March 30, 2025 Sermon

Transcript >

I recently discovered one of my favorite little regional oddities, and it's up in Frederick County off of Maryland 194. Right before you get to New Midway Elementary School, there is a very permanent road with a very permanent road sign.

And this road is called Detour Road. What's even better is that in digging into this strange occurrence and strange road name, I discovered that Detour Road leads to, of all places, Detour, Maryland.

It will not surprise you to know that Detour, Maryland, population somewhere south of 2,000 folk, is still unincorporated and still out of the way of most of the world outside its borders. Detour was and is aptly named. At the beginning of last century, the Pennsylvania Railroad built south into Maryland. And for some reason, in their infinite wisdom doing the surveying work that they did, they determined that this little out-of-the-way place was the perfect location for a station stop.

Even though it existed decently far from any of its antebellum neighbors—Thurmont, Emmitsburg, Taneytown, etc.—it was from the get-go an honest detour, a diversion from the long-established and expected pathways.

I've been thinking about that image of a detour this week as we reflect on the great parable of the prodigal son and our Lenten theme of quiet as returning. As a priest, it is almost axiomatic that detour is part of my life. I remember my first week of seminary. We broke out into small groups and shared our call narratives with one another—that is, our story of how and when we experienced our call to ministry. And without fail, I think every one of us had some narrative of, "I had a call. I detoured and tried to do anything else, but it just wouldn't go away."

I suspect that many of us can relate to this experience of detour as diversion. Like the prodigal son, we get off track pursuing desires or drives of our own making that get us tied into knots and disoriented. Only then, like all good detours hopefully do, to eventually find us back pointed in the right direction and back on track.

Like the prodigal son, the Israelites in our passage from Joshua today experience an almost instantaneous reprieve, a sense of relief that they are at least headed toward the light again. The Israelites are not yet fully in their new life in the land of promise, but they’re at least out in the wilderness, and they’re able to enjoy the first fruits of their return.

Even before reaching his father's house, the prodigal son has this sense of relief. He has this sense that he is finally going back to something that is better. That even if he returns as a laborer in the field of his father's house, his life will be better than it is now.

It's like those times when you take a detour, and the signs and guideposts seem to be taking you further and further away from where you thought you were supposed to be heading. And yet, at some point, there's that moment—that landmark or some sort of indicator that pops up—and you think, "Ah, I know where I am again. I now see the path of return. I now know how to get back on track."

There’s a sense of immediate relief in all of this. If you remember back to the very beginning of this season, we had a call to a holy Lent on Ash Wednesday. In that call, we are exhorted in this season to be put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the gospel of our Savior and the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

The detours we find ourselves on are journeys back to repentance and faith, moments of quiet as emptying, quiet as listening, quiet as waiting. Now, in this fourth Sunday of Lent, it is quiet as returning—the beginning of the process of renewal and getting back on track.

This Sunday, Laetare Sunday, Rejoicing Sunday—the Sunday when we are back on that final stretch, the final few weeks of Lent—our detour is finally showing us signs and guideposts that are familiar, welcoming, and recognizable. Our journey is not over, but we see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I'm also, however, struck by detour as a destination in itself, as we find with Detour, Maryland. So often, we think about detours as the sideways, the indirect or alternative paths that we sometimes go down, where things sometimes go sideways, as it were, from which we return to the path that we were originally on.

But the root of detour is of Middle French origin, destourner, which does not just mean a temporary diversion but also a turning away—a reorientation into a new direction entirely. A detour that takes you in a different direction from the one in which you were headed, and possibly a direction that is new and different from the one in which you came.

I think about that sense of detour as we hear our epistle reading from 2 Corinthians, where St. Paul says, "If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. Everything old has passed away. See, everything has become new." The detour is the new reality, the new beginning, the new way of life.

As is often observed, our Lenten disciplines are not just temporary acts of contrition or repentance, but they are an invitation into a new way of life. The hope, the aspiration, is that these practices we take on in this season will become our new normal. They will become the new way in which we live and move and have our being in God, and the way in which we communicate the gospel news of Christ’s coming among us to the world around us.

