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Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany

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A More Excellent Way

Grace Church

Epiphany 4, 2010

January 31, 2010

I know that for most of us, our primary exposure to scripture comes on Sunday morning. A few of us might read the text more closely, study the bible either individually or in groups. Some of us are relatively familiar with the texts from Sunday School, but I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that most people who attend Episcopal Churches have at best a superficial knowledge of scripture. Now don’t get me wrong; I’m not criticizing you. If anything, I’m criticizing the church, and its lay clerical leadership, for not taking the education of children and adults seriously enough.

What that superficial knowledge of scripture leads to is a pretty fuzzy, incomplete, and misleading understanding of who Jesus was. Most of us have a picture of him in our minds as a nice guy, good teacher, who didn’t ruffle many feathers, or if he did, it was only because they needed to be. That image of Jesus as a nice guy may be so deeply engrained in us that when we hear stories like the gospel that was just read, we either miss the conflict entirely, or totally misinterpret it.

As I said last week, Luke dramatically alters this story of Jesus’ return to his hometown, moving it to the very beginning of his ministry, telling the reader what Jesus said, and shifting the focus away, at least slightly from the reception he receives there. Perhaps the most striking element in Luke’s story is that it seems as if Jesus goads the crowd into taking action against him. There’s an odd and abrupt shift of sentiment. Luke reports that all spoke well of him and were amazed at his gracious words.. Then the crowd asked, “Is not this Joseph’s son?”

It’s after that question that Jesus seems to provoke them. First he quotes the proverb, “Doctor, heal yourself;” and says that they will want him to do the sort of healings in Nazareth that he has done elsewhere. Instead of answering those objections directly, Jesus cites the two examples from Hebrew Scripture, the great prophets Elijah and Elisha, and their healing of two gentiles.

The meaning of this exchange is obscure. Does Jesus want to incite the crowd’s anger? Or is something else going? Is his challenge to them a response to the question, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” If we think back to what I said last week about the Isaiah text quoted by Jesus. It serves in Luke as what we could Jesus’ mission statement and his identity as Messiah is measured by the extent to which he preached good news to the poor, gave sight to the blind, etc. So, he is basically laying out his future ministry to his listeners, identifying himself as the Messiah, and declaring the year of the Lord’s favor. And the response from the crowd was not recognition that he is the Messiah, but recognition that he is one of their own, Joseph’s son. They are given everything they need to see him as the Messiah, but all they can see is the one who grew up among them.

Sometimes it is hard to see what’s in front of our eyes, and sometimes it’s hard to accept the message coming to us—whether that message is good news or bad. In fact, it’s often the case that the best news is the hardest to hear. Jesus came to Nazareth, proclaimed the year of the Lord’s favor, proclaiming, in other words, the coming of God’s reign. His listeners didn’t understand what he was talking about, but when he put it into words they could understand, they recoiled and resisted. When he mentioned Hebrew prophets healing gentiles, their ears closed up and they attacked him.

Accepting the new can be dangerous and scary. We don’t know what might happen down the road. We can’t see clearly into the future. For most of us, we’re pretty comfortable with doing things the way we’ve been doing them. They seem to work pretty well, after all.

But closer examination reveals that isn’t the case. I mentioned last Sunday some of the discussion the vestry had on our retreat two weeks ago. We talked about our vision for the future, and we also did some hard work laying out some of Grace’s strengths and weaknesses. Inevitably, as is always the case in such conversations, talk turned to the way things used to be. Long-time members can remember when our congregation was much larger, when we had a youth group of fifty members and a Sunday School that filled the education wing. Often, such reminiscences can turn into discussions of how we might get back to that time.

Well, the reality is that the world, Madison, and the church have changed dramatically. To make the point, I will use a very different example than Grace Church. A few years ago, I did some consulting work with a parish in the county seat of a largely rural county in South Carolina. Their congregation had declined significantly since the sixties, and they were hoping to turn things around. The mantra I heard repeatedly was “We’ve got to attract young families.” The county’s population was declining, because the textile mills that had provided employment had closed and there was around 20% unemployment. I did some demographic research and learned that something like a third of the children under age 18 lived in single-parent households. In other words, the chances of attracting two-parent families with stable employment were pretty low. If they wanted to be the church and grow, they were going to need to do some creative, and hard, thinking.

We at Grace need to do some hard thinking too. It’s easy for many of us to think back to the “good old days” of the fifties through the eighties when the church thrived. But those days are long gone. As I said, the world, Madison, and the church have changed. Many of these changes are gigantic—like the lessening role of religion in America and in Madison, increased ethnic diversity—I could cite dozens of things. Some of them may seem relatively insignificant, like the growing importance of Sunday as the only day when families can spend time together. We can do little or nothing about many of them, but taken together they mean that to expect the church to look like what it did thirty or forty years is not only unrealistic, it would lead to its complete irrelevance, and probably its death.

But still, we hold on to that vision of the past. It collides with the present and impedes our future. That is true for an individual parish like Grace. It’s also true for our denomination as a whole, and indeed for mainline Christianity. So what do we do? How do we capture a vision of the future, that brings what is best of our tradition forward and brings the life-giving message of the gospel into a new world?

Well, that’s the question. It may seem innocuous, but in fact, different answers to that question, different ways of approaching it, can lead to intense conflict. In a very profound way, conflict over that question is what has driven conflict within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican communion for a very long time and it threatens to tear our denomination and our global communion apart. But there can be, and often is, equally intense conflict on the local level. When facing such conflict, it’s important to remember that in spite of our differences, there are deep and lasting bonds that tie us together.

That’s what Paul is talking about in I Corinthians. The past few words we have read his famous analogy of the Christian community as the body of Christ, in which each member is of equal importance. He didn’t write that in a vacuum. In fact, the community of Corinth to which he was writing was embroiled in nasty conflict internally, but also externally, with Paul himself. He writes in order to hold that community together, and in order to preserve his relationship with it. That’s the context for today’s reading, the so-called love chapter.

He has just been saying that there is a variety of gifts, but the same spirit, varieties of services, but the same Lord, varieties of activities, but the same God. He uses the metaphor of the body to stress the organic relationship of all members in the community, the necessity of all, the importance of all. When he comes to the end of that discussion, he transitions from it by saying, “But let me show you a more excellent way.” And with that, he begins “Though I speak with the tongue of mortals and angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal.” Paul was talking about relationships within the body of Christ. Love is that which binds us together; indeed love creates the body of Christ.

But love is also the path showing our way into the future. We live in a culture in which it seems impossible to disagree and remain in relationship. Our political discourse is impoverished, little more than shrill rhetoric aimed at scoring points, whether that conflict is over healthcare or the Edgewater development. In the Episcopal Church it seems easier to walk away than to remain in conversation with those with whom we disagree. And for many, when there is conflict in a parish, we find it easier to leave than to stay and struggle. Yet, if we are to be the body of Christ, if we are to offer God’s Christ’s reconciling love to the world, there is no more excellent way, than to show that love in all that we do as God’s people in the world, as God’s people in this world.

The Year of the Lord’s Favor: Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year C

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The Year of the Lord’s Favor

Grace Church

Epiphany 3, 2010

January 24, 2010

Today’s lessons are all about great preaching. The lesson from Nehemiah is one we rarely hear; indeed, it comes from a book that is read only rarely in the three-year lectionary cycle. And since this is an Episcopal Church, probably none of you, unless you were raised in a different Christian tradition, could even find it in the bible. Still, it’s a great story, and an important one for the history of Judaism, and for the history of scripture itself.

For scholars think that this story captures one of the key moments in the development of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah. As I’ve mentioned before,  Babylon conquered the Kingdom of Judah and carried off the political and religious elite of that kingdom to exile in Babylon. Now in the ancient world, when you were conquered by another people, that pretty much proved that not only were they more powerful than you, but their gods were more powerful than yours, too. So most conquered peoples came to accept the religious superiority of their conquerors, along with the military and political superiority.

That didn’t happen to the exiles in Babylon. Instead, they began to rethink their theology, their faith, and sought a way to fit their experience into a new understanding of who God was. Along with that, they compiled and organized texts. Some they wrote in Babylon; others they brought with them. It was in exile in Babylon that most scholars believe much of the Hebrew Bible came to take something of the form we have today.

When they were released from exile, many returned to Jerusalem; among them Ezra and Nehemiah. They brought with them their new theological understanding, and these new scriptures. In today’s lesson from Nehemiah, we hear Ezra reading that text to the assembly of people. It took all morning, and he didn’t just read; he also interpreted the text.

The gospel story relates Luke’s version of Jesus’ first public sermon. Jesus has just been tempted in the wilderness and Luke reports that “filled with the power of the Spirit” Jesus begins his public ministry, a preaching tour through the synagogues of Galilee. Eventually, he finds his way back home in Nazareth. When he gets there, his reputation seems to have preceded him. He goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath (Luke tells us it was his custom, signaling to the reader that yes, Jesus is a good Jewish boy) and as is not unheard of for local boys made good; he is asked to perform. We can imagine that there’s quite a crowd in attendance; people want to know what the fuss is about, they’ve heard about Jesus’ activity in Capernaum and the other towns of Galilee.

So Jesus stands up, reads from the Torah, and sits down to interpret it. The text he reads is itself dramatic: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Now there’s a puzzle here. In the first place, this quotation is a combination of several verses from Isaiah 61 and 58 so we don’t know if the formula as it stands goes back to Luke or to Jesus himself, but it certainly wouldn’t have been a logical reading from scripture in the synagogue. The second thing that’s interesting is what it leaves out. The verse that reads “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” continues in Isaiah, with another phrase, “and the day of vengeance of our God.” So Luke, or Jesus, leaves out a prophecy of gloom, doom, and destruction. Instead, it’s a message full of hope and promise.

Luke puts this story at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to tell us something very important about Jesus. It’s a summary of the key themes of Jesus ministry. We can see how important it is for Luke by recognizing how he has changed the story from the versions in Mark and Matthew. In both of those gospels, the visit to the synagogue in Nazareth comes after a significant portion of Jesus’ ministry. Both gospels put it after big chunks of Jesus’ teaching and a number of his healings. For them, it is only a story about Jesus’ rejection in his hometown. They don’t tell us anything about what Jesus said. By placing it here, by putting these words in Jesus’ mouth, Luke is telling us to pay attention—this is what Jesus is all about.

So Jesus reads these verses, then he sits down and tells the congregation, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” The people are amazed by the power of his words. There are several fascinating things about this text. In the first place, we see Jesus behaving like he’s supposed to do. He’s a good Jewish boy, he goes to synagogue on the Sabbath, he knows his scripture. But then, when he begins to speak, he blows away people’s expectations. Perhaps the congregation was expecting to hear how all this might happen when the Messiah comes. Instead, Jesus tells them, it’s happening right now!

