Category Archives: Sermons

My job has many delightful moments–leading the children in the dismissal each week, explaining documentary hypothesis to new Episcopalians, preaching.  And this past week, I got to participate in one of my more favorite fun moments–marrying two of my more active parishioners.

They told me early on that they wanted to invite the whole parish to their wedding, since St. Paul’s had been so important to their lives.  And they wanted to hold the reception here at the church–which turned out to be an inauguration of the newly renovated parish hall.  And so it was that most of the parish family turned out for a wedding of two of our own.

See, weddings (when you’re the officiant) can go one of two ways–they can be anxiety fests of stress and misery, where every decision is agonized over and every detail is scrutinized because everyone knows that you are spending the equivalent of a college education on this one day in your life–or weddings can be joyous celebrations of two people and their relationship and your need to dance to bad disco.

This one was the latter.

Here is what I said for the sermon.  (More or less–I wrote it down, but then didn’t look at the paper at all. So while I think I hit all the points, I also think I used different words.  But this is the general idea/flow/mise en scene.)

Luke 7

So, there are some traditional readings for weddings.  Some Bible readings that are always done–a Greatest Hits of Wedding Readings, if you will.

Romans 8–that’s a big favorite.  This section of Ruth–Where you go, I will go–very popular.  1 Corinthians 13: love is patient, love is kind–that’s practically the “My Heart Will Go On” of wedding readings.  

Know what’s not a well-known wedding reading?  

Jesus and the centurion.  It is on none of the Wedding Pop Charts–and yet when I met with them, this is the reading Jonathan and Chris were really set on.  

And for good reason, because this story is amazing. It is a hidden, underappreciated gem, is what it is.  

Jesus is headed to Capernaum, hanging out with the disciples as per usual, when a local centurion comes up and asks him to help one of his slaves.  The slave is about to die, and the centurion is upset, so he intercedes on his behalf with Jesus.  “Look, Jesus,” he says, “you don’t even have to come into my house–just do the thing from a distance and it will be enough.”

This impresses Jesus immensely and he heals the centurion’s slave.

Now, see, when I tell it like that, it may not sound that amazing–sick guy gets healed–not unexpected, and still confusing for a wedding.  

But here’s what’s interesting about this story.   This centurion didn’t act how you would expect a centurion to act.  This guy’s a big deal–he’s in charge of all the Roman troops that occupy the town.  The Jewish leaders even intercede for him with Jesus, saying “This guy’s not so bad–he built our synagogue for us!  Please ignore the imperialist tendencies of his people.”

And there’s what he said about his slave.  Centurions didn’t go around begging for the lives of their slaves.  Slavery back then was….well, slavery.  If a slave died, it was sad, but the owner moved on–you didn’t start calling up faith healers.  But what’s odd about this is the language the centurion uses.  In Greek, he doesn’t say the slave is well-liked, or good at his job–what he says is that the slave is precious to him.  That’s very different.  The Greek word used here is more indicative of a romantic relationship than a working on.  The centurion is asking Jesus to heal someone he loves.  

And Jesus does.   

So the miracle of this story is not so much that the centurion’s slave is healed–the miracle of the story–the part that is really transformative–is that Jesus sees and accepts the centurion and his slave for who they are.  Not individuals who believe the wrong things, hold the wrong jobs, come from the wrong place, love the wrong people–but as children of God, beloved by God.

And look–this right here is why the church blesses marriage.  Not so we get all cozy with the government, and not out of some weird obsession with procreation.  

We bless marriages in the church because we really believe that in these sorts of dedicated, faithful, lifelong relationships, we can see a glimpse of the sort of love God has for us.  And we want to hold that up as special.  

We believe that in marriage, we can see the sort of love that accepts us unconditionally, that sees us as we are, that heals us and brings us home.  That’s what we want to bless in marriage–in any sort of relationship that offers that sort of love.

And so, Chris and Jonathan, we are gathered here today to bless your union because we know that in your relationship, you offer us a glimpse of that healing accepting love of Christ.  In the way you lift each other up, and complement each other.  In the way you forgive each other and support one another.  You show us how God in Christ loves us.  And you, through your relationship, heal the world a little bit more.  

When I was a young kid, my brother and I would recite scraps of movie dialogue to each other, over and over. We didn’t know what anything meant, but we liked the sound of the words all in a row. One of our favorite shows we memorized was Charlie Brown’s Christmas.

At age 4, I didn’t get any of the jokes, and I didn’t understand the touching ending. But I knew that I liked when Lucy lists off that long string of psychological fears, and finally Charlie Brown yells THAT’S IT!!!! to pantaphobia (the fear of everything.) My tastes were simple.

Aside from a fondness for assigning labels to mental disorders, Lucy also taught me that real estate is always preferable to other gifts. And most of all, that telling the truth is preferable to polite lies, but generally less appreciated.

She and Jeremiah would have gotten along pretty well, I’d bet.

So here’s what I said this week.

Rev. Megan L. Castellan
September 25, 2016
Ordinary Time, Proper 18
Jeremiah, Luke

One of the predominant theories of preaching when I was in seminary was that each sermon should contain good news. Each sermon should be uplifting in some way, should leave the hearer feeling better about God, Jesus, and life than they felt previously. Since, surely, we were to proclaim the gospel, which was, by definition, good news, then each time we preached, we also needed to impart literal good news.
It will probably not surprise you that I ran afoul of this theory pretty early on. Because there are times when good news does not feel particularly good. There are times when good news just feels somewhat far away.
And frankly, I don’t believe in conflating faith with denial.

So I don’t know about you, but this is one of those weeks, (one of those months, one of those election cycles) when good news seems particularly difficult to find. By Wednesday, two more unarmed Black men had been killed by police: one in Charlotte, one in Tulsa. One reading a book, one trying to restart his car. Again. The agonizing drip of death that we’ve seen since the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson hasn’t let up, and here we are again. It doesn’t seem to get better. It doesn’t seem to change.
On the one hand, the quiet, peaceful protest of Colin Kaepernick and others, who sit or kneel during the national anthem is decried as being un-American and met with death threats, while on the other hand, the angrier, noisier protests in the streets of Charlotte and Cleveland are denounced as too angry, too loud. And neither seem to move the scales.
Meanwhile, in our political process, the worst impulses of the America of fifty years ago seem to be raging forth again, with no one to check them.
Basically, the world is not laden with good news right now.

So what are we called to do, when the world is awash with brokenness, and hope isn’t easy to grab hold of? What is the faithful response?

See, this is where we need to start talking about real estate. Because–in the first reading today, we have one of my favorite stories from Jeremiah, where in he buys some real estate. Now, this is an odd move for Jeremiah. Usually, we see him yelling at something or someone. Jeremiah made a name for himself in the early days of his career denouncing the Temple cult. At that time in Judah, popular religious lore thought that since the Lord’s Temple was in Jerusalem, the people could do whatever they wanted, and God would still be happy with them, so long as they showed up to worship regularly.
Jeremiah disagreed–and holds forth with something called the Temple Sermon, where he stood outside the Temple itself and told the people streaming in that the Temple wasn’t enough to save them–they actually had to love their neighbors and uphold justice, and do what God asked of them. This did not make him popular.
He appears again, when his prophecy is coming true. He goes to the King of Judah and warns that the rampant injustice and unfaithfulness in the kingdom is going to cause its collapse, and the invasion from Babylon. This bit of bad news he delivers has the king toss him in a big empty cistern for a few weeks.
So, basically, Jeremiah’s career has been built on yelling angrily at important people about important things. And quite frankly, it doesn’t go well for him. The people don’t listen. The king doesn’t listen–he gets hauled off to Babylon. The people don’t repent–they die under siege conditions or go into exile themselves. The religious authorities don’t listen–they denounce Jeremiah as a fool and a lunatic. His country ends up in ruins, his people scattered. Really, he fails all over the place.
And yet, before the end of his life, Jeremiah does this weird real estate transaction we hear about today. He’s in jail, but he goes to his servant and asks him to purchase a plot of land in Judah, and then to bury the deed to keep it safe. Then he heads out into the Babylonian Exile, to die in captivity.