So this Sunday, as we focus on quiet as returning, as we consider the detours of life that we encounter—the ways in which we are brought back onto the pathway, or sometimes discovering a new pathway entirely, a new way of life, a new way of being—I invite us to embrace that return. To embrace the light at the end of the tunnel, to see the new path before us, the returned path, the love and light of God, which guides us into greater joy, greater love, and greater compassion.

And as we hear this invitation today, may we, like the prodigal son, like the Israelites, have a glimpse of that joy. This Sunday of reprieve, of rejoicing, may we rejoice too. Even as our journey continues, may we have that sense of elation that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

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

March 23, 2025 Sermon

Transcript >

This is one of those sermons that I never wanted

to preach But here we are and here's the word

that God opened to my heart this last week it

starts with a confession a Couple of months ago

when I was mapping out the thematic trajectory

for my homilies for lent I found myself more

driven by the place I wanted to get to instead

of the message that is in the scripture itself.

I felt it appropriate in Lent this year to focus

this Sunday on the theme of waiting, and I kind

of grasped at the straw of the gardener's plea

to wait in chapter 13 of St. Luke's gospel, but

I wasn't really sure what else I had to work

with. And then I was surrounded by the profound

impact of waiting these last two weeks. My father

-in -law Mike would observe on occasion that

he had never lived more than 30 miles from Searcy,

Arkansas where he was born. I was never quite

sure if that was purely an observation, a badge

of honor, or some sort of lament. But considering

how much of a homebody he was, I think there

was at least a statement of contentment in that

observation. It was a fact of his life that he

accepted as he waited for the rest to unfold.

And I think maybe He's also content, having gone

to his eternal rest in that same town of Searcy.

Searcy, and Desaric, and Higginson, and Phoebe,

some of these little towns that hardly anyone

has ever heard of, are all clustered towards

the western edge of the great Mississippi alluvial

plain, where waiting is THE way of life. This

land is a land like every land. It charts its

own course and farmers and farm hands and whole

families and communities watch and listen and

wait for just the right time to act. Driving

to and then back from Julie's hometown, I watched

this mighty expanse of Delta region as we flew

by on Interstate 40. I watched as just now the

John Deere box drills get out underway seeding

this year's row crop of rice. In a week or two,

they'll probably turn around and do the same

with soybeans and corn and grain sorghum. But

none of that is ever guaranteed. Each season

brings its own timeline, its own season of waiting

and responding. And all of this is to say nothing

of the waiting we did as a family. Waiting for

the paperwork to get filled out, waiting for

family to arrive, the obituary to get published,

the visitation, the service, the burial to happen.

In a land of waiting, we waited too. And the

more that I sat with this waiting, the more I

thought about how much waiting actually does

permeate our readings for today. If we go back

and look at our first reading from Exodus chapter

3, we are immediately centered in a great act

of waiting. Our lesson begins with verse 1, but

if we look back to the second half of chapter

2, immediately before our reading today, We are

reminded that Moses is in Midian because he stood

up to Pharaoh's oppression of his people and

had to flee. And we are reminded too, as the

very last verses of chapter two indicate, that

the people of Israel have now been waiting a

long time to see their salvation. As verses 23

through 25 of chapter 2 say, after a long time

the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned

under their slavery and cried out. Out of the

slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God

heard their groaning and God remembered His covenant

with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon

the Israelites and God took notice of them. In

our gospel passage, we have a little bit of an

odd situation. We have this ostensive question

that the crowd is posing to Jesus. It is not

framed as a question, but what they are actually

doing is bringing this situation, a group of

Galilean Jews who were killed while making their

sacrifice to Jesus. Asking him to confirm their

suspicion that these folks were killed because

of their sinfulness They were unrighteous and

therefore they suffered right Jesus The same

basic reality is true of this 18 on whom the

tower fell but Jesus in responding challenges

them in this assumption are all to whom bad things

happen, sinful, unrighteous people who deserve

what they get, not in God's kingdom, not in the

reality of God's work in this world. That is

the purpose of the parable. Sometimes we are

the land owner, the judgmental crowd wanting

the thing, not bearing fruit. or not producing

goodness to be uprooted and destroyed. Sometimes

we are the plant, the Galilean surrounded by

hardship and calamity wanting desperately to

experience fruitfulness and new life. Sometimes

we are in an in -between space where we do not

know which direction is up or down, which way

to turn or what to do next or where we are located

in such a paradigm or parable. Sometimes the

great gardener, Christ, calls us to let new care

and cultivation take root and simply wait. To

wait to see where we are located. To wait to

see what happens next in the next phase of life.

