Christmas is For YOU

Christmas Eve 2025
Christ Memorial Episcopal Church, North Brookfield

2 The people who walked in darkness
  have seen a great light;
 those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
  on them light has shined.
 3 You have multiplied exultation;
  you have increased its joy;
 they rejoice before you
  as with joy at the harvest,
  as people exult when dividing plunder.
 4 For the yoke of their burden
  and the bar across their shoulders,
  the rod of their oppressor,
  you have broken as on the day of Midian.
 5 For all the boots of the tramping warriors
  and all the garments rolled in blood
  shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
 6 For a child has been born for us,
  a son given to us;
 authority rests upon his shoulders,
  and he is named
 Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,
  Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
 7 Great will be his authority,
  and there shall be endless peace
 for the throne of David and his kingdom.
  He will establish and uphold it
 with justice and with righteousness
  from this time onward and forevermore.
 The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. – Isaiah 9:2-7

1 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered. 4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place in the guest room.

  8 Now in that same region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid, for see, I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: 11 to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
 14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
  and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
  15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” 16 So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the child lying in the manger. 17 When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them, 19 and Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told them. -Luke 2:1-20

I had lots of Christmas-time traditions growing up, but one that was often sort of in the background but often present, was the music of Handel’s Messiah. Though it was originally composed with Easter in mind, the arc of that narrative begins with incarnation. Over time it found a place in the Christmas repertoire. And the only real line I remember with distinction from hearing it in childhood was the part that sets to music the lines we read tonight from the prophet Isaiah: 

“For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be call-ed: Wonderful Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace!”

I loved the way the music proclaimed those names for God. Jesus may have come as an infant, but he would know how to walk with us, support strong civil authority and justice, rule with might forever, and, perhaps most importantly, bring peace. 

These are words we long to hear just as Isaiah’s first listeners did. They were in a time of political upheaval. There was turmoil among their own people and threats their small Hebrew community would be overthrown by mightier armies. They were questioning God’s presence and the future of their faith community, their ability to be free to practice their faith. And as there is in every age, there was injustice, fear, illness, and death. They longed for the promised messiah. 

The same is true of the beloved Christmas story itself. Luke’s gospel sets the birth of Jesus in the context of empire. Once again, the Hebrew people are facing oppression from rulers and empires bigger than they are. They are wrestling with what it means to live their faith in the midst of big questions and daily challenges. The town of Bethlehem is overflowing with guests. Mary and Joseph can’t even find a welcoming place to lay their heads. The birth of the Christ child happens among the animals, unnoticed by almost everyone. Even the shepherds would have been unaware had the heavenly chorus not shown up to alert them. It always strikes me reading the story that almost everyone in the world missed the birth of Jesus. Longing as they must have been for the prince of peace to transform their lives and the world, they missed the important moment.

Perhaps you feel that way, too. The violence in our world cries out for peace. The injustice in our world longs for a reorientation. Our hearts broken by grief long for comfort, for new life. Most of our days, and perhaps especially at this time of year, our calendars get full, our lives are busy, the next urgent thing calls our attention until we are too exhausted to rest. 

In the midst of all that I return to the words of Isaiah. Reading those lines again this week, I was struck by the little words the music doesn’t really emphasize that much, the little words that easily get lost as we focus on the mighty God and prince of peace. To us. To us a child is born. To us a son is given. 

Tonight you have come to this space, in the midst of all that is going on in the world, in all that is going on in your own lives. To meet again the one who comes for you. For us. 

Even here it can be easy to miss. We sing the beloved carols, we read the familiar story, and we know how it all turns out. We know that Handel’s messiah rolls on to tell the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection for the life of the world. We confess as much in the creeds. Even if we feel in deep in our hearts this night, we are tempted to quickly roll on to the next thing, the next celebration, the next task that needs our attention. 

But here tonight, hear again those little words. The holy one comes to you. For you. Christ comes into this world where empires rage and violence abounds. Christ comes to this country, divided and hurting. Christ comes into this busy season. Christ comes to this congregation seeking to be faithful in this time and place. Christ comes to our lives, with all their joy and sorrow and pain and surprises. Christ comes…to you. 

Much of the time I suspect we are like the multitudes on that first Christmas Eve, and we miss entirely that God has entered the world anew, and miss that the presence of God is slowly growing in our midst toward the cross of Good Friday and that Handel-worthy Hallelujah chorus of Easter. Sometimes, like the shepherds, we get a wonderful sign that points us to the in-breaking of God to our world. But even when we miss it, as we often do, God is still present in this world, not just in a generic way but for each and every one of us. 

