“And he could do no deed of power there…”

In Mark’s Gospel, there’s a story about Jesus teaching in his hometown. He’s already been going around the countryside calling followers, teaching, and healing. He stilled a storm! Now he’s home with the people who know him best. And their response is…depressing.

The people who heard him that day were astounded at his teaching, wisdom, and deeds of power. And they were offended. Offended! Immediately (as Mark might say) instead of talking about what Jesus said, they started attacking who he is. He’s just a local boy, no one special. We know his family, they aren’t that great.

And then, the Gospel tells us, Jesus could do no deed of power there. He failed.

That’s a depressing story, especially for those of us who are called to teach the message Jesus taught. Because what the Gospel tells us today is that, when teaching that message himself, faced with the disbelief of the people who knew him best, Jesus failed. He was unable to do for them what he had been doing all around the countryside – calling followers, freeing people from unclean spirits, healing the sick.

If Jesus faced this kind of failure, this rejection, what hope is there for us? We, too, are trying to preach the word he preached, to call followers and heal people who are hurting.  When we carry out our various ministries – even just being a good hearted person out in the world – will we face rejection? What if the people who know us best say we’re well spoken and all, but not good enough. Offensive, even. Will that rejection lead to failure?

What about the world around us? The world that claims to want peace and justice? What happens when we go out and try to advocate for those things and…we can do no deeds of power. 

Our professions and educational institutions and businesses usually don’t look too kindly on failure. An effort that doesn’t go as planned is often personalized so that we think of the person themselves as a failure. For most areas of life, failing equals guilt, financial disaster, lack of intelligence, lack of effort, and waste. Failure equals a loss of respect and dignity.

Most people I know have experienced some kind of failure. We know what it feels like when a relationship ends or a project tanks or our health takes a turn for the worse. And if you haven’t yet had those kinds of failures, I’d like to remind you that you were probably once in high school where almost everyone goes through embarrassing failures of one sort or another. 

Those failures are personal, events that makes us feel like we are failed human beings. It’s hard to crawl out of the hole that failures seem to dig for us. 

But the failure of Jesus in his hometown – and our potential failure as we follow in his footsteps as believers –  is worse than personal. It is a rejection of love and justice. A defeat of all that is holy. Where does that leave us? 

When we fall flat, have we let God down? Or, worse, does it mean the whole project of Christianity is a disaster?

Today I am feeling this fear of failure intensely. When the leaders of our nation suspend the observation of Black History Month, at the same time as immigration officers are racially profiling people for deportation, at the same time as gender affirming care for young adults is banned, at the same time as humanitarian aid is being pulled from the most vulnerable people on Earth…it’s hard not to feel like those of us who value the whole of humanity and the dignity of every human being have been ineffective. 

It is depressing. 

But there is hope and here is where I find it:

“And he could do no deed of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them.”

In the midst of his failure, of the rejection by those who knew him best, Jesus still healed. The power and love and truth that Jesus brought to the world were still active. And right after the hometown rejection, Jesus sent his disciples out and THEY were able to cast out demons and heal the sick. 

Jesus, you might say, kept calm and carried on. In a way, he demonstrated that failure is not the end. He gave his followers permission to try, fail, and keep on trying. 

There is, interestingly, a positive view of failure that has developed in corporate and scientific fields. I wonder if we might benefit from their example in some way. (And I wonder if their optimism about failure didn’t come from religious folk in the first place!)

Some of you know that Post-it Notes are a failure – the inventor was trying to create a super strong adhesive. And failed. It is one of the reasons that 3M, the company that sells Post Its, encourages it’s employees to experiment and fail. 

Oprah Winfrey was fired from her first job as a news anchor. 
Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. 
Albert Einstein had a failure that is so out of my depth I can’t even describe it to you because it involves math. 

And there are failures closer to home. Like some of you, I bet, I’ve been up to my state capitol to join thousands of people advocating for causes I believe in. If you have ever been part of an effort like that, the atmosphere can be exciting and convivial. You are often surrounded by hundreds of people you’ve never met before who all support the same cause and there is a temptation to feel that success is possible. People give powerful, personal testimony. Crowds chant and sing. It is both rousing and peaceable. 