This seems pointless. He’s never going to use that land. Never going to live on it, never build a house, never grow a vegetable garden. He is going to grow old and die away from his homeland and never see it again. It’s a waste.
But Jeremiah is buying the land, not as a solid investment, but as a statement of hope. And hope always seems foolish in the moment. Jeremiah buys that land because one day, his people will again live in the land in peace. He won’t, and maybe his kids won’t, maybe their kids won’t either, but one day, someone will. And he believes in that day. One day, God will keep the promise.
See, that is what faith is. Faith is acting on the promise God makes to us, regardless of whether we see results. Faith is continuing to do what God calls us to, regardless of whether we see things changing. Faith is buying that land, regardless of whether we will be the ones to benefit.
The measure of our faith is not what we achieve. We aren’t responsible for results–God handles those. Our job is whether we do what God asks of us. It’s whether we follow where Christ leads us. Our job right now isn’t to worry about whether it works.
Right now, our job is to be faithful. That’s it. That’s all we can do. We can do what God asks of us. We can pray for those struggling against injustice. We can listen to those speaking out about their own experiences. We can learn more about how systemic and institutional racism works, and how we White people have benefited. We can do justice, and love mercy, and take up the cause of the orphan and widow in the gates of the city.
But whether it works? Whether people listen? Whether it’s enough? That’s not up to us. That’s up to God.
God takes care of the results. Not us. God takes care of bringing fruit out of our efforts; not us. We may not live to see our work pay off, we may never see police brutality erased, or gun violence done away with. We may never see a day when all races and ethnicities can trust each other again in our lifetimes.
But if we remain faithful to the call God has given us, if we remain faithful to acting as Jesus would have us act in the world, then someday this will happen. Someday, God will reach through our tiny efforts, and bring about the justice and peace we all long for, for the generations behind us.
Today, we don’t remember Jeremiah as a failure. We remember him as a great prophet who spoke the truth when it was difficult and scary. We remember him as someone who gave his life in service to God’s call, and who ultimately helped save the soul of the people of Israel.
Jeremiah wasn’t a failure–his success just outlived him. May we keep the faith in these times, and may people someday say the same of us.

Amen.

So one of my (many) faults is that I am prone to not taking vacations.  I am bad at vacationing.

I am better at finding an excuse to go somewhere, or visit someone, and I can take time off to Go Do a Thing if I can convince myself it needs doing, but just taking time off to recharge?  I am terrible.

And so it was that in my several years of working full-time, I have never taken a vacation longer than a week.  And those I have taken, I have spent Going and/or Doing.

This year, due to a confluence of events, my summer was much busier than normal.  So much so, that my rector informed me that as I had not succeeded in taking time off during the summer, I would be doing it before the fall started in earnest.  So, I decided to try an experiment–I took 2 weeks off.  2 weeks, in which I did nothing except sleep in, stare at the pets, knit a tea cosy, read a stack of books, and recall that life exists outside of stress, anxiety, and work.

I returned to work on Sept 10, at the deanery meeting, and I came bearing some glorious news, which I now share unto you:  Vacation is effective!

Yes, friends, I hadn’t fully understood its effects before, but let me tell you–2 weeks of not tracking emails, going to meetings, obsessing over details, etc–leads to a lot less crabbiness when you return.  When I walked into church on Sunday, I was so happy to be there, and see all these people that I liked, and do this job that I loved.  There was my choir!  There were my parishioners in their pews!  There was the random homeless guy sleeping on the porch!  Ah, so glorious to be home!

Of course, I returned to preach on the 15th anniversary of 9/11, a minefield of minefields.

Here’s what I said.

Rev. Megan L. Castellan

Sept 11, 2016

Ordinary Time, Proper 19

Luke 15

Prepare yourselves for a meta sermon.  OK?

Five years ago, I recall being very overwrought over how to recognize today.  As a college chaplain, I was responsible for planning the weekly service, and I was keenly aware that the tenth anniversary of 9/11 was approaching.  So I agonized–what to do?  I didn’t want to be too over the top, but didn’t want to ignore it either.  Didn’t want to slide into mushy patriotism, but didn’t want to ignore people’s feelings either. 