Tonight we gather, of course to sing the familiar carols, to hear the familiar story, but also to receive the embodied presence of Christ. You all invited me months ago to be here with you for Christmas Eve because it has been several Christmas Eves now that you have been without a priest for Eucharist. And of course God is just as present when we are unable to celebrate at the table together. But there is a way in which that holy encounter at the table is an opportunity to come before God in a particular way.

Like many others, when I teach first communion to younger kids – and sometimes with adults too! – I help them prepare for receiving communion by suggesting that they put their hands out together like this and to think of it like making a manger with their hands to receive Jesus. For it is Christ’s very body we welcome and hold in the bread and wine, it is Christ we welcome into our hearts and our bodies. In my own Lutheran tradition the typical words we say when we share communion are different: instead of “The body of Christ, the bread of heaven. The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation,” we say “The body of Christ given for you. The blood of Christ shed for you.” Tonight Christ is here for you. 

I invite you tonight, in the midst of joy-filled carols that ring out with the heavenly chorus, in the midst of the familiar story, in the midst of our complicated, messy, broken lives, in the midst of broken systems that perpetuate injustice and violence, to pause and remember that this night, and every night, the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the everlasting parent, the prince of peace comes here and now for you. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Asking About Resurrection

22nd Sunday after Pentecost
November 9, 2025
Zion Lutheran, Oxford & Reconciliation Episcopal, Webster

          Anyone who knows me just a little bit knows that I’m a planner, and organizer, a type-A personality. I have a plan A, B, and C, knowing what I’ll do if things don’t go the way I expect. When I go on vacation there are spreadsheets involved in planning. If you know anything about the Enneagram personality type system, I’m a 5, one of my core drivers is to get information, and the belief that if I just had all the information I could fix all the things. I want to understand how things work and how to make a system that maximizes benefit for everyone. Like any personality traits, this is both a strength and a weakness.      

            But I share it with you because it makes me a little sympathetic to the Sadducees. They have taken in the information they have available to them and they’ve come to seriously question that an afterlife is possible. Their question is meant, I’m sure, to trap Jesus. But I think it also comes from their own deep desire to understand – if God’s going to resurrect people, how will this really work? I mean, it’s pretty implausible when you think about it. 

            The scenario they choose highlights a vulnerable woman. Someone acquainted with tragedy and grief. Someone who through social norms was likely on the margins. They create a hypothetical not out of care and concern for the subject of their story but in order to prove a point. These are men in power who are using the plight of a vulnerable woman to argue a point. That’s not to say they didn’t also in their faith make meaningful acts of charity and support the vulnerable. But not unlike in our own day when recipients of SNAP food aid are caricatured in the media and used as a pawn in bigger political game, they ignore the humanity of the very people they are seeking to lead and guide. 

            They come to Jesus with this hypothetical situation and ask how this will all work in the resurrection that Jesus and other Jewish groups at the time believed in. Come on, Jesus, they say, this whole thing just doesn’t make sense! Just admit it, it’s just a fantasy to make everyone feel better. People have been wrestling with what happens when we die since long before Jesus and they still are today. Among Christians in the 21st century you’ll find faithful people who have very different ideas about what God means by resurrection and ideas about heaven. That’s to say nothing of those people of other faiths who have their own breadth of beliefs about the afterlife, and those who are not people of faith who certain include those who point to a logical argument to debunk the idea. 

            Jesus doesn’t explain how it will all work. God doesn’t have a rulebook that explains whose husband she will be in death. It’s not as if God pulls out volume 73 of the Heavenly Code and recited section 574 subsection B, defining the marriage rules of heaven. Instead Jesus’ answer is that they’re asking the wrong question. Falling into the fullness of God’s love isn’t about rules, or even human relationships and conceptions. It’s something so outside of what we can conceive that we wouldn’t even understand it. 

            What Jesus is doing, this whole resurrection thing, isn’t about fixing up the world as it is, it’s about an entirely new creation. Something beyond what we can conceive. 

            We have our own existential questions when faced with death – our own or the death of those we love. We want some assurance that we will be together again, some promise that it isn’t the ending. These become very real questions for us – will my pet be with me in heaven? Will my body be fully healed in resurrection? How will I be both the child my parent remembers and the adult my children know me to be? Will the streets be paved with gold? Will heaven be an endless feast or a joyful unending worship? 

