God Loves Weirdos (Reflections on the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul 2025)

 

He said to him the third time, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter felt hurt because he said to him the third time, “Do you love me?” And he said to him, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.” Jesus said to him, “Feed my sheep.” (John 21:17)

Have you ever heard of the Ecumenical Catholic Church? Probably not. It only has somewhere between 2,000 – 3,000 members across the globe. It’s just like the Roman Catholic Church in doctrine and liturgy, but it’s open to communing divorced folks and welcoming same-gender couples. Pretty cool, huh? This tiny but worldwide denomination got its start in California back in 1987 when an eccentric PhD named Mark Shirilau decided that gay people and divorced people might like to go to church without being made to feel like they deserved to roast on a spit in purgatory for just being who they are.

Mark was a friend of mine. We went to the same Lutheran church in Long Beach, and I think I can attest without fear of contradiction that Mark was weird. He was off the wall crazy brilliant, but spoke with a shrill, high-pitched voice and was obsessed (or so it seemed) with historic Christian ritual. He would fume that such classical liturgics were disappointingly lacking in our little suburban congregation, so he fled to the greater grandeur of the Episcopal Church, and, not satisfied there, founded his very own denomination.

I could cite many examples of Mark’s peculiarities (such as his tendency to date correspondence by the festival of the Catholic saint’s feast appointed for that day or his copious use of Latin) but one incident seems to sum him up best. While I rode shotgun for Mark as he sponsored our church youth group on a road trip to a Lutheran Youth gathering in New Orleans, I heard him singing behind the wheel as we rode through the night. Not pop songs or even hymns. He was chanting the canticles from the service of Holy Communion. You know: “In peace let us pray to the Lord. Lord have mercy.” Who does that? Obviously, the guy who started his own denomination in his house and grew it to a three-thousand-member church with congregations in the United States, Italy, Latin America, and Kenya. A guy who, like Saint Paul, financed his ministry through his own secular work and never took a dime in pay for his ministry[i].

Another oddball I’ve admired but never met is Nadia Bolz-Weber, the ELCA’s first ordained Pastor of Public Proclamation. Nadia, with several published books and frequent media appearances to her credit, is something of a celeb in ecclesiastic circles. She no longer pastors the alternative congregation House for All Sinners and Saints she founded in an Episcopal church’s parish hall in Denver, but preaches in women’s prisons, guest preaches around the country and the globe, and is currently holding a series of events called Red State Revivals, song and preaching events in historically conservative districts. The purpose of these gatherings is, as she states on her webpage:

I want to be revived from despair and from self-righteousness. I want us to remind each other of what’s most important and least popular right now. Namely: humility, curiosity, mercy and hope – the things Jesus of Nazareth yammered on about and that were as difficult to embrace then as they are now[ii].

Nadia’s the last person you might imagine as a Lutheran pastor. She was raised in a conservative, fundamentalist household. She wandered away from the faith of her childhood at a pretty early age, started getting tattoos at age 17, worked as a stand-up comedian, and is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict with a tendency toward depression. She found herself tugged back to the faith when she met Matt Weber, at the time an ELCA seminarian. When Nadia was asked to preach a barroom eulogy for a fellow comic who’d committed suicide, she realized that the mourners who gathered were her kind of people—and a potential congregation. House For All was founded as a haven for those who love God but might not love the church—LGBTQ+ folk, recovering addicts, the depressed, and anyone who feels outside of society.

God loves weird people. And God knows how to use them.

This Sunday (June 29, 2025) is the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul, two of the weirder misfits from any religion. Peter is just a working slob. He’s impulsive. He’s sometime frightened. He’s felt himself deeply unworthy of being a follower of Jesus. At times he was stubbornly conservative and block-headed in his thinking. According to Peter, Messiahs aren’t supposed to get crucified, rabbis aren’t supposed to lower themselves to wash their students’ feet, and non-Jews are to be avoided if you can help it. It’s safe to say Peter never understood his buddy Jesus while Jesus was with him. But then Peter got slammed by the Holy Spirit. The peasant fisherman started shooting his mouth off again, but this time proclaiming the grace and love of God through Jesus Christ.