As I recall, I put something in the prayers, and wrote a sermon. 

And afterwards, at dinner, one of my students commented that he thought it was really fine, my sermon, and what I said–but that he thought all this attention felt rather odd.  “After all,” he pointed out, “I was in first grade that day.  I don’t really remember it.”

I was stunned.  But I thought about it.  My students had been in early elementary school that day, and more–they had been in Arizona–not even out of bed when the planes crashed.  They had quite literally slept through one of the events that, at least for me, divides my life into Before and After. 

After all, I have clear memories on flying on planes before the TSA.  I remember meeting people at the gates in airports.  I have friends who remember skipping class in high school to go wander the halls in Congress to see what politician they could meet (I have weird friends, but the point applies.)  I can remember a time when we weren’t in a state of continuous war. 

My students could not.  The feeling that propelled me, what I was mourning in that service was, for them, an abstraction.  They hadn’t been changed by 9/11–they had never known the difference.

For them–for even more people now–life has always been in the shadow of that event–so much so that it goes unnoticed. The pervasive fear and defensive crouch that felt new when it started, now becomes routine.  We have now always been at war.  We have now always lived with the constant, low-level threat of attack.  We have now always looked with continued, voiced suspicion towards those who profess a different faith. 

And all this is so familiar now, 15 years on, to the point where I wonder if it is possible for us to consider whether this state of being is where Jesus actually wants us to live.

Consider, after all, the parables Jesus tells today. 

The kingdom of heaven, he says, is like a shepherd who realizes a sheep has gone missing.  Or a woman who realizes she’s lost one of her few coins.  And so both abandon everything they have to search out the lost thing. 

Like all parables, I should note, there’s an element of weirdness to this story.  Any sane shepherd is not going to leave 99 sheep to fend for themselves in the wild while he traipses off to search for one sheep that was dumb enough to wander off.  A sane shepherd will feel momentarily bad, figure that sheep is coming out of his pay, and move on. 

But God, Jesus reminds us, doesn’t work like we are used to.  God operates differently, and so God desires for us to operate differently as well.

Both of the characters in these parables experience loss, to some degree.  Both experience trauma.  Granted, it’s the loss of wealth, or a blow to their welfare–not necessarily a literal death.  But loss, nonetheless.

And yet, their response to it, as Jesus outlines a Kingdom-type response, is not to close down.  It’s not to become self-protective.  The widow doesn’t build a better box to hoard her remaining gold.  She doesn’t install a security system for fear someone will come and rob her of what remains.  The shepherd doesn’t invest in a snarling guard dog, or build a better, higher wall to surround and guard his 99 sheep that are left.

Instead, they both risk further.  They become vulnerable, in response to loss. 

Frankly, that’s not the average response to loss, to tragedy.  Usually, what we do is hunker down, close off, and build a fort.  We attack anyone in range so we don’t run the risk of suffering further loss.  Risking vulnerability is the last thing we want to do.

Yet that is precisely how God can work to redeem loss.  That is how God can transform the pain we suffer, when we grieve these injuries.  When we allow God to be with us in our vulnerability, and our suffering, God connects our suffering to that of every other fragile human on this planet.  God reminds us that while we suffer, so does everyone else in some way.  Suffering is always unique, but also always universal.

And slowly, our suffering becomes not just our personal sorrow–but a gateway to empathy.  A bridge to deeper love for God’s creation, and an understanding of the love of God in a new way.

Slowly, we can see each other as fellow creatures in need of love and care like we are.  We come to see that we’re all in this together–children of the same God, who need the same things. 

That’s what happens when we head out in search of the one lost sheep, when we risk enough to find the single missing coin.  The hope of a healed world made whole lies where only that risk will carry us–a place where we rely not on our own defenses, or our own strength, but on the Love of God, and our faith. 

The only way we will get to that world we dream of, the world where all sheep are safe, all coins are saved, and no towers fall–is when we become brave enough to become that vulnerable– when we respond to violence with greater peace.  When we respond to attacks with greater love, and when we see suffering as a call remember our common humanity. 

That’s the world we want.  That’s the world God wants for us.  That’s the world we are called to build.

Amen.