Third Sunday of Lent; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25, John 2:13-22

I wonder, have any of you noticed the weather? (I can’t believe I’m asking a room full of Minnesotans that question. Do we ever not notice the weather?) But this weather… May I say, “wow!, not to mention ‘thanks be to God” It got to almost 60 yesterday, beautiful, bright sunshine. And it looks like it’ll be just as phenomenal today. Makes you think about spring cleaning. Opening up the windows, letting that fresh, clean air rush in, and all the dust and cobwebs and stale detritus of the winter flow out.

In Jesus time, it was Passover cleaning. At Passover, traditionally, the home would be cleaned, every inch. Every bit of dust eradicated, every spare morsel of food consumed or thrown away. All the physical detritus and waste of the household would be systematically eliminated.

We are near Passover today as we join Jesus, and he is engaged in some serious housecleaning. The disciples have been called, and have responded to something deeply compelling in this extraordinary rabbi. Already, he has prophesied and spoken authoritatively of things they can barely fathom. They have witnessed the conversion of water to wine in the wedding in Cana. Now they travel to the temple with Jesus.

Understand, saying that they go to the temple is not like saying they go to church on Sunday. Before the temple’s destruction, it was a place of worship, certainly, but so much more. The temple was at the very center of Jewish faith. The temple was not just a house of God, it was God’s house, his pad, his home address, whereabout He put up His divine feet of an evening and settled in for a spot of tea.

The temple was where one came to participate in the complex system of tithes and sacrifices demanded of the pious Jew. Sacrifices required unblemished animals of sundry varieties – who can manage an entire pilgrimage with an unblemished animal? So there must be vendors at the site – a place to acquire such an animal. And you can’t pay for a sacrifice to God with a coin bearing the image of the false God, the emperor Caesar. But that is what you have – it’s the coin of the realm. So there need to be money changers there, to change your tainted coins for Tyrian shekel, with no visage on the coin. It’s noisy. It’s crowded. It’s what must be in order to do the right sacrificial thing.

The disciples are devout people accompanying this charismatic, extraordinary Rabbi to the holiest place they know.

Can you imagine their reaction to Jesus’s dramatic outburst? This gentle, devout man of glorious, flowing, divine ideas goes stark raving mad, seemingly. We call this the “cleansing of the temple”, which has such a wholesome sound to it, but His acts scream of anger and violence. He bodily throws tables. Money soars through the air, feathers are flying. The man brandishes a whip. A WHIP, for heaven’s sake.

This is not gentle Jesus, meek and mild, and it’s a bit, unnerving. We like our kind, sweet Jesus, healer, protector, always in our corner, aways on our side when we’re down. We like that Jesus. This guy we’re seeing today, well, he’s not very nice, is he? These people are following the rules, doing their best to make sure that the system keeps running, enabling everybody else to do the “right” thing. Maybe the worship gets a little lost, but the institution gets protected.

Consider the possibility that this is disturbing because it forces us to confront the notion that following Jesus is not about being nice. In fact, as Father Richard Rohr points out, “….the word ‘nice’ is not in the New Testament. Not once.”

All four of the Gospels contain this story, with slight variations. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, the story occurs at the end of Jesus’ ministry, soon before he is arrested and eventually crucified. The event makes sense historically in that part of Jesus’ ministry as it would likely bring various authorities, already in tension with Jesus’ message to the breaking point. John, however, places it very early in Jesus’ ministry. It’s unlikely that there were 2 such events, and unlikely that John simply goofed. He put the story here, at the beginning, to tell us who Jesus is. Jesus is God. As such, He is the disrupter, the radical, the passionate advocate of clearing out all the detritus that stands between God’s people and God.