But much of the time, those efforts do not end well, if “well” means the legislative vote goes my way. Most of the time, at least for me, my colleagues and I fail to change the minds that need changing. 

Yet every time, there are people gathered who needed to know we were with them. Every time, there were people who were not offended by the message we brought and felt a sense of healing knowing that they were not alone and not unloved. 

For scientists and business owners, failing that leads to success is part of an ideology of progress. Personal failures can lead to personal success. Corporate failures can lead to corporate success. Failure is a step along the way. It is a learning process

I suggest that for followers of Jesus, failure is much more than that. Our failures are not simply a lesson on the way to success. There is something holy going on in the midst of failure when you are on a mission for Jesus. Our failures in ministry are evidence that we are with Jesus in preaching the word, sharing wisdom, and reaching out to heal. 

In the midst of failure, of people being offended at our message, there will also be people who need healing. There will be people who need to hear that they are loved and valued. That they are not alone. 

Jesus has equipped us to be the kind of people who are willing to fail, because as long we are are going about the mission of Jesus, there will always be people who need to hear the message we bring. 

Based on a sermon preached at Christ Chapel, Seminary of the Southwest, 2/9/25

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s a day when many people I know reflect on the horrors that happened in Nazi Germany, but also on the state of antisemitism up to and including today. I have to say, as a non-Jew, I see and hear it more today than at any other era of my life. Which means it must be pretty loud if I can hear it and it’s not targeted at me. Right? Is it more prevalent or are people just feeling bolder about expressing their hatred? Maybe it’s both. 

This morning, I had a meeting with someone who is wearing a necklace that they won’t take off until all the hostages held by Hamas are released. This person worships in a synagogue that was fire bombed in 2021 – which is not that long ago – here in Austin, Texas. That’s the same year that our community saw antisemitic graffiti pop up around town and some neighborhoods were littered with antisemitic leaflets. 

And it is happening still. 
Our community is not unique. 

It is important to remember the Holocaust, not only to honor the people who suffered and died and those who survived, but also to remember what happens when hatred runs amok. The victims of Nazi hate were not only Jews, although we should never forget that Jews were uniquely brutalized. Other human beings not considered worth living also went to the camps and the ovens. 

As a white Southern woman, I know this kind of remembrance is important. My ancestors perpetrated a different kind of hatred run amok. Their racism and classism caused untold (well, thankfully some of it is told) harm to particular human beings and whole cultures – and to themselves as well. No one fares well in the end when hatred is the governing principle. 

It shouldn’t take a family tie, but I also have Jewish people in my family. When antisemitism flares up, I know they are afraid for their safety in a way that I am not. It is a peculiar thing to be tangentially related to the danger faced by someone so close to you. Peculiar, but not unfamiliar. There are people in my family who are members of other hated groups.

Remembering is a way to re-member people who have been cut off from the community by injustice, fear, hatred, violence. Remembering is essential if we are to restore wholeness to the human family.

One day soon, I hope, my friend will take off her necklace because all the hostages will have been released (although, to be clear, some will be in body bags). One day soon, I hope, antisemitic graffiti and online hate mongering will die down. And still we will need to remember. 

Until that day and all the days after, I try to keep in mind that every person, every household, every community has a role to play in creating, maintaining, and promoting justice. We know from experience that neutrality is not an option. We know from history that when some groups are targeted – Jews, Muslims, women, people of African descent, indigenous people in colonized lands, trans-people, and so many other groups – when these are targeted with violence the rest of us will eventually be enveloped. 

When I was in my mid-20s, I moved across the country from my parents. In part this was an exciting statement of independence. I packed up my Ford Escort and drove more than 1,000 miles from Houston to Charlotte, North Carolina. Granted, I was moving close to cousins, aunts and uncles, but it felt independent – and more important, I thought it made me look independent. 

In my new city, I found a job, got a place to live, connected with college buddies, and made new friends. I felt like I was becoming the adult me. The real me who was different from the old me, leaving behind the me from high school, college, and living in my parents’ house. 

