The Rev. Dr. Deacon Bette Kauffman homily from July 6, 2025, at Christ Episcopal, Saint Joseph, LA

 

Choose Hope, Choose Love

6 July 2025

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, LA

Year C, Pentecost 4

2 Kings 5:1-14; Galatians 6:1-16; Luke 10:1-11,16-20

 

In today’s gospel lesson, Jesus sends seventy followers ahead of him, two by two to heal the sick and proclaim the Kingdom of God. They go, they do, and they return rejoicing.

That’s the point I want to focus on today: They return rejoicing.

You have perhaps experienced this phenomenon. You have perhaps heard others talk about their experience. We go out to minister and we are ministered to by those we sought to serve.

I went to the Dominican Republic a number of years ago with a handful of deacons. We traveled about the countryside with several Dominican deacons and worshipped with folks in tiny, unairconditioned churches. Those churches were mostly bare of ornamentation; they might have one cross, one painting of the Holy Family, but very little else. The altars were a wooden table made by the local carpenter. The pews were crude benches.

But the worship was heartfelt and joyful, the people in awe that we had come to worship with them. I came home a different person, a little bit haunted by the stark contrast between those churches and most U.S. American churches, but also deeply grateful and refreshed.

This phenomenon of returning joyful, having been ministered to by those we serve is, not merely the joy of a job well done. It’s not merely the good feeling we get when those we minister to are grateful. Or that glow of virtue we get from having done a good deed. There’s something deeper than all of that going on.

The people Jesus sent out were ordinary folks, probably what we would consider working class—literally laborers. We know that because those are the kind of folks who followed Jesus: fishermen, carpenters and such. They most assuredly were not religious leaders—pharisees, sadducees, priests, deacons and such—because those folks spent their time arguing with Jesus and plotting against him, NOT following him.

These ordinary folks lived in a terrible time, a time of oppression by centralized political power, a time of corruption and of poverty and food insecurity. Life was fragile.

In sending them out, Jesus warned them that it would not be easy. Some would reject them. They were like sheep going among wolves.

But these ordinary folks went as sent by Jesus, and they were changed by their acts of mercy. They came back rejoicing, exulting in what they had been able to accomplish—which clearly exceeded their fondest hopes and expectations. You can hear the glee in Jesus’ voice as he greets them, proclaiming that he had seen Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightening.

Jesus also explains to them that he had given them power over enemies, but then he cautions: don’t rejoice over the power; rejoice that your name is written in heaven.

Here’s what I think all this means: WE, in our mixed motives, are not what bring about the Kingdom of God. Rather, the Kingdom of God comes forth, pretty much in spite of us, through our actions and interactions in service to others. We do not first love God then serve others. We serve others and in serving others become lovers of God.

See, I think we pay a lot of lip service loving God. Yes, yes, I love God, we say. But how do you love… an entity that you cannot see or touch? The only way we can put our arms of love around God is by putting them around another human being.

Now that is easy to see and do when it comes to friends and family. Of course we experience hope and joy and the love of God when we put our arms around friends and family! We would be less than human if we didn’t.

Just a quick aside here. It should come as no surprise that our prisons are full of people who did not experience the love of God through loving relationships with friends and family as they grew up. This is attested to by the experiences of the men and women who conduct Kairos ministry—like Fr. Ned Webster--and report that hardened criminals break down into tears when given a dozen cookies baked for them by a complete stranger. It speaks to them of love they have never known.

I do not think we fully comprehend how hollow it is to say “I love God,” all while ignoring the plight of the millions of God’s children who live in fear and in poverty and poor health.

Serving others—especially outside our circle of family and friends, those who cannot do anything for us in return, those Jesus describes as the least of these—transforms us--even more than them.

Here’s how Mother Teresa of Calcutta put it: “Only in heaven will we see how much we owe to the poor for helping us to love God the better because of them.”

Today we are sent into a world full of “wolves” of war, violence, greed, divisive politics and conflict over scarce resources—like food and water—due not only to war and greed but climate change accelerated by our own behavior.

Today’s primary disease is no longer leprosy or tuberculosis, but possibly the utter loss of hope that comes from feeling unwanted, uncared for, abandoned by everyone and unable to make a difference in one’s own life, much less the world.