Lent is a time of spiritual housecleaning. A time when we, individually and as a church, can clear away the detritus that stands between us and God. As we saw with the Temple, this most likely is not a matter of rooting out the deep evil core. The money changers and the merchants served a purpose, keeping the institution going. But the whole system had fallen into these comfortable habits that served to keep the institution running, and failed to realize that those habits had become a block to the worship of God, clogging the courtyard, excluding the poor and the unclean, providing a venue for arrogance and corruption. What comfortable habits do we as individuals fall into that block the worship of God? What comfortable habits do we, as a church, mindlessly maintain that may block access to the poor, the lost, the lonely, the “different”?

Like at the temple, this spiritual housecleaning may not be a sweet, pretty, gentle process. We go through our daily lives, dependent on our habitual rhythms and our pre-conceived notions of God and right. It seems insane to give up those things which are comfortable and fit us well. And yet, “We must,” as theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.” We must embrace “God’s foolishness (which) is wiser than human wisdom.” Expend the spiritual, emotional effort to purge the debris that has arisen between yourself and God. Dare a flash of anger at the institutionalized wisdom that hampers any person’s access to the words of everlasting life.

anna murdock writes, “When tables are overturned and money is scattered, when righteous indignation of our Lord is seen and heard, the least, the lost and the lonely become visible and we become a voice in their gouging world.

When tables are overturned, we might begin to overturn shattered
lives. When feathers fly, we might begin to soar.”

Praise be to God!

Amen

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Second Sunday of Lent; Mark 8:31-38

I do feel bad for Peter. Peter, who rarely seems to open his mouth without putting his foot in it, finally got the right answer. In last week’s lesson, which occurs in the scripture just before our reading today, Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you think that I am?” Peter finally gets the right answer, “You are the Messiah.” He has no time to bask in finally getting it right. Jesus swears the disciples to secrecy on that subject and goes on to describe what that means. As he does so, Peter learns that he did not have it so “right” after all. The Messiah is the savior. For a first century Jew that meant the one who would break the yoke of Roman control on Judaism. The mighty conquerer. The one who would restore Israel to all her former glory. Peter and the other disciples pinned all their hopes on Jesus to be the one who led that charge.

So what was this that their proposed savior was saying? “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” No, wait, that’s not right. That’s not right at all. “Be killed.” is definitely NOT part of the plan. Peter apparently missed the “rise again” part entirely. We tend to gloss over things that we don’t understand, I imagine Peter did the same. Never one to keep his thoughts to himself, he let Jesus know he should cool it with the suffering and death talk.

Peter had it wrong again. Peter was thinking in terms of the here and now, earthly power and earthly reward. Jesus redirects his thinking.

Jesus speaks now to the crowd, not just to a select few. This is an invitation to all who would hear. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” This is an eminently disagreeable invitation.

The cross has powerful meaning to us as we look back at it from a post Easter perspective. We see it in the post-Easter light of the resurrection. It had powerful meaning to the disciples and the crowd as well. It was one of the predominant tools of public torture and execution utilized by the mighty Roman Empire, and Empire which did not take kindly to upstarts, rebels or threats of any kind to their established order.

Those who would follow Jesus looked to him to overthrow the Empire; he offered them a gruesome death on the cross. Over time the disciples came to set their minds on divine things. They worked and lived and died for the sake of the good news. It could not have seemed like good news that day, as they were forced to dismantle their preconceived, very human notions of what it meant to follow the Son of Man.

In his work, “Whistling in the Dark” theologian Frederick Buechner posits that after he was baptized in the river Jordan, Jesus spent forty days in the wilderness asking himself the question of what it meant to be Jesus. During the 40 days of Lent Christians should ask themselves what it means to be Christians. (Feasting on the Word)

Deny yourself.
Take up your cross.
Follow me.

This must have sounded horrible to 1st century ears. It has been abused since then. This formula was used to quell the restlessness of slaves in pre-civil war America. Slavery was their cross, they were told. Their reward would come in heaven. The poor have at various times been told the same thing. The reward will come. Abused wives were given the same advice, “deny yourself”, this is what Christ would want. This is your cross to bear. (Renee Rico – Midrash discussion, 2012)

Is that really what Jesus meant? Didn’t Jesus speak for the poor, the weak, the ill, the marginalized?