Another key element of the text is the importance of the spirit. It’s something Luke stresses throughout his gospel, and I’m sure we’ll have more to say about it as we go through the gospel this year in the lectionary. Today’s reading begins, and Jesus, filled with the power of the spirit. And of course, the words Jesus reads from Isaiah begin with the phrase, the Spirit of God is upon me…” So, Jesus filled with the spirit, proclaims the year of God’s favor, preaches good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, proclaims release for captives, and freedom for the oppressed.

To put it into contemporary language—this is Jesus’ mission statement according to Luke. He makes this clear later in the gospel when the John the Baptizer, now in prison, has gotten word of Jesus’ activity. He sends two of his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he is the Messiah or if they are to wait for another. Jesus response to them, and to John is “Go tell John what you have seen, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the poor have good news preached to them.”

Jesus’ mission statement, but is it ours? I suspect that, just as in the case of the wedding at Cana, where our usual focus is on the miracle, here, we want to see Jesus’ words as relating only to him, and to his miraculous powers. But we’re not so easily left off the hook. If we follow Luke’s gospel, and then read in the book of Acts, which is the second half of Luke’s story, we see the same emphases being stressed. In Acts, the disciples, filled with the Holy Spirit, do amazing things, like give sight to the blind and set the oppressed free.

Ezra and Nehemiah came back from exile in Babylon with a vision for what God’s people might become. Jesus came back from the wilderness with a vision for his public ministry.

In the coming weeks and months, we will be talking a great deal about what the future holds for Grace Church. During the vestry retreat last weekend, we spent a lot of time talking about Grace’s present and future. We analyzed our strengths and weaknesses as a parish—what we do well, and what we don’t do so well. We looked at the challenges that face us, and the opportunities that we haven’t fully exploited. We also shared what we hoped Grace might look like in five years. All of this is part of a process that will help us clarify what our ministry and mission is and should be in this place. In the coming weeks, we will begin to share our work with the parish, and invite all of you to reflect on and contribute to this effort.

But however we articulate our own mission and ministry, the standard by which we must judge it is the Gospel. And it’s not inappropriate that we use this passage as our guide. Is this the year of the Lord’s favor? How are we going to bring good news to the poor? Help the blind to see, the lame to walk, the oppressed go free? Do our ministries match up to that job description? If not, why not?

What might it mean to grab hold of Luke’s vision of Jesus’ ministry, for ourselves, for our church and our community? What difference might that make? Oh, I know there are all kinds of things that get in the way. We lack the funds, the time, the commitment, the people, there’s so much else to do.

I know it’s daunting. The needs are so great and we are so few, but my friends, that’s what it’s about. We come to church to be nourished, to be filled, to find spiritual growth and we do, in the fellowship, in the proclamation, and in the celebration of the Eucharist. But we need to remember that we are nourished at the table not only for our sake, but for the sake of the world and for the sake of Christ. We often leave our worship with the dismissal—let us go forth rejoicing in the power of the spirit. Like Jesus, filled with the power of the spirit, let us become a people of vision, empowered to do great things!

The Wedding at Cana; Epiphany 2, Year C

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That’s a whole lot of wine

Second Sunday of Epiphany

January 17, 2010

Grace Episcopal Church

This morning our hearts are of full of sadness and concern for the people of Haiti. We have seen the images on TV, read the accounts in the paper. Some of our members of Grace have been to Port-au-Prince and Jeanette, which is the location for our diocese’s Haiti Project. We have hosted Haitians in our homes as we have been hosted in theirs. Some count Haitians among their friends; some are almost like family members. Those of us who have been there are full of memories, wondering what it’s like now. But all of us, whether or not we are personally affected through friendship or travel, have seen the pictures and have some sense of the devastation. We feel helpless in the face of this destruction; the dollars we give seem a drop in the bucket compared to the vastness of the tragedy.

And inevitably, our minds turn to questions of why. Why now? Why Haiti? As human beings we want suffering of this magnitude to make sense, we want to try to fit into categories and systems we might understand. We want to manage it, intellectually, emotionally, spiritually.

But this isn’t the first time for such horrendous tragedy. There was of course 9-11 which now seems like a distant memory; there was the tsunami in Indonesia and South Asia in 2004; there was hurricane Katrina in 2005. Each of them seemed more horrific than the last. Each one brought misery as well as miraculous human efforts. Each one brought questions of why.

We want to know what it all means. We want to put it in a theological framework that we can make sense of; we want to say it was God’s punishment, or God’s will; or perhaps we want to say suffering of this magnitude proves God doesn’t exist. These are hard questions and demand coherent answers, but it may be the answers don’t come.

We are in the season of Epiphany, that time when we celebrate the presence of God among us, the presence of God’s glory. It may be hard for us to think about God’s glory; indeed it may be difficult for us even to think about the presence of God in a world that experiences such tragedy and human misery. Yet our Christian faith lives in the paradox between what is and what will be; what we see with our eyes and what we know by faith. Epiphany is a time to reflect not only on the reality of God’s glory and God’s presence in the world, but also on that paradox. There is no better place to explore that paradox than in today’s gospel reading.

OK. Let’s do the math. 6 jars for purification, each holding between 20-30 gallons of water. That’s between 120 and 180 gallons of water. That’s how much wine Jesus made. And in case you can’t get a clear sense of just how much wine that is, let’s do some more math. A bottle of wine is 750 milliliters; that’s roughly five bottles of wine in a gallon. So we’re talking between 600 and 900 bottles of wine, between 50 and 75 cases. That’s a lot of wine. That must have been quite a party. Now remember, Jesus made the wine because they had run out. In other words, like any good party, the wine had been f lowing for quite some time, and either the guests were drank more than was expected or the hosts had not planned very well.