It is hard to have hope in today’s world. Yet we are sent, and as we go, I think we will find that hope is like love: It’s not something we have that enables us to act, it’s something that we create by acting.

Moreover, love and hope are contagious. Our acting transforms not only us, but those around us. Our hopeful act, our loving act make us more hopeful and loving, and those around us start acting in a more loving and hopeful way.

Hope and love are not feelings we have so much as choices we make. And by making and acting on those choices, we are transformed into loving, hope-filled people.

In the name of God, Father, Son & Holy Spirit, AMEN. 

Homily from Dr. Deacon Bette Kauffman at Christ Episcopal 1 Jun 25

 

Focus on the Light

 Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La., Easter 7/Ascensiontide

The story of Jesus’ ascension is told near the end of Luke and at the beginning of Acts. Both accounts were thus likely written by the same person since scholars widely believe the two books have a single author.

 

Although there are several differences between the accounts, neither tells us when it happened. Nevertheless, the feast day for the ascension is always on a Thursday—the Thursday exactly 40 days after Easter, which is, of course, always on a Sunday.

 

It’s a bit odd since most churches don’t have a service Thursdays. But… of course, it must be 40 days after Easter to match the 40 days Jesus spent in the wilderness before he began his ministry. And why? Because that’s how the church does things, that’s why!

 

So… today is officially the 7^th Sunday after Easter, but I prefer to think of it as the only Sunday during Ascensiontide! And since you most likely did not go to church Thursday, well, today, is our celebration of Ascensiontide, that extraordinary moment between Jesus’ departure from Earth and the coming of the Holy Spirit—to be celebrated next Sunday—Pentecost Sunday.

 

And it is a moment, so to speak. It is just 10 days between Jesus ascending and the Holy Spirit raining fire on the heads of Jesus’s followers. And this is the only Sunday within that 10 days, thus our main opportunity for thinking a bit about what that time must have been like for the disciples and IS like for us today.

 

The disciples had been on quite a roller coaster ride. Jesus had been crucified. It seemed to have all been over. Their hopes for a new kingdom were dashed. They went fishing.

 

Then Jesus began to appear to them. At first they weren’t sure but he kept showing up. They moved from disbelief to belief. Could it be they had him back again? They hung on his every word. This time when he said he was going away but would send this mysterious presence that would be with them always, I suspect they were readier to believe, but…, did they have any idea what to expect? 

 

 

You know that I always love to look at artist renditions of the Bible stories. The vast majority of paintings of the Ascension show Jesus in voluminous robes and rising, arms outstretched. The focus is all on the glorification of Jesus. The disciples, if they appear at all, tend to be highly stylized hands and faces.

 

But there are a few that only show Jesus’ feet and maybe the hem of his robe dangling down from the top of the frame. In these, the focus tends to be on the disciples and their reactions, and their faces are not always calm! I saw one, in particular, that showed faces contorted by surprise, of course, but also fear and anxiety.

 

It is hard to be in an in-between time! What next? After all we’ve been through, what next?! Here we are alone again, and Jesus says something big is going to happen, but… what is this new thing going to be like?

 

It seems the disciples were kind of frozen in the moment—and wouldn’t we all be?! So the next thing that happens—and my fave thing about this story—is that two men dressed all in white appear. Angels, presumably. And they shock the poor, already stunned disciples out of their reverie.

 

Wake up guys, they say. What are you doing standing there with your mouths hanging open? You’ve got work to do—like “change the whole world” work to do. Better get cracking. Go back to Jerusalem and get ready.

 

So Ascensiontide is a little bitty—10 day, to be exact—in-between time when the disciples prayed and prepared for something to come, they were not sure exactly what or how, but they prepared in faith with prayer and praise, and lo and behold, something wondrous did happen, and they did go out and change the world.

 

But you have most likely noticed… you surely have noticed…the world.. still.. needs changing! Christianity brought some wonderful teachings to the world, and I’ll come back to that momentarily. But some of what Christianity brought was cruel and inhumane, and most assuredly not from God. Christianity brought the Inquisitions and the Crusades and the Doctrine of Manifest Destiny that supported our ancestors in decimating indigenous people and culture in this country.

 

Some Christians used passages in the bible to justify slavery. And then other Christians came along and used the Hebrew Scripture to preach that all humans are created equal and in the likeness and image of God. Christianity has always been a mixed bag and even though the disciples of Jesus changed the world… we have much to do today!

 

Our central teachings--love of God first and foremost then love your neighbor as self—are sorely needed in our still violent and evil world. We have a long way to go and our work cut out for us.

 

So we still need two men in white—or maybe any random priest or deacon—to show up every so often and say, “people of Christ Church, St. Joseph, why do you stand here gazing into heaven? You’ve got work to do! Get cracking.”

 

We too live in an in-between time, not a little bitty one like Ascensiontide but an enormous, ongoing one that stretches from the first Easter until that glorious day when God’s kingdom comes, fully and gloriously, and Divine Love and Perfect Unity rule everything.

 

What we do with our in-between time matters. What we focus on matters, as we play out our lives working toward the coming of that Kingdom. Here’s a gem I found on FB of all places, in the past couple of weeks. The author framed it as…

 

A reminder in these dark times…

 

We must call out the darkness, The unspeakable injustice and evil in this world. But we must never *focus* on it.

Make sure your focus is *always* on the Light. And remember that no matter how great the darkness gets, the Light will always be greater.

 

Yasmin Mogahed, Muslim woman

 

 

Our Gospel lesson today is Jesus the Christ’s prayer for his disciples, and us, as he departs this earth. It is a prayer for love and unity. But we will never achieve God’s kingdom of Love and Unity by striving for conformity and uniformity. It always sounds nice! If we could just get rid of our differences, we could all live in harmony, right? Except that what every human who ever thought that had in mind was the rest of the world conforming to THEIR beliefs, values and way of seeing! BE like me, then we can all get along, right!

 

Our only possible unity is in learning to live with and love in all our variation. That’s Divine Love and that’s the Light—the only Light that can guide us.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN.

Saturday, April 8, 2023

Do This

 Maundy Thursday, Grace Episcopal Church, 2023

It’s a familiar story. Yet we need to hear it again. And again.

 

So we come together every Maundy Thursday to re-enact, with Jesus in our midst, two expressions of who we are as followers of him and as children of the living God.

 

One of those things is Holy Eucharist: Jesus calls Eucharistic community into being by blessing and sharing bread and wine with his disciples in his last meal with them on this Earth. And he says, “do this in remembrance of me.”

 

Those of us who take seriously our commitment in our baptismal covenant to “continue in the fellowship and the breaking of the bread and the prayers,” tend to be here at least once a week for the ongoing celebration of Holy Eucharist in this place.

 

The other expression of who we are as followers of Jesus that we re-enact this night is our identity as servants, initiated by Jesus’s washing of his disciples’ feet. And this time he says, ‘I’m doing this as an example of what you are to do.”

 

We call this night “Maundy Thursday” because “maundy,” coming from the Latin “man DAH tum,” means “command.” Jesus didn’t just express hope or desire that we do these things, he commands us to do these things.

 

So we participate and are renewed weekly by Holy Eucharist. But do we have an equally powerful weekly reminder of our servant identity? It is there, in our post-communion prayers, and I’ll come back to those. But do we see our Eucharistic life and our servanthood as being one and the same?

 

I’m not so sure, and much as I love the Book of Common Prayer that guides us through our daily and weekly liturgies, I wonder if it’s not a shortcoming that we can so easily miss that point. Certainly I think our role as servants is the harder to remember and make real with regular practice in our lives.

 

I dare say, coming to the holy table reassures us of our belonging and reminds us of God’s grace and mercy toward us. It is, by and large, our comfort zone.

 

In contrast, practicing our servanthood often takes us out of our comfort zone. And isn’t it interesting—and probably quite relevant—that the action Jesus used to drive home his point about servanthood also takes us out of our comfort zone!

 

I grew up in the Mennonite Church—a sharp contrast with the Episcopal Church in some ways. And I will never forget so long as I live the acute discomfort of the teenagers of the church on foot-washing Sunday. Because, you see, in the Mennonite Church, everyone had to do it. Everyone!

 

And so the teenage girls and the teenage boys would congregate in separate groups in opposite corners of the church, as far apart as they could get, and, rather hurriedly, heads down, wash feet.

 

What is up with that? Well, clearly, kneeling down and washing each other’s feet involves more vulnerability than even adults are comfortable with, much less teenagers. But that is exactly as I think Jesus intended it.

 

Now, please. I did not tell that story to pressure anyone into participating in the ritual of foot washing tonight! I love the Episcopal Church’s “some should, all may, none must” approach to such things.

 

But I do want to call each and every one of us, whether we participate by coming to the basins or by sitting in our pew watching, that we not allow this to be just another annual ritual in the church year.

 

I do call each of us to recognize this re-enactment to be a recommitment to our role and identity as servants, along with our brother Jesus the Christ, and along with all of the vulnerability that servanthood involves.  

 

See, the life of servanthood is not about making us feel good. Last week at our monthly pub theology gathering, we got into a discussion about charitable acts—specifically about such things as giving money to someone who is asking for help.

 

Now that is by no means the only way to enact servanthood—maybe not even the best way—but it is one way. Helping people who ask us for help is one way to “seek and serve Christ” in every human face, as our baptismal covenant puts it.

 

But the question that came up was, what if it doesn’t make us feel good to do it? Shouldn’t doing a charitable act, doing some kind of service to another, make us feel good?

 

My first thought in response to the question was, yeah, that makes sense, it should.

 

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I question my response. Why should it make us feel good? When did Jesus ever say that following the servanthood he modeled for us would make us feel good?

 

Actually, what Jesus did say pretty clearly is that following him was not going to feel good. You know, all that stuff about maybe having to leave behind family, about letting the dead bury the dead, about giving away all your stuff, about the narrow way vs. the broad way…

 

So maybe if doing some charitable or servant-like thing makes us feel good, we really ought to think twice about it. We ought to question our motives. Because following Jesus into the life of servanthood is not about making us feel good. It is far more likely to be about leaving our comfort zone, with God as our help—and that, of course, is what makes it possible.

 

Here’s what servanthood of the Jesus kind is about: Love. That is all.

 

Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. What Jesus did was about love. What Jesus institutes is loving service. And he says, I do this as an example of what you are to do. And when Peter objects, he says, Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.

 

Loving service to each other and all of humankind is intrinsic to our relationship with Jesus the Christ. Without it, we have no share with him.

 

It is the outward manifestation of an inward grace—that inward grace being the love of God through our relationship with Jesus the Christ. Without it, we have no share with him.

 

Our service in the name of Jesus the Christ is an extension of the community we share at the holy table. It is sacramental.

 

And now, Father, send us out to do the work you have given us to do, we will soon pray after receiving the holy food. Or, in the magnificent words of Rite I, strengthen us to do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in.

 

Service is not merely something we do in our spare time or with spare resources. Loving service is how we walk in the world.

 

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, AMEN

 

Monday, April 3, 2023

Please Save Now

 Palm Sunday, Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph, La.

It has never been clear to me why a homily is required on Palm Sunday. What can a preacher—or anyone else, for that matter—say after reading the Passion Gospel? Would that we all sit quietly and let the pain.. and the anguish.. and the despair.. of having been forsaken by God wash over us.

 

So I don’t have much to say, but a little that matters, it seems to me.

 

I always thought the word “Hosanna!” shouted by the people who waved palms and marched into Jerusalem was a joyous, triumphant “yay, God,” “long live King Jesus” kind of statement. 

 

A few years ago, doing some research for teaching religion in the Grace Middle School, I discovered to my surprise that that’s not at all what it means. Far from being a shout of triumph, it is a plea. “Hosanna” comes from the Hebrew hoshia-nah, which means “please save now.”

 

In other words, the people who escorted Jesus into Jerusalem with a celebratory parade were not shouting praise, adoration or victory. They were begging to be saved already!

 

Perhaps then, it is no wonder that just a few days hence, after Jesus had stood silently before the chief priests and elders and refused to defend himself before Pontius Pilate, those same people called for his execution.

 

He had let them down. Here was a man who refused to save himself, refused to even defend himself. How could he possibly save anyone else? Jesus was a disappointment. He betrayed their hope and longing for a Messiah who would actually solve problems! Fix things! Get the Romans off their back! And so they quickly turned against him.