Jesus didn’t mean to submit to being abused, or enslaved, or marginalized for the sake of being abused. He bid us to take up the cross before us, not to carry a meaningless burden thrust upon us. “Those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” His ministry, his life, his good news was a message of life, of truth, of love, not of suffering for the sake of suffering.

It is unlikely, I hope, that any of us will actually be asked to give up our physical lives to follow Christ. That doesn’t mean we get to sit back and think, “Gosh, sure glad that era’s over”, and remain otherwise unchanged.

Deny yourself
Take up your cross
Follow me

I heard a story this week of a young man in East Germany (before the wall came down) who chose, at the age of 14, to be confirmed in his church, in this officially atheist country. We was the only confirmand in his town. He chose to follow Christ when it was politically, socially, culturally the “wrong” path. (Nancy Price – Midrash discussion, 2012)

I heard a story this week of a 5 year old who agreed to give a transfusion that might save his critically ill sister. Partway through the procedure he asked if he would begin to die soon. He hadn’t understood that the transfusion allowed them both to live, he just knew that his sister needed what he had, and so he gave it.

They denied themselves for the sake of Christ, for the sake of love.

Christ’s cross was a cross of sacrifice, a cross of selfless love. Will we pick up our own crosses and follow Him?

We have daily opportunities to give ourselves in the service of love, compassion, justice, peace. The stories I mention are touching, but not unique. You had a chance last week to serve a wonderful soup supper to benefit the hungry. You had a chance last week to stop some ugly gossip, or to call your congressperson about an unjust practice. You had a chance to pray, when you might have preferred a good mystery novel. You had a chance to lend a listening ear, or to hold an angry tongue. You had a chance to turn off the TV of an evening and call someone who would otherwise be lonely. You will have those chances again. It may mean giving up status, or wealth, or time, or security, or more. Jesus does not promise us easy, he promises us life.

As we ask ourselves during this 40 day Lenten journey what it means to be Christian, may God grant us the strength and courage to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Christ in our daily lives.

Thanks be to God.

Amen

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Fourth Sunday after Epiphany; Deuteronomy 18:15-20, Psalm 111, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, Mark 1:21-28

Oh man. Idol worship. Sacrificed meat. Exorcising demons. Not a comfortable set of lessons for an enlightened group of 21st century folks. Meat is meat – you can argue whether or not it is good for you, but not from a spiritual standpoint. Demons, well, thanks to medical science, we know that convulsions aren’t caused by evil spirits and we don’t spend much time or energy trying to exorcise epileptics. Or maybe these lesson are actually too comfortable for us. We pull out our modern cultural perspective and dismiss these readings as the products of a pre-science world and neglect to find what the message is for us.

Fred Craddock is a famous homiletics professor. He tells the story of a young minister. Fresh from seminary. He’s new and nervous and wants to do everything right. He is called to his first parish and eventually is called to make a pastoral call to an ailing, elderly pillar of the church. The woman had severe chronic respiratory issues and has contracted pneumonia as well. There is no hope for her recovery. The family calls this young, inexperienced, sincere new minister to pray with her, anoint her, give her a last communion. On the ride over he agonizes over the words to say, how to give comfort to this dying woman, prays that he can communicate God’s love to her.

He comes to the woman’s room. She is frail and ill. They chat for a bit, nothing earth shattering, and eventually he asks if she would like him to pray for her. “Well, of course, that’s what I wanted you to come for.” He then politely asks, “And what would you like me to pray for?” The old woman looks him straight in the eye and says, “I want you to pray that God will heal me.”

The young pastor is a bit surprised by the answer – doesn’t she know that she is dying? Flustered, he takes her hands and starts fumbling over the words. Somewhere in the flurry of words he ends up praying for what she asked – that God would heal her. When he finally says the Amen at the end of the prayer, the woman says, “You know, I think it worked! I think I’m healed!” And she gets out of bed and begins to run up and down the hallway of the hospital yelling, “Praise God! I’m healed! Praise God! I’m healed!”

Meanwhile, the young pastor stumbles to the stairwell, makes his way to the parking lot and somehow manages to find his car. As he fumbles to get his keys out of his pocket, he slumps back in the seat and looks heavenward and yells, “Don’t you ever do that to me again!”

That poor minister. He “knew” things didn’t work that way. Knowledge puffs up, and the poor man was deflated. Great are the works of the LORD.

We do so love to be right. To be in the know. Not just to know things, but to know more than the other guy. Paul says, anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge. It’s the Pauline version of Robert McKloskey’s, “I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

The Corinthians knew that idols meant nothing in the face of the one true God. They knew meat was just…meat. Paul didn’t argue with that truth. The Corinthians use this “knowledge” in a game of one-upsmanship with their “brothers” who followed their consciences to deny themselves the tainted treat. Paul struggles to explain that “right” is not the issue. Love is the issue. Knowledge can steer you wrong. We must meet our brothers and sisters where they live, and love them.

Doesn’t apply to us? Sacrificed meat not such a divisive issue? How about creationism? Literal biblical interpretation? Gay marriage? Agnosticism? Women in ministry? Using contemporary words to the Lord’s prayer? We all have opinions. And we all know we’re right.

Have you heard of the Episcopal Story Project? It is a new effort to collect the stories of Episcopalians on line. It’s just starting up, and just has a few entries. One is from Mark Osler, an attorney, who is talking about how to have a meaningful conversation about a controversial topic. I won’t repeat the whole speech. (It’s worth taking a look at). Pertinent to today, he talks about a technique used by attorneys. When there is an exhibit to look at, they have two choices. They can stand behind it, thus (demonstrating), and show it to the jury. Or they can place it up front, walk to the jury, turn around and say, “Let’s look at this together”. It’s a visual cue for what needs to happen for people to connect. “What you have to do is walk to them, turn around, and walk with them, back to where you want to go.” It’s a walk across the courtroom for the attorney. It’s a journey of love for us. A transformative process for everyone involved. As Maya Angelou said “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Jesus went to the synagogue, the place where his brothers and sisters would have gathered every week, not just to worship, but as a way of life. He spoke, and they knew his authority, just from his few words. The scribes had knowledge. They knew what was “right”. Jesus’s authority doesn’t spring from what he knows, or from being correct. Presumably he was – we don’t even know what he taught that day. Jesus joined them where they were, right or wrong, enlightened or not, with such demons as they carried. The love of God flowed through him, the Holy One of God, and with it came authority and healing.

Great are the works of the LORD!

Let the love of God flow through you. You don’t have to change your convictions. Truth is still truth. Just let God’s love greet your brothers and sisters where they are, with all their new-fangled or old fashioned ideas, all their demons, all their issues. You are God’s messenger, God’s prophet. Remember, they will forget what you say, forget what you do, but they will never forget how you made them feel.

Great are the works of the LORD! Praise be to God.

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Third Sunday after Epiphany, Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Mark 1:14-20

What would make you stop your life as you know it and follow a completely different path? A new job? A new life partner? A promise of another climate? A better living situation? How about a seemingly random summons from an itinerant carpenter with no promises of security, safety, social acceptance, or even a bed to sleep in? It was enough for Simon, Andrew, James and John. Jesus called to them;
offered them a completely impossible life. They dropped their lives, their identities and they followed him.

I don’t know about you, but I reluctantly find myself identifying much more with the more practical, less compliant Jonah.

We didn’t read the whole story of Jonah this morning. You all know the story, though, right? Abbreviated version: God says to Jonah, “Jonah, I’ve got a job for you to do.” Jonah says, “Um, what?” God says, “Go to Ninevah, tell them they’ve got it all wrong and they should change it up”. Jonah says, “You want me to go a city that embodies pure evil, one that I would happily see wiped from the face of the earth, a place where they would just as soon kill me as look at me and say, ‘Oops, sorry folks, completely change the essence of your being or be destroyed’. Uh, yeah, sure, God, I’ll get right on that.”

Except that Jonah doesn’t go to Ninevah, he hops a ship to Tarshish – closest thing he could figure to the end of the earth. A horrendous storm blows up and the sailors say, “You’re a God person. Talk to God and get us out of this.” Jonah says, “Yeah, God and I are not getting along all that well right now. Actually, I pretty much disobeyed a direct order and am presently AWOL.” “Right then”, say the sailors, “out you go.” They toss him off the ship, where he’s eaten by a great monster of a fish.

Three days in the digestive tract of a fish gives a person plenty of time to work on their spiritual life with very few distractions. So Jonah prays. A lot. God finally decides Jonah’s had enough and the fish vomits him unceremoniously on land. “Ok, then, Jonah, let’s try this again” says God. “Go…to…Ninevah.” That is where we join the story today. Jonah goes, delivers the message as succinctly as possible, “You’ve got 40 days, then you’re toast.” Ninevah as a whole believes him, and that quintessential seat of evil does a complete 180 right down to the sackcloth and ashes. And God spares them.

The story of Jonah is usually told with a whale playing the role of the “great fish” but the scriptures are not specific and scholars doubt it was actually a whale. A number of more likely species have been suggested, as outlined by specialist Brian Donst. One possibility that has been proposed is Icthusius apathensis, an overwhelmingly large, oblivious fish with the common name of Large-apathy bass. A related possibility is the Ichthusius privatus paradiso. This prolific fish, more commonly known as the “Feather-my-nest fish” is often found indoors in huge rooms with vaulted ceilings nestled among more things than can possibly ever be useful. Consideration must also be given to Fishensius frightensius; also known as the Timid Fish or the “What-can-I-Do Walleye”. This interesting creature is known for swimming away from any kind of turbulence, apparently feeling inadequate to negotiate any kind of troubled water. Interestingly, if thrown into rough waters the Timid Fish typically functions quite reasonably. Perhaps the strongest contender in Jonah’s case is the great Rightensiusindignatus. According to Donst “a very ancient fish that somehow always swims upward and in straight lines and looks either sorrowfully or disdainfully at more wayward fish around it that seem to be swimming in unhealthy ways, but doesn’t really get involved with them, just watches them swim to their end.”

You may hear people question whether this could actually happen. Could a human being actually spend 3 days in the bellies of one of these beasts, and live to tell the tale? All these fish are alive and swimming in today’s world, and I am here to tell you from personal experience that we humans can spend days, months, even years in the bellies of these and similar beasts, seemingly cut off from God and God’s world. It happens every day. And although the process of exiting the beasts may not be pretty, we can survive it, and God still has this job for us to do when we escape.

We know very little about the fishermen Mark describes before Jesus called out their names with his preposterous proposal. They may well have wrestled with the species I’ve described. We do know that they were working men with families and livelihoods and presumably all the messiness and confusion in their lives that has always accompanied the human condition. These were not young kids following a crazy fad, or people with nothing to lose. Yet they responded “immediately” to Jesus’s summons, leaving hearth, home and family.

Poet Timothy Haut writes:

A distant bell rings
Through the morning fog.
There is the slap of nets on water,
And a sudden flurry of birds
Stirring the sky.
The two fishermen are weary
Though the day is just beginning.
They sense that the seasons of their lives
Are slipping away,
Like silver fish seeking
Deeper water.
They can not see beyond the horizon–
Not the farther shore of the sea,
The green hills where a strange world is hidden,
And not the uncertain shores
Of their own mysterious lives.
Something has stirred in them, too,
This voice calling them,
This presence casting a net over their hearts,
Tugging them somewhere
Yet to be discovered.
“You will always be fishing,” the man had said,
“But it will not just be fish that you seek.”
The brothers feel the sun
Shining on their sweating faces.
They know that whatever will come,
They are in it together.
The younger one shades his eyes,
Squints at the man coming down the road,
Waving toward them.
They are caught by love.

Remember that God’s love is with us, even when we languish in the bellies of our own personal monsters. Jesus asks for nothing less than our lives, and offered nothing less than his own in the service of that great love. Listen for your name. Know that God is calling you. As that call becomes clear, you may have to forgive yourself a brief Jonah moment of “Who me? You want me to do WHAT?” But then drop your net and open your heart and follow the love that is Jesus Christ. After all, you may not be called to go to Ninevah, you may be called to go fishing. And oh, what a fishing trip it will be….

Thanks be to God!

Amen

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Epiphany; Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12

This morning we celebrate Epiphany. Epiphanies (with a lower case “e”), as opposed to slow, plodding, deliberate work, have been touted as the movers and shakers of big ideas. If we stay, for the moment, outside the religious realm, Archimedes provides one of the most famous examples. Archimedes was a Greek mathematician, inventor, engineer and physicist who lived a couple hundred years before Jesus was born. Archimedes was placed in the awkward position of figuring out whether a gift to a king, a crown, was real gold or something cheaper and less dense. This happened a couple thousand years before mass spectrometry came around, and in those days, an object needed to be a nice regular shape to figure out its volume and thereby calculate its density. Archimedes was in a bad spot though, because it was considered very bad form to melt down the king’s crown to see if it was made on the cheap. Archimedes struggled with the issue, and struggled with it, and finally went off to take a bath, without solving the question. When he got in the bath, he happened to notice the water rose as he sat down, and suddenly realized that the volume of the water moved would be the same as the volume of the thing put in the water. His problem was solved. Legend has it, he was so excited he jumped out of the bath and ran down the streets stark naked, yelling “Eureka!”

Isaac Newton is famously said to have experienced a similar dramatic experience of an unexpected truth suddenly becoming obvious when he got conked on the noggin by an apple and suddenly put the whole radical gravity idea together. As far as I have heard tell, at least Newton managed to keep his clothes on in the process.

Epiphany (from the ancient Greek, “showing” or “manifestation”) is the sudden realization or comprehension of the (larger) essence or meaning of something. We kind of like the idea of epiphanies, because they seem to suggest that nothing more is required of us than to take a nice relaxing bath, or sit under an apple tree and truth in all its glory will be revealed. But it turns out that Archimedes and Newton did a great deal of thinking and work and study before that inspiring bath, and before the fateful apple – head bonking.

Our Holy Day “Epiphany” (Epiphany with a capital “E”) is another sort of “showing”. In this case it is the manifestation of the babe Jesus to the Gentiles, in the form of the wise men, as the King, the Son of God.

We know very little about the wise men, the Magi, not even how many there were (all the songs and stories notwithstanding). The Gospel makes it clear there were more than one, but never gives a number. They were probably followers of Zoroastrianism, well known and, in their day, respected astrologers. They were looking for something. They were diligent and disciplined and they looked in the only way that they knew, by watching the stars. Eventually their discipline and dedication led them on a long, uncomfortable journey. After an awkward encounter with the powerful, ambitious and brutal Herod, they followed their beacon in the darkness to something they never expected, an ordinary infant resting in the arms of a teenage mother in an ordinary stable. This combination does not sound like a recipe for success in the world of royalty, but clearly the wise men recognized the truth of Jesus’ kingship immediately: “They were overwhelmed with joy… they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

(The gifts, incidentally, have developed their own symbolism in relation to Jesus’ life: gold for kingship, frankincense, a type of incense for deity, and myrrh, an ointment used for preparation for burial, symbolizes sorrow and death. But I digress)

“Arise, shine; for your light has come, and the glory of the LORD has risen upon you.” This sounds like such a gift, and indeed it is. But this is not the sort of gift that you sit and wait for, where the only work required is to unwrap it when it arrives under the tree.

Like Archimedes before them and Newton many centuries later, the magi studied, worked, observed. When there was action to be taken, the magi took it, traveling at least 300 hot, dusty miles west to follow the light. When they experienced truth, they were open enough to recognize it and cherish it, although it could not have been in the form they were expecting.

The magi’s journey was not the same as that of Mary and Joseph, or of Matthew’s jewish listeners. The magi could not have found God incarnate by studying the Torah or listening to angels in a dream. Those things would not have made sense to them. They did their spiritual work in another way.

My journey is not your journey, and I cannot tell you what work needs to be done in your journey, only that there is work. Prayer, study, deliberate mindfulness, a helping hand to a neighbor, extending welcome to a stranger. You must discover what furthers your journey. Not what is easy, but what brings you closer to Emmanuel, to God with us.

Understand that in your journey you may need to cross uncomfortable spiritual deserts. Understand that you may need to ask directions along the way. Understand that when the epiphanies come (not “if”, “when”), they may not be in the form that you expect, or resemble what you might want. Understand that, like the magi, who “left by another road” after paying homage to the infant king, your course will be forever changed. One does not meet God and remain unchanged. Nonetheless, let us heed the voice of the prophet Isaiah, “Lift up your eyes and look around…Then you shall see and be radiant; your heart shall thrill and rejoice.”

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First Sunday after Christmas; Isaiah 61:10-62:3, Galatians 4:4-7, Luke 2:22-40

Well, here we are, we’ve done it. Christmas day is done and gone. The waiting days of Advent, pregnant with anticipation of the coming Christ, came to their climax in the celebration of Jesus’s birth Christmas Eve. Christmas dinner has been served, and all the dishes are cleaned. The shepherds have gone home with their sheep, and the cattle are lowing elsewhere. The aisles and aisles of Christmas finery in the stores have been packed away in some stores and deeply discounted in others to make room for Valentine’s and Easter displays. It’s a time that leaves us in danger of feeling shiftless, ungrounded, even let down. You wonder if Mary and Joseph felt that as they took on their new parental responsibilities. New, young parents. Traveling, yet again, this time to the temple, for Mary’s purification (a ritual required of all observant Jewish women after all that messy childbirth business), and to offer sacrifice for their first born. It’s the spiritual equivalent of post partum depression, as we face an ending and a return to “normal life” (whatever that is), where we had for so long anticipated a beginning, and new life.

Fortunately, we have Paul today to rescue us from any sense of ennui. Paul brings us back to Christmas with his own birth narrative, “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law.” No census, no mangers, no shepherds, no angels. Simply this, the time was right and God offered this incomparable gift, born of us, to be one of us, to share and live with us. Paul goes on to explain the real implication of this – God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” “Abba” is the aramaic equivalent of “Daddy”, or “Papa”. We know it from the intimate prayer of Jesus to his Father as he approaches the day of his death. The point of Jesus coming, being born human, if we are to believe Paul, is that we might know ourselves as children of God.

God’s son was born into financial poverty. The rather famous conditions of his birth itself suggest that. That could, theoretically, have had as much to do with a crowded town as a lack of means. But in the aftermath of that first Christmas Mary and Joseph get back to the business of the day, offering two turtle doves (or pigeons) in sacrifice for their firstborn as required by the law. If they had money or means, the law would have required a lamb.

I had the opportunity yesterday to meet a young family who, in the wake of Christmas, had nothing. Through a variety of circumstances this family found themselves without a home, without means of support, without food, simply without. They were hungry, and did not know where to turn. They met someone else, who had a house that they could use. Now they are warm and dry and together. The person with the house knew people who could spare food and furniture and books. Now this wonderful little family can sit together at the dinner table. They have something to put on the dinner table to eat. Out of the ashes of their old, broken lives, a new life is beginning. God’s work was done in their lives. The work was not done as part of any church, or organization, just one child of God serving other children of God.

This is not the time to lament the endings. This is the time to be about God’s work. To join with Simeon in blessing the Holy One. To join with Anna in praising God. To be the gifted children that God has created us to be. To bring God’s graciousness and love into all his children’s lives.

Today marks the new year, a new beginning. By all means, take a breath and recoup from the chaos and emotional pull of Christmas. But breathe in the reality of Christmas, do not blow it away. In these quiet minutes (there may not be many), let the echo of intimate connection with God, “Abba, Father”, echo in your heart. “As the prayers of Jesus are formed in us they form us, shape our faith and faithfulness. When we pray the prayer of Jesus and profess the faith of Jesus, we begin to do the works of Jesus… And all of this as God’s once and abiding Christmas present to the world.” (THOMAS R. STEAGALD)

“I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my whole being shall exult in my God” Amen.

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STW121111.doc

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STW121111.doc

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Christmas Day; John 1: 1-14

“Jesus is the reason for the season.” A popular catch phrase, meant to remind us that Christmas is not all about sales and glitter and food and presents. I was reminded the other day that some would claim that the tilt of the earth on its axis in the reason for the season. While that comment was intended as the comeback of the secular to the religious, my friendly neighborhood secularist was not wrong. Obviously, he is not wrong from a scientific perspective. The tilt of the earth on its axis is, in fact, largely responsible for the seasons. But he was not even wrong from a religious perspective.

According to former Episcopal Bishop Frederich Borsch, “There is no evidence of any kind regarding the date of Jesus’ birth. His nativity began to be celebrated on Dec. 25 in Rome during the early part of the fourth century (AD 336) as a Christian counterpart to the pagan festival, popular among the worshipers of Mithras, called Sol Invictis, the Unconquerable Sun. At the very moment when the days are the shortest and darkness seems to have conquered light, the sun passes its nadir. Days grow longer, and although the cold will only increase for quite a long time, the ultimate conquest of winter is sure. This astronomical process is a parable of the career of the Incarnate One. At the moment when history is blackest, and in the least expected and [least] obvious place, the Son of God is born…”

John would not have known of Christmas celebrations – they started long after he was gone, and they probably wouldn’t have made much sense to him in their current form – but he did know about the importance of light.

Yesterday evening we heard the familiar Christmas story from Luke’s perspective. It’s a beautiful story, complete with radiant, beaming new mother, attentive, caring father, cherubic infant. The angels sing and the shepherds keep watch, and all the world sings God’s praise. The images and emotions evoked are warm and tender and loving.

John, however, is not a storyteller. John is a mystic. John is a poet. John is not a romantic.

John begins his Gospel earlier than any of the others. Mark begins with John the Baptist. Matthew tells us of Jesus’s genealogy, Luke carefully places Jesus’s birth in place and time. There’s good evidence that John had access to Mark, Matthew and Luke’s materials. He knew about the wise men and the sheep and the sweet baby and all the rest. But, for John, that is not the beginning.

John begins at the beginning. Before Genesis. When Christmas really starts. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. As the Rev. James Ligget says, “using language evocative of Genesis, John begins by talking about the Word of God — the Word of God here is God in action, God creating, revealing, and redeeming. The Word was with God, and the Word was God.” And then he tells us the birth story. In nine words. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.”

With matter/energy transformations, time warps and tense shifts to give nightmares to physicists and English majors alike, John describes the indescribable. The Word that was before the beginning. The Word is with God. The Word is God. The Word is the true light. The Word is flesh, but through the Word made flesh, people of flesh might become children of God.

And so, as we pass the solstice, and our days grow longer (if not necessarily warmer), we celebrate the coming of the Light. God in Christ is with us still – the Word is eternal, the Light remains. If we open our eyes of our hearts to the light, we see God in the everyday – in shoveling snow, and in folding laundry, in the feast we share here and in dinners alone, in good-morning kisses and in good-bye hugs, in the moment we look into the eyes of one of the world’s outcasts and know that person is a child of God. As one commentator says, “It is why we aim to live the Christian life by not only talking about it or thinking about it, but by doing it—why our prayers are not only those of the heart, but those of the hands and the feet. (KIMBERLY BRACKEN LONG) May we live always in Light. May the light live always in us. Glory to God!

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