Paul is also a wacky choice for sainthood. This guy hated the Jesus people. He hated them so much he wanted to see them get their skulls crushed by rocks at a public stoning rather than hear a doctrine he didn’t agree with. But God knew this uber pious Hebrew so full of hate and violence could be used to proclaim love and reconciliation. I don’t think it was Paul’s blinding that brought him around. I think it was the love and forgiveness shown him by the Christians who loved him even when he hated them. Paul found the power to preach to the ones who would’ve been outcasts, to Gentiles. He found the poetry to write the great love poem of 1 Corinthians 13. He stayed cranky and sometime irascible through much of his ministry, but he found the compassion to be all things to all people for the sake of the Gospel.

Both Peter and Paul would give their lives for Christ. I certainly won’t ask you, dear Reader, to die for the faith, but I will remind you that the word “martyr” literally translates as “witness.” God loves you in your weirdness, in your brokenness, in your occasional anger and depression, and in your fear. God may be using you right now and you don’t even know it. So embrace that love and acceptance God is splashing all over you, you weirdo. Look for the way of Jesus in the funky folks God has put in your life and BE Jesus for them.

Feed those sheep. And come and see me again.

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[i] Sadly, Mark passed Away in January of 2014 while in Italy. I used to tease him about living in the church of the 14^th Century, but I have come to believe he was ahead of his time. A gay man, he championed same-gender marriage back in the 1980’s and, as an engineer, worked on developing sustainable, eco-friendly energy.

[ii] Check out Nadia’s website at https://nadiabolzweber.com/

Demons of Revenge (Reflections on Pentecost 2, Year C 2025)

 

Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion,” for many demons had entered him. (Luke 8:30)

This is pretty creepy. At least I always get the creeps just a little when I read the story of the Gerasene demoniac, the Gospel reading for Pentecost 2, Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary (Luke 8: 26-39). Here’s a crazy guy with superhuman strength running around naked in a graveyard. The Bible tells us he’s possessed by a whole legion of demons, and in the world of the New Testament a demon[i] was always evil. Folks believed demons could take control of human bodies and cause mental illness or disease. They might even take control of nature and cause natural disasters. I know I’d be afraid of running into a guy full of evil spirits. Wouldn’t you? He’s like something out of a horror movie. Yikes!

I confess when I was a kid I rather enjoyed old horror movies. I even taught a film appreciation class once and discussed the evolution of the genre. I noted how the old gothic horror flicks started to disappear after World War II. Dracula and the wolfman just couldn’t compete with the real, demonic horror of bloody combat, the Holocaust, and the atomic bomb. The real world had become much scarier than anything Hollywood could put on film—and it still is.

The demons still possess us. Just look at what’s happening in Israel and Gaza (and now a potential war with Iran). The evil savagery of the October 7^th attack and destruction and loss of fifty thousand lives in Gaza, with the potential every day of more dead through famine and disease should fill all conscientious people with terror. We are seeing the real demons of addiction running unchained. The obsessive desire for revenge is just as addictive as alcohol or cocaine.

As we watch these horrors, it’s certainly tempting to fall victim to our own demons of despair and complacency. These are demons which really could use an exorcism. Nothing could be further from the mind of Christ than the absence of hope. The Gospel story is really about the ability to change, to banish the desire for evil, and to come to the feet of Jesus in our right minds.

I think a significant detail of this Bible story is that this tormented creature dwells in the tombs—a detail Luke emphasizes. The possessed Gerasene is in love with the dead and dwells with the morbid pain of loss. It’s like someone who has been wronged or who has survived a trauma but hasn’t really survived it because the fact of past victimhood still defines that person’s life. I had a friend in seminary who talked endlessly about AA and her alcohol recovery. She may not have been drinking, but the demon of her past addiction was as much a part of her current identity as her nights in the bars had been.

I pray for the day when the living memory of the Holocaust and the Nakba will give way to the reality of the current situation in the Holy Land. Could it be possible that young leaders will emerge who will say, “Let’s get beyond avenging past injustices. We are living with occupation and oppression and responding with terrorism. Terrorism only brings about retaliation and more oppression, and that only brings about more acts of terrorism. Enough! Let’s get out of the tombs and end the horror movie.”

There’s a legion of demons out there. There’s addiction to drugs, alcohol, gambling, you name it. But there’s also an addiction to revenge and the desire to control or to be right. The demons in the Gospel story beg Jesus not to send them into the abyss. They would rather enter the swine and send themselves into the abyss—an arrogant desire for control which is just as self-destructive.

What demons keep us in the land of the dead? Holding grudges? Holding on to outmoded ideas? Never admitting that we could be wrong or that someone else might have a valid point of view? Victimization or self-righteousness can become our identity. We can’t accept that our country or our political party or our religious denomination might be off track. When we get caught in these places there’s never any room for Jesus. Have you ever tried to share your faith with someone who is bathing in their own sense of indignation?

But Jesus is the only way out. Jesus leads with love, and love takes away the fear. When the fear is gone, there’s room for hope. The beauty of this Gospel story is, with the demons gone, the man is restored to his community. Sometimes we have to let some pigs die in order to be reconciled with the world.

 

[i] In case you’re interested (and why wouldn’t you be?) the Greek for this is daimaon. It once referred to any number of spirit beings who could be good or bad, but by the intertestamental period it was almost ubiquitously understood that a demon was Satan’s little helper.

Remembering the Innocent (Reflections on Christmas 1, Year A)

“Now after they had left, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said, ‘Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt, and remain there until I tell you; for Herod is about to search for the child, to destroy him.’” (Matthew 2:13)

After all the joy and festivity of Christmas, the Revised Common Lectionary leads us out of the calendar year with this disturbing story of jealousy, oppression, and mass murder (Matthew 2:13-23). I’m not sure I really blame the folks who decide to sleep in on Christmas 1. This story, known as The Massacre of the Innocents, is really a buzz kill, isn’t it? After “Peace on earth, good will to men,” we end the year getting reminded that this world we live in is still a pretty sick place.

Now, should it make you feel any better, I could tell you that the story of King Herod murdering all these little boys under age 2 in order to wipe out Jesus as his competition is believed by many historians to be apocryphal. Of course, it’s not that hard to believe that a ruler might use his governmental power to destroy a rival, is it? And we know historically that Herod the Great had no trouble murdering members of his own family in order to secure his throne. It’s not very hard to believe that he’d want Jesus dead, too.

The Gospel isn’t going to let us off easy with just a message of Joy to the World. Christmas 1 reminds us that suffering still abounds, and innocent children are still victims. This past year alone 100 children have been victims of gun violence in the city of Philadelphia. Between 2009 and 2018 there have been over 180 shootings in K-12 schools in the United States, resulting in 356 youngsters killed or wounded, and countless others scarred by the experience. Over 400,000 children are in foster care in this country. At this moment there are still over 700 children separated from their parents and detained at the US border. 35 million children are living in the world as refugees from violence, war, persecution, and starvation.

Our Gospel lesson should remind us of these suffering innocents because the Most Innocent, was, according to this story, a refugee from violence and oppression himself.

It’s kind of hard to know how to preach on a passage like this, so I’ll defer to the great Henry Wadsworth Longfellow who penned this poem (which later became a Christmas carol) during the bleak days of the Civil War:

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
and wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And thought how, as the day had come,
The belfries of all Christendom
Had rolled along
The unbroken song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I hung my head:

"There is no peace on earth," I said

"For hate is strong and mocks the song

Of peace on earth good-will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:

"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,

With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Then ringing, singing on its way

The world revolved from night to day--

A voice, a chime, a chant sublime

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said;
"For hate is strong,
And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The Wrong shall fail,
The Right prevail,
With peace on earth, good-will to men."

Our Gospel lesson tells us two things: the world is sick, but God is still active in healing it. God desires wellness in our land, in our world, and in ourselves. It’s appropriate that we at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia observe a healing liturgy on this last Sunday of the year. As the sands ebb out on 2019, we can come before God with all that troubles us and all that troubles God. We can pray for deliverance, but we can also recount how we, like the Holy Family, have been delivered and rescued. We can take that deliverance as a source of strength as we go forward to do our part—however small that may seem—for the healing of the world.

The poet said, “God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.” Take heart. Have hope. Go on.

May God give you courage and peace in the New Year.

A Word About Fathers (Holy Trinity & Fathers' Day 2025)

 

“All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.” (John 16:15)

Holy Trinity is a pain. Yeah, I know it’s one of the six major festivals of the Christian liturgical calendar, but it’s a feast which celebrates a doctrine and not an event. There’s no story line here, so it’s hard to make Holy Trinity dramatic—or even interesting. It’s just this confusing teaching about the way we understand God—and that’s assuming we actually understand God at all! Trinity sermons are the benzodiazepines of homiletics. Nothing can put a congregation to sleep faster.

Fortunately, this year Holy Trinity falls on the American secular holiday of Father’s Day. The Father is the first person of the Trinity, so if I preach about fathers I won’t be straying too far from the appointed readings and I won’t get in trouble in case there’s a liturgy Gestapo.

As you can imagine in heavily Roman Catholic Northeast Philly, I often find myself being addressed by the neighbors as “Father.” I don’t mind. Even though I have no biological children of my own, I feel great kinship with dads everywhere. A parent and a parish pastor share one important attribute: we are both completely responsible for something over which we ultimately have no control.

It’s not easy to be a dad. I think my own father did the best he could, given that his dad died just two months after my father was born. My father didn’t have much in the way of guidance. Many people, boys and girls, grow up with absent fathers or fathers who are shining examples of how not to parent.

I hate to say it, but the Bible isn’t much help. The Scriptures are crawling with examples of inept fatherhood and dysfunctional families. Look at Adam. His son Cain was a murderer. I guess if your dad has sinned against God, been put out of Paradise, and blames it all on your mom you might grow up with some issues.

Then there’s Noah. He saves his family in the ark, but (in a story we don’t tell in Sunday School) he later drinks himself into a stupor, passes out buck naked, and then curses his son Ham for discovering him sleeping it off in the nude.

Fast forward to the Patriarchs of Israel. Abraham banishes his oldest son Ishmael because Ishmael is illegitimate. Abraham also attempts to cut his legitimate son Isaac’s throat and offer him as a human sacrifice. Neither of these acts speak very well for Abraham as a dad. Isaac and Rebecca split their sons apart with favoritism, and Jacob isn’t any better. Eli, the prophet and judge of Israel in 1 Samuel, is an overly permissive father whose two sons, although priests of the tabernacle, couldn’t seem to keep their hands off the serving girls or out of the collection plate. God smites both sons for their wickedness and also knocks off Eli for being a bad parent.

Perhaps the most egregious example of lousy fatherhood is King David himself. David committed adultery and lost all moral authority over his sons. His oldest, Amnon, was guilty of sexual violence against his half-sister, Tamar. David couldn’t bring himself to punish his crown prince, a fact which angered David’s other son Absalom, Tamar’s full brother. Absalom subsequently murdered Amnon and led an armed rebellion to overthrow his father. The rebellion failed and Absalom was killed, proving that dads who set bad examples and/or fail to teach their sons right from wrong stand a pretty low chance of seeing their boys grow up to be men they can be proud of.

It's not until we get to the New Testament that we see a dad we can admire. You have to love Joseph. He’s not actually Jesus’ father, but he’s a righteous man and he really loves Mary and is willing to be dad to the Son of God. Luke actually has Mary refer to him as “your father[i]” when she’s talking to Jesus. Sometimes being a dad has nothing to do with biology. It has to do with being present. We know Joseph was a great dad. After all, Jesus turned out alright.

But Jesus gives us an even better example of fatherhood. In the famous parable of the “Prodigal Son[ii],” Jesus draws a picture of a father who is generous, understanding, forgiving, and loving. No matter what kind of bozo sired us, in our hearts we all long for a relationship with a father like the one in Jesus’ parable—a father who inspires our love, admiration, and trust. This is a concept of fatherhood which, even if we haven’t experienced it, we can imagine and desire. It’s the fatherhood we believe in when we call God our father. Martin Luther wrote of “pure, fatherly, and divine goodness and mercy” as the attributes of God. He encouraged us to pray Our Father, which art in heaven “boldly and with complete confidence, just as loving children ask their loving father.[iii]”

No earthly dad is ever perfect or completely lives up to the ideal which we yearn for in our hearts, but many try to be the best they can. Our heavenly Father knows this, forgives them their shortcomings, and inspires them to do better. God also provides us with substitute fathers—stepdads, coaches, teachers, bosses, and other men who see both our needs and our potential and can speak to places in us our own biological fathers can’t always reach.  

As I said above, being a father isn’t easy. Dads are called to be protectors and providers and instructors in the way of the world. They can never be sure of the fruits of their labor, and even the best dad is willing to have his heart broken by a wayward child. If you’re a dad or stepdad, I honor you. If you had a great dad, be grateful to God for that relationship and for the patience, love and sacrifices that man made for you.

As the hymn says, “Thank you, O my Father, for giving us your son and sending your Spirit ‘til the work on earth is done.[iv]”

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[i] Luke 2:48

[ii] Luke 15:11-32

[iii] See Luther’s explanation to the Lord’s Prayer in the Small Catechism.

[iv] From “There is a Redeemer” by Keith Green, Birdwing Music 1982.

She's With You (Reflection on the Day of Pentecost 2025)

 

“Peace I leave you; my peace I give to you. I do not give as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (John 14:27)

Don’t let your hearts be afraid? Have you watched the news lately? There’s plenty in this world to be afraid of. There’s climate change and war and run-away inflation. There’s plastic in our drinking water and all kinds of crap in the air and a possible loss of the social safety nets we Americans have relied upon. If you’re a young person—like those making their Confirmation on this Day of Pentecost—there’s the very real fear that your prospects for a comfortable lifestyle exceeding that of your parents might be slipping away from you. And, if that’s not enough, let’s remember the fear of gun violence. In my day, there was no such thing as an “active shooter drill.” You guys are dealing with a lot—and yet, Jesus in our Gospel (John 14: 8-17, 25-27) is telling you not to be afraid.

That’s where the Holy Spirit comes in. Today I’m asking you—Confirmands and the already confirmed and anyone else who reads this—to remember the promise of your baptism. You are washed in the promise of God. That’s a promise that you will never be left alone or abandoned. It’s a promise that you serve a God who is more powerful than all the powers of this world combined. I can’t (and won’t) promise you that nothing evil will ever happen to you. I certainly won’t promise you that if you live a godly and righteous life God will reward you with material blessings and safety and health. I will, however, repeat the promise of your baptism: You are sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever.

This promise and anything related to spiritual things may not be that important to you today with all the other things that are crowding through your life. But someday, the meaning of your life, the existence of God, and the perplexity of righteousness will be very much on your mind—just as it has been and will be for all of us. I’ve often joked that Confirmation has been considered “Graduation from church.” What I’m hoping and praying for is that it might only be “Vacation from church.” I pray you’ll be back because a spiritual life only matures with spiritual discipline.

On this holy day we celebrate the coming of God’s Holy Spirit to Jesus’ confused and often dumbfounded disciples. In honor of this, I will place my hands on your heads (you Confirmands, that is) and ask God to send the Holy Spirit into your lives. Actually, since God tends to pay in advance of the work, God’s loving spirit is already with you. I’m just going to pray that you come to see and know her.

Jesus told the disciples that the Spirit will be a Spirit which will let you see the truth. She will live with you and be part of you. She’ll give you wisdom and peace to navigate all the freaky, crazy stuff this world throws at you, because she’ll remind you of the things Jesus taught all of us: love of God and neighbor, forgiveness, compassion, generosity, humility, hope, honesty, and courage.

Martin Luther taught us in the Small Catechism that Spirit “enlightens (us) with (her) gifts.” You all have been drenched in marvelous blessings which some day may make an awesome, earth-shaking change in this weird, broken, and limping world.

God’s Holy Spirit can be a spirit of peace, but on this festival day we are reminded she is also the Spirit of whirlwind and fire. She can lead you into calm contemplation, but she can also drive you into the wilderness to face the devil. She can lead you into combat with the powers of this world that value wealth and power and fame over love and acceptance and respect for all of God’s creation. I don’t imagine you’ll start speaking in other languages, but, as Peter tells us in the First Lesson (Acts 2:1-21) you may just prophesy—that is, you’ll proclaim in your own words the Word of the Lord. And you may just see visions of a new society, a new mission, and a new way to be the people of our great and loving God.

May the Holy Spirit of God confirm our faith, guide our lives, empower our serving, give us patience in suffering, and bring us all to eternal life. Amen!