June 22, 2025 Sermon

Anna is a wonderful traveler. She's excellent when it comes to being on the road, going and having adventures, and I absolutely love it because it's an opportunity for me to take her places and to experience the world anew through her.

A little while back, she and I had the opportunity to take a day trip to New York City where she got to see the big buildings and all the kind of bright lights and shiny things that she's seen in movies and books and other things. And then this past week for the Juneteenth holiday on Thursday, we had an opportunity to be with some friends at their beach house in Ocean City, Maryland.

And these two trips are connected because being Anna, being the age that she is, everything is kind of stereotyped now. When I asked her what things she wanted to do in New York City, her worldview was shaped by the imagination she's developed through these books. So we had to go get a pretzel from a pretzel cart. And we took a ride in a yellow taxi, and we went to Central Park and walked around, and we took the Staten Island Ferry so we could go past the Statue of Liberty.

And when we went to Ocean City, we, of course, had to get Fisher's popcorn, and we walked the boardwalk, and we did all the things that you kind of expect to do. And I was thinking about that this week because there's kind of a fun joy in experiencing the world through those stereotypes and seeing her experience of them. But there's also kind of a shadow side to stereotypes as well. Those times when we can get stuck in what we expect the world to look like or what we think the world could look like. And we get mired in our own obsessive clinging to these ideals.

The context, geographically and historically, of our gospel passage today is really interesting. This whole region around the Sea of Galilee, both... in its geographical location, which was the western side of the Sea of Galilee, and this region on the opposite side of the Gerasenes, this whole area was called the Decapolis. There were ten Hellenistic Greco-Roman cities, that's the Deca there in the Decapolis, that were scattered throughout that region, made it a place of intermingling. It was a... bridge between East and West. It was a region that was very, very involved in international trade and commerce. There were multiple people from multiple places and this huge melting pot of identities and cultures and traditions.

But it's not that everyone in that region experienced life in that way. There were many pockets of places that kind of clung heavy-handedly, strong-fistedly to particular ways of living, particular ways of being. And we know this, not just because of examples that we have in the narrative stories like this. community that was so resistant to what Jesus was doing in the gospel today, but we also have it in the material, archaeological evidence. There were communities, and actually, Nazareth in Galilee, where Jesus was raised, was one of these, where even though they were right next to your metropolitan center, all of the physical artifacts that we have from that community were explicitly Jewish, were explicitly connected to Jerusalem.

And just like today where we can look at certain stylistic elements of the plates that we own or the drinkware that we own or the ways that we design our houses. historians and archaeologists can look at the material remains and say ah it's noticeable that there aren't a variety of cultural artifacts in this community it's limited to this very narrow experience this very narrow culture Indicating that they were clinging on to a certain identity, a certain way of life. They were kind of standing as a bastion against this diversity that they saw around them.

And that's one evidence of this happening. But another is, like I say, the story we have today. We have this community that has a certain way of being. A certain way of thinking. a certain way of interacting with the world around them. And the moment that gets upset and flipped on its head, they get scared and fearful, and they want nothing to do with it. But they're not the only ones who are scared and fearful.

We have three communities, or at least three examples. of fearfulness in this narrative today. We have the community that this poor man lived in, the one that lacked compassion for him, the community that kept him at arm's length, not only that kept him at arm's length, but shackled him, kept him within bonds in order to prevent him from being more fully a part of the community. They showed no effort to help heal him. They just wanted him to go away and stop bothering them.

Then you have a second fearful community. If we pay close attention, there's the community of these demons living within this man. They don't want to go back to where they came from. They don't want to be sent back to the pits of shale. They would rather be destroyed. Then return. They too fear. And in that fear they consume this man's life. And then you have the one stuck. Stuck between all of these oppressive forces. The one caught in the middle. The one most powerless.

And what do we do with all of that? Well I think. What we see in the outcome is the power of transformation, the power of living differently, the power of witnessing to the goodness that God can bring out of even the most devastating of circumstances. But we also have a witness to openness. A witness to compassion. A witness to changing hearts and minds.