 

And are we not like that today? Do we not lay down our palm branches and pick up our weapons rather quickly when our often unrealistic expectations are not met by… whomever or whatever: a political party; a friend; a spouse; our church; a priest, bishop or deacon.

 

We want what we want and we want it on our terms. Even when we all really want the same thing, we disagree on the way to get there and have trouble even having civil discussions to seek some common ground.

 

We are very quick to drop our palm branches and pick up our weapons, fling harsh words and sarcastic memes at one another.

 

Jesus before the elders and before Pilate must have looked like a loser. The people wanted to hitch their wagon to a winner. And don’t we?

 

And don’t we want God yet today to “please save us now”! Don’t we, too, have unrealistic expectations of God’s role in human life? Why does God allow.. bad things to happen to good people? we ask. Why does God allow poverty? Why does God allow evil in the world? Why, God…? we ask, as if God were in the business of handing out political favors for those who vote for Him.

 

The people who waved palms that first palm Sunday were unprepared for the answer to their suffering to be Love, simply Love—humble, obedient, self-sacrificing Love that overcomes evil not by fighting back, but by embracing.

 

I’m not sure we’re any better prepared or accepting today of Love as the answer, Love as that which will save us, than were the people 2000 years ago. We sure don’t act like it! We’d rather dig in our heels and go for the win, regardless of the collateral damage the fight might do.

 

As we walk through this holy week, let us examine our own expectations of

God, each other, and perhaps most of all, ourselves. Can we accept humble, patient, unconditional Love as the thing that will save us? And if we say “yes” to that, how must it change us?

 

  In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Monday, March 27, 2023

This One Life

 Grace Episcopal Church, Monroe, La., Lent 5

Five weeks ago, as I was preparing a homily for the Ash Wednesday service down at Christ Church in St. Joseph, I was inspired to go online and order a small hourglass on a chain. My theme for that homily was memento mori, “remember that you are going to die,” and my plan was to wear the hourglass pendant as a Lenten discipline.

 

The plan did not work so well. The pendant came, quickly enough, but the moment I opened the package, I realized that I had ordered too short a chain. I needed to get a different chain for it, and somehow… I just never got around to doing that. Until yesterday, when I finally robbed a cord from another pendant so I could wear it this morning.

 

Or, at least, that’s my excuse for not making good on my Lenten discipline!

 

Why an hourglass? Well, because time is running out—not just in the general sense that everyone must die, but in the particular: I’m going to die! My time is running out. Lent is about remembering that.

 

In today’s Gospel story, Lazarus gets something the rest of us will not get, namely more time after his hourglass had run out. Did you ever wonder what he did with it? Did you ever wonder what that multitude of dry bones did with their second chance after Ezekiel—with God’s help—prophesied them back into life?

 

Mary Oliver, recently deceased, is one of my favorite poets of all time. I’m going to read a poem of hers called “The Summer Day.” The last line of this poem is quite famous. You will most likely recognize it; you’ve probably heard it before. But I think the entire short poem makes the punch line even more powerful.

 

Here it is: “The Summer Day” by Mary Oliver

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

 

To be perfectly honest, I am sorely tempted to sit down and simply leave that poem hanging in the air… to give us all time to reflect on what it is we are doing with the one wild and precious life we have been given. But that would not be according to Sunday morning protocol, so…. here are a couple of my thoughts on this business of life, death and being raised from the dead.

 

First, life is a series of mini-deaths and mini-resurrections. It is quite literally a messy mix of deaths and resurrections, so much so that I often think of Khalil Gibran’s famous statement: Life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

 

We have all experienced those times of loss or adversity or change we neither asked for nor wanted—times of loss of control, times that feel like dying. And I also know, because I know my stories and I have heard some of yours, that we have also experienced God pushing aside the stone and calling us to come out of the tomb of hurt or anger or despair we are in and back to life again.

 

At last Tuesday’s Lenten luncheon, it was my turn to give the meditation, and “forgiveness” was on the agenda of the booklet we are using, “Living
Well through Lent.” One of the things I pointed out, contrary to what the culture teaches us, is that forgiveness is not a “once and done” deal. It is a daily decision we must make.

 

Like forgiveness, resurrection is not a once-and-done deal. Forgiveness and resurrection are to be practiced, and I do believe they are connected. It seems to me that we cannot experience resurrection until we have experienced being forgiven, and forgiving… the person who wronged us, maybe ourselves for doing something stupid that got us into this current messy death-like situation, maybe just reality itself for being exactly what it is, nothing more, nothing less. And this human life will give us plenty of opportunities to practice both.. forgiveness and resurrection, of that we can be certain.

 

The second thing I want to say about life, death and resurrection is that, as followers of Jesus, God has a claim on us. God has a claim on our lives. With our baptism, we made decisions well in advance that necessarily shape what we do with our one wild and precious life. Not in detail, but certainly in substance and in principle.

 

To echo one of Fr. Don’s themes, one of those things we promise is to be in church. So, you’re here, I’m preaching to the choir, but… have you considered picking up the phone and calling someone you haven’t seen here in awhile to just remind them that “the fellowship and the breaking of the bread and the prayers” is incomplete without them! 

 

BTW, in case you don’t know, research shows that it is umpteen times more effective for you to do that than for clergy to do it. 

 

But to me the much harder promises come at the end of the baptismal covenant. Those would be the promises to seek and serve Christ in every other person, loving them as myself, and to seek justice and peace for all and to respect the dignity of every human being. I don’t think we do those things well at all.

 

So I’m a teacher. Giving grades comes naturally. I would actually give us a B on church attendance, and maybe a C on seeking and serving Christ in every person. That’s charity. We do some of that. Not enough, but some.

 

But that last one? Seeking justice and respecting the dignity of every person? Well, I would say D at best. Because I have heard the poor blamed for their poverty inside every church I have served or attended.. by people who haven’t the slightest idea of what systemic poverty is like or what it takes to get out of it. To respect the dignity of every human being surely requires, at minimum, hearing their story before coming to conclusions about the cause of their condition.

 

I give us a “D”  on that last promise because seeking justice involves change. Justice is not a hand-out. Doing charity does not produce justice. At best it produces survival within the status quo. Seeking justice means looking at causes and examining systems that produce injustice. It means being willing to change, even those systems that worked well for us. And just talking about such things makes us deeply uncomfortable.

 

These things are in our baptismal covenant because God calls us to do them. And we agreed! We made a solemn vow that whatever else we do with this one life, we will—with God’s help—do it all within the context of God’s claim on us, guided by the Spirit, walking in the way of Jesus.

 

Easter Sunday is just around the corner. Our Easter liturgy is a major baptismal event. Using Lent to prepare for baptism became a tradition of the church many centuries ago. My prayer today is that we use what remains of this Lent to assess honestly, to look forward courageously, and to renew our baptismal covenant again, as if for the first time.

 

In the name of God, Father, son, and Holy Spirit, AMEN

Services at Christ Episcopal, Saint Joseph, LA, April 6 - 27, 2025

Services planned for Christ Episcopal for April 6-27, 2025:

--Sunday, April 6, 10am - Deacon Bette, Morning Prayer & Distribution of Communion

--Palm Sunday, April 13, 10am, Morning Prayer

--Good Friday, April 18, to be determined - Deacon Bette

--Easter Sunday & Christening, April 20, 10am, Holy Eucharist, Canon Suzanne Wolfenbarger

--Sunday, April 27, 10am, Morning Prayer

Definitions for prodigal:

1.  Spending money or resources freely and recklessly; wastefully extravagant.

2.  Having or giving something on a lavish scale.

The Rev. Deacon Dr. Bette Kauffman's sermon from Ash Wednesday service March 5, 2025

  Christ Episcopal Service Schedule:

    Sunday March 9th 10am MP

    Sunday March 16th 10am MP

    Sunday March 23rd 10am MP

    Wednesday March 26th 5pm Holy Eucharist with The Rev. David Perkins

    Sunday March 30th 10am MP

 Memento Mori

Christ Episcopal Church, St. Joseph

Year A, Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58:1-12; 2 Corinthians 5:20b–6:10; Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

 

Keep death daily before your eyes. That’s what St. Benedict said when he established his order many generations ago. It is still a good way to practice the Christian life.