After a couple of years though, I hit a rough patch. My job was unfulfilling and the company was being bought out. I had broken up with a boyfriend and felt lonely. I was not going out with my friends as much, not even my roommate. 

At one low point, I called my mom to complain about my life. She listened to me say how I was the least interesting person in my friend group, I was no fun, my life was not going in the direction I wanted. I felt lost.

My mom could have offered advice on how to get a different job, or lambasted my friends for making me feel like an outsider. Instead, she said, “But you’ve always been so fun and funny. What happened to that Mary?”

That got my attention. She reminded me who I was.

She reminded me that I was known – that even when I forgot myself and felt lost from my dreams and ideals, or even my quirks and practical jokes, there were people who knew me and could call me back to myself. My mom believed in me. 

It worked. I did remember. My journey to become a new, adult Mary circled around to remembering the person I already was. 

I’m thinking about that story today, the sixth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. The journey to get there was long and involved a lot of forgetting who I was, and then being reminded by loved ones, by life around me, and by God. 

Losing yourself can feel like a failure of belief. Am I believing hard enough? Is my sense of where I am going just fake news? At times like those, it might take a “call from Mom,” a reminder of how we are known and loved and believed in to get un-lost. 

Last Sunday, the words of Isaiah reminded me of that call: 

Thus says the Lord,

he who created you O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; 

I have called you by name you are mine. (Isa 43:1)

Over the course of decades, as the sense of my vocation came to me in various voices, it became clear to me that no matter how lost I felt or how distant from that path I wandered, people around me believed in me. And their belief reminded me that God believed in me. 

Here is something interesting about the word “believe.” It comes from the same root as the word “belove.” There is a relationship between believing and beloving. That makes belief more than an assent to an idea. It makes belief holding something precious. 

And it isn’t just about OUR belief. God believes in us, God beloves us. That belief, that belovedness, goes all the way back to the beginning of everything and stretches across time. 

It is because of that belovedness that none of my wandering and doubt have been wasted, they are part of a beloved life. It is because of that belovedness that I can see the loveliness of all those around me, not only those whom I pastor, but those I encounter everywhere. 

Ordination is a rite that sets some of us apart for specific ministry. But my experience is that, because it was an answer to the beloved voices of my community, it feels more like taking my place among them. 

As I enter another year of priesthood, I remember that no matter how sidetracked I get God is always calling me – and all of us –  back to ourselves. God believes in us. We are all beloved. 

On a recent morning, I woke early to see a landscape covered in snow. It was a winter visit to see my mom and the first time I had been to her home for this kind of winter weather. 

While I cooked our breakfast, she wondered at the icy trees and sidewalks. “I was not expecting this! Was it predicted?” Yes, it was. 
We sit down to eat.
“Did you see all that snow?! Did we know it was coming?”
Yes. We watched it fall yesterday. 

My mom has dementia. It has been a mix of emotions (and tasks) going through it with her and my siblings. No one in our family has had it before and I sometimes joke that we’d be better equipped to handle cancer or heart disease. 

It turns out many, if not most, of our friends and family are similarly perplexed. It may be because dementia can affect people differently, or because people are so busy managing their family member’s needs they don’t have time to reflect on it, or any number of other reasons. But once you open the topic, it turns out there is a mix of stereotypes, unfocused sympathy, and “oh, gurl, I’ve been there.”

Mom has been in a plateau for some time now. Her short term memory is…well she can’t remember if it snowed yesterday. But she can do things that I never realized were a measure of health: bathe and dress herself, make her own breakfast, walk to and from a friend’s house without getting lost, remembers the number code to get into her home. She remembers close family names. She is physically and socially more active than I am (for real!) with classes, dances, outdoor walks, and shared meals. She loves to work a puzzle.

There are some very strange things about dementia that I was not expecting and I often get a shared laugh from those in-the-know. She invents stories about her neighbors, how they are divorcing and how their house is being joined with the two next to it. Then the couple walk happily by with their dog. 

But there are elements of her personality that are more evident now than ever before. She is always asking if you have what you need (water? food? a blanket?) or if you need help with whatever you are doing. Always ready with a hug. 