This man is living in fearfulness, quite reasonably so, if we look at where his life has taken him. But when Jesus heals him, when he is back in his right mind, His first response is to stay in that place of fear. He asks Jesus to let him depart with him. I have been healed. I am a new person. I want to get as far away from these people who have mistreated me as I possibly can. And oh, what a human reaction that is. How many times I have enjoyed and my own friends who have left oppressive circumstances for better climates, better communities, more supportive places.

But Jesus says no. He says go back. Go back into this difficult circumstance and proclaim what has happened to you. Proclaim the goodness of transformation. And I have to admit, that's a really challenging prospect for me. I would never in a million years want to tell someone who has suffered so significantly under the weight of such an oppressive community to return to it. To stay in it. To be in that place of challenge. But this man goes forward and does exactly that. He returns and proclaims. He stays and transforms.

And I want us... To really sit with that today. This continues, this developing theme that I'm working on and inviting us into over the course of this year. Of really, deeply, intentionally discerning what it means to be community. How being the community of Christ. How being the church in this day and age is a process of being witnesses and proclaimers of uncomfortable truths, of preaching transformation when society and the world around us is more and more tightly clinging to certainty. Conservatism not in a political sense, but a sense of resisting change, resisting being pulled, being stretched, growing anew into new realities.

Every day. Seems to present a new opportunity. A new impulse to circle the wagons. We're seeing that just in the last 24 hours. With this increasing anxiety over further military conflict. And yet, there's a place. There's a place. peace and resiliency that Christ offers us in reorienting us not to the struggle, but to the transformation. As my colleague, Father Robert Hendrickson, who I've quoted before, observed last night, it is possible to hold that war is terrible, that there aren't good faith actors involved in tension, with the knowledge that bad options are sometimes the sad payment we pay to forestall worse ones. This is why we are to put little hope in the powers of this world and to pray for a peace that passes human understanding.

So often, it is so easy to just get fixated. on all of the problems that the world is presenting us, to get mired in all of those difficulties. And yet our invitation today, always, is to hold those things gently. Not to shy away from them. Not to ignore the realities of the world. but to preach the transformed life, to show the better way ahead.

G.K. Chesterton, in probably his most famous poem, which has been set time and again to music as a hymn, says in this very first stanza, "O God of earth and altar, bow down and hear our cry. Our earthly rulers falter, our people drift and die. The walls of gold entomb us, the swords of scorn divide. Take not thy thunder from us, but take away our pride." And that was over a hundred years ago that he penned that, and yet how prescient it is for us today.

In this season, of being stretched and pulled, of growing anew. May we, in preaching that transformation, ultimately find this great wellspring of humility that is so much a part of our faith, setting aside those places of pride, those places of anxiety, those places of fear in which we hold on to things so tightly. that we have fists to fight instead of open arms to embrace. And may we, as we are shaped and reformed today in this moment, be people of compassion and love, communities of openness and growth. May we be proclaimers of the truth of transformation that Christ offers. And in that, may we more fully and completely embrace the love and the presence of our God, who even now is transforming and breaking in anew to the realities and difficulties of the world around us. May we be healed of our demons of resistance, and may we be proclaimers of the transformation of new life. that we find in this place and always. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

June 15, 2025 Sermon

Julie and I have been fortunate to have community as a central focal point of our relationship for the past 15 or 16 years. This has been true across various stages of our lives, from our college days and the years after, when we shared a house with close friends in Arkansas, to our time in the D.C. area starting in 2014, where we were part of the seminary community. Even today, in our current neighborhood, we're part of a cul-de-sac where many homes have children around our daughter Anna's age, fostering a strong sense of connection.

Just recently, while our kids were playing outside, I spoke with a fellow dad, Kyle, an economist teaching at Montgomery County Community College. We were discussing the ongoing conversations within the Montgomery County public school system about reallocating associations and the feeder system. This is especially relevant to us as we're on the cusp of changes driven by a new high school in our part of the county. Our conversation highlighted a perceived challenge: balancing community cohesiveness—where kids grow up together within the same school system—with the seemingly competing good of fostering economic, social, and cultural diversity by having children be part of communities beyond their immediate neighborhood. The question is how to successfully navigate the needle between increasing diversity and maintaining community cohesiveness.