            God’s answer to our deepest longings, the hopes we cling to in grief, is not to give us definitive answers, but to show us resurrection. Jesus doesn’t explain it all for us, but invites us to trust his leading through death into new life. God’s answer to every last one of those deep questions is “I love you. You are mine. I am bringing you new life.” 

            Jesus not long after speaking with these Sadducees goes to the cross and the grave. Jesus shows us the fullness of life and death. And then, when all hope seems lost, when the end has come, new life begins again. Jesus’ resurrected body is both familiar and mysterious, both comforting and challenging, both wounded and restored. In response to the fear and grief and pain of his followers Jesus shows himself to them and calls them forward into yet another new life, another restart, another resurrection. 

            The answer to what happens after we die is beyond our knowing. But God’s love and God’s promise of new life is already erupting in our world. Every time we get caught up in trying to puzzle out how everything works, every time we try our hardest to organize our life and our plans, God has something more in store. 

            When congregations are no longer sustainable on their own, God finds a way to continue the work of the gospel – for some through the generous releasing of resources, for others like you here at Zion/Reconciliation – in partnership that enriches and strengthens the opportunity for ministry. These are resurrection moments. And that’s really the way of the church – it’s not a place where everything is neat and orderly and life is made simple and easy. It’s a place where embodied people gather to be together and celebrate the ways that God is doing something new and unexpected in our midst. 

            When people go without food and strangers are not fully welcomed, our ministries make the table a little bigger and stretch the loaves and fishes until all are fed. When veterans are struggling to find a community that cares, a table is set to provide not just food but community. These are resurrection moments. 

            A few of you might have heard that my family and I traveled to Jamaica to attend a dear friend’s wedding and we ended up having to shelter there through the hurricane and its aftermath. We were and are safe, we were in a place of incredible privilege in the midst of disaster. As we talked with local people afterward, they not only spoke with a sense of togetherness, community that has and will support one another through whatever comes. It was a terrible tragedy that will take years and even lifetimes to recover from. Many are very much in survival mode still. And yet, there is resurrection already happening. They aren’t focused on how, they are focused on life. 

            This is what Jesus is about. Not careful plans, not everything going right, not everything working out neatly and orderly. Jesus is about life, wherever it is and however it comes. Jesus does not ignore death and all of the questions and grief that comes along with it. Instead Jesus walks us through it, not just telling us the answer but leading us there in this life and the one to come. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Holy Cross, Tree of Life

Holy Cross Day & Second Sunday in the Season of Creation
September 14, 2025
Grace Episcopal Church of the Southern Berkshires

            Last week I worshipped with my home church community, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in South Hadley.  The first Sunday after Labor Day is a nationwide Lutheran day of service, and at our church we continued the long process of making the church property more environmentally friendly as well as supportive of our human neighbors. There is a growing vegetable garden to support the local food pantry, a gradual transformation of grass lawn to wildflower meadow, a hope to make space for people to come and meditate in the natural world. Nothing compared the extent of your work here at Gideon’s Garden but a big endeavor for the small congregation. Several members are dedicated to learning and leading in this endeavor and last week my task for our day of service was to tackle some invasive plants. 

            I was pulling up swallow-wort, an invasive plant Monarchs sometimes mistake for milkweed, laying eggs that hatch caterpillars that can’t eat the plant. It was seemingly everywhere in the small patch in which we were working, its seedpods already opening and spreading themselves on the wind. It felt futile even to try, but every plant and seed pod put away was something against what should not be there. 

And I was pulling out as much oriental bittersweet as I possibly could. This invasive vine is well known for taking over. It grows up and grabs on to whatever it can – in this case some large and healthy evergreen trees. It can outcompete native species and take over an area. It was easy to identify, but as I pulled at one part of the vine it would bring along with it vines from other directions, often bringing with it much longer vines trailing much higher up than I realized. I would wrap a bit around my hand, pull until it either came loose or stuck firm, and used the clippers to what I could. It was, I have to say, rather satisfying to pull these up, even though I knew I could not fully eradicate it from the property.   

            As I did this, it was reminding me of a hymn called There in God’s Garden. It’s a hymn often sung on Good Friday: a beautiful poem that weaves the tree of wisdom from the Garden of Eden, the cross of Jesus’ death, and Christ himself crucified and risen in every age. These are the first three stanzas*: 

1   There in God’s garden 
stands the Tree of Wisdom,
whose leaves hold forth 
the healing of the nations;
Tree of all knowledge, 
Tree of all compassion,
Tree of all beauty.