There was an early stage when she could tell what was happening to her mind and that caused a lot of fear and anger. Now, she no longer panics when she realizes her memory is slipping and is more content to exist in the moment. She is almost never anxious about the future or regretful about the past. 

Every night at dinner she said grace from memory. And when she asked if I wanted to say it instead, I always let her because it is a grace to hear her say grace from memory. 

One day her situation will start declining again. We know what the options are and are ready to move to an escalated level of care. For now, her healthcare providers say she is safe and better off where she is with the help she has. 

This journey is a tough one for me and my siblings. We balance the need to attend to all her “business” with the desire to be with her in person as much as we can. (We are grateful for all the helpers that see her every day!) Often it means we see less of each other as we take turns visiting from our various homes around the country and the world. 

Things are not easy and will get harder. We sort of know what is coming, but when it does, I have a feeling we’ll ask, as my mom did this morning, “I wasn’t expecting this! Was it predicted?” 

I remember a family friend once noticing (with a laugh) that the story of Jesus’ family not missing him for three days shows that Jesus, too, came from a dysfunctional family. That story occurs when Mary and Joseph and an extended group of their kin travel from Nazareth to Jerusalem for the Passover and on the trip back discover that their 12-year-old son is not with them. 

I can’t even imagine the panic! 

But aside from the anxiety of the lost child, I wonder about the size of that caravan of people, the siblings, cousins, aunts, and uncles that helped look out for one another, that celebrated holidays together. But also a sizable group that might make it easy not to notice the absence of one. 

When they find the tween Jesus – idealized but also realistic – he’s a little bit cheeky (“Why didn’t you know where I’d be? Duh!”) and also naturally expressing a little independence. He’s starting it understand who he is and telling his parents who he is. 

Part of what Jesus reveals – and that Luke’s Gospel starts to reveal to us in this story – is what family is. The Gospel of Luke starts with Jesus’ close family – with Elizabeth and Zechariah and John who will become the Baptist. It starts with Mary and Joseph – Jesus’ immediate family – traveling to Bethlehem because of who their ancient family is, because of their lineage back to David. 

And when Mary and Jospeh find Jesus in the Temple, where they all traveled together with extended family, he expresses an understanding of being part of an even larger family. He is in his Father’s house. The Temple gives him an understanding of being part of a family that includes these teachers studying Torah.  

Later, as an adult, Jesus will further broaden the notion of family. From his biological family to the family of faith, he will expand his understanding of family to those who were considered outsiders. Family now includes all the world, especially sinners, the “impure,” people who worship differently, women, children, all sorts of leftist people. 

If we look around the world today – including and maybe especially in our faith communities – maybe we are all part of a big dysfunctional family. Perhaps the idea that we connected by bonds of family to everyone else might challenge us to think about family in new ways. 

For those of us who are part of worshipping congregations, it can feel familial. Being a member of a congregation is often the first way we experience being close to people outside our households. These are people we might not choose as friends but sit next to and pray with. People who we might love dearly – and also have to forgive for being imperfect. 

Not everyone comes from a family that is loving, and sometimes that makes the image of a congregation as family problematic. I’ll admit, with a title like “Mother” I have concerns that people will think of me in a parental role in a congregation and that’s probably not healthy. And yet the image of us being family can be helpful. These are people to whom we have connections, responsibilities, and obligations. 

Another challenge is how to extend the concept of family beyond the congregation. What counts as family grows from immediate (parents and children) to extended to companions in faith to…

All humanity. 

There are hints of this sense of belonging together right from the beginning of creation. Our tradition is clear that all humans are made in the image of God and share in God’s love. 

From that beginning humans break off into tribes and nations. And yet there are messages throughout human history that we are to welcome strangers and show hospitality to all. 

Families are not perfect and not meant to be perfect. What they are meant to be is together. 

I hope that when you are in the company of your various kinds of family families you might find yourself in the company of kin. People who help you feel connected to larger and larger circles of responsibility, obligation, and love. 

I hope being in these families helps you see yourself within a big, extended family of God. 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. John 1:1-5

“What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”

Life and light. Light and life. This is how God comes to us. As life that is the light of all people.

People across time and cultures know this connection between light and life. There is no life without light. Perhaps that is the reason that in the first Genesis creation story light is the first creation. From that beginning comes everything we know. 

From the beginning of human community, we have known that light is essential to life. Even in pre-scientific times, it was clear that light made all life possible. Modern tools allow us to see ever more clearly how this happens.

Light that comes to us from the Sun provides the energy necessary for all life on Earth. Light is energy and all the energy we require for life is brought by or released by this light. 

Sunlight that warms our planet created the atmosphere that gives us livable temperatures and protects us from being too hot or too cold. That light warmed water, which released oxygen that we and other living things breath. Sunlight draws water up from the seas and then showers it back down on us. Light shines through rain to give us rainbows and hope. Light is converted into stored chemical energy in plants that sustains other life forms – it becomes food. 

Light is the reason we have day and night, and the seasons of the year. Our sense of time is possible because of light – it gives us a sense of past and future. 

Light travels eons across the universe, allowing us to see the distant past – and it also travels across the sky marking minutes and hours. 

Light makes sight possible! Revealing creation all around us, including colors and textures and movement. Light literally enlightens us. Light carries information into our eyes and into our minds. It allows us to understand our world and ourselves. 

Light warms us and infuses us directly with nutrients and energy. Light helps us sense and follow directions, it helps us find our way. 

We rely on light for energy, information, and guidance through time and space. 

The writer of John’s gospel didn’t understand all the science behind light, and yet the comparison of Christ to light is amazingly fitting, especially when we know the connections between light and life that science reveals. 

What we believe about Christ is that through him the radiant energy of God makes all life possible. The light of Christ becomes infused into our lives, becomes the food of our faith, the revealer of truth, the way we are able to see and understand God. 

Think about “God with us” as light touching our existence and creating the atmosphere that enables life to thrive. The light of Christ enters our bodies the way oxygen enters our lungs, and gives us insight the way information enters our minds, and nourishes and energizes us the way food does, and dispels darkness the way sunlight brings morning from night and spring from winter. 

A lot of times, we think about God being in our lives as an intellectual proposition, an idea. We have a Bible and tradition full of thoughts about God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit – and I for one enjoy contemplating all these ideas and finding ways to connect to Jesus through words and actions, through community and ritual. 

And yet, we also have this visceral way to experience God in Jesus. As light, as warmth, as energy. As a presence in our very being, in the very cells of our physical bodies. When I experience God this way, I think about Jesus, the incarnation of God, in a very personal and also very universal way. When “the Word became flesh and lived among us” it was in the person of Jesus, a particular human being. We can think of Jesus as part of history, we can think of his life, death and resurrection as events to remember and reflect on. And yet the Word also was there in the beginning, and all things came into being through this Word, and this Word brings life and is the light of all people. 

This is beyond history. This is beyond memory and reflection. Or perhaps it is more appropriate to say this light is before history and before reflection. 

There is a unity in all things. All that is, originates with God and comes into its own through God. Jesus is a reminder to us that we all originate with God. Light is an ideal image for this unity because light shows us the way, dispels darkness, warms us, and is essential to life. 

Jesus came into our darkness, into a world that he – as God – brought forth. He came into our darkness to lighten and enlighten us.

When we think of Jesus as light it is impossible to feel separate from God. Just as sunlight infuses life into our world from the smallest atomic level to the most expansive global level, so God in Christ permeates our existence from the cells of each body to the most complex arrangements of human communities. 

And all of this is captured in the wonder of a tiny human life, in a simple human family. 

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us” in Jesus, as an infant and a young man, and suffering on the cross. 

In Jesus we have the impossible vastness of God’s love expressed in a baby you can hold in your hands.  In Jesus, we can understand that God is in our lives at the most basic and ordinary level – in our breathing and eating and sleeping. God is with us in our most elementary connections, as between a helpless infant and exhausted parents. 

God sent us light to remind us that we come from light and that following the light will bring us to our source. 