600 to 900 bottles of wine. Given that the wine had been flowing, assuming the guests were a little tipsy already, what was Jesus thinking? After all, how much wine does it take for your average person to get, well, pretty drunk? That must have been quite a party!

Before we explore the meaning of all this, there’s a little more math in the story that I would like to talk about. John 2 begins, “On the third day …” Now when you hear that phrase, what pops into your mind? Of course, the resurrection. And I have no doubt that the gospel writer is making an allusion to the resurrection. But there’s more to it than that. If we go back to Chapter 1, we see something very interesting. The gospel of John begins “In the beginning was the Word” so quite literally, it begins at creation. But very quickly it moves down to the present day of Jesus. After the gospel begins describing the ministry of John the Baptizer, three times it begins an episode with the phrase “the next day.” So if you add those three, actually four, days to the three days mentioned in John 2:1, you get seven days—seven days from “In the beginning was the word,” to the wedding at Cana.

In other words, for the Gospel of John everything converges on this point, on a wedding, in Cana of Galilee—it is the point to which all creation has been moving, the moment at which the disciples, and we, see the glory of God. It is also, to hearken back to Genesis, the completion, the fulfillment of creation. On the seventh day, God finished the work that he had done… God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it. On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana.

All of this—creation, redemption, resurrection, all of it converges on this point, on this story. But to note that is only to deepen the mystery. Why wine? Why so much wine? How does that reveal Christ’s glory? As we search for an answer to that question, our first impulse, temptation, really, is to place the emphasis on the power involved in turning water into wine. But that is not what the story emphasizes. The change takes place off stage. Jesus is expressly not involved in the miracle. He simply tells the servants to put water in the jars, and to take some for the steward to taste. There is no magic involved, no Hollywood special effects.

So the important part of the story is not that Jesus turned water into wine. The important part of the story is the amount of wine, the occasion itself, a wedding party. And if we think about the gospel writer’s chronological references, it all becomes much clearer. A wedding banquet set “on the third day” or “on the seventh day.” This is no simple miracle. In this story we learn about Jesus Christ, and we learn about what it means ultimately to follow Christ. It is a foretaste of that eternal Sabbath, the messianic banquet of which the Jews of Jesus’ day hoped, and which Jesus proclaimed in his own language as the Kingdom of God.

Our meals participate in and provide a foretaste of that messianic banquet. The Eucharistic celebration, in which we partake of bread and wine bring us into the presence of Christ and promise of that great feast to which all people are invited and in which we will all share. But it’s not just the Eucharist. One of our great obligations as the body of Christ is to offer hospitality, to welcome others in, and to offer them food and drink. The gospels agree that a major part of Jesus’ ministry took place at meals. But he didn’t just preach or teach at them; he used them to demonstrate the inclusiveness of his message. He welcomed everybody to the table, and he was constantly criticized for doing so, for eating with tax collectors and sinners.

There’s a sense of that in the story of the wedding at Cana. Jesus is a guest, what business it of his or of his mother to make a beer run? Yet here he acts as host, ensuring that there will be plenty of wine to go around, that a good time will be had by all. Cana reminds us that we are not the hosts here; Jesus is; Jesus has sent out the invitations, but Jesus is also throwing the party. And like Cana, we need to remember that we aren’t in control of what happens here, Jesus is. As we come to the table, we open ourselves to the possibility that we might be transformed by our encounter with Christ, just as the water was turned into wine.

Ordinary water, ordinary jars, a run-of-the-mill wedding celebration. In the middle of these Jesus turns everything upside-down. Can you imagine what the servants, or the steward might have thought when they saw that the water had been turned into wine? Suddenly, the ordinary has become spectacular. Jesus turned water into wine, and revealed his glory.

That surprise, that unexpected, transformation of the mundane is at the heart of Epiphany. In John 1, the gospel writer tells us that the Word became flesh and lived among us—now we see, as the disciples did, we see the glory of his presence. Jesus was an ordinary human being, like us, but he was also God. The water was transformed into wine. Epiphany reminds us, demands of us, that we be ready to encounter the glory of Christ in the world around us.

Epiphany also demands that we help others see that glory as well. In the Gospel of John, Jesus repeatedly offers his listeners a way into a fuller life; often it is called abundant life. We usually think that he is referring to eternity, to life after death. But the miracle at Cana shows us that the full life Jesus offers us is here around us; in the enjoyment of the creation God has given us, in the celebration of life’s transitions, in a good party.

Just as ordinary water in ordinary jars become extraordinary wine, our presence here, our faith proclaims the hope, the danger, that we might be transformed into something quite new. When we encounter Christ, whether it be at the table here, or in the face of another person, we run the risk that everything will change. We might not like that. Just as we are made a little bit uncomfortable by the math of the wedding at Cana, there’s nothing moderate, or respectable, or seemly about the amount of wine at Cana, we can’t control what might happen to ourselves, to our church, or to the world, when we open ourselves to encountering Christ. All bets are off. So let’s party on!

Baptism of Our Lord

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Baptism of our Lord

January 10, 2010

Some of you know that I grew up Mennonite. It’s not something I talk about a lot, if only because I’ve gotten tired of telling the story over the years. For many of you, the term “Mennonite” conjures up people who dress in funny clothes, drive around with horse and buggies, or bring choirs to sing at the Dane County Farmer’s Market. Well, all of those things are true, I suppose, but that doesn’t at all describe my upbringing. The only funny clothes I wore growing up were the clothes we all wore in the 70s and I’ve never driven a horse and buggy. The Mennonite community in which I was raised had abandoned most of its peculiar dress and ways in the first half of the twentieth century and now if you were to visit my mother’s church, the people would look very much like typical Midwesterners.

That is not to say there are not, and were not, oddities about the Mennonite Church and over time, I’m sure I will have more to say about them and Corrie would be happy to share with you her take on them. My journey from the Mennonite Church of my childhood to the Episcopal priesthood was a long and winding road filled with wrong turns, the occasional dead-end, and a few visits to the ditch.

One of the roadblocks for me was infant baptism. The roots of the Mennonite Church lie in the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century and with a group of people who rejected infant baptism, arguing that only baptism of adults, made after a mature confession of faith, was valid. What I find interesting in my own journey is that while I came to accept the theological arguments in defense of infant baptism relatively quickly, imagining myself baptizing a baby took a very long time. My spiritual forebears had given their lives because of their commitment to adult believer’s baptism, and if you look at the 39 Articles in the back of the Book of Common Prayer, you can read the denunciation there of the practice of adult baptism.

I say all that because today we are baptizing both children and an adult. We don’t often do that in the Episcopal Church, but I suspect that as our culture changes and becomes more secular, we will be doing more and more of it. Jewel Rose will be taking the big step in a few minutes, and with her will be Cade and Phoebe Seep. I will ask all of them if they want to be baptized; during our run-through yesterday, all three of them answered that question for themselves, and I hope they will today, too. But the next set of questions, Jewel will answer for herself, while Cade and Phoebe’s parents and godparents will respond on their behalf.

It is traditional that we baptize on this day, the First Sunday after the Epiphany, because it is on this day, each year, that we celebrate the Baptism of our Lord, Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptizer in the River Jordan. It may seem somewhat strange that we do this now, when we have just celebrated Jesus’ birth a little over two weeks ago, Jesus’ baptism marks the beginning of his public ministry, and except for Luke’s mention of Jesus’ visit to the temple when he was twelve, the gospels are completely silent about Jesus’ childhood.

We heard Luke’s version of Jesus’ baptism as the gospel today, and well, having taught Bible all those years, I can’t resist pointing out the most interesting piece of Luke’s story. Unfortunately, the lectionary editors left the most interesting part of the story out. You will notice that several verses of chapter 3 were left out of the gospel reading. The reason they were left out was because in them, Luke tells the story of John’s arrest by Herod. In other words, in the Gospel of Luke, John the Baptist is arrested before Luke mentions Jesus’ baptism. Now there are good reasons for this. It’s not that Luke doesn’t know that John baptized Jesus; rather it’s because he wants to de-emphasize John. The question I always used to ask my students when they were confused about this was, “Who has more power, the person doing the baptizing, or the one who is baptized?” Of course, in the case of a toddler, the answer to that question may not be obvious.

So we don’t really see John baptizing Jesus in Luke’s gospel. Instead the focus is on something else—the expectations of the crowd, and the question concerning John. We will see this again in the coming weeks, the question of who John was, and whether he was the Messiah, the one people were waiting and hoping for.

It is a question that was asked in the first two chapters of Luke, and it is a question we will hear again as we read through Luke’s gospel this year. But it’s always a matter of just what one expects, and whether one’s expectations are realistic or warranted. In this case, the answer is not quite obvious.

The problem was not just the question of the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptizer, the problem was also about the meaning of the baptism itself. The gospels agree that John’s baptism was a baptism for the forgiveness of sins, and everyone knows that Jesus was without sin, therefore, why did he need to be baptized? That’s the question the gospel writers struggled with, and part of the reason Luke writes the way he does is to downplay the significance of Jesus’ baptism, for his own self-understanding and for his ministry. The lesson from Acts underscores Luke’s interpretation that John’s baptism was ultimately inadequate.

The crowd was filled with expectation and wondering. Baptism is an important celebration in the life of the church. It is an opportunity for us to welcome new members and to remind ourselves of our baptisms and what we committed ourselves to at that point. In fact, it’s helpful for us to watch an adult being baptized. Too often, the questions that are asked during the service, and the vows we make are treated lightly, as if they really don’t mean what they say.

The baptismal covenant lays out our responsibilities as members of the body of Christ. They are what is expected of everyone who takes that step: to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers; to persevere in resisting evil; to proclaim by word and example the good news; to seek and serve Christ in all persons, and to strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human person.

Those are enormous responsibilities and tasks, and how each of us fulfills them is between us and God. But membership is not about occasionally attending services. Membership is about committing oneself to the body of Christ, using one’s gifts, talents, and resources to build up the community and to reach out to others. We’ve included in the service bulletin one way for you to do that. While many of you already participate in our worship service by serving as acolytes, readers, and the like, we are always in need of others. I encourage you to think about how you might help out with services, fill out the form, and put it in the offering plate. Of course, there are many other ways you can volunteer. The shelter meal which has been organized by Sarah and Sparky Watts for several years, can always use additional volunteers, for example, as can the food pantry.

The prayer book actually views adult baptism as the norm, not the exception as is our practice. That’s a good thing, because the vows that Jewel makes today are vows that we all make together. As we make them, let us make them, not only with our lips, but with our lives, promising to do all that we can, body and soul, to strengthen the body of Christ and serve God’s kingdom.