2   Its name is Jesus, 
name that says, “Our Savior!”
There on its branches,
see the scars of suff’ring;
see where the tendrils
of our human selfhood
feed on its lifeblood.

3   Thorns not its own 
are tangled in its foliage;
our greed has starved it, 
our despite has choked it.
Yet, look! it lives! 
its grief has not destroyed it
nor fire consumed it.

These mighty evergreens on our church grounds stood, continuing to grow, to shelter other life, to breathe oxygen into our world, even with the vines that grew, tangling themselves in the foliage, threatening, if not to overtake the mighty trees, at least to bother them a bit and choke out other plants. 

            How like our world, where our greed attempts to starve the tree of life, where our spite has choked it. The invasiveness of our human destruction is everywhere. We remember in this season especially the way we destroy habitats, harm our plant and animal neighbors, pollute our waters, and consume carbon at alarming rates, destabilizing the climate that supports us all. While the bittersweet might not fully choke out those evergreens, our destruction might well destroy the earth our home. 

            So, too, all the terrible things we do to our human neighbors. We use guns to silence those we don’t agree with and destructive weapons to destroy people we consider expendable. We plow forward with policies that leave too many without healthcare, food access, and even their freedom. Our whole communities are harmed immigrants are singled out and shipped away. 

            I don’t know about you, but it feels like those things are reaching up like oriental bittersweet, not only making it hard to grow and thrive, but putting us at risk of death itself. I’ve become so accustomed to the evil in the world and within myself, that those things seem like the native species of our garden. 

            Jesus invites us today in the gospel to keep walking, not to let the powers of evil and destruction overtake us. But that invitation is one that can be exhausting. Fighting the vines of greed, fear, anxiety, prejudice, and division, it feels as if they pull us down even as we try to take those steps forward. Ripping them from our world takes concentrated effort and even then it only does so much good. 

            The garden in which we live, despite the prevalence of those invading vines, is one that is planted for our flourishing. A garden rich in welcome for all creatures – human, animal, and plant alike. A garden that produces food enough for all. A garden that grows shade and shelter for people from every tribe and nation. A garden that flourishes from the peaceful interconnectedness of a great multitude of species. 

            We have a call, my siblings in faith, to do our part to pull out those invasive species. Literally, of course. But figuratively as well. We plant anew every spring to feed people with nourishing vegetables, but also with needed mentorship and community in your garden. We advocate for policies that protect the most vulnerable. We share our resources with those in need. We seek peaceful ends, not just to global conflict but in our own small disputes with our neighbors. We learn and pray and act. And it is never enough.

            As I pulled up the bittersweet last week I knew I would not get it all. It is, even now, growing back in places. The swallow-wort had already gone to seed and our destruction of the remaining pods on one small property does not quell the advance of that and other invasive species across the state. We do that work not because we will fix the world, but because we honor the garden of wisdom and life that continues to grow. 

            On this Holy Cross day, we honor the symbol at the heart of our faith. The cross we wear around our necks, that we process in worship, that finds prominent place on banners and church logos – it’s become so common I think we forget what it really means. Yes, an instrument of shame and torture, but more than that a reminder that oppression, death, violence, destruction are all an ongoing part of our world and that Christ is deeply present in it. 

Paul says it this way in Galatians: May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Another hymnwriter, Marty Haugen, says it this way: Tree of Life and awesome mystery, in your death we are reborn; though you die in all of history, still you rise with every morn. 

In every garden there is death and new life. In every place weeds and invasive evil abound. And yet the tree of life stands in the midst of it all, breathing life-giving oxygen to feed our breath, sheltering and shading, producing nourishment for body and soul, experiencing with us the victories and the defeat, drawing all people to the center. 

God promises one day a new creation, a restoration of that beautiful garden to its natural state, creating a home for all. But we live today knowing that is not just some distant reality, but the foundation of our earthly home despite so much evidence to the contrary. 

And so the last three stanzas of that hymn: 

4   See how its branches 
reach to us in welcome;
hear what the Voice says, 
“Come to me, ye weary!
Give me your sickness, 
give me all your sorrow,
I will give blessing.”

5   This is my ending, 
this my resurrection;
into your hands, Lord, 
I commit my spirit.
This have I searched for; 
now I can possess it.
This ground is holy.