Based on sermon preached on 12/29/24 at St. Joan of Arc Episcopal Church

This week – starting yesterday – is an in-between time for many Christians. We end the old liturgical year one Sunday and observe the new one the next Sunday. And that last Sunday of the year has, since 1925, been observed as Christ the King or the Reign of Christ Sunday. And while it might seem like a long-established and obvious tradition to celebrate the Reign of Christ for people who follow Jesus, it is rather new to the calendar.

Briefly, in 1925, Pope Pius XI instituted Christ the King Sunday as a response to the horrors of World War I and surging nationalism. Tyrants were rising, people were losing faith in those with power and also losing faith in God. It has been almost 100 years, and we Christians have participated in or led another World War and countless other devastating conflicts around the globe. So it might be worth asking if Christ the King Sunday did us any good. But it is also worth noting that we certainly seem to need the reminder.

In addition to wars, there a a number of movements on the rise right now – in nations and in churches – that challenge our claim that we truly follow Jesus and believe in the Kingdom of God as scripture describes it for us. At the very least, it is worth taking one Sunday a year to remember just what that kingdom is.

One of the most pernicious challenges today is Christian nationalism – it isn’t new, but it is newly popular. Those who promote it want to fuse religious and national identity, at the very least to promote Christian views but usually also to elevate Christians above those of other faiths and in the most common forms today also to exclude those who don’t adhere to a particular strand of the faith. There’s no aspect of this that is okay. Christian nationalism tends to also be racist and sexist, to denigrate the poor and immigrants – the very ones our faith tradition tells us to love and care for. One reason Christian nationalism is so challenging and dangerous is because it contains many of the other challenges in our social and political culture – racism, sexism, antisemitism, heteronormativity, immigrant-blaming, and more.

The question that Christian nationalism poses is, “who belongs?” For Christian nationalists, those who belong are select group who meet the racial, ethnic, gender, social, and religious standards set forth by other Christian nationalists.

And for followers of Jesus the answer is, “Everyone.”

The most basic tenet of Christian nationalism is that there can be borders around faith that are congruent with those of a nation. That a nation can confer status that equals the identity of a person of faith.

For followers of Jesus, this is not true. It is a heresy.

Who belongs? All belong. Who is made in the image of God? Everyone.

I have no doubt that the question of belonging is going to be central to people of faith for the foreseeable future. We’ve had a lot of experience recently to prepare us! How you draw the boundaries around nationhood and around a faith community will say a lot about how seriously you take the teachings of a King who came for all, served for all, and welcomes all.

I just returned from a trip to New York to see friends (and for some work meetings for my spouse). There was a lot of talk about politics and all kinds of division – ethnic, racial, religious, gender…and a little bit of sports.

But something happened while I was there that gave me some encouragement: we sat around tables with people from all over the world and enjoyed each other’s company. Even between those of us who might otherwise have the kinds of conflicts that lead to war.

Korea, China, Germany, Netherlands, Italy, Kenya, South Africa, Russia, UK, Lebanon, Brussels, Mexico, and US. Some I had known for several years, others I only just met on this trip.

We broke bread together – literally. We lifted glasses and toasted each other. We talked about our children, spouses, summer travel plans, multiple elections, irritations at work, and weather. Like people do all over the world.

For many cultures across time and geography, gathering around a table to share food is a synonym for making and keeping peace. It keeps families together when they aren’t talking. It keeps nations talking when they aren’t together. When you “break bread” you aren’t just eating it, you are sharing it. That works with bowls of rice, as well.

Humans need food to live, and we also need each other. Meeting both of those needs at once helps us to experience each other as siblings around a family table.

It’s summer. My routine is no longer a routine and I’m starting to lose track of what day it is. This might sound ideal to some – but not me! I like structure! For much of the year I count on Mondays to reset the chaos of my life as my household resumes a schedule. But not only is it summer, I’m between jobs. So…what is Monday? It’s just a continuation of the other chaotic days! 

I’ll probably have to drive my daughter somewhere…but where? And at what time? No one knows. I don’t even know when to make my to-do list? Like, when do I start? Does it even matter? 

Ongoing chaos reigns. Having a teenager is chaotic, of course, and I also have a mom with Alzheimer’s. And a garage door opener that doesn’t work. And a geriatric dog who asks to go outside in complete silence so we don’t know when he needs to pee. My chaos is nothing compared to plenty of people I know…but I don’t know anyone who lives without it. 