Taking another road: Sermon for the Second Sunday of Christmas, 2010

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Taking Another Road

Second Sunday after Christmas

January 3, 2009

Although Corrie would tell you otherwise, I’ve got a pretty good sense of direction. I was talking with someone a couple of weeks ago about having to find our way around, and he observed that there are two types of people: map people and directions people. Both he and I are map people. We have to see on a map where it is we are supposed to be going. Directions just won’t do. In my case, by the time I’ve received the third piece of information (take a left at the old Shell station), I will have forgotten the first two. But even with a map, and if I’ve made no wrong turns, it’s often the case that when I leave, retracing my steps is very difficult. Instead of turning right, you have to turn left, and what happens if there’s a one-way road? It often happens that a trip that took fifteen minutes one direction, can take a half hour the other. So finding the way to a new place can be difficult, but finding one’s way home is not always easy, either.

I was reminded of this while reading this week’s gospel—the story of the wise men and the star. We know it well, but we don’t often note that while the magi had little trouble finding their destination, thanks to the star, and a little help from Herod and his advisers, we know very little about their journey home. Matthew writes simply, “they returned home by another road.” The story ends there; the magi leave the scene, but continue to pique our curiosity.

In the reading from Jeremiah, the prophet promises that Yahweh will lead the people of God home. It’s actually not at all clear when this particular passage was written, but it seems to presuppose that the prophet is writing during the exile, when many of the people of Israel had been carried off in captivity to Babylon. God is promising them that their exile will cease, that God will bring them back to the promised land, that God will lead even the lame and the blind home. It is a powerful image and theme, common not only to the Hebrew Bible but also to the Christian New Testament, to both Judaism, and Christianity. Such imagery was also seen in our readings for Advent; with the cry of John the Baptizer: Prepare a way for the Lord.

But we often think of this imagery only in terms of God leading God’s people to a new place—the promised land, and not in terms of God leading God’s people back. The familiar story of the wise men is a good example. They followed a star from the east to Bethlehem, stopping in Jerusalem to confirm their directions. Let’s unpack this story a little bit; let’s make it strange instead of familiar.

First of all—the wise men themselves. As you know, there is no mention in the text of the number, that they were kings, and certainly not their names. All of that is later pious Christian accretion to the story. In fact, “wise men” is even something of a mistranslation. They are magi—astrologers. That they come from the east suggests that Matthew is trying to emphasize their foreign-ness, that they are exotic travelers. What’s more from the perspective of the Gospel of Matthew, to call someone a wise man is not necessarily a compliment. Matthew consistently contrasts wisdom and foolishness—the wisdom of the world is not true wisdom but folly.

To be sure, there are kings in Matthew’s story—two of them, Herod and Jesus with very different kingdoms and with different sorts of power. The magi come to Herod for directions, because Matthew wants to highlight the opposition between Herod and Jesus and because, I think, he wants to say that for all the magi’s knowledge, in fact, to call them wise is somewhat misleading. They have seen the star, and they want to follow it, but they still don’t know its meaning.

When they reach Bethlehem, they bow down and worship Jesus. And then they go home by another road. We don’t wonder what happened to them after that. Matthew isn’t interested in their journey home; just as Luke is not interested in what happened to the shepherds after their encounter with the infant Jesus.

I’m inclined to imagine that what happened to the magi and the shepherds after Christmas is very much like what happens to us, too. There’s this tremendous build-up: growing excitement, heightened activity, everyone’s just a little bit on edge with the planning, the parties, and all. And then comes Christmas, and inevitably, there’s something of a letdown.

But it’s not just Christmas that has such an effect. No doubt you’ve all experienced it—working toward some goal that was at once elusive, yet seemingly full of promise, even life-changing. Reaching that goal takes all of one’s effort, incredible psychic, spiritual, and sometimes physical energy. Then having achieved it, what’s next?

Perhaps some of you the George Clooney movie “Up in the Air.” His character lived and worked for a single goal, one that he hardly dared articulate to his friends. At the end of the movie he achieved it, but his victory seemed somewhat hollow. There was no one to share it with, no one who cared and the goal itself, 10 million frequent flyer miles, seemed hardly worth the effort.

For many of us, achieving the goals we laid out for ourselves may be something of a game, a way of challenging ourselves to improve our lot, to better our selves, and when we’ve achieved them, we set a new goal. For others, that goal may be our raison d’etre. And when we get there, we have nothing more to look forward to.

What the magi may have had in mind is quite beside the point. According to Matthew they saw the star; they followed it, and when they reached their destination, they returned home by another road. Did their long journey and the encounter at the end change them? Who knows? That’s not really the point. For Matthew, what mattered was to depict these men, come from afar, worshiping the newborn Christ, while others, most notably Herod, sought to kill him.

The magi knew to go home by a different road but what was next for them? Did they set new goals? If so, how? And we, like the magi, have encountered the incarnate Christ again at Christmas. What’s next for us? What are we looking forward to? How do we set those new goals? How do we find our bearings, when the star we were following no longer leads us, and we’ve reached our destination? Where do we go from here? Do we retrace our steps, or embark on a new journey?

These questions are especially compelling, now, with the beginning of a new year. We look forward to what might come, with some apprehension perhaps, but also with a sense that there are infinite possibilities lying ahead. We want to start over anew. We make new year’s resolutions to change our lives.

In the life of our parish, we have also reached an important milestone. After years of conflict and turmoil, uncertainty, many of us finally feel like we have achieved what we were working for the last few years. There seems to be some stability, new energy, and a new rector. Outgoing Senior Warden Sally Phelps and those vestry members who have seen us through so much in the past few years have stepped down. They may feel like they deserve a break, and indeed they do. As a parish, we need to thank them again and again for their hard work, and for having brought us to this place in our common life.

