup of salvation. Bring your deep faith and your wildest doubts. Bring your passionate energy for your faith and your tired and weary souls burdened by sorting out life and ministry. Bring it all to this table, and wherever you are, whoever you are, experience the abundance of God. 

It is no magical solution to all your problems. While it may draw you closer into that deep and abiding relationship with Jesus, that also will not magically solve all your problems. But it will call you into God’s abundant life where God comes again and again to be close with you, to be in relationship with you, to love you into new life.  

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Offering of Gifts

Epiphany (transferred)
January 5, 2024
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, East Longmeadow, MA

Livestream recording: https://www.youtube.com/live/9AlABEqYAko?si=iwrlh5a5Sp6uBnRs

1 In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, 2 asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; 4 and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. 5 They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:
 6 ‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
  are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
 for from you shall come a ruler
  who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ”
  7 Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. 8 Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” 9 When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. – Matthew 2:1-12

            Perhaps by now you, too, have seen some version of the comic that goes around from time to time. The magi show up to greet the child king they have journeyed long and hard over months of difficult and dangerous terrain to honor. Mary is a little taken aback. The magi present their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, which Mary accepts graciously. And in various forms the punch line is a grumble that something like diapers, infant formula, and onesies would have been a little more helpful to Mary. 

            Of course the gifts are meant to honor a king, show royal privilege. Centuries of interpretive layers have connected the gifts to a foreshadowing of the significance of Jesus’ death, where his body will be anointed and placed in the tomb before the glorious resurrection morning. But the comic points out the kind of incongruity that often marks some of our most beloved scripture accounts. 

            Here royal priests, astrologers, mystics – people of some kind of status and privilege journey many miles to discover that one they seek is in some humble abode – perhaps some temporary dwelling between the stable of the night of the birth and the couple’s journey back to Nazareth or in flight to Egypt. They discover the star has led them not to the palace where they stop first but to some no-name family with no resources to speak of. Perhaps even more surprisingly they don’t turn around and go home, questioning their star charts and their better judgment, but instead they trust the leading of the star and somehow recognize in this infant something special. They leave gifts of tremendous value and leave it seems, forever changed.

            This story always invites so many questions for me, but one recurring question is what gifts I might bright were I in the shoes of the magi. If I were to be drawn by something so mysterious and astounding that I would leave my home for months and offer a significant part of my resources, but didn’t quite know what I would find when I got there, just what would I pack? 

            This is in fact a fundamental question of our lives. What do we have to offer? How is it that I honor God and neighbor and add value to the world? That’s a core identity question for us. Sometimes, it feels hard to answer. Hard to know if what we’ve done in work, for our families, for our community is enough to make a difference, even though we deeply want to offer something that does. 

            What would you pack if you were called on a journey to honor an unknown new king? Your best clothing to wear for the occasion? A check from your retirement savings? A lavish gift purchased and wrapped exquisitely? What is appropriate for such a king that gets a star formed at his birth? What gift do you have to honor the one who formed you and made you and sustains you? 

            I am reminded of a poem that was first shared with me by the bishop who ordained me, Bp. Margaret Payne. The poem is by Billy Collins and it’s about a man recalling having made a lanyard at summer camp to give to his mother: 

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.

No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.

I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that’s what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.

She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I, in turn, presented her with a lanyard.

Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.

And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

            Sometimes I feel like that with God and with what I have to meet the needs of the world. What can we possibly offer back to the creator of all things? What is enough? What is appropriate? God is perhaps the kind of recipient that would be glad were we to use our time and resources serving someone in need in lieu of spending money and time on shopping for things. After all, what could we give that God does not have? But even there, how should we do that? How can we serve others in a way that honors their and our common humanity and dignity and works to bring equity and justice and lasting peace? I know that I only, at best, have a small piece to offer in that work. 

And yet, here we are, fellow people of God meeting here this morning on the road. We have been called to follow Jesus. Some light has drawn you. What have you brought with you today to offer Jesus? What gift do you have to present? 

Maybe you know. Maybe you have discovered that place where your god given gifts and passion meet the world’s need. Maybe you bring administrative skills or capacity to teach others, the gift of making others feel welcome or the gift to see a vision for the way forward. Maybe you bring a skill – carpentry or music. Maybe you have time and willingness to work hard. Maybe you bring joy to others. And maybe you don’t know in this moment what gift you have to share. 

But this is the thing about God as a recipient of gifts. God really just wants you, exactly as you are. Wants to see you flourish, see you experience joy, wants to be present with you in hard times. The journey sometimes is long and winding. The encounters put us sometimes in places of risk. The gifts we feel we have don’t always seem to match the needs we face. And yet, God takes our lanyards – the things that seem incomparably small in comparison to the need, and transforms them in to the healing of the world. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco