Author Archives: megancastellan

In case you haven’t seen it elsewhere on this here Series of Tubes, I will be moving to Ithaca, New York in a few weeks to become the rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church.

I am really excited and happy about this–St. John’s is amazing and I’m so thrilled to be able to work with them.  But this also means leaving KCMO, and St.Paul’s–and that is hard.  I love this place and this parish so much, and I am so proud of the ministry we have done together.  God is doing such amazing things here, and I have been lucky to participate.

But that departure is not today, and never fear–this blog will continue as it has before.  And this blog knows I owe you at least 2 sermons.  So here’s one of them–from the Last Sunday after Epiphany, in which we discuss Peter’s super power.

Rev. Megan L. Castellan

February 11, 2018

Transfiguration, Last Sunday of Epiphany

Year B

–I have a tradition of watching the Opening Ceremony of each Olympics.  And livetweeting them.  A group of us have formed over the years–I think the first time I did this was 2012 or so.  

–It’s the only rational response, I feel, to watching such a momentous occasion under the circumstances NBC gives us, which are less than ideal,  At least for me–it’s frustrating to have parts of the show edited out, random trivia spouted by talking heads, and so much attention placed on the American athletes, when maybe this is a great time to pay attention to people who exist outside this country?  And often, as it was this year, the whole thing is time-delayed with plenty of commercials.

-So, loving mockery it is.  Because how else can one digest the dichotomy that occurs onscreen?  The designers of the Opening Ceremony were tasked with a near-impossible task:  tell the story of Korean life and culture over thousands of years through a show–use everything at your disposal.  So, they have 5 children ‘wandering’ through the history of Korea, meeting with mythical creatures, giant puppets, dancers, war torn refugees, drumming choirs, mountains made of calligraphy, and a technological future.  It’s all pretty great, actually.  And it’s all hard to explain in mere words.  

–So, perhaps that’s why the commentators ended up offering tidbits like “Asians are not afraid of tigers!” and “Korea has more tech rehab centers than any place except China!” ….Ok.  

–the need to explain is not always helpful.  And often counterproductive.  In fact, NBC had to offer an apology to South Korea just this morning for some of their commentary, when one of the on-air folks said that Korea had always looked to post-war Japan as their economic ideal.  If you know your history, you know that NO.  Koreans definitely did NOT have those warm feelings for post-war Japan.  

So, when looking at the gospel for today, maybe sub in Katie Couric for Peter?  Because really, it’s the same problem.  

Jesus, after a year or so of teaching, preaching, miracle-working, takes a few of the disciples up a mountain by themselves.  These are his inner circle, his most trusted friends.  And the disciples, Peter, James, and John, have a mystical experience.  There’s no other name for it.  Before their eyes, the truth of Jesus is revealed.  

Now, the text gives an image of what this is, but it’s important to keep in mind that the specifics are less important than the thing to which they point.  So Jesus suddenly becomes transfigured, his clothing whiter than the sun, shining with light.  For Mark’s readers, this would have sounded to them like the divine Son of Man figure in Ezekiel, who seems to be made of shining light, all shimmering and brilliant.  So they would have gotten the notion that Jesus is being revealed to be like that figure–divine!  Otherworldly!  Mystical!  

And then Elijah and Moses appear and talk with Jesus.  Mark doesn’t tell us what they talked about because that’s not what he wants the audience to get here.  The audience would have grasped that Elijah was the sum of the prophets, and Moses was the carrier of the Law.  Their friendliness with Jesus indicate that he is literally conversant with the Law and the Prophets, he’s on their side, they approve–and Jesus, as established by the shining,  is clearly divine.  And then, if that weren’t enough, God speaks, and reminds the disciples to LISTEN TO HIM.  

There’s also thunder, and mist, and sleepiness

—

There’s a lot happening here.  Whatever exactly happened, it must have been overwhelming.  

Because the first thing Peter does is open his mouth and panic.  “IT IS GOOD FOR US TO BE HERE.  LET’S BUILD BOOTHS.  OR SOMETHING.”  I have decided that Peter’s chief spiritual gift is being the first person to open his mouth, and utter what everyone else is thinking.  He’s basically biblical cannon fodder, who takes the rebuke when Jesus explains why that, too, is wrong.  But someone has to do it, and Peter cheerfully takes the set down time after time.  

Here is no exception.  Peter says this truly dumb thing about booths, made all the more inane by the beatific vision unfolding before them, and I’m sure Jesus just sort of looks at him.  And everything disappears, and Jesus tells them not to talk about it.  

One of the commentaries I read this week pointed out that literally everything Peter does is undone by God in this story.  He talks, Jesus tells him not to.  He wants to build booths, Jesus has them leave.  He wants to tell people, God reminds him to listen.  

It would seem that there’s an impulse for Peter, perhaps for all of us, in the face of what we cannot understand to shrink it into digestible parts as fast as we can.  Especially when it comes to God.  We take these experiences of transcendence in our lives, and rather than letting them exist in their complexity, to slowly unfold and reveal themselves, we sometimes try to jump to explain them–or worse, we try to explain them away.  

But the reality is, that while words can do a lot to convey what we know of God, they cannot do everything.  Much of the divine remains beyond us.  Part of what makes God divine is that inability to be fully comprehended.

Our instinct to shrink those experiences that challenge us comes from fear, that most primal of failings.  Our fear that God is, in fact, beyond us.  Our fear that God might want us to change.  Our fear that the great unknowable Divine is uncontrollable, and therefore will wreck us.  

Yet, in the face of that primal fear, is it not striking that the one thing God says on that mountain, in the middle of all that shining light, all that mist, and fog, and appearing prophets, in the middle of all that theophany—is “Here is my Son.  My Beloved.”?  The one thing God says is an assurance of love.  In fact, if you look through the gospels, everytime there’s a terrifying voice from heaven, the ONE THING God always says is that affirmation of Love.  That’s it.  

Not “I’m coming for you!” or “Pray hard and beat the flu” or “Here are the lotto numbers”.  Each and every time, God says My Beloved.  Each and every time, God speaks of love for us.  And love, as scripture tells us, casts out fear.  

If we hold on to one thing, let us hold on to that perfect love of God, and not be too anxious to shrink all of God down to easy words.  The main thing God reveals of Godself is this love–this love for us throughout history, and in the person of Jesus.  

Poking around on the interwebs today, I came across a blog I kept during seminary.  It was quite the reading experience.  Apparently editing was not my strong suit 10 years ago.  I also had many thoughts about church politics and events in the Middle East, so solidly on brand there.  It included the text of the sermon I gave in the chapel senior year.

I was surprised at how well the sermon held up.  There were definitely things I would change–stylistic tweaks I would make.  Things I would add for clarity’s sake, and adjustments if I weren’t preaching in an academic community who all knew who Cyrus the Persian was***.  But for the most part, the faith I talked about in that sermon is the faith I talk about today.  I want to go back in time and high-five my younger self, and tell her “That’s it!  Don’t be so nervous! You got this!”

On that note, here is my sermon from this Sunday.  It’s less of a sermon, more of a very thorough outline, but the ideas are there.  I wanted to talk about light and dark, and the limits of dichotomies in our dealings with God.  So I talked about neurological things!  As one does.

December 31, 2017

Christmas 1

John 1:1-18

Fun story:  For a few years in college, I saw things.  Not interesting things, like visions of God or angels, or apparitions of the future.  I saw flashing lights, floating dots, and ghost images around lights.  All those symptoms that doctors tell you are Very Bad, and you should immediately go to a doctor should you experience.

Tests were all negative–they couldn’t find anything wrong with me, even after all the doctors had stared at me, and med students had looked worried at me.   But the flashing lights, and weird floaty things persisted.  And thus did begin my fascination with light–since suddenly, everyone else could see something clearly that I could not.  This phenomenon I had taken for granted was now very apparent in my life.  

(Fast forward a couple years, and doctors would conclude that nothing WAS wrong with me–that what I was seeing was the result of a fried cranial nerve during a bad migraine, and could mostly be fixed with surgery and good glasses.  So please don’t worry about me–I am FINE.  But my fascination persisted.  Light, it seemed, wasn’t just light for everyone.)

Light/dark is a familiar dualism.  Light= good!  Dark=bad!  Light makes us happy, and dark makes us sad. Light is the thing we want, darkness is the thing that scares us.  This dichotomy is so familiar to us that we assume that this is apparent to everyone and we use that turn of phrase all the time.  It’s everywhere.  It’s in the gospels–and not just in the Johaninne prologue. 

Recently, this turn of phrase has become controversial, because it has been used throughout history to tell people of darker skin that they are less than.  Even so far as Joseph Smith telling Mormons that Indians and black people had darker skin because it was an outward sign of their sin.  Now that’s horrific, and so equating light with goodness has become a problem not just for those of us with visual impairments, but also for the reason that it can hearken back to this really troubling history.  

But  if we listen, what the prologue tells us is that, in fact, the dualism we assume is not apparent.  And it isn’t self-evident.  When the light comes, John writes, the world doesn’t even notice.  Even as the light illuminates the darkness, and even as the light has been present for all time, and lightens all creation.  Such a powerful presence, and somehow we just don’t notice it.  He came to his own, and his own did not receive him.

In retrospect, we sit here, comfortable in the 21st century, and it is hard to see how Jesus’ contemporaries didn’t realize who he was.  He was doing miracles!  He was preaching such amazing things!  How could people not stop what they were doing and noice?

Yet what’s fascinating throughout the gospels is how mundane the reasons people give for avoiding following Christ are.  It’s rarely that they don’t believe, per se-more often it’s something more pedestrian.  The rich young man really likes Jesus, but Jesus tells him to sell all he has, and well, his house is so comfortable!  Business leaders in Jerusalem acknowledge the truth of what the apostles are preaching in Acts, they believe in the risen Christ, but they’re worried about their income.  Pilate and Herod know who and what Jesus is–Herod asks for a miracle–but they have other, pressing political concerns.  

Rather than a simple dichotomy, what pulls us away from the light of God seems not to be darkness–it seems to be apathy.  We seem to be numb  to the light, and to what it’s doing.  It is all around us, and somehow, we just ignore it, or we don’t see it, because we’re so focused on other things.  It’s not that we dwell in darkness–a big, bad, foe out to snatch us up–we just become immune.  

It’s here that John’s prologue is at its most wise.  John, in his poetry, reminds us that the light is deeper and more profound than a simple enemy to the darkness.  But the Word, which is the Light, was in all things, and gave birth to all things, so when we stop and look around–it is in the light in which we live and move and have our being.  There is nothing we can think, say, or do that is apart from the Light.  And there is no darkness that can overcome or destroy the light. The light of God is what enlivens all life.  

But our constant task is to realize it.  To see the light as it shines around us, because while God never is apart from us, often we are so used to God’s presence that we begin to take it for granted.  Our task is to notice.  To recognize.  To be aware of the light shining around us.   To recognize the divine presence suffusing our existence, and not to be distracted by other concerns or worries.  Not money, not politics, not family–not even the darkness.  Because as John reminds us today, there is nothing in all creation that can snuff out God’s presence in this world.  Thanks to the Incarnation, we are inextricably intertwined in the life of God from now on.  The Light is here, and cannot be removed.  Our job is to recognize it and mirror it back.

Amen

***Cyrus the Persian was the Persian emperor who conquered the Babylonian Empire, and allowed the exiled Israelites to return and rebuild Jerusalem.  Despite not being Jewish, Isaiah LUUUUUVES Cyrus because of this–which is why I refer to Cyrus as the McDreamy of the OT.  (Because he is.) (Prove me wrong.) (You can’t.)

I very much like preaching about Mary.

There is a dearth of good Anglican mariology, in my opinion.  Generally, we fall into one of two camps:  either we go full hyper-dulia and Romish about the Mother of God, with rosaries and novenas aplenty, or we go full Baptist, and ignore her.  I don’t think either are helpful.  Mary has a unique role in the Gospels and in the life of the church.   So it’s important for a theoretical, textual reason.

But it’s also important because of actual, human people.  This year, I was tempted to talk about something other than Mary, and her kick-ass self.  But then I came across a published sermon, given by a mainline Protestant minister, in which he claimed Mary was unimportant because she merely was a pawn in God’s larger plan of grace.  In fact, he argued, she had no choice at all–and emphasized that several times.

Nope–I decided right then and there I had to talk about Mary again.  It was either that or be kept awake for the next year with nightmares of that horrifying sermon playing in my head.

As I was giving the sermon, I watched the congregation.  They were on the smaller side–it was the morning of Christmas Eve, after all.  But when I got to the part about Mary being her own person, a teenaged girl in the pews shot her head up, and started grinning.  Afterwards, she told me delightedly that she loved my sermon.

That’s why I do this.

Rev. Megan L. Castellan

December 24, 2017 (Morning)

Advent IV, Year B

Luke 2

The week before Christmas is a fascinating time for clergy, and other workers within the church.  Traditionally, it is the time when the copier breaks, when the plumbing declines to further plumb, and when all manner of small inconvenience suddenly appears, such that you cannot deal with the mounting pile of insanity that needs to be dealt with.  It breaks the weak, let me tell you.  And it’s why I’ve been bringing chocolate into work all week.

Of course, that’s what it’s like for most of us in these last pre-holiday days:  lots of rushing, lots of worrying about whether the family will make their flights, or whether Atlanta will have another blackout.  Whether that last side dish will get done, whether everything will be read or not.  For many of us, clergy or not, Christmas is an exercise in anxiety.

Contrast this, then, with the images on our Christmas cards of the Holy Family:  figures serene and formal, spotless and pale–looking like they never had a day of worry in their lives.  

Most of the images of Mary and Joseph that we see around this time of year do not reflect what we know their reality must have been:  harried, frantic, dirty, and terrified.  I did a Google search this week, when I was trying to avoid writing this sermon, and by a large margin, most of the images you find of Mary, especially, show her emotionless, and with her gaze off in the middle distance.  She’s distant and otherworldly–too pure and holy for whatever fears and concerns we struggle with.

But we know, of course, that this isn’t present in the narrative.  To read Luke’s account of the Annunciation is to encounter a young girl who has a lot of emotions.  

When Gabriel shows up to Mary (according to tradition in Nazareth, he shows up while she’s getting water from a local well), she very clearly has some concerns.  If you read the text closely, you can track the changes as the conversation happens.  Gabriel gives her the good news, and Mary is quite explicitly not on board.  She is worried, she is frightened, she has some questions, gosh darn it.  So she asks them.  “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”  Mary is trying to figure this out.

Gabriel gives further information, and it is only when he does, that Mary responds to the initial announcement.  “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”  Mary’s affirmative response is predicated on this give-and-take with the angel, and we know this in part because Luke describes Mary’s interior life–the only person really besides Jesus who is described as having interiority at all in the gospels.  

It never fails to amaze me, how many sermons and articles I come across which try to overlook or dismiss Mary’s arguing with the angel, and try to make the case that she either had no hesitations (flimsy) or she had no choice (horrifying.)  Each year, when I read about the Annunciation, these depictions of Mary as an emotionless pawn again flood my vision–the verbal equivalent of those pictures of the otherworldly, distant white girl on the Christmas cards.  

For one thing, the girl who doesn’t care doesn’t appear in Scripture, so there’s that.  For another, any assertion that Mary is anything other than a fully embodied agent of her own authority helps prop up some really disturbing ideas about women as a whole, and their ability to make their own decisions.  Because Mary is so often held up as What All Faithful Women Should Be, when she is reduced to a quiet pawn in the hands of God, that similarly tells women that the ideal to emulate is quiet, subservient, and without a will of her own

But finally, and perhaps most vitally, when we do actually stick to Scripture, and the depictions of women shown there, instead of our invented nonsense, we see that Christianity is resting on the foundation of the (still-controversial idea) that it is vital to believe women.  Both the malaligned women at the empty tomb, and the frightened, excited girl who spoke to an angel.  Without the believed testimony of women, we would have no church.  We would have no faith.

And just as vitally, when we bear witness to the fullness of this tradition, then we also see that it is as fully formed human beings that God encounters us.  God encounters Mary in her complete humanity–in all of her confusion, in all her doubt and fear, in all her questioning.  God does not shy away from any part of her or declare her questions out of bounds–God declares her as Blessed among women before a single word leaves her mouth. Indeed, she is blessed just as she is.  She does not have to do or change a thing.  

So then, Mary serves as a reminder that God takes us, each as we are.  Each one of us, regardless of our doubts and our hesitations has been declared beloved and blessed by the Most High.  Each one of us is needed in this recreation of the world.  And for each one of us, regardless of how well the cookies turned out, regardless of whether the dog eats the turkey, regardless of whether the children fight, regardless of whether we can muster up enough cheerfulness or not–Christ will be born on Christmas.  

Rev. Megan L. Castellan

December 24, 2017 (Morning)

Advent IV, Year B

Luke 2

The week before Christmas is a fascinating time for clergy, and other workers within the church.  Traditionally, it is the time when the copier breaks, when the plumbing declines to further plumb, and when all manner of small inconvenience suddenly appears, such that you cannot deal with the mounting pile of insanity that needs to be dealt with.  It breaks the weak, let me tell you.  And it’s why I’ve been bringing chocolate into work all week.

Of course, that’s what it’s like for most of us in these last pre-holiday days:  lots of rushing, lots of worrying about whether the family will make their flights, or whether Atlanta will have another blackout.  Whether that last side dish will get done, whether everything will be read or not.  For many of us, clergy or not, Christmas is an exercise in anxiety.

Contrast this, then, with the images on our Christmas cards of the Holy Family:  figures serene and formal, spotless and pale–looking like they never had a day of worry in their lives.  

Most of the images of Mary and Joseph that we see around this time of year do not reflect what we know their reality must have been:  harried, frantic, dirty, and terrified.  I did a Google search this week, when I was trying to avoid writing this sermon, and by a large margin, most of the images you find of Mary, especially, show her emotionless, and with her gaze off in the middle distance.  She’s distant and otherworldly–too pure and holy for whatever fears and concerns we struggle with.

But we know, of course, that this isn’t present in the narrative.  To read Luke’s account of the Annunciation is to encounter a young girl who has a lot of emotions.  

When Gabriel shows up to Mary (according to tradition in Nazareth, he shows up while she’s getting water from a local well), she very clearly has some concerns.  If you read the text closely, you can track the changes as the conversation happens.  Gabriel gives her the good news, and Mary is quite explicitly not on board.  She is worried, she is frightened, she has some questions, gosh darn it.  So she asks them.  “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”  Mary is trying to figure this out.

Gabriel gives further information, and it is only when he does, that Mary responds to the initial announcement.  “Here I am, the servant of the Lord.”  Mary’s affirmative response is predicated on this give-and-take with the angel, and we know this in part because Luke describes Mary’s interior life–the only person really besides Jesus who is described as having interiority at all in the gospels.  

It never fails to amaze me, how many sermons and articles I come across which try to overlook or dismiss Mary’s arguing with the angel, and try to make the case that she either had no hesitations (flimsy) or she had no choice (horrifying.)  Each year, when I read about the Annunciation, these depictions of Mary as an emotionless pawn again flood my vision–the verbal equivalent of those pictures of the otherworldly, distant white girl on the Christmas cards.  

For one thing, the girl who doesn’t care doesn’t appear in Scripture, so there’s that.  For another, any assertion that Mary is anything other than a fully embodied agent of her own authority helps prop up some really disturbing ideas about women as a whole, and their ability to make their own decisions.  Because Mary is so often held up as What All Faithful Women Should Be, when she is reduced to a quiet pawn in the hands of God, that similarly tells women that the ideal to emulate is quiet, subservient, and without a will of her own

But finally, and perhaps most vitally, when we do actually stick to Scripture, and the depictions of women shown there, instead of our invented nonsense, we see that Christianity is resting on the foundation of the (still-controversial idea) that it is vital to believe women.  Both the malaligned women at the empty tomb, and the frightened, excited girl who spoke to an angel.  Without the believed testimony of women, we would have no church.  We would have no faith.

And just as vitally, when we bear witness to the fullness of this tradition, then we also see that it is as fully formed human beings that God encounters us.  God encounters Mary in her complete humanity–in all of her confusion, in all her doubt and fear, in all her questioning.  God does not shy away from any part of her or declare her questions out of bounds–God declares her as Blessed among women before a single word leaves her mouth. Indeed, she is blessed just as she is.  She does not have to do or change a thing.  

So then, Mary serves as a reminder that God takes us, each as we are.  Each one of us, regardless of our doubts and our hesitations has been declared beloved and blessed by the Most High.  Each one of us is needed in this recreation of the world.  And for each one of us, regardless of how well the cookies turned out, regardless of whether the dog eats the turkey, regardless of whether the children fight, regardless of whether we can muster up enough cheerfulness or not–Christ will be born on Christmas.