Yet all is not perfect by any means. There is work to be done and it is no time to rest on the journey. We must continue to move forward. Perhaps we do not yet have a clear goal in mind; there is no star leading us forward. The direction may not be clear.

The magi knew where they were going when they left Bethlehem, they were going home. They chose a different route for expediency’s sake. We may lack the clarity they had as they got up from the encounter with Christ but like them, we should be wise enough to choose the better road, for ourselves, and for Grace Church. Let us be like those, as the Psalmist says, whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way.

Re-reading old sermons

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In Maryanne Robinson’s Gilead, the elderly Protestant pastor is going through decades of sermons, ostensibly to put them in some sort of order for posterity. His sermons are written on paper. The exercise gives him the opportunity to reflect back on his ministry, on those many years of being with his congregation, on the changes that took place over those decades, and also, to ask about the meaning of it all.

I haven’t preached anywhere near as many sermons as that, and I’ve preached in several different contexts but I do go back and look over what I’ve written before. It is fascinating to do so. I find myself drawn back into the life of the parish in which I preached the sermon and very often into the mood of the time, even if fewer than five years have passed. Rereading those sermons often brings to mind members of those parishes, the struggles they were going through, and, inevitably, those people who have departed this life.

Very often I go back over past sermons in hopes of finding some nugget to include in the sermon I’m currently writing. This week, not having to write a sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas Day, I went back over some I had preached over the years. Given the heightened anxiety over terrorist attacks again, I thought it might be of interest to others:

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And the Word became flesh and lived among us: Christmas Day, 2009

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And the Word became flesh

Christmas Day, 2009

Grace Church

In the beginning was the Word. Have you ever wondered what that might mean? Are words, is a word, ever at the beginning? I remember when I was in college thinking a lot about words. I repeatedly had the experience, I’m sure everyone’s had it, where I couldn’t quite find the word to express the thought I was having. I would be frustrated because my grand idea never sounded as good when I spoke it as when I was thinking it. As I studied foreign languages, and as I became fluent in German, that feeling became even more common. There were times when I wanted to say something in English, and knew the perfect German word, but no English word seemed adequate. Of course the opposite was true as well.

Words are funny things. We need them to communicate; we also need them to think. Philosophers debate, and have debated for thousands of years, whether the written word is more important or less important than the spoken word, and where the unspoken idea fits, as well. I’m sure you know that the word translated in John 1:1 as “word” can mean other things, among them reason, wisdom, even idea. These verses in the Gospel of John are so important in the Christian tradition because they make the connection between us and God in a profound way. It is fitting that the church has long read this gospel on Christmas Day, because it allows us to reflect on the miracle of the incarnation.

For John to begin this way—in the beginning was the word—is to link Christmas to creation. In the beginning was the word draws our attention away from Bethlehem for a moment and to the whole universe. In Genesis 1, God creates by speaking. “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light and God saw that it was good.”

Creation and Christmas are linked, not just because John 1 is the gospel for Christmas Day. Creation and Christmas are linked because Christmas is the feast of the Incarnation, when we celebrate Christ becoming human. The Incarnation, Christmas reminds us that it the universe in which we live was created by God, and that it was created good. The Incarnation and Christmas teach us the important lesson that the world in which we live, the bodies that we inhabit, were created good.

It is a difficult lesson to learn, because so much of our experience seems to deny that goodness. To deny the goodness of creation is one of the oldest heresies in Christianity. It appears to us in various guises. Sometimes, it rejects the material world, even our human bodies as evil and sees salvation as deliverance from this mortal flesh. Sometimes, it appears in another form, when you hear Christians wanting God to destroy everything, punish the world and all that is in it and start over.

In the ancient world, it was inconceivable for many, especially the more learned, to imagine that the divine might become human. By the time of the New Testament, most cultured Greeks and Romans thought the old myths, even the old gods—Zeus, Apollo, and the like—were nothing more than stories that might have a suitable moral. But for these people, the idea that the divine could become flesh and bone was inconceivable. That bias remained in early Christianity, and for many, it remains today. Many Christians are uncomfortable thinking about a Jesus who had emotions, or was ever hungry, or whose body was limited in the ways that our bodies are.

Of course, that is what the story of Mary giving birth to Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem is all about—that God became flesh like we are flesh. In these verses from John, we here both sides of the paradox that is the incarnation. On the one hand, the profound statement that “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” On the other hand, that profound statement, “and the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us. In that paradox is the heart of the Christian message, that the God who created the World is present among us, recreating us, and the world.

Those Christians who, in centuries past and today, have a strong sense of the fallen-ness of human nature and the fallen-ness of creation are not entirely wrong. St. Paul writes in the letter to the Romans “that all creation has been groaning until now.” The English poet John Milton put it another way. When describing Adam and Eve eating the apple in Paradise Lost, Milton writes “Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her Seat, Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe that all was Lost.”

All was not lost. Milton and Paul are trying to express that deep sense that things are not as they should be. It is a sense we all have when we encounter suffering, or death, or any inadequacy in ourselves or in those around us. But in spite of that, creation is good. It must be, for we believe it was created by God, who is good.

Today on Christmas we celebrate the Incarnation, the word becoming flesh and dwelling among us. I began by speaking about the inadequacy of words. Words can hurt, we can easily misunderstand one another; we find it hard to express ourselves as clearly and plainly as we want. Our faith is expressed in words, and very often those words seem inadequate to say what we think they mean; sometimes we wonder whether we really believe what we say. Christians have fought over words, and still do, we fight over the meaning of the creed and over the meaning of scripture.

