“Let’s play a cooperative game.”  These were the words of my good friend, the Reverend Mary Vano, at our annual seminarian friends retreat a couple of years ago.  Five of us gathered, as we do each year, for several days of intense study and accountability and evenings of enjoying one another’s company.  It was after dinner and time to unwind, and we were trying to decide what to do.  “Let’s play a cooperative game,” Mary suggested.  To me, she might as well have been speaking New Testament Greek.  The words she used were familiar, but the way she strung them together made little sense.  “A cooperative game?” I asked.

You see, in my family of origin there is no such thing.  Games, by their very nature, are not cooperative.  Games are about bending others to your will, gaining advantage, vanquishing your foes, winning.

Beginning with my grandfather, Pop, a game of Scrabble quickly instilled the importance of using multisyllabic words.  Otherwise Pop would bring down the hurt with a triple word score and that included three Qs and a Z.  With my own father, a card game of Old Maid was an opportunity to teach kids the despair of defeat.  As we grew older, board games like Clue were bloodsport.  Scattegories and Taboo caused family rifts that might take years to heal.  To this day, Jill refuses to play Balderdash with the Thompsons.  Too many scars.

Even now, each time my family gathers, three generations sit around my parents’ dining room table for a fun game of Scum, a card game where the loser of each round has to move to the foot of the table and wear a dunce cap, an object of defeat and ridicule.  Good times.

I’m being unnecessarily hard on myself and my family, because, in truth, our entire society is predicated on such an approach to games.  In a capitalist society, there are always winners and losers.  In fact, one necessitates the other.  Economics acknowledges this explicitly and without apology.  An entire branch of economics is called Game Theory, defined as, “A mathematical framework for analyzing strategic interactions…where each player’s outcome depends on their choices and the choices of others, helping predict behaviors in competitive situations like pricing, negotiations, and market competition by modeling scenarios as “games” with players, strategies, and payoffs.”[i]

More than Christianity, our economics is our true religion, and the desire to gain advantage—to win—carries over into all aspects of our lives.  Indeed, in my somewhat studied opinion, the root of much of the social tension and ill throughout our society today, from immigration to race to ideology, is the deeply-rooted and unexamined belief that if someone else succeeds, we must be bound to decline.  We love to win.  We hate to lose.  Life is the big game, and we all play for keeps.

When we think about it, this also pertains in our relationship with God.  Despite any highbrow theology or heartfelt spiritual connection, at the end of the day we often revert to treating our relationship with God as transactional, a game we hope to win.  We try to bargain when we need God to do something for us.  We try to negotiate when God asks us to do something we don’t want to do.  Even with God, we strive to figure out where the advantage might be and capitalize on it.

We’re in good company at least.  From Moses to Peter, the titans of Holy Scripture make this same mistake.[ii]  Even they approach God’s calling upon their lives as something to be managed and won.  They want to minimize God’s impact on them and maximize God’s favor.  Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

But last Sunday and this Sunday, we get a very different scenario, one that breaks the mold.  For two weeks in a row, we read about Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist at the River Jordan.  Last week we read Matthew’s version of this story, and this morning we read John’s Gospel.  Last Sunday, Michael McCain preached a brilliant homily about the redeeming power of water, including the water of baptism, so today I want us to look at the story differently, from the standpoint of the interaction between Jesus and John.

The baptism of Jesus by John is one of the few stories that shows up in all four Gospels, and each Gospel relates the story in slightly different but consequential ways, as if the Evangelists are trying to reckon with a strange event in which the roles are upside down.  Jesus is the Son of God, but John is the Baptist.  Jesus shows up to be baptized, and John is in place to do the deed, but why would Jesus need to be baptized by John?  To be so would seem to place John in a position of authority over Jesus.  In a sense, John wins and Jesus submits.  That doesn’t seem right to the Evangelists or to us.  It turns out, it didn’t seem right to John the Baptist, either. 

In today’s version, as soon as Jesus appears on the riverbank, John the Baptist declares, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”[iii]  Last week’s version had John explicitly add, “I need to be baptized by you, Jesus, and you come to me?” [iv] 

Things seem to be crescendoing like it’s another game.  John doesn’t want to do this thing God asks him to do.  John wants to jockey and manage the outcome.  But suddenly, something shifts.  In Matthew’s version Jesus (who I believe is likely as confused by what God is asking at this point as John is) pauses and replies, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then, we are told, John the Baptist cooperates with Jesus to do the thing God has called them to do.

Today, the Gospel of John’s account extends the action to show us how the baptism of Jesus serves as a catalyst for proclaiming Jesus as the Son of God.  It turns out it wasn’t for Jesus’ own benefit or John’s that Jesus was baptized, but for the benefit of the world.  The stakes were much greater than one or the other of them prevailing or being right.

In other words, the interaction between John and Jesus was a not a competition, not a game.  It was a step in God’s salvation history, and as such only God set the terms.  The goal of the “players,” if we insist on calling them that, was not to win, but to cooperate.  (I hate it when Mary Vano is right.)  It was o.k. for both of them—John and Jesus—to be confused, and wonder, and ask questions.  But rather than trying to figure out an angle or avoid God’s call, the interaction was all about figuring out how faithfully to do the thing God called them to do.

This is the Epiphany season.  This is the time in the church year when we are called especially to pay attention to where God may be revealed, and what God may be saying, and how God may be calling each of us to follow.  This is not a transaction, not something to push and pull with God, not a game to win.  If, in our lives, instead of responding to God, “O.k. God, I’ll do X if you’ll do Y” or “God, how about I do Z instead of what you’re asking me to do?” what if we approached God’s call in a spirit of cooperation?  What if we trusted God enough to lean into God’s plan for us, even when it confuses us as it did John the Baptist?  We can and should ask our discerning questions just as John the Baptist did.  To the extent that we can understand what God is doing, we should strive to understand.  (God made us rational and inquisitive creatures, not automatons.)  But then, we, like John, should seek to place our wills in concert with God’s will, to cooperate with God.  In that way, we will discover that we are freed from the obsession with winning the game and instead will be able to declare, “This is the Son of God!  Come and see!”