This challenge has been on my mind a lot this week because it lies at the heart of what we celebrate with the Trinity. While I usually focus on the Old Testament, Epistle, or Gospel readings, this week, the "collect"—the unique prayer for the day—really captured my attention. This particular collect is one of Thomas Cranmer's translations from Latin, slightly edited and included in the earliest prayer books of our tradition, with roots going all the way back to medieval Anglican sacramentaries. The core observation, even in the Latin, asks for God's grace to "acknowledge the Trinity and worship the unity."

This phrasing is incredibly interesting. It suggests that when it comes to diversity, represented by the Trinity, the best we can often do is acknowledge it. In contrast, it feels much easier to worship homogeneity, the unity that binds us together. I want us to reflect on this, because in God's fundamental Trinitarian nature, we find the reality of community, diversity, and unity—all simultaneously true and part of God's ultimate being. Yet, as humans, throughout history, we often bifurcate these concepts, seeing unity and diversity as competing goods.

However, today, on Trinity Sunday, we are invited to recognize that diversity and unity are not opposing goods. Instead, they are seamlessly unified in that diversity. They are part of the truth of God's presence in the world and the truth of who we are as the church. It's so easy for us to seek out community during times of difficulty and trial, to find support among each other. In our epistle reading, the virtues of suffering—resiliency, endurance, strength of character—are framed in the first person plural. It's not just individual suffering that builds these traits, but when we as a community struggle together and are present with each other during tribulations that these virtues manifest. It's when we are together as a community that these virtues truly appear.

Yet, every community, no matter how homogenous we try to make it, contains diversities. There are individual life experiences, perspectives; we are never all the same. So, even within community, we always encounter differences. The question then becomes, how do we hold these two things together? I don't have an easy answer, but I invite us to recognize both realities: our diversities, our myriad gifts, perspectives, and life experiences, and to let these differences draw us into deeper relationships, ultimately leading us to find and claim community once more.

It feels like our world and society are at an inflection point, where community feels very tenuous, frayed, and uncertain. One of the greatest gifts we have in proclaiming our faith is to name the power of community—the power of being together. To unequivocally state that when we are together in our differences, not despite them but because of them, we build lasting, sustaining, and good community. This kind of community can transform the world and set wrongs aright.

It's also incredibly powerful that we celebrate Trinity Sunday this year in June. More often than not, it falls in June, which for many years in the United States has been Pride Month. I remember my mother, a nurse in the 1980s and early 1990s, and her doctoral research exploring ways to help those suffering from HIV-AIDS maintain their strict medication regimens. Even as a young child, I sensed the profound and powerful community that supported each other during that harrowing and uncertain time, where suffering and turmoil were widespread. The strength of that community was central to navigating the challenges ahead.

Also, every June, we celebrate Father's Day. For many years now, there's been a recognized epidemic of lack of male companionship in the United States. I listen to an outdoors hunting podcast, and I've been so pleased to see BetterHelp, a mental health service, as one of their main advertising partners, encouraging men to seek support and relationships to navigate this epidemic of loneliness and isolation. Here too, community is a central place of support in navigating struggles.

As a parish family, we sometimes find ourselves in places of difficulty and struggle. We, as a community, region, and nation, are experiencing this. Our great gift today is the centrality of community: community in the midst of our diversities, providing a path forward, a place of support and togetherness as we struggle, wrestle, and experience challenges together. Through this process, we find new life, strength of endurance, and hope—a provocative term in these dark times.

So this morning, friends, as we celebrate Trinity Sunday, may we acknowledge the beauty of diversity and, within it, also see the unity that is brought forward. Let us be together in our differences, and through those differences, be blessed to find our strength—our strength as a community, our strength to navigate the days, months, and years ahead. May we always feel the presence of our triune and unified God who gives us the hope, power, and strength to see better days ahead. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.