Hoping to find a way out of the chaos in my life, I recently read Patricia Livingston’s book, This Blessed Mess. (I already have a stack of unread “how-to-organize-your-stuff books.). Instead the book helped me discover that chaos is part of life and, indeed, essential to it. She writes as a person of faith, that was a connection point for me. 

The creation story that is part of my faith tradition tells of God bringing forth light, sky, land, oceans, living creatures – from chaos. Chaos is the raw material for creation. In the history of humankind, that chaos keeps re-emerging and we have to keep reimagining ways to create from it. Create communities that have been broken, create healing from sickness, create art from scraps of what was, re-create ourselves when we’ve gone all chaotic. 

That insight reframed chaos for me. It’ll always be in my life, what will I make of it? I’ll never make a whole cosmos…but the disarray in my life shows me opportunities to bring comfort, repair, joy, resourcefulness, or even just plain listening. 

I’ve got months of chaos ahead to see how this works. 

If you know me, you know that I often find examples in the natural world that are great metaphors for the human condition – and for the divine. I’ve preached and written about dogs and rabbits, rocks and water, clouds and trees. 

Today, I’m going to talk about ants and termites. 

These insects – ants and termites – have two fascinating qualities: they are profoundly social and they engage in near ceaseless construction. They communicate with each other almost constantly and each one of them has specific work to do. Some move twigs, soil, and construction materials; others bring food; still others rear broods of their young. Each is engaged in a specific task.

At the same time, if you look at them from a distance, it is clear that they are engaged in common work. Elaborate, interconnected collaborative projects – the Hill and the Mound – that are the signature of their species. Their social projects are the things that make them what they are. 

Scientists have observed these animals communicating with each other through touch and through chemicals like pheromones, so they can tell each other about the location of food or if there are enemies nearby or what their building projects need. 

And about those building projects: ant hills and termite mounds are structures that involve elaborate, collaborative architecture. They require near constant maintenance and division of labor. 

The work is compulsive. Ants construct, maintain, and repair the region of their hill without knowing what work is being done elsewhere and without a blueprint. Termites live out their brief lives in a social enterprise that goes back hundreds of generations. They don’t know how it started or how it will end up. 

This is what characterizes all social animals. They keep at a particular thing as a group and work ceaselessly under genetic instructions and genetic compulsion on that project. They can’t help it! Being part of these large, joint projects is just who they are. 

Now, the way I found out about the social nature of ants and termites is itself a story about another social animal. Humans. 

I read about the nature of ants and termites in a book that belonged to my dad. After he died several years ago, I started taking his old books home with me one or two at a time. Part of me was interested in the books themselves (in this case, The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas) and part of me was interested in knowing the things my dad knew and passing them on. It was a way of carrying forward the thoughts of the author and my dad through me and to other people. In fact, I am doing that right now! 

Like ants and termites, humans are profoundly social animals. Our interactions and relationship with other humans are fundamental to our nature. And like other social animals, we are engaged in particular behavior all the time, a collaborative project that is part of who we are. 

Now, even though we humans do build things that take generations – like huge gothic cathedrals or massive transportation systems – it isn’t the building of physical structures that we are innately compelled to engage in. We have archeological ruins from around the world that testify to the fact that we move on from our physical group projects all the time and we are still human. 

So what is our group project? 

When we look at the projects of ants and termites, we know that each one is focused on their particular task, not a single one of them has any notion of what is being constructed elsewhere. And none of them know the origin of their joint project or how it will end up. Ants have a very brief life, but their hills go on for many, many years. 

What do we have that is like that? 

We have language. Language is the human project that makes us us. We are born equipped to use it. While specific languages like English or Chinese or Sign Language are not inborn, the impulse to communicate through words does seem to be something that humans engage in communally, compulsively, and that we can’t be human without. We seem to be born with a sense of past, present, future; of subjects and objects. 

And not only that. We are able to use language in endlessly creative ways. We are not just stuck with a few key messages about food or safety or “let’s get together”…we name and describe things, we tell others what is happening around us.  