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[i] The definition of Game Theory by Google AI.

[ii] Cf. Exodus 4:10, Matthew 16:22, Matthew 17:4.

[iii] John 1:29.

[iv] Matthew 3:14.

Though this is the eleventh day of Christmas and the Feast of the Epiphany is day after tomorrow, the Gospel reading this morning begins as the Magi are leaving Bethlehem.  Immediately thereafter, an angel warns Joseph that King Herod is looking for Jesus to do him harm and counsels Joseph to flee with his family.  Joseph does so, and if you read the Gospel on your lectionary page you’ll see that after an interval in Egypt, King Herod dies and the Holy Family are able to return home unharmed.  A reading that begins with mild apprehension is anodyne in the end.  We can move on directly to the next chapter of Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus is grown and begins his ministry.

Even if you are a regular Sunday churchgoer, this is all the story of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt that you’ll ever get.  But it’s not the whole story.  If you look again at your lectionary page, at the heading of the Gospel reading, you’ll see that we read Matthew 2:13-15 and 19-23.  We left out three verses.  No big deal, right? 

We never read those three verses on a Sunday.  We only read them once per year, on December 28, but even then, if December 28 falls on a Sunday (as it did one week ago), then we punt Matthew 2:16-18 and read a different Gospel.  I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but it does seem as if the lectionary powers-that-be want us forget these three short verses of scripture.  Why might that be?  What could they say that might offend us, shock us, or affect the way we view the entire salvation story?

Here are those missing verses: “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the boys in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men.  Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’”

Let that settle in our minds and our psyches: hoping to scoop up Jesus in his deadly net, King Herod sends his thugs into the village of Bethlehem, rips baby and toddler boys from their mothers’ and fathers’ arms, and kills them.  Can you imagine?

Some question the historical veracity of this account, because outside of Matthew there is no other written or archaeological evidence of it.  But here’s the thing: Bethlehem was a tiny village in a backwater province ruled by a strongman.  Today no less than two thousand years ago, atrocities in such places go unrecorded with frequency that would shock us, if we paid any attention.  And what we do know of King Herod’s recorded character renders the slaughter of those children—called the Holy Innocents in our tradition on the rare occasion that we pause to remember them—entirely plausible. 

Herod was a ruler tolerated, if not loved, by the establishment, because he was larger than life and actively stoked the economy.  But he was also a terrible human being.  We know from reliable accounts[i] that Herod murdered three of his own sons, his wife, and his mother-in-law.  King Herod also ordered that, upon his death, Jewish elders were to be rounded up and killed, so that when the masses grieved for the elders, it would present the illusion to the outside world that they were mourning for Herod himself.  A guy like Herod would not hesitate to send his lackeys into Bethlehem to kill a generation of boys. 

He did it, friends, of that I have little doubt.  The slaughter of the Holy Innocents is a part of the historical story just as it is part of the salvation story.  We can’t elide over it and pretend Jesus and the Holy Family merely went to Egypt to lie low while nothing else happened.  Those little boys were killed by the man in power.  Their families’ lives were scarred forever.  For the residents of Bethlehem, the world shattered.  We can’t ignore it.  We have to reckon with it.

I mentioned a moment ago that the slaughter of the Holy Innocents occurs in both history and the salvation story.  This matters because too often we seek to separate the two.  We attempt to spiritualize the Gospels as if they have only to do with our own individual inner relationship with God.  We want to read passages of scripture in relation only to our own sin and salvation (and then only if these questions don’t impinge too much upon our daily lives).

But that approach misses the mark[ii].  As we celebrate during this Christmas season, the crux and pivot of God’s plan for salvation is the Incarnation, which shares the same root as the word “carnal,” having to do with flesh and blood.  Which is to say, whatever God is doing in our souls God is also doing in the real, tangible, gritty, social, everyday world.  The historical Jesus actually, literally embraced the diseased, sex workers, the hopeless, and the elite who harbored inner feelings of unease that they did not follow Jesus’ lead.  There can be no spiritualization of the Gospel, friends.  In addition to the posture of our souls, the Gospel of Jesus is always about the real world, and how we live in it, and the choices we make.

So what do we do with Matthew 2:16-18?  What do we do with a story of Jesus barely escaping the murderous hands of Herod and those dozens of little boys Herod callously and brutally kills?  What would it look like to draw Herod’s act forward and translate it for our own day?

UNICEF provides detailed statistics about violence towards children.[iii]  Each year, on average, 130,000 children and adolescents die violently across the globe.  Some years that total is much higher, and sometimes violence is perpetrated by those in power.  As one of innumerable examples, occuring just scant miles from Bethlehem (and admittedly close to my own heart), in November many of us gathered in this space to hear the heart-wrenching stories of Dr. Ahmad Yousef, a Little Rock physician who has spent time in Gaza, where more than 50,000 children—not terrorists, not soldiers, not able-bodied adults, but kids just like the ones who stream with laughter to our own children’s chapel each Sunday morning—have been killed by air strikes, illness, and malnutrition in the past twenty-six months.[iv]  That’s children equal to the combined total population of Benton and Bryant. 

Nor are we immune from violence against children in this country.  The National Children’s Alliance reports that approximately 2,000 children die from abuse or neglect in the United States each year.[v]   And, according to Education Week, in the past eight years, 147 have been killed and 419 injured in 238 school shootings in the United States.[vi]

A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.

You know, and I hope you trust, that I strive never to be a partisan preacher.  It would be a mistake to read into any of the real-world examples I cite a political slant that I do not intend.  The point is from the time of Herod until our own day, we live in a world that kills children.  And we live in a world in which, too often, those in power sanction, actively or passively, the death of children. 