6   All heav’n is singing, 
“Thanks to Christ whose passion
offers in mercy
healing, strength, and pardon.
Peoples and nations, 
take it, take it freely!”
Amen! My Master!

*Text: Király Imre von Pécselyi, c. 1590-c. 1641; tr. Erik Routley, 1917-1982; Text © 1976 Hinshaw Music, Inc.

Shake Off the Dust

4th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 14C)
July 6, 2025
Christ the King-Epiphany Church, Wilbraham, MA

Worship, including readings and sermon are recorded here: https://www.youtube.com/live/waWnW3J3gXY?si=EgT8dsQN4rLayl0h

[1 My brothers and sisters, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. 2 Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3 For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. 4 All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbor’s work, will become a cause for pride. 5 For all must carry their own loads.
  6 Those who are taught the word must share in all good things with their teacher.]
  7 Do not be deceived; God is not mocked, for you reap whatever you sow. 8 If you sow to your own flesh, you will reap corruption from the flesh, but if you sow to the Spirit, you will reap eternal life from the Spirit. 9 So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. 10 So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all and especially for those of the family of faith.

  11 See what large letters I make when I am writing in my own hand! 12 It is those who want to make a good showing in the flesh who try to compel you to be circumcised—only that they may not be persecuted for the cross of Christ. 13 Even the circumcised do not themselves obey the law, but they want you to be circumcised so that they may boast about your flesh. 14 May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. 15 For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything, but a new creation is everything! 16 As for those who will follow this rule—peace be upon them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God. – Galatians 6:1-16

1 After this the Lord appointed seventy-two others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2 He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3 Go on your way; I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4 Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals, and greet no one on the road. 5 Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6 And if a person of peace is there, your peace will rest on that person, but if not, it will return to you. 7 Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8 Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9 cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10 But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11 ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’

  16 “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

  17 The seventy-two returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” 18 He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19 Indeed, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you. 20 Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” – Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

There was a time, hopefully mostly in the past, when we told our children and our peers to just get up, dust yourself off, and move on. 

And I can appreciate that advice on the one hand. There are times when we make a mistake, we fall and get mildly hurt, something we have worked on just doesn’t work, and there’s some level of resiliency that is good – to be able to pick up and keep going. 

On the other hand, sometimes it has been used to cover up pain that needs attention, to suppress emotions, to ignore a process of repair and amends when wrong has occurred, and promote a kind of toxic bravado. Just push through, carry on. 

And all that rings in my mind when Jesus tells the seventy that he sends out in pairs what they are to do when they encounter an unwelcoming community. Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Just dust yourself off and keep going. 

On the one hand, Jesus is in a moment of urgency to communicate the good news of God come near. He encourages the seventy apostles to keep moving and do the work where its possible to do it, and not carry with them the lack of welcome that they will inevitably encounter. 

But on the other hand, we all know that trying to do good work, God’s work sometimes we get burned. People resist, complain, argue, and sometimes outright disparage one another. The ways of the world prevail against the equality and justice and compassion of God’s realm. And you know what, sometimes it leaves us scarred, bruised in soul if not also in body. It can leave us feeling defeated, questioning the power of God to be at work in the world, and afraid or too tired to try again to work toward the sharing of good news in word and deed that our baptism calls us to do.   

We can support food pantries and feed our neighbors, donate our resources, and advocate for policies that support everyone around the globe having enough to eat. But people still go hungry and our calls for care in our policies go too often unheard. 

We can take a strong stand against gun violence, support neighborhood programs that develop community bonds and reduce harm, but down the street and around the globe weapons destroy bodies and lives at an alarming rate and wars that seem bent on destroying whole peoples rage on as if that is normal. 

We can support immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers, honoring the biblical call to welcome the stranger, but we cannot seem to overcome our own and our communities’ fear of the other, the ways we draw lines between peoples and create hierarchies based on race, citizenship, language, and so much more. 

We hold here in our local parish communities this incredible gift of grace. We have a message of love and compassion, of welcome and joy. This parish is one of our most vibrant communities. I know you’re not perfect – none of us are, but you’re doing pretty darn good work being Jesus people together. And yet, so many don’t know or don’t even want to know the transforming love that we feast on here in this place and at all our tables across the synod and diocese and beyond. 