And that's true no matter where we fall in the

larger scheme of this story and the story of

our lives. 1 Corinthians 10, St. Paul is unpacking

some similar truths. Now we always have to be

mindful with the epistles that the universal

truths embedded in them are framed contextually.

Written to the communities to whom st. Paul was

writing Dealing with the issues of the day that

those communities were struggling with But we

are invited this morning To be curious about

the universal truths being communicated in this

historical and contextual What are we being tested

on today I think maybe that one place is precisely

this spiritual practice of waiting. Because I

think often we find ourselves falling into a

kind of sinful or unhelpful practice in waiting

or our inability to wait in two significant ways.

First is that disciplined of waiting itself.

In our culture, in our context, and our larger

society, we do not like to wait. We have a culture

of immediacy. We want and we want now. When one

or another person offends us, we want recompense

and restitution now. We want immediate action.

We crave instant response. And that is a practice,

a sin in our culture that has to be uprooted

and transformed. But similarly, we have sometimes

practice of waiting without action. We wait in

inactivity and that too is a sin that needs to

be uprooted and destroyed. Sometimes as the culture

around us continues to move, we in our waiting

stay immobile. When in fact we ought to be acting

we ought to be responding even if we do so imprecisely

Even as we do so in the context of further discernment

further insight further listening for what God

will have us to do I Think we often have this

attitude of waiting That makes it synonymous

with inactivity. That we wait without a sense

of doing. But anyone who is close to the land

will tell you that this just isn't true. My father

-in -law for decades was in the family logging

and timber business. And that's an industry that

is also rooted in waiting. waiting for trees

to mature, waiting for just that right time to

cut down and harvest the lumber that will be

used in so many industries in this country. But

that waiting is not inactivity. There is much

to be done to make the soil and the land the

proper and appropriate land. for growing and

strengthening these trees. Much to do to maintain

the health of the growth as you're waiting for

that season of harvest. My father -in -law was

also a very avid outdoorsman, and one of the

most poignant moments in these last two weeks

was just a day or two before we left. We have

about 35 family acres just down the road from

their house. Another 35 to 40 that we manage

in a lease for hunting property. And my brother

-in -law walked those 80 acres and we talked

about all of our hopes and aspirations for cultivating

that land for the purpose of having grains, having

seeds that deer can forage on, having a proper

wetland. for ducks, and all of that driven by

this love and this desire to be connected to

the land, to hunt and be able to have an appropriate

kind of place that animals will find appealing

and attractive. And as we wait, as we wait for

the time of the hunting season, we cultivate.

and we care for the land, the waiting is not

an activity but intimate and detailed attention

to the actions and activities we are called to

in that time of waiting. And so this morning,

as we continue this arc through our Lenten journey,

as we reflect on these building blocks, of having

first emptied ourselves in this time of transition

and growth. As we reflected last week on the

act of deep listening, we are invited this week

to think about the importance of waiting in that

time of listening and emptying. Because to listen

is to wait. To listen is to hear, to hear the

voice of God as we practice spiritual disciplines

of stopping, of pausing, of waiting. And that

doesn't mean that we do nothing. We continue

to go by and go about our lives. caring for,

loving, cultivating the places, relationships,

and cares that we are called to cultivate and

maintain. But equally, we are called to have

this time, to have this time in which we wait.

We wait, we wait to hear more fully the voice

of God. more fully the call to respond, more

fully the time to harvest, to move forward in

ever more fulsome action. And so this morning,

as we empty ourselves, as we listen, and in that

emptying and listening as we wait, may we hear

and experience and know ever more fully the presence

of God who comes to us in this time of waiting,

who transforms us ever more fully for the work

that lies ahead and prepares us ever more fully

for His coming kingdom, for the time of true

and full action. in which all things will be

made right and restored to their greater goodness

and glory. In the name of the Father, and of

the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.