As Christian people, we cannot skip either those verses in scripture or those stories on the news that speak this truth and live our lives as though they don’t exist.  And then, we must—each of us—ask ourselves what our role will be in such a world.  Herod, due to his paranoia and will-to-power, sends thugs to kill children.  Many who benefit from Herod’s status quo undoubtedly choose to pretend that the slaughter never happened.  The parents of the dead kids keen and grieve.  Are those the only options? 

In Joseph—who is not, remember, Jesus’ biological father—we find one who takes action to protect and, indeed, save the child Jesus.  And in the adult Jesus who will emerge from these events, we find someone who learns from Joseph’s example and acts throughout his ministry to intervene and protect the vulnerable in real, physical, and concrete ways.[vii]

We, who claim to be disciples of Jesus, can do no less.  In wherever our contexts; in whatever ways we have influence; however our hearts are moved; we must intervene and act.  We must hear Rachel’s weeping.  We must preserve children’s lives and laughter.  We must obstruct Herod wherever he is found, so that all children can grow into the full stature of Christ. 

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[i] Namely, those of the contemporary Jewish historian and general Josephus.

[ii] Which is, by the way, the literal definition of sin.

[iii] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/fast-facts-violence-against-children-widespread-affecting-millions-globally#:~:text=Violence%20takes%20the%20lives%20of,killed%20by%20violence%20were%20boys.

[iv] https://www.unicef.org/press-releases/unimaginable-horrors-more-50000-children-reportedly-killed-or-injured-gaza-strip

[v] https://www.nationalchildrensalliance.org/media-room/national-statistics-on-child-abuse/#:~:text=In%202022%2C%20an%20estimated%201%2C990,compared%20to%20girls%20at%202.25.

[vi] https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-over-time-incidents-injuries-and-deaths

[vii] See John 8:1-11, for example.

What are you waiting for?          

Have you ever asked yourself that question?  What are you waiting for?  The areas and aspects of life to which the question could pertain are limitless:

You are stuck in your profession.  Going to work each day feels like repeatedly banging your head against a concrete wall.  You have long wanted to pursue something else as your livelihood.  But each day you sigh, and pack your lunch, and head back to the same place to do the same thing.  What are you waiting for?

You have always wanted to play a musical instrument, or learn a second language, or write poetry.  It’s been a lifelong dream you feel certain will give you a sense of accomplishment and meaning.  But the days, months, and years pass, and you never pick up the guitar or the pen, and you never subscribe to Duo Lingo.  What are you waiting for?

You yearn for a relationship of intimacy and understanding in your life.  You want someone with whom to share your joys and fears, someone to rely on and who can rely on you.  You believe you are capable of being both vulnerable and strong with another person.  And yet you do not make that phone call, or offer that invitation, or (these days) swipe right.  What are you waiting for?

In each of these scenarios, the waiting is for something that has not yet been.  It is the mystifying, and sometimes paralyzing, longing for a future that we desire but which seems inexplicably and bafflingly out of reach.  It is the exact opposite of nostalgia, when we pine for what once was.  The German language has two associated words for such waiting, sensucht which refers to a longing for some thing, person, or ideal you’ve never known, and fernweh, which refers to a longing for a place you’ve never been.  I love these two words—sensucht and fernweh—because together they capture that wistful and forward-looking emotion that seems to occupy so much of our lives.  We stare toward the horizon, wishing in our lives for so many things that aren’t: People, skills, ideals, and an altogether different world…and we wait.

We are in the right season to ask this question.  This is Advent, and it is a season of waiting.  Advent begs the question of what we are waiting for with importance that is equal parts personal and cosmic.  Each year, Advent insists that Christians ask, “What Lord are we waiting for?  What kingdom of God are we waiting for?”

I am presently reading a book[i] that examines these important questions in the context of the current American Christian milieu, and the conclusions are not promising.  So many Christians today—including, ironically, those who claim to be the most “Bible-based”—are waiting for a Jesus who looks very little like the one promised in Holy Scripture, and for a world that is completely foreign to the Bible’s hope.  In their sensucht, Jesus is a mean-spirited, violent-prone cynic.  In their fernweh, the kingdom is one in which only a few are included and most are left out, where those on the outside are considered ineligible for grace and unworthy of care.

But here’s the thing: Christians don’t get to decide who or what we are waiting for.  We don’t get to create our hoped-for vision out of thin air, or according to our cultural and ideological inclinations, or, worst of all, by lifting a Bible verse out of context here and there to cobble together a self-justifying picture.  The scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments are clear about who and what we are waiting for, and nowhere so clear as in the Book of the Prophet Isaiah.

Isaiah writes in an era when nothing is trending the right way.  Personal relationships, local society, and the broader world are all spiraling downward.  The glories of Israel’s past are long gone.  Rather than blooming with abundance, God’s promises of grace and blessing seem as dead as an old and rotting tree stump.  If people are waiting for anything, the horizon of their hope is low and dim. 

But it is then that the Prophet speaks, and his sensucht, his fernweh, is bold.  Isaiah says:

A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the awe[ii] of the Lord.

His delight shall be in the awe of the Lord…

[Then] the wolf shall live with the lamb,
the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the
ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.

They will not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,

for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters cover the sea.

The promise of God is not dead, it turns out, and from that rotting stump will emerge a new, green shoot.  The sensucht of God’s people—the one they are waiting for—will be filled with God’s spirit and wisdom and will embody joy and delight.  That One will usher in a world—the fernweh of God’s people—that is so wondrous, so desirable, that it brings tears to the eye: A world where there are no predators or prey, where violence and hurt are no one’s motivation, where those so unlike one another are all embraced as creatures and children of God, where all commune as siblings rather than exclude as competitors and enemies.

From the days of 8^th century B.C. until our own day, God’s vision is unchanged.  This is what we are waiting for.  This is our Advent expectation.  Anyone—Christian preacher, secular leader, or individual believer—who construes God’s intention for the world in any other way is twisting Holy Scripture and maligning God’s goodness and grace. 

This would all be merely argumentative, except for the character of the waiting to which God calls us, as Christian people. Our waiting is not—cannot be—like the waiting in other areas of our lives with which I began this homily.  In spiritual terms, we must give up our soulless pursuits and write poetry, reach out to others in love.  Once we know what we are waiting for, we are called to ready our hearts and the world around us for the coming of this Lord.  This means we are to be the vanguard of—we are to embody now—that which will be fulfilled when the Lord comes.  And not only during the hour on Sunday when we are in the church building.  We are to reflect Jesus–the One we are waiting for–in our own lives, taking delight and joy in God, decentering our own egos and allowing God’s Spirit to fill the space in our souls.  We are, in our own orbits, to labor for the world we are waiting for, in which there are no predatory human snakes, wolves or lions, where all of God’s children are embraced and cared for.         

In other words, those German words, sensucht and fernweh, which mean a passive longing for a future yet to come, we replace with a different word, a Greek word—prolepsis—which means “to live in the present as though the future has already arrived.”  Our waiting is to be active, so that we show ourselves and the world around us exactly what we are waiting for, so that, when the Lord arrives, Jesus looks upon us and says, “You have made the most of your waiting.  You have delighted in your God.  You have sought the kingdom.  Well done, good and faithful servants.

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[i] The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism, by Tim Alberta.

[ii] “Awe” is an appropriate synonym for “fear” here, and, given our contemporary equation of “fear” with “terror,” it better evokes the original meaning.

Zacchaeus was a wee, little man, and a wee, little man was he.  He climbed up in a sycamore tree, for the Lord he wanted to see.

Anyone who grew up attending Sunday school knows today’s Gospel story from Luke.  Jesus is traveling through Jericho at the edge of the Judean wilderness.  Jesus’ reputation as a teacher, healer, and exorcist has preceded him, and as he enters the town a crowd gathers around him.  Word reaches Zacchaeus, the town tax collector, that Jesus is coming, and Zacchaeus wants to see him.  But Zacchaeus is a short fellow, and in order to see the impressive, awe-inspiring Jesus over the crowd, Zacchaeus must climb a sycamore tree.

Those are the details of the story as specifically described by Luke the Evangelist, correct?  Not so fast, says biblical scholar Isaac Soon.[i]  Professor Soon points out that the crucial Greek masculine pronoun in the Zacchaeus story is imprecise.  The NRSV, which mirrors the Greek accurately, says “Zacchaeus was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way.”

Luke’s text is unclear whether the “he” referring to the one who is short in stature points to Zacchaeus or to Jesus.  In our minds, without pause, we always translate Luke to be saying, “Zacchaeus was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because Zacchaeus was short in stature.”

But Professor Soon points out, with an undoubted twinkle in his eye, that the passage can equally be translated this way (listen carefully): “Zacchaeus was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd Zacchaeus could not, because Jesus was short in stature, so Zacchaeus ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see Jesus.”

Maybe Zacchaeus is six feet tall, and maybe—just maybe—the reason Zacchaeus can’t see Jesus through the crowd is that Jesus is four foot eleven.  What does that do to the way we imagine the story?  What does that do to the way we imagine Jesus?  Do our minds, and perhaps our pride and sense of self, rebel against such a notion?

The possibility that Luke is describing Jesus short in stature is even more intriguing when we realize that the Gospels contain no other physical description of Jesus at all.[ii]  So, where do our preconceptions of Jesus’ appearance come from?  In preparation for this sermon, I did a bit of digging on the prevailing renderings of Jesus in various Christian churches and traditions. 

A common image is Jesus with a slim, angular face.  Jesus has auburn hair and a gauzy glow about him.  He looks contemplatively and angelically up to heaven, as if his attention is always on the will of his Father.  You’ve likely seen this very print on innumerable church walls.

Another common image shows a robust, hale, and even muscular Jesus, again with auburn hair, looking like a Nordic Hercules ready to wrestle a lion for the faithful.

And so on.  In these and similar images, Jesus is always attractive in some way or another.  Jesus portrays the epitome of one or more of our contemporary ideals.  Jesus looks like we want to look.  He looks like us on spiritual (and in some case physical) steroids.  In other words, the way we depict Jesus says a lot more about us than him.

The physician and biblical scholar Albert Schweitzer famously said that often our depiction of Jesus is akin to looking down a dark well.  We think we see Jesus, but what we really see is our own reflection.[iii]  We call to Jesus, but instead of Jesus’ voice, we hear our own echo.  This is problematic, to say the least, because when we cast Jesus in our image, his teaching and his call cease to challenge us.  Instead, such a Jesus serves to reinforce the ways we already look at the world, to satisfy our social, political, and religious inclinations rather than turn them on their heads.  Such a Jesus doesn’t say, as Jesus does throughout the Gospels, “Drop everything you know and follow me.”  Rather, such a Jesus merely says, “You’re doing fine.  No need to change a thing.  Keep on keepin on!”

But what if Jesus looked nothing like our usual renderings?  What if Jesus was physically underwhelming?  Professor Soon, who poses this notion, points out that Luke the Evangelist was familiar with Greek stories and the Greek world.  That includes the stories of the great Greek philosopher Socrates, another character who, like Jesus, challenged everyone he met.  Socrates is described in various places as having a snub nose, protruding eyes, a paunch, and to top it all off, a bad temper.[iv]  Socrates was not much to look at, apparently, and he could be abrasive and infuriating.  Socrates always pushed and prodded those around him to examine their assumptions about life, value, and the Good.  Crowds flocked to Socrates despite the fact that he was, in every conventional way, unattractive.  And, it’s worth noting, the conventional world ultimately condemned Socrates to death for his critiques.

Socrates and Jesus had a lot in common.  Professor Soon believes that Luke may have had Socrates in mind when he recollected Jesus.  Jesus also had a temper.  Jesus also frustrated and infuriated as many people as he captivated.  Many people, rather than open themselves to Jesus’ challenges upon their assumptions and their lives, chose to walk away from him.  They spread rumors about him.[v]  They ridiculed him.  Ultimately, they killed him.

I agree with Professor Soon’s interpretation of the Zacchaeus story.  I think it may have been Jesus who was short of stature rather than Zacchaeus.  Because anytime we imagine Jesus as the embodiment of our conventions, we close ourselves off to Jesus’ challenge.  We see not the Son of God who overturns our world, but our own idealized reflection, justifying our ways of being and our outlook on the world. 

So give yourself permission to imagine Jesus with a pug nose, bulging eyes, and a paunch.  Imagine that, when Jesus speaks, his words do not comfort you like a mug of cocoa on a cold day, but rather get under your skin, frustrate you, force you to see the world around you in a radically different way.  Then, imagine that you choose to follow Jesus anyway, not because he affirms you as you are, but because his words are so compelling, so true that even though they require you to change everything, you cannot help but embrace them. This is the effect Jesus has on Zacchaeus.  Jesus overturns Zacchaeus’ world.  After gazing at Jesus from the sycamore tree, Zacchaeus climbs down and invites Jesus into his home.  Zacchaeus commits his whole life to living differently, and he puts his money where his mouth is, committing half of all he has to help the vulnerable and the lost.  Zacchaeus will never be the same again, not because Jesus embodies all of his expectations, but exactly because Jesus does not.  Jesus upends everything, and Zacchaeus follows.  What about you? 

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[i] https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-topics/new-testament/jesus-the-short-king/

[ii] The singular exception is in John 20, when the Evangelist describes the wounds on the resurrected Jesus’ body.

[iii] https://wwwtest.csun.edu/~rcummings/gridly.html

[iv] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hide-and-seek/202304/how-ugly-was-socrates

[v] See Luke 7:34.

Some will know that Jill and I recently moved to Hillcrest, and we’ve been getting our new-to-us house in order.  Last week, an electrician came by to fix a faulty socket.  He was a young man and quite talkative.  As he worked, the electrician glanced around at the books on my bookshelf and at our décor, including a small portrait of me in my Sunday vestments.  He suddenly paused both his work and his chatter and asked, “Are you a pastor?”  With a reluctant sigh, I responded, “Why yes, I’m an Episcopal priest.” 

Thus, what should have been a twenty-minute service call turned into an hour-long witness by the young electrician about his faith.  He was forthright, he was sincere, he was yearning…and I disagreed theologically with virtually everything that came out of his mouth.  But I nodded, made thoughtful noises (Hmm…), and didn’t say a meaningful word in reply.

Do you have any recurring dreams?  According to the website Choosing Therapy, there is a host of dreams that people commonly experience again and again.[i]  Most such dreams are not happy ones.  Among those that top the list are dreams of which you are likely aware, such as dreams of falling or being chased.  Others were new to me, such as the common recurring dream of one’s teeth falling out.  Then there’s an entire category of well-known recurring dreams that include the dream of standing naked in front of a crowd of people.  The motif of this and similar dreams is finding oneself unprepared and exposed. 

My own recurring dream is actually a variation on that theme, though blessedly in my dream I am fully clothed.  My version is that I step into the pulpit, and my sermon manuscript is missing.  It’s gone, and as I look out at the congregation, I have nothing to say.  Another variation is that I stand at the altar, and the pages in the altar book are all mixed up.  When it’s time to speak the sacred words of the Eucharistic Prayer, I say the wrong thing at the wrong time.  I have those dreams quite often, and I always wake up anxious and unnerved.

Today’s epistle reading comes from the Second Letter to Timothy.  This letter is traditionally considered to be the last of St. Paul’s writings, a farewell of sorts, in which Paul gives his final advice and encouragement to Timothy and all those followers of Jesus yet to come.[ii]  In the letter, Paul warns of a world in which the teachings and meaning of Jesus will be manipulated toward personal and worldly ends, when, instead of following Jesus faithfully, people will “suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth.”  When that happens, Paul says in the letter’s crescendo today, “I solemnly urge you: proclaim the Gospel; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching.”

The young electrician who came to my house last week did not knowingly or intentionally misconstrue the Gospel of Jesus, but he misconstrued it nonetheless.  He expressed a Gospel message of “divine gotcha,” in which God is waiting at every moment to jump out and condemn.  He believed the primary goal in life is to get one’s ticket punched to heaven when we die, rather than living a life of gratitude for God’s grace already given.  And the look behind the electrician’s eyes was not that of someone who felt himself unconditionally loved by God, but rather of one who is skittish and wary of a stern and capricious Creator. 

Not only did I disagree with the electrician; I also worried for him that he was leaning into an interpretation of God and Jesus that is more about a particular strand of contemporary American culture than anything I read in the Gospels.  But I didn’t say a word.  I listened to him talk; I offered him a brief prayer when he finished; and I let him gather up his tools and leave.      

After the young man left my house, I realized I had exactly the same feeling as when I awaken from my recurring dream.  I didn’t find the words to say to him, words that might have given him relief and offered light.  And I’m a preacher, for Pete’s sake.

This is the Episcopalian’s lament.  So many become Episcopalian because we sense that the Gospel we seek to understand and follow here is true to the person, the message, and the grace of Jesus.  Many of us have gravitated to the Episcopal Church for just this reason.  At some point, through word or action, some Episcopalian spoke to our souls in a way that liberated us from either distorted Christian exclusion and fear on the one hand or secular emptiness on the other, and we were awakened anew to the sheer abundance of God’s grace and the wide circumference of God’s love.  So why are we Episcopalians often so timid to name that Gospel and speak that Word?

Consider it this way: Many Christian churches regularly pull a verse or two from scripture and weave a message around those isolated verses that may have no bearing at all on the context of either the history or the biblical book in which they appear.  To often, those messages fall prey to the exact danger St. Paul cautions in Second Timothy, suiting the preacher’s own social, cultural, or political desires rather than faithfully following where the Gospel leads.

But in the Episcopal Church—our church—each and every week we read large swaths from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the Epistles, and the Gospels, and over the course of months we work through entire books of the bible, paying close attention to how the pieces fit with the whole.  Additionally, our parish offers well-attended bible studies that dive deeply into Holy Scripture, so that we get not biblical sound bites, but the sweep of salvation history, in which God is always pushing God’s people to grasp more fully the radical extent of God’s embrace.  And yet, we Episcopalians are too often timid about sharing our faith.

It’s time we find our voice.  The world can no longer afford our hesitation or our silence.  Dividing lines, the demonization of others, the acceptance of violence as a way to settle differences, a willingness to disregard those on the margins, leaving the most vulnerable forgotten, and uncared for…Each of these things is increasingly common in our world, and, unbelievably, all of these things are at times pursued and defended in the name of Jesus.  But that is not the Jesus I read about in Holy Scripture.  That is not the God whose Gospel we follow and who nourishes our souls.  More than ever, the world needs our voice.

The Rt. Reverend Andy Doyle, Bishop of Texas, has published two books entitled Unabashed Faith and Unabashedly Episcopalian.  I love those titles, and I love that adjective.  Unabashedly—without reserve, with the confidence borne of the grace of Jesus that lightens our souls and enlightens our lives—we must find the words to share the Gospel as we know it with the world. 

The singer songwriter Jason Isbell has a tune entitled, “It gets easier, but it never gets easy.”  That’s true of many things in life, and it is surely true of sharing the Gospel.  We will never be as prepared as we’d like.  We will not always have the manuscript close at hand or the altar book turned to the right page.  Sometimes we may find ourselves in awkward situations that feel like a bad dream, perhaps trapped in a house with a stranger who talks about Jesus with a twinge of fear in his voice.  Speaking of our faith, talking about the grace we encounter, naming Jesus, will not always be easy, but as we do it, it gets easier. We are Episcopalian followers of Jesus.  We are unabashedly faithful.  “Do the work of an evangelist,” St. Paul says, “proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable.”  The grace of God is too good, the embrace of God is too wide, not to share it.  God knows the world needs it. 

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[i] https://www.choosingtherapy.com/recurring-dreams/

[ii] Most mainstream biblical scholars believe 2^nd Timothy was written by a later disciple of Paul rather than Paul himself.

The U.S. National Park Service says, “Of the tens of thousands of letters written in the days leading up to the First Battle of Manassas, certainly none is more famous than the last letter of Major Sullivan Ballou.”[i]

Sullivan Ballou’s letter was made known by Ken Burns in his magisterial documentary series The Civil War.  Read in the timbral voice of Sam Waterston, with the haunting melody of “Ashokan Farewell” playing in the background, the letter is a window into the relationship of Sullivan Ballou and his wife Sarah, as Sullivan goes off from Rhode Island to war.  In this last letter to Sarah, Sullivan is prescient of his impending death, which will soon happen at First Bull Run.  He detects that these are his last words to his beloved and writes with depth and urgency.  Sullivan begins, “My Very Dear Wife: Indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days, perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write a few lines, that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.”

Sullivan then offers Sarah his justification for leaving her and going to war.  He says, “If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American civilization now leans upon the triumph of the government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution, and I am willing, perfectly willing to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.”

But then, as if his resolve stumbles as his pen moves across the paper, Sullivan bares his soul to his wife.  It is heartbreaking: “Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables, that nothing but Omnipotence can break…The memories of all the blissful moments I have spent with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God, and you, that I have enjoyed them so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up, and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our boys grow up to honorable manhood around us…O Sarah, if the dead can come back to this earth, and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you in the garish day and the darkest night amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours always, always, and, if the soft breeze fans your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air cools your throbbing temples, it shall be my spirit passing by.  Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone, and wait for me, for we shall meet again.”

Sullivan Ballou’s letter moves me almost to tears.  That is what letters intend to do.  Letters move us.  They shake us.  They persuade us to look at life and the world differently.  When I was in college, my grandmother, Boo, wrote me a series of letters in pencil, on scratch paper.  I keep each one as a treasure.  Through those letters, my grandmother still affects my life for the better.  Through all these years, she speaks words of counsel, occasional indictment, and fulsome grace.

Did you know that there is only one true letter in the bible?  We speak of much of the New Testament as letters, but in truth, they are epistles, a very specific kind of letter, written to whole communities and intended to be read publicly for instruction.  Of the kind of letter one person writes to another person as private and personal communication, intended to move, persuade, and inspire as Sullivan Ballou does Sarah, there is only one in the entire bible.  And we read it today.  It is the Letter of St. Paul to Philemon.

Here’s the context: Paul is in prison, and while there, an enslaved man named Onesimus whom Paul had earlier converted to Christianity has run away from his owner Philemon and traveled to Paul. It seems Onesimus took seriously Paul’s teaching that in Christ there is no slave or free[ii], and Onesimus has claimed his liberation from slavery.  The problem is that his former owner, Philemon, is unlikely to agree.  Philemon is also a Christian, and a wealthy one.  Indeed, Paul’s ministry depends upon Philemon’s patronage.  So, when the runaway Onesimus shows up at the jailhouse door, Paul finds himself him a tricky situation. 

It seems that Paul has a stark choice: He can help Onesimus flee, or he can send Onesimus back to Philemon.  But Paul sees a third way, an trickier option, that he feels compelled by God to attempt.  Paul wants Onesimus to be free, but he does not want Onesimus to live a life on the run, so Paul seeks the most unlikely, radical outcome of all: He wants Onesimus to be able to return home to his community, family, and church and be free.  And that means Paul must write the letter of his life to Onesimus’ owner, Philemon.

Readers familiar with Paul’s epistles such as Galatians and First Corinthians are often confused by Paul’s Letter to Philemon, because Paul’s epistles tend to be brash, arrogant, and demanding.  When Paul writes to a community, he pulls no punches.  But his Letter to Philemon doesn’t read that way at all.  When Paul writes privately to Philemon, someone he hopes to move, Paul takes a wholly different approach.  Not unlike Sullivan Ballou writing to Sarah, Paul speaks to Philemon’s heart.  Paul says, “When I remember you in my prayers, Philemon, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus.”

 Listen to the appeal Paul then makes to Philemon, the images Paul evokes, the relationship on which Paul leans, the intimacy with which Paul writes.  Paul says, “I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, Philemon, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.”

Paul reminds Philemon of Paul’s many years of service and sacrifice, and Paul subtly says that his moral authority should be persuasive.  Paul then gets to the point:

“I am appealing to you, Philemon, for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment…I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you…that you might have Onesimus back forever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.”

 It is a hard ask, Christian faith that flies in the face of all conventional and societal wisdom.  And, if Philemon acquiesces, it will cost him economically to lose a slave.  So, Paul concludes by putting Paul’s money where his mouth (or pen) is.  Paul says, “So if you consider me your partner, Philemon, welcome Onesimus as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way, or owes you anything, charge that to my account.”

In other words, this is not only a sacrifice of paper on Paul’s part.  He hopes Philemon will free Onesimus simply because is it what faith in Jesus commends, but if Philemon insists upon recompense for his loss, Paul himself (who is not a wealthy man at all) is willing to pay.  Onesimus’ freedom is worth that much to Paul.

This is a masterful letter.  Paul is authentic in his expression of love for both Philemon the slaveowner and Onesimus the enslaved man.  Paul does not write with smug self-satisfaction.  Paul does not demonize.  He does not even demand.  But nevertheless, with almost supernaturally powerful, subtle persuasion Paul speaks truth to Philemon that would move mountains. 

The bible doesn’t give us a coda to Paul’s Letter to Philemon, but I suspect Onesimus returned to Philemon and handed over Paul’s letter with a quaking hand.  I suspect Philemon initially read Paul’s letter and got defensive and angry.  But upon reflection, I feel sure Philemon re-read that letter in light of Paul deep love and affection for him.  I believe Philemon then freed Onesimus and embraced him as a brother in Christ.  And so, Paul changed two lives forever and for the better, all in a letter of three hundred thirty-five words.

I worry today that we no longer write letters.  Letters require forethought, time, reflection, pondered language, a consideration of how to move and persuade.  Today, we instead send knee-jark emails that cannot be retracted.  We tend texts written in chopped up sentence fragments, riddled with acronyms and emojis.  We post social media outrage that makes us feel better but does not move anyone or anything (except perhaps our own heartburn).

Paul offers us another way to change hearts and lives.  Paul leans on relationships, on his own carefully built and stewarded character among his friends, on persuasion based on deeply formed faith.  Paul speaks the truth, but always leans on love.  And Paul is willing, literally, to pay the price of his convictions.  Paul’s is, I think, the better way.  If we will emulate him in our faith, our interactions, and our insistence on what our faith requires of us and one another, we may find that we, like both Onesimus and Philemon, each in their own way, are set free. 

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[i] https://www.nps.gov/articles/-my-very-dear-wife-the-last-letter-of-major-sullivan-ballou.htm

[ii] See Galatians 3:28

(NOTE: The following essay was written by my twenty-one year old daughter, Eliza.–Barkley)

Mom and I were sitting at home one Sunday afternoon when the phone rang. “You have to come down to the church and see this dog,” my dad demanded as he stood in the courtyard of Christ Church Cathedral’s annual Blessing of the Animals. Of course, within five minutes we hopped in the car and were on our way. Low and behold, we saw a golden, practically glowing, young pup with a wrinkled face and glitter bandana reading “adopt me”.

Now, I would be lying if I said this was the kind of dog I was expecting to meet. My dad was (and still is) a full blown beagle enthusiast. Our elderly dog, Wrigley, was a purebred warfieldred beagle and our other pup Maggie was a “beagle of sorts,” you could say. My nine year old brain didn’t even consider our family welcoming any other dog than a hound. However this pup, named Mira, had eyes that stared right into your soul. Mira was found abandoned in Houston’s 5th ward, battered, bruised, and hairless. A selfless UPS driver scooped her up and nursed her back to health. There isn’t a love richer than that of a rescue dog, and my parents couldn’t resist. The following week Mira arrived at our house for her “trial period” and never left.

During our first few years together, Mira would run and play constantly with Maggie, while terrorizing poor old Wrigley. She would frequent nights in my bed cuddled within my mound of stuffed animals. At our ranch, Mourning Dove, Mira was your most loyal companion, sticking by your side at all times and protecting you from all the “dangers” that might appear from the tall weeds. She also, on occasion, would join Maggie in chasing and herding the cows running the land.

As incredible as she was, I didn’t truly understand the magnitude of Mira’s love until the tragic passing of Maggie. Mira lost her best friend, and as a result we created a newfound friendship with each other. We became inseparable. When I would cry, she was there to check on me. When I was excited, she sensed my feelings and joined in on the celebration. Her love radiated through her and had the power to change the tone of an entire room. A soulmate isn’t always a romantic partner, maybe not even a human being. I truly came to believe that Mira was my soulmate, and she was meant to be in my life.

Not too long ago, my dad and I sat in the living room discussing the Harry Potter saga. In result, the question arose, “If you had a patronus, what would it be?” A patronus watches over you, guards, and protects. Everyone’s patronus is different, unique to them and only them. I didn’t even have to think. “Mira is my patronus!” I exclaimed. “She is always there. Even when we aren’t together, she’s always with me.” Of course dad immediately responded, “My patronus is a beagle.”

During the past few years Mira never showed her age, but within the past few weeks she stopped eating completely. It started with slow, small bites but later escalated to no food at all (with the exception of a few treats here and there). Deep down, we all knew this was the end. It was going on day seven of no meal when my parents decided it was Mira’s time to go to heaven. I am devastated. I’ve lost my soulmate. However, I will never lose my patronus. Up in heaven, Mira has a front row seat to the story of my life.

Mira, you’ve always been my soulmate, my patronus. Now, you’re my guardian angel too.

In 1956, RCA released a song written by Eddy Arnold and Cindy Walker.  It was a poignant tune, but it was mostly ignored until six years later when it found the perfect voice in Ray Charles.  When Charles sang, listeners were captivated.  The song catapulted to number two on Billboard’s Hot 100 Chart.  Records flew off the shelves.  And obsession with the song didn’t end there, or ever for that matter.  After Ray Charles’ version, the song was re-recorded by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Kenny Rogers, Michael Buble, Alison Krauss…In all, versions of the song have been released by more than sixty artists.  Meryl Streep even sang it in the 1990 film Postcards from the Edge.  The song is “You Don’t Know Me”:

You give your hand to me, and then, you say hello
And I can hardly speak
My heart is beating so
And anyone can tell
You think you know me well
But you don’t know me…

The singer is talking about a love that got away, but I don’t think romance alone explains the song’s endurance.  Eddy Arnold’s song seems to me to speak of a much more essential human need, one that is never really met in human relationships of any kind.  Namely, we yearn—desperately—to be known. 

This is confirmed by musical artists in each generation, as singers and songwriters continue to pick up Eddy Arnold’s theme.  In 2006, the Indie Pop band The Weepies released “Nobody Knows Me at All,” which begins:

When I was a child, everybody smiled, nobody knows me at all.

Very late at night and in the morning light, nobody knows me at all.

I got a lot of friends, yes, but then again, nobody knows me at all.

Kids and a wife, a beautiful life, nobody knows me at all.

And just this past May, rapper and singer Post Malone released a song entitled “Nobody Knows Me.”  I will not try to sing Post Malone, but the song lyrics include, “All these people in my life, still I feel unknown.”

To be known.  At the end of the day, it is the deepest human desire.  How much of our frustration with those closest to us in life stems from our experience of being misunderstood by them.  They misread or mistake our intentions, our motives, our anxieties, our hopes.  With daily instances whose rough edges never smooth, we realize repeatedly to our hurt and sorrow that, despite years and intimacy, our friends and loved ones don’t truly, fully know us. 

In another parish I once buried a parishioner who had been married fifty-eight years and raised four children with his wife.  When I met with his widow to plan the funeral and asked her to share stories of her husband, she looked at me and said in surprised wonder, “I’m not sure I ever really knew him.”  That realization shocked her almost as much as her husband’s death.

Equally surprising is the realization that, just as others do not know us, we do not know ourselves.  We self-delude; we obfuscate; we weave false narratives; we are willfully un-self-reflective.  The proof of this is that 30% of Americans actively engage in therapy in the attempt to better know and understand themselves[i].  (And that includes me, by the way.  I believe wholeheartedly in therapy.)

Is our existential desire to be known hopeless?  If we cannot even know ourselves, it is conceivable that anyone, anywhere can know us as we are, in the fullness of our being?

Our desire is not hopeless.  In our Old Testament reading today, the very voice of God comes to Jeremiah.  Before God says anything else to Jeremiah, before God commands or commissions, God says, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born, I consecrated you.”

Let that sink in.  The Creator of heaven and earth, the one who knit the stars in the blanket of the sky, the Alpha and the Omega whose purposes are mysterious even to the angels knows you.  When you are misunderstood by those closest to you, when you lack understanding even of yourself, God knows you.  As we say of God in the Collect for Purity at the outset of every Holy Eucharist, “to you all hearts are open, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid.”[ii]

I wonder, though, whether this strikes us as a relief or a terror?  If there are things about me that I so don’t want to know that I self-delude and suppress them, do I really want God knowing them?  What if God, upon knowing me, rejects or condemns me?

The opening verses of Jeremiah address these questions, too.  Jeremiah immediately protests that God must not know him after all.  Jeremiah claims immaturity, fallibility, and unworthiness to be known by God.  But God will have nothing of it.  God says to this unsure man who will become one of Israel’s greatest prophets, “Do not say, ‘I am only a boy,’ for you, Jeremiah, shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you.  Do not be afraid, for I am with you to deliver you.”

In other words, God knows Jeremiah and each of us so well that God knows better than we do who we are.  And even so, God consecrates us—we can translate that as chooses us—even when we think we are unworthy.  Bishop Mariann Budde says, “Whenever God…issues [a] summons, it’s normal to feel both unworthy and unprepared, but it doesn’t matter,”[iii] because God knows us.  God never rejects; God embraces and redeems.  And God has plans for us, things God calls each of us to do to further God’s great project of grace in the world, because God knows what we can accomplish and what we can endure.

It’s a lot to take in, the shift from “Nobody know me at all” to “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you.”  We have always been known, and by a love greater than we can imagine.  We are embraced by that love, no matter our flaws and failings, so that, like Jeremiah, we can become in the world the people God knows us essentially to be.          

If God knows us and embraces us come what may, then surely we can face the entirety of ourselves without subterfuge and without flinching.  And once we’ve done that, we can with confidence reveal more of our true selves to those in our lives and encourage them to do so as well, becoming more transparent, more vulnerable, and more authentic in all our relationships.  Then, our lives will begin more fully to reflect the kingdom of God, which Jeremiah proclaimed in hope so many eons ago. 

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[i] https://mydenvertherapy.com/therapy-mental-health-statistics/

[ii] Book of Common Prayer, 355.

[iii] Budde, Mariann Edgar. How We Learn to be Brave, 116.