July 27, 2025 Sermon

Traditions are funny things. In the scrubby, dusty hill town of Nazareth up in Galilee, there are two separate locations venerated for the Annunciation, the Gospel passage where the angel Gabriel comes to announce to Mary that she will be with child. The first is the Greek Orthodox Church of the Annunciation, and it is located over the ancient and still present wellspring in Nazareth, where everyone would come and draw water on a daily basis. The presumption there is that Mary, as a young woman, would have been the one in her family to retrieve water from the well for their daily usage, and it was there at the well that Gabriel came to her. You probably have seen images depicting this scene.

The other, just across town, is the large Roman Catholic Basilica of the Annunciation, and it is centered over the grotto home, hewn out of rock, that is historically associated with the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Anna and Joachim. And so there is, in the Western Christian tradition, this association of her parents with the Annunciation.

Now, where Anna and Joachim come from is a little bit of a tenuous connection. We don't have their names anywhere in scripture, but as early as the second century and maybe possibly even late first century, there's an association of those names with the parents of the Blessed Virgin Mary and a veneration of them in their role in raising her up. We also have traditions sort of like Elizabeth and Zachariah of Anna and Joachim being of an advanced age themselves when they conceived the Blessed Virgin. So there are all sorts of echoes and kind of memories of history and the past as well. One reason why we hear this great narrative of Abraham and Sarah, that is a motif throughout Scripture, of faithfulness being rewarded even at a latter and late stage in life.

But when we come to ask what the impact of their life, of their witness has on us today, that is the witness of Anna and Joachim, I think we're kind of left with an uncertainty there, especially if we limit ourselves to the Annunciation. More provocatively, more profoundly, I think we know something of them in a passage that comes just after this. A little bit later on in the first chapter of Luke, Mary leaves this experience of the Annunciation and travels down into Judea to visit her cousin Elizabeth. And there, at that moment of the two connecting, we have what is referred to as the Song of Mary, the Great Magnificat.

And I want to suggest to you all today that in listening closely to Mary's song, we have a sense of the values that Anna and Joachim held, the ways that they shaped and formed her in her faith so that she would be able to be the person that God needed her to be. Beginning in verse 46 of Luke's Gospel, in the first chapter, we hear, "And Mary said, 'My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed. For the mighty one has done great things for me and holy is his name. His mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud and the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and his descendants forever.'"

So what do we hear in all of that? First, we have this sense of proper orientation. The place of departure for everything else is worship, is magnification of the Lord, is rejoicing in God's presence, in the creative power that has brought us about, in experiencing that love, honoring it, and worshiping it. But then, we have the second turn towards humility. "The mighty one has done great things for me." That it's not what we do ourselves. It's not the accomplishments we have in our lives. It's the places in which we can be humble and open to God's presence in our lives and the things that that presence, that work on us brings about. And what is that work of fruitfulness when we are humble? When we are open? When we are the vessels that God asks us to be? They are the fruits of justice: of lifting up the lowly, of scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts, of filling the hungry with good things.

Those are acts of God, the power of God righting the wrongs of this world. But so often, that act of God is manifested through us, through us, the church, through us as individual Christians, being the humble vessels of his work in our lives, the motivation, the activation of us to do those works of charity and love that we are called to do. And then it is a return after humility, after action, after care. It is the return to remembrance, to the memory of what God has done and what God will continue to do in the future. The promise that he has not made just in the past, but the promises he continues to make for us going on forever.

It's remarkable that we have this profound and powerful commitment and promise because not unlike what we experience today in our current climate and world, the first century Palestine that Jesus was born into, that Mary was raised up in, was one that was very and difficult in its own way. The Jews of the first century were very much under the oppressive thumb of the Roman Empire. It was very much a time of struggle, of pain, of suffering. And there's an easy impulse to be cynical in those moments of fraughtness. But instead of cynicism, Mary expresses optimism. Optimism for the good things that are promised, the good things that can be, and frankly, the good things that are in the very moment of this present state in her life. When it would be so very easy to be angry, to be distressed, to give up, she turns that into goodness, into charity, into love and celebration. And Anna and Joachim, the unnamed hidden forces in the background, surely must have formed and shaped her to respond in that very way.

And today, as we celebrate and honor them, and as we lift up especially our patron mother, Saint Anne, I invite us to be present to those places in our lives where not only can we hear and be instilled with the values of the Magnificat for ourselves, but to be mindful of the way that we shape and form others and the values that we express to them and how we lift them up and make them better attentive and better responders to the work that God is doing in their lives.

Many years ago now, when I was in my mid-twenties, I had a passion job. I was the religious outreach director for the Arkansas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. I've talked some about that before. It was me, an Episcopalian, a young Jewish guy who was our executive director and the legal force behind the work, and then a whole bunch of really salty and hard-edged Roman Catholic nuns who kept us focused on what we were doing. But that job, in as much as I loved it, didn't pay very much. So I was a barista at Starbucks at the same time. It got me insurance, it paid the bills. And I happened to befriend one of my co-workers. I have to admit, I actually don't even remember his name. It was the kind of thing that I would go and do for a few hours, then go home and focus on the place that really brought me nourishment and fulfillment.

So all of that period of life ends. Julie and I move out here. We start graduate work. And sometime after we had moved out here, we went back to Arkansas for a friend's wedding. And during the reception, this same young man came up to me. I had really not even paid attention and had kind of forgotten him. I didn't recognize him when he addressed me. And apparently, in those conversations and talks that we had, in that little side gig I had at Starbucks, I profoundly impacted him. He had decided to go back to college and finish his degree. He had gone on and really focused on the things that were valuable and meaningful in his life. And he profusely thanked me for the ways in which our time together had helped him see the clarity of what he was called to do.

I was floored. I hadn't given him a second thought. It had been a totally unintentional and inconsequential experience for me. And yet, I had very much impacted and shaped his life. And I think in some ways we can very much be that same kind of presence in the world around us. Sometimes we are the Anna and Joaquins, the silent, sometimes forgotten presences. That even in our humility and faithfulness and the work that we do, the work that may go unrecognized, nevertheless has an impact far beyond us, a goodness and grace that exudes out in waves far beyond what we are capable of seeing or imagining.

And so this morning as we celebrate their legacy, as we memorialize them and lift them up as the faithful servants that they were, may we glorify in the things that they show us through their daughter, our mother, the Blessed Virgin. But may we too take inspiration from their humility. See the places of impact that we can have, even if they're seemingly inconsequential or unnoticeable. May we have the faithfulness and humility to keep on doing what we are called to do. And recognize that in our witness, there may be ripples and effects that long outdate us, that go far beyond what we can even imagine. And may we have the charity of spirit, the fulsomeness of faith, to honor and respect that. And never more come back to the memory as the Blessed Virgin does of God's promises, remembering that even in dark times, even in uncertain times, he will be with us. His mercy will extend over us. And the promises he made to our ancestors remain the promises to us now and always. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

July 20, 2025

My friend Chris was someone I grew up with. We were very, very close friends. And he's one of those oldest friends that I even go back in my mind and can't really remember a time that I didn't know him. We grew up in the church together.

Through our childhood years in the high school, even though we lived in two separate communities, we continued to cultivate and have a deep and lasting relationship. One of the things that I remember most distinctly about Chris was my ability to be a kind of non-confrontational, non-anxious presence in his life. He had some developmental and behavioral difficulties that would sometimes make it really difficult to be a kind of functioning, positive presence. And the adults in the room would just get frustrated and not exactly know what to do.

And so often, I was able to just sit with him, to be that presence for him until he was able to kind of reorganize and reorder himself and come back in a more gentle and kind of approachable way. I learned later on in life when I started training to be a psychotherapist that there's a descriptor for this, called active listening skills, and I'm sure many of you in your own professional capacities have encountered this principle, that you're present. You're present in an engaged way, where you're paying attention, and you're responding to the other person, not obsessed, not fixated on what your reply is going to be or what your next thought is or how you might turn the conversation to something you want.

Now, admittedly, inasmuch as those are skills that I have cultivated professionally over the years, I still find myself often coming up short. I can't tell you the number of times that those active listening skills have been challenged when Anna has just one more thing she wants to say before brushing teeth, or before getting pajamas on, or before finally winding down for the end of the night. But it's still, in the back of my mind, that place, that wellspring of generosity, of compassion, of presence, that I know is ultimately the place of real nourishment and connectivity.

And today, we have one of the classic examples of this presented to us in our gospel passage, where Jesus is with Mary and Martha. And this passage is really striking if we understand the fuller cultural context as well. Mary is not just sitting at the feet of Jesus listening to him. But she's actively upending or avoiding what would have been culturally appropriate.

Hospitality is such a deeply rooted part of Levantine society to this day, to this day, that the first and primary impulse would have been to do, would have been to prepare, would have been to serve, to do all of the things that Martha is doing. And it's not a fault of hers that what she is caught up in is this place of service. It's what she would have naturally been inclined to do. And Jesus, in his responsiveness, upends the expected narrative.

But there's a more important, I think more fundamental piece of this too. Hospitality, kindness, compassion, generosity, those are all elements and hallmarks of a good, and loving society. But what is the end of those things? What is the purpose of them? And ultimately, it's the purpose of relationship, the deepening and strengthening of relationship, of caring for one another that we might be in fuller and closer fellowship with one another. The Westminster Shorter Catechism talks about our first and chief end as humanity being people who glorify and worship God so that we might enjoy God forever. But what is worship and glorification about if it's not ultimately about relationship?

And I think that's where Jesus is really drawing our focus and our attention today. It is about that commitment to relationship. And I dare say, even though in some ways we don't have the same cultural conditionality around hospitality, we very much resonate with this same impulse. We as Americans are a people of action. So much of our history is rooted in this impulse to do. You know, they talk in some ways. Historians of Christianity in the United States, even larger kind of cultural historians of our society, talk about the deep impact and influence that the so-called Protestant work ethic has had on the American psyche. This idea that we are only as valuable as our output, that we are only as meaningful as what we do. It's that same kind of impulse towards action that a context or a culture of hospitality has, but shaped and formed in a little bit different way. It's all at the end about our work, what work we have done, and what we can show forth with that work.

And all of that. All of that is being uprooted and reordered and challenged in today's readings. I love this section from Colossians that St. Paul offers us. Because when he talks about who Jesus is, there is this image that I have in my mind of the iconography of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. Because we have this beautiful descriptor of these attributes of Christ and who he is in the fullness of his being. And there's this tradition in Orthodoxy of the icons, the icons, these images. Being not static representations of things in the Bible, but windows. That's actually where this language of iconography comes from. Icons as windows into the reality of what you are seeing. And so quite literally as you sit before the icon, you are seeing the truth of the kingdom made real before you. You are seeing the lived experience of the church in the present moment. But that is drawn out, that is made real, that is made present by our ability to be present, to be quiet, to be attentive, to listen.

And so much of the time, we as a gathered community talk about action. So many times I stand here before you at this pulpit calling us to action. But all of that, all of that in some fundamental way is secondary to relationship. Because what is our action devoid of the purpose for which we do the action? What is our ministry if there's nothing more than hospitality and kindness behind it? Who are we as a people? And what is our offering of new life to the world beyond the activities we are involved in? What is it that we are giving in the fullness of our being to those around us?

And it is, I would offer today, the relationship that we are granted and a joy and given in the presence of our Lord, of our God, who shapes and forms and sends us out. Because it's not sufficient just to dwell on the worship, the relationship, the depth of presence, even as that may be the focus today. Because ultimately, if we take the fullness of Jesus' teachings, action must necessarily be a part. Our responsiveness must necessarily be a part. But it is an integrated whole with this element of relationship.

And so today as we encounter this great story of Mary and Martha, I think it's so very easy for us to bifurcate the two. To say that Mary was in the right and Martha was in the wrong. In a sense, that's what Jesus is suggesting. But if we take the larger narrative of the Gospels as a whole, of Jesus' earthly ministry as a whole, of even St. Paul's teachings to us as a whole, and the whole of Holy Scripture. What we learn is that it's not that Martha was right or wrong. It was that she wasn't being present to the moment that was before her. That her impulse towards action was not misplaced as it was so much just a misappropriation of that energy. At the time that it was needed.

And so for us, in this present moment, in a world where things seem so chaotic and frenetic. And our impulse is to do something. In that moment of chaos. To do anything. To act. There are times, like this present moment where we are simply called to be present, to be quiet, to listen, to worship, and to hear what our depth of relationship with Christ is bringing out of us.

One of my favorite poets who I've quoted many times before from this pulpit is the Irish poet Seamus Heaney. And I want to offer this as an ending for us today. Because the other side of this too is that that place of presence is not always confined to the places where we expect it. And as much as I want to sit here and tell you all how important it is to be here in this place for this community and this style and form of worship today. Sometimes that place of deepest relationship comes in the spaces and places which also are unexpected.

One of Heaney's most famous poems is called When All the Others Were Away at Mass.

"When all the others were away at mass, I was all hers and we peeled potatoes. They broke the silence, let fall one by one like solder weeping from the soldering iron. Cold comforts set between us, things to share. gleaming in a bucket of clean water. And again let fall little pleasant splashes from each other's work would bring us to our senses. So while the parish priest at her bedside went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying, and some were responding and some were crying, I remembered her head bent towards my head. Her breath and mine are fluent dipping knives, never closer the whole rest of our lives."

Relationship is found in many places and spaces. And even within our own community, we have those experiences of finding that depth of relationship here and in places far from here.

But I want to invite us this morning to be attentive to those spaces and places of relationship. To be attentive to the moments of quiet. Quiet and silent and present contemplation. Where we can hear and be more attentive to the presence of God in our midst. And maybe too, to be attentive and present to the places where we are being God for each other. Being Christ for each other. Being the people of deep and lasting love. The attentiveness that we hear in God's presence through others in our lives and the spaces and places where we might be that presence for others.

And it all led us in the depth of that moment, that presence, that sense of deep listening, find evermore the wellspring and love of our relationship with God. That we might eventually go back out and do and be the things for this world that we are called to be. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.