I don’t know about you, but it feels like we encounter the unwelcome far too often. It feels as if the world is bent against the transforming nature of God’s love. And we can follow Jesus’ advice and shake the dust off our feet and carry on. But after a while it gets harder to find the energy to brush the dust off. And at the risk of carrying the metaphor too far, the dust starts to cake on, and harden, and make it harder and harder to take the next steps and harder still to brush it all off. 

And what of the communities that resist the apostles? Is Jesus’ advice simply to abandon them to their own brokenness? I’m not one who worries about evangelism as a means to make sure as many people as possible end up in heaven. That’s God’s business and I tend to lean into my experience of God’s ever-expanding grace and love in that regard. But I do worry about evangelism in the sense that my faith and my experience in a faith community has been an incredible gift in my life, challenging me and comforting me, connecting me to God and neighbor. And I grieve that so many who long for those things have not found them.

And this is where I think there is a great gift in Jesus’ advice. Jesus isn’t interested in his apostles’ success rate. His call is to keep doing the work and lean into the places where it flourishes. It’s not meant to kick us forward when we’re feeling run down or ignore the hurt of rejection and the frustration of the world’s lack of welcome to the gospel. It’s about working where we can and seeing what happens. 

Something that strikes me is that no community exists in isolation from others. If some of the pairs of apostles find themselves in a place where God’s transformative love flourishes, that cannot help but affect the communities around them, welcoming or not. I understand the world to be deeply connected. When we work in one place it is not an abandonment of others, but a trust in God’s Spirit flowing beyond boundaries and transforming the world through us, and because of us, and in spite of us all at the same time. 

God does not abandon God’s people. Not us, not anyone. Whether we are eager apostles, reluctant followers, welcoming communities, or closed off towns, God does not abandon us. Instead God plants seeds here and there and everywhere. Some grow, some don’t. But the persistently invasive realm of God is always pushing its way past our resistance and reluctance. 

Paul admonishes the Galatians not to weary in doing what is right and to work wherever there is opportunity for the good of all. Siblings in Christ, sometimes that work is wearying. We face resistance from others and even resistance within ourselves. And yet God chooses us and sends us out as the vehicle for the spreading of God’s love and mercy and compassion. God does not force it on anyone, but also never lets go. 

Keep striving to follow the call. Keep planting – literally in your pollinator-friendly gardens and figuratively out in the world. Keep welcoming – into this wonderful place and out there in the community making space for others. Keep striving for peace – in your own hearts and in the global community. Don’t do it alone. Go together, two by two, or eight by eight or 100×100. Join with others wherever there is an opportunity for the common good. Jesus cannot promise your message will be welcomed. But he can promise that he is with you always in everything, and that Jesus’ presence with you is enough – in fact, all you really need. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Dance of Delight

Trinity Sunday
June 15, 2025
St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Worcester, MA

 1 Does not wisdom call,
  and does not understanding raise her voice?
 2 On the heights, beside the way,
  at the crossroads she takes her stand;
 3 beside the gates in front of the town,
  at the entrance of the portals she cries out:
 4 “To you, O people, I call,
  and my cry is to all that live.

 22 The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
  the first of his acts of long ago.
 23 Ages ago I was set up,
  at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
 24 When there were no depths I was brought forth,
  when there were no springs abounding with water.
 25 Before the mountains had been shaped,
  before the hills, I was brought forth—
 26 when he had not yet made earth and fields,
  or the world’s first bits of soil.
 27 When he established the heavens, I was there,
  when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
 28 when he made firm the skies above,
  when he established the fountains of the deep,
 29 when he assigned to the sea its limit,
  so that the waters might not transgress his command,
 when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
  30 then I was beside him, like a master worker;
 and I was daily his delight,
  rejoicing before him always,
 31 rejoicing in his inhabited world
  and delighting in the human race.” – Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31

[Jesus said,] 12 “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. 13 When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14 He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15 All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” – John 16:12-15

With thanks to Amy Frykholm for her wonderful lectionary essay that inspired the focus for this sermon and from whom I have quoted Julian of Norwich: https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/3875-divine-delight

            I have a friend who says that when we get to heaven she thinks that God doesn’t ask us for an accounting of our work: Did you do enough? Did you pray enough? Did you stay on the straight and narrow? But instead she imagines that God asks whether we enjoyed the ride: Did you eat enough ice cream? Did you enjoy enough sunsets? Did you get and give enough hugs? Mostly, though, did you get enough ice cream?

            Now, who knows what heaven is like – we can only ponder what God has in store. But I do think there there’s something to this. I think we have a God who delights in our delight, who wants us to enjoy life, to know love, to celebrate abundance.

            My friend is not alone. The famous 14th century theologian Julian of Norwich, known for her ascetic lifestyle locked away in isolation for prayer, said this: “Our soul must perform two duties. The one is that we must reverently wonder and be surprised. The other is we must gently let go and let be, always delighting in God.” 

            Again, who knows the mind of God, but it sounds like a beautiful midrash on the summary of the commandments to love God and neighbor. 

            In our first reading we hear the ancient words about wisdom: “When God marked out the foundations of the earth, then I [, wisdom,] was beside him like a master worker; and I was daily in his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race.”

            God delights! In us!! God playfully, artistically, masterfully sculpts a world in which God takes delight. And God invites Wisdom, often associated with the second person of the Godhead – the same one who incarnates in Jesus – to delight in the process. 

            Today is Holy Trinity Sunday – a day when we ponder the mystery of God, too vast and expansive to make sense in human language. I think we rarely do well to attempt complicated explanations of this doctrine. But what always draws me is the idea that God is fundamentally relational and that God opens up that relationality to delight in creating us, human beings. And that God doesn’t just delight in the idea of human beings, but delights in each and every specific creation of a human person. And in the trees and flowers, rocks and waterfalls, insects and elephants and all the rest. 

            God dances and sculpts, paints and brings to life in playful, loving delight. And then invites us to dance and sculpt and paint and bring to life in similarly playful, loving delight.            

            Of course, we must wrestle with the reality that much of life is not sunshine and roses. This is not a call to deny reality and stick a smile on our face. We live in a world of inequality, where some are given the opportunity to satisfy their hunger to excess while others starve. I am deeply disturbed at the celebration of violence that seems to mark the wars that are happening around the world – in Russia and Ukraine, in the Middle East, in Congo. We live in a time when nationality, language, skin color, gender, and all kinds of other factors can make it more difficult for someone to fully live with delight in our communities. 

            If we have a relational God who delights in creating a diverse and joyful world, we also are called to live into that open delight for others. How can we delight in a world that is so broken, so full of pain, so challenging for others without engaging those things and seeking to bring the world into closer alignment with God’s vision for creation? 

            I know that here at St. Matthew’s you are deeply engaged with your community. Lots of congregations have food ministries, and you are one that not only feeds people but seeks to connect and be in relationship with all your neighbors. You have found a way to care for and delight in one another and then open that up to the neighborhood. I got to visit you last fall on a day when you were getting food ready to share, and I had had the sense you were all excited to be preparing and meeting the community. What a reflection of holy relationship and mutual delight! 

            You have welcomed in this time of transition the gifts of many – supply preachers and your own leaders who bring themselves and their gifts to leading morning prayer. I have heard you delight in one another in that way -honoring each other’s gifts and presence as you go through a time of clergy transition. What a reflection of holy relationship and mutual delight! 

            You are known for the way you honor the worship traditions of the church. You bring your musical gifts together from different backgrounds. You lean in to the holy. I don’t believe there’s a “right” way to worship, except insofar as it has to do with delight in God and one another. That’s something I sense here in your Sunday morning gathering. What a reflection of holy relationship and mutual delight! 

            In the midst of hard things – challenges in the church, challenges in the community, challenges in the world, challenges in our own lives, we often lean in to our anxiety. Fair enough. I do plenty of that. All of us do. But anxiety sometimes leads us to fear and fear to closing ourselves off and locking ourselves into the way we’ve always done it, only talking with those we already know, relying on what we’ve already learned. 
            But today invites us to something different. Invites us to join the dance of God. The playful interweaving of three persons, the beautiful mystery of unity in one God. The delight that Wisdom models for us. The delight God has in each of us. It invites us even in the most difficult and intractable situations, in the midst of violence, conflict, and even facing death, to ask the fundamental question of where we can honor the holy delight God takes in us and in our neighbor and in the ones we have labeled as enemies. Reshaping our every interaction around that idea of delight in the existence of the other, may well move us closer to the vision God has for our world. 

            So go forth this week looking for delight. Look for God’s unique delight in your neighbor. Look for God’s unique playfulness in creation. Look for God’s gifts and opportunities for you. And look in the mirror sometime this week and rejoice that God takes delight in you, welcoming you into the holy and life-giving dance of the Trinity. 

-Pastor Steven Wilco

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