You might recall that 2 years ago, I purchased this hourglass to wear as my memento mori, to wear throughout Lents. It is my reminder that we, and everyone, are going to die.

I’m not sure wearing it only during lent is adequate. Although I have had a good life and think I am not afraid to die, nevertheless I have trouble conceiving of the world without me. But of course it will.

Today, we get ashes on our foreheads, but we only do it once a year. I’m not so sure that is enough. Perhaps keeping our own death daily before our eyes—not just during Lent, but all year long—would indeed rearrange our lives, teach us to make better choices about how we spend our time, and our talent and our money.

Keeping our own death daily before our eyes is also a way of healthy and appropriate letting go of those things that are so destructive to living a full and rich life. How much time will we invest in holding onto a grudge, stubbornly refusing to forgive, beating up ourselves with regret… while contemplating our own death? Not much, I hope.

How about awaking us anew to the value of life itself and to the transient beauty that surrounds us? Like trillium, this most beautiful wildflower that blooms for only a few weeks in the early spring. Now! Go see it now, because by the middle of March it will be gone. Without a trace.

The poet E.B. Browning said it like this:

Earth's crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God; and only he who sees takes off his shoes. The rest sit around it and pluck blackberries. 

Maybe keeping our own death before us helps us to be joyful, content and attuned to the present, to cherish every moment that we draw breath? To love God for God alone? For no other motive than to love for love’s sake?

Remember, you are going to die.

So consider a Lenten discipline of giving yourself a daily reminder that you are going to die—a memento mori. Make it real. Write about it in a journal, or wear something—maybe a skull pin or pendant, or an hourglass to remind yourself that time is running out.

If you were here Sunday, you heard me say that in writing my sermon, I could not come up with a story about what I’ve done lately to make the world a better place. And I suggested there might be a continuation of that theme today.

I have never been one to “give up” something for Lent. I did grow up attending a Roman Catholic elementary school for a time, and it just never much impressed me that eating fish on Friday and giving up candy did much to transform the behavior of my classmates, much less to make the world a better place.

So I usually try to add a new discipline or spiritual practice to my life during Lent. I can’t do exactly what Jesus did. If I were to go around trying to heal people by spitting in the dirt and making mud, all we’d end up with is people with mud in their eyes!

So we need to look for ways to make the world a better place that in our own time and place and within our capabilities. And this year, I found my thing a couple days ago.

It’s called the 39-Mile Walk Challenge and it is being conducted by the Carter Foundation, which was founded by Jimmy Carter and his wife Roslyn after he left the presidency.

The 39 miles of the challenge comes from the fact that he was our 39^th president, but I hasten to add, this is NOT about politics.

It IS about a man who said “faith is an action verb” and he, himself, lived his faith in visible and specific ways. I’m sure you have seen many photos of him building homes through the Habitat for Humanity program well into his 90s.

The Carter Foundation’s motto is, “Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope.” It has a record of success and is highly rated as a nonprofit for low overhead costs. Your money goes to the causes the Foundation takes up.

Jesus healed, and so I chose the 39-Mile Challenge Walk as my Lenten discipline this year. I see it as a way for me to follow Jesus and make a difference in the world by raising money for this organization engaged in healing people around the world.

I also chose this challenge because it requires something physical—some action—from me. This Friday is my first scheduled walk. I plan to walk 5 miles out at Black Bayou Lake National Wildlife Refuge. And while I walk, I will pray and reflect and praise God through appreciating the beauty of creation.

Jimmy Carter also said, I have one life and one chance to make it count for something. I’m free to choose that something. … My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can.

So that’s what I chose for this Lenten season. You choose what works for you! A million opportunities await.

Today is Ash Wednesday, the day we remind ourselves that we are but dust and to dust we will return. I will close with this reminder from Br. David Vryhof of the Brothers of Saint John the Evangelist:

We receive the mark of ashes on our foreheads, not as a sign of our sanctity but as a sign of our humanness. We kneel in repentance today. The Savior knows the secrets that hide in the hearts of each of us because he created us, redeemed us, and called us by name. It is his love that will make us whole.

 

  In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.