Human language evolves and carries ideas and messages from the past into the future. (Like my dad’s book.) Language connects us to those we have never and may never meet, even to those who are anonymous. Language is for us like an ant hill or a termite mound – we each have specific roles in using it. We keep at it – using and creating language – compulsively. If two people meet and don’t speak the same language, they will find a way to communicate, to understand what each other’s words mean.

We can’t help it. It is who and what we are. 

If you consider humans individually, we each learn language and use it in specific ways. Some use it to write or sing or create art. Some use it to solve problems or care for the young or the sick.  Some use it to report on the past, others to address needs in the future. We use it to make lists, fix things that are broken, invent new things. 

If you zoom out and see us from a distance (as we did with ants and termites) you can see that language is also a collaborative human project. No one knows how it started, but it was with us in our earliest days. No one knows how our languages will end up. 

We use our languages every day, around the world. The ancient languages have evolved and merged and separated to become the languages we have today. No one from the Middle Ages would know what “radio” or “television” mean, but those modern words have their origin in Latin and Greek. All our new words are built on old ones. The languages we inherit evolve to meet new needs or facilitate new ideas. And no matter which specific tongue we use, we use it for the same purposes as humans around the world do. It is a group project across time and place.

There are some interesting aspects of human language that fascinate me as a person and as a Christian. For instance: the more we learn about ancient cultures the more we see that we humans are storytellers. We have used language to tell stories from the time we hunted and gathered our food, from the time we lived in caves and painted those stories on the walls. 

In my faith tradition, storytelling is how we know about people like Moses, Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar. Storytelling is how we are invited to sing psalms of joy and anger, awe and sadness. Storytelling is how we know the story of the struggles and passion of the early church.  

Language is so core to who we are as human beings that it is how Jesus taught us about the kingdom of God and used metaphors like scattering seeds, harvesting crops, and growing mustard bushes. Storytelling is the way we learn about faith from a widow who lost a coin or love from a prodigal son.

We are not compelled by our nature to build buildings or make kings. We are compelled to use language to tell stories about those things. We are compelled to use language to transmit our history, our hopes, our very nature to those who come after us. 

That language is the social project making us what we are is a proposition from science, from people who study human culture, linguistics, and history. But there is something truly spiritual about it, as well. For one thing, we know from the very opening words of our story – from scripture – through to the very end that we humans are not made to be alone, that we are made for each other and made to be social. So, for those of us who share this faith, it makes a great deal of sense that we are created with this language impulse that keeps us connected both immediately and across time and place. 

And it makes sense that language is how we come to know about God and God’s love for us; that knowledge comes to us through stories being told around fires and around tables, stories written down and sung and painted. It is through language and through stories that you can look into the eyes of someone you love and talk about God…and it is also the way you can understand and interact with people whose eyes you will never behold. People like Mary of Nazareth and Mary Magdalen; people like Joseph and Peter and Paul; people who live today, but in far away places. 

God spoke creation into being and has made us in God’s image, so I don’t think it is any accident that speaking is one of the key ways we connect with each other and with God. 

And that is why I think it is not just language that makes us human. I think one of the key things that makes us human, that is as compulsive for us as building a hill is for ants, is love. It is the urge to connect with other humans. Language is the key way we do that, perhaps it is the purpose for which language has been given to us. 

Language can be misused, just as love or any other gift can be. Yet it is the urge to connect with other people, to make stories together, and to be in communion with God that makes us who we are. It makes us us. 

I am leaving a community I’ve been part of for almost 5 years. In that time we have told a lot of stories – and made some stories. Stories about being baptized and sharing meals around a table. Stories of making masks for each other in 2020 and creating new ways to connect online and outside. Stories about births and deaths and weddings. 

After today, my story will diverge as I move on from that place, even as their story adds new chapters. Yet we will still be part of the same bigger story – the story that includes ancient prophets and kings and struggling church planters. A story that includes a musical score that is both ancient and modern. Most importantly, it is a story that has at it’s center Jesus. Jesus who is the story and who told stories and who invites us into the story of how God loves us and how we can share that love through our own stories, in our shared language.

(Adapted from my last sermon at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas)