by whitneyrice

Fear Is The Beginning

We’re going to talk about two themes this morning: fear and wisdom.

They move throughout our scriptures this morning, and are connected in one controversial Bible verse in our psalm: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”

It’s controversial for good reason.

For centuries many Christians were trapped in a concept of an angry, vengeful God, a God who demanded restitution for their sins, a God who seemed almost to hate them.

It was a tragically narrow view of God that kept people afraid and made them judgmental because they were so sure they themselves were being judged and found wanting.

The more you feel you don’t measure up, the more likely you are to find fault in others.

It was a desperately insecure Christianity, and it felt the fear of the Lord in a visceral, literal, unhealthy way.

I do not think we should fear the Lord in that way.

But I don’t think we should just get rid of the concept altogether. Continue reading

Things We Don’t Talk About: Jesus and Addiction

We think of sin as the universal human problem, but I’ve been thinking about it this week, and I believe that sin may be actually only an outgrowth of a deeper problem.

I think we might be able to classify the true root of most of our troubles with a more modern word that no one in the Bible would have been familiar with: addiction.

It’s comforting to think of addiction as someone else’s problem. Addiction is the stuff of meth labs and crack pipes.

But as our St. Luke’s Bible study talked together on Wednesday, we agreed that addiction is actually a universal condition.

We’re all addicted to something.

For some it’s alcohol or prescription medication, for others it’s food or sex, for others it’s shopping or video games or gossip or exercise.

So why do I call addiction deeper than sin? Continue reading

Your Vegas Wedding to God

I’ve decided to take this opportunity to stand in the pulpit today to tell you about my misspent youth.

In my younger and badly behaved days, I ran wild and did the following things which I really should have thought through a little more carefully: I got a tattoo, I drank too much and danced on the roof of my dorm, I kissed on the first date, I bought a motorcycle, I wore a miniskirt and a tube top to a job interview, and I got ordained to the priesthood.

Actually, none of those are true save the last and the most reckless one. Continue reading

A Tale of Two Kings

Today’s scriptures are a tale of two kings, both born in the city of Bethlehem.

One would lend his name to his birth city; it became known for ever after as the City of David.

One would bring a star to his birth city; people followed it there to worship him in the manger that was his cradle.

David was the great king of the Hebrew Scriptures, the archetype for all who came after him and originator of God’s favor on the throne of Israel.

Jesus was the great king of the New Testament, the king who cared nothing for political power and turned the definition of kingship inside out.

But this is not a simple story of compare and contrast.

David is far too complex a figure for us to simply dismiss him with the old interpretation of, “Well, the old kings of Israel tried but they were no good so it’s a good thing Jesus came along.”

David is one of the most deeply human figures in the whole Bible.

He reaches sublime heights of worship and leadership, and commits monstrous sins that result in almost destroying not only his life, but his family for generations afterwards.

Perhaps what fascinates us the most about David is the unique designation that he alone bears in the entirety of scripture: he was a man after God’s own heart. Continue reading

What To Do When Atticus Dies

When we meet Jesus and the disciples in our gospel today, two things happen: “The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’”

But if we pick up the scripture right there, we miss a key ingredient of the story.

What just happened? What did we read about last week?

Mark doesn’t tell us what we know actually happened.

In the same conversation where the disciples tell Jesus all the good they have been able to do in his name, he has to break the terrible news to them: John the Baptist has been beheaded.

Can you imagine the grief and pain and fear that broke over them at hearing that Jesus has just lost his cousin and the world has just lost a great prophet?

So Jesus took them away to a deserted place to rest, not just from the clamor of the crowds and the tiring ministry work they’d been doing, but to give them some space to be alone as a small family to come to terms with the blow they’d been dealt.

It must have been a profoundly disillusioning moment for the disciples.

They’d just gone out and healed the sick and preached the good news to the poor.

They’d really seen people’s lives being changed by the message they had been sent out to deliver.

Then to come back and find that John the Baptist had been executed—it is one of those moments of wondering, “What is the point of all this? Where is God in the midst of this?”

We’ve all had moments like this lately as we’ve watched the news in our world around us, with one act of gun violence piling up on another.

And I have had one of those moments of combined disillusionment and grief in hearing the news about Atticus Finch. Continue reading

What I Have in Common with Herod and What Herod Has in Common with Jesus

I want you all to just gather yourselves for a minute.

Settle down comfortably in your pew, and then put on your seatbelt. Because today I’m going to do something I don’t often do.

Today’s sermon is a pulpit-thumper.

I am going to pound my fist and rant and rail about sin and depravity and moral rectitude.

Who’s that sneaking out the back already? I haven’t even started yet!

It’s funny because Episcopal priests are not traditionally fire and brimstone preachers, but the reality is we do have to take time to talk about sin, because it is a destructive force in our lives.

It is profoundly destructive to us, and as we see in our gospel lesson today, profoundly destructive to others.

I don’t think you need me to spend a lot of time outlining Herod’s sins and weaknesses, they are all too obviously on display.

In this one short episode, we get to know a man who is ruled by his love of power, his lust, his lack of respect for God’s law (having married his brother’s wife), his fear of what others think of him, and his rash and impulsive decision making.

But what interests me most about Herod in this story is his relationship with John the Baptist.

It can be interpreted in a number of ways, but where I want us to take it this morning is through the lens of John the Baptist as Herod’s conscience.

This is often the role of the prophet for an entire society, reminding us of uncomfortable truths and how far we have strayed from what God asks of us, but I want us to take it to a very personal and individual level with Herod and John.

The reason I want to do that is that we get a surprising amount of detail about their relationship.

And it is a relationship. Theirs is not an impersonal governmental encounter in which they never meet face to face, all actions coming through paperwork and rubber stamps.

John and Herod know each other. Continue reading

Charleston: Do You Not Care That We Are Perishing?

I have felt physically weak ever since I heard the news out of Charleston.

Nine shot down and killed at Bible study by a white man because they were black.

It is as though another gun violence massacre has drained me of all hope.  I don’t know how to say, “We cannot let this happen again,” without it sounding like a cruel joke.

And then I read our gospel again for today and felt like I’d seen a ghost.

The words, the story, already powerful in their own right, struck me to the heart when I thought of them in conjunction with this tragedy.

Scripture can sometimes be our only solace in times like this.

I believe in the Good News of Jesus Christ, but I’m not sure I know how to find it today after what has happened this week.

But just like the victims at Emmanuel AME church, we are people of faith, and just like they were doing moments before they died, together we will go to the Word of God in search of truth and hope. Continue reading

Holy Spirit! Let’s Get Set on Fire and Drown!

Today we have an interesting juxtaposition: baptism and Pentecost. What do the two have in common?

There are four traditional baptism dates in the church year.

The first is Baptism of Our Lord, which takes place in January. That makes sense. Of course we would baptize people on the day in which we celebrate Jesus’ baptism in the River Jordan.

The second is Easter Vigil, the Saturday night before Easter morning. This was the traditional baptism date in the early church.

The original purpose of Lent was to give people who wanted to be baptized time for instruction and preparation. They spent forty days learning about Christian life and discipleship, and then they were baptized at Easter Vigil, receiving communion for the first time on the Sunday of the Resurrection with great joy and festivity.

The third traditional baptism date is All Saints Day in November. The symbolism here is that when someone is baptized, we welcome them into the communion of saints, the fellowship of all believers, and all God’s people throughout time and space rejoice with us.

I’ve mentioned to several of you that I personally was baptized on December 26, the day after Christmas, which incidentally was in medieval times a popular date for baptizing illegitimate children.

You could sort of sneak them into the church when no one was there and avoid controversy and gossip.

I suspect my parents’ reason was more along the lines of having family in town for Christmas, but it’s kind of hilarious given that I turned out to be a priest.

But what about Pentecost, the last traditional date? Why baptize today? Continue reading

Gambling and Math: Methodology of the Holy Spirit

Well, folks, we’ve got some real crazy going on in our lesson from Acts today.

Ascension Day was on Thursday, and Jesus has left.

Now what are we supposed to do?

And Pentecost is some days off both for us and the original disciples. The Holy Spirit, called the Comforter, has not arrived yet and we find ourselves rather at a loss as to what to do next.

Luckily, Peter has an idea.

Peter always has an idea, and he always wants to share it. Whether it is building booths on the mountainside for Jesus, Elijah and Moses or jumping out of a boat in a storm to walk on water to test if Jesus is a ghost, Peter is nothing if not a man of action.

So Peter says that the next step for us to take is to find a replacement for Judas.

Jesus wanted twelve apostles, and so, by God, we’re going to have twelve apostles.

Who has been with us since day one? Who has been here since we first saw John the Baptist baptizing in the River Jordan?

Everyone looks around the room and two names come up: Joseph called Barsabbas, also known as Justus, and Matthias.

I see two very different men when I picture these two in my head. Continue reading

Preparing for Priesthood by Failing My Ordination Exams

There are a number of good ways to study and interpret scripture, but one of the ones I enjoy the most is to take details within a particular passage that jump out at me and ask what they mean in my own life.

The people who wrote the books of the Bible were trying to communicate the events of stories, but part of what makes these writings Holy Scripture is the fact that they are layered with meaning.

Each time we come back to them we find a new echo, a new resonance in our own lives. This is why the Bible is our heartbeat as the people of God.

Our lesson from Acts today is rich with sentences and phrases we can mine for meaning in our own lives.

The basic story is about Philip the Evangelist and the Ethiopian Eunuch.

This Philip is not the Philip of the Twelve Apostles. Rather, this Philip was a member of the early church who was chosen as a leader to help administer and organize the church so the apostles could go and pray rather than sort out disputes about food and money.

At some point Philip becomes known as a talented evangelist, and begins to go on conversion missions under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

He finds a eunuch traveling from Jerusalem back to the court of the Ethiopian queen, where he is a high official. This eunuch is reading the text of Isaiah in his chariot.

Philip interprets Isaiah to him in the context of telling the story of Jesus, and the Ethiopian man is so moved that they stop and baptize him on the spot.

Philip is taken away by the Holy Spirit to evangelize elsewhere, and the eunuch goes on his way rejoicing. Excellent story, the end.

But like I said, it’s worth slowing down and taking a look at the details of the story. I find some of my most fruitful prayer and insight about my life come from this type of Bible study.

I’m fascinated right from the beginning of this passage. “An angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went.”

This is a wilderness road.

What does it mean to be called by an angel of the Lord to go to a wilderness road? Continue reading