In the beginning was the Word—the logos, the idea, perhaps even a conversation that God had with Godself. When God created with the Word, when God comes to us in the Word, God reaches out to us to draw us to God. We don’t need to try to comprehend it, because it can’t be. We need only be assured that God is present, in Word and Sacrament, and in the Incarnation.

Muddy feet: Christmas Eve 2009

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Muddy Feet

Christmas Eve

Grace Episcopal Church

December 24, 2009

This Advent, I’ve been blessed by a series of encounters with great art. A group of us were treated to a tour of the Chazen led by parishioner and curator Maria Dale. The tour introduced me to several spectacular images of the Virgin Mary that continue to fascinate me. The next week, Corrie and I spent a day in the Art Institute of Chicago, and much of that time was spent in front of a Caravaggio on loan from England. Then on Sunday the 13th, Tom Dale, Professor of Art History here at the university, gave us a whirlwind survey of images of the Virgin Mary.

Among those images was one that has haunted me ever since. It’s another Caravaggio, this time the Madonna of the Loreto. It’s the image on the service bulletin tonight and was painted by the great, and controversial Italian painter on commission for a chapel in San Agostino in Rome’s Piazza Navona. When it was unveiled, there was considerable controversy. Mary is barefoot and looks like a very ordinary woman, with only the faintest hint of halo to distinguish her from the other people in the picture. Even more scandalous, the dramatic focus of the painting seems to be the dirty feet of the man who is kneeling in homage to her.

A black and white reproduction of that painting is on the cover of tonight’s service bulletin. It’s probably difficult to make out details in the image, but I think you’ll agree that the peasant’s feet seem to be the center of attention. And it was those feet, crusted in dirt, as well as the fact that the Virgin herself is barefoot, that led to the public’s derision of it.

The peasant’s muddy feet. I have no idea why Caravaggio painted this image in the way he did. What little I do know about him leads me to think he was a something of a seventeenth-century equivalent of those contemporary artists who seem most interested in shocking the public. But I think most scholars agree that whatever his motives, and in spite of his scandalous life, Caravaggio was also a man of faith, who sought to express that faith through his life.

The peasant’s muddy feet. His public rejected the image because it did not conform to their ideas of beauty and what was appropriate for the chapel in which the image was to hang. It offended their artistic and religious sensibilities. I doubt any of you would even notice the dirty feet if you were looking at this image where it now hangs. You wouldn’t notice those muddy feet unless your attention were drawn to them by a guide or art historian, and even then, you probably wouldn’t think there was much wrong with the picture. It’s a beautiful painting, masterfully done, in a style we all associate with religious art, with high art.

Now I know that some of you may have muddy boots having braved tonight’s weather to come here, but I suspect most of you are dressed a little better than usual. It’s Christmas Eve after all, a time to celebrate, and most of us want to do things that will make Christmas seem a little different than any other day—Why else would you have come to church tonight? Christmas is out of the ordinary, and we want to mark that in all kinds of ways, with festive dress, great food and wine, and the like.

As part of that celebration, but only part, we have gathered here. Some of us for the first time, many of us returning here from the places we now live, and others who come here most Sundays. We come to connect with our past. We come also to connect with our faith, or to reconnect, or perhaps, we come even in search of or grasping for faith. All of those reasons, and many others have brought us here.

We come here, tonight, in the midst of an uncertain and changing world, looking for stability, and certainty. We yearn for the old familiar ways. We want to be reassured that in spite of everything going on in our lives and in our world, for a few minutes at least, for an hour or so, we can push away all of our doubts and fears, our pain and suffering, and relish once again, the lessons and carols that we have heard so many times before. We are here to celebrate again the birth of Jesus Christ.

We come out of duty, out of habit, and out of hope. Like the shepherds, we come hoping that we will encounter Jesus Christ, the savior of the world, in word and sacrament. But in spite of that hope, we probably do not expect to be transformed as the shepherds were, as Joseph and Mary were. Our expectations may be low, if only because it’s all so familiar to us.

This aura of familiarity surrounds the great mystery of our faith—that God has become human, that 2000 years ago, in a crude manger in a stable for animals, God became incarnate in a tiny baby. That great mystery is so incomprehensible, so beyond our grasp, that over the centuries we have done everything in our power to protect ourselves from its explosive power.

In the twenty-first century, it has come to this. We celebrate Christmas with blow-up Santas in our front yards, with nativity scenes that include Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer and Frosty the Snowman alongside the shepherds and magi. We celebrate the birth of Christ in an orgy of consumerism and then pause this evening, to acknowledge for a few minutes what we ought to be celebrating this season.

We want to bundle our celebration of Christmas in a package of sweet consumeristic nostalgia. We want to worship the Christ child, but we want to do so on our terms—to approach the manger with eyes veiled and ears closed. We surround ourselves with kitsch and extravagance to shield us from the simple, wonderful power of this story.

We come to hear the old familiar story and sing the familiar carols. We come full of nostalgia and perhaps hope. And many of us, all of us come with dark places in our lives—with concerns, doubts, fears. We come with muddy feet, if you will, muddy feet that we hope no one else will notice and that we try to forget.

In fact, Christmas is muddy and messy. It’s supposed to be. Luke tells a story that is about God becoming human, God becoming one of us, God taking on flesh that is just like ours, a body like ours with all of its messiness. Because we all know, bodies are messy.

I’m reminded again and again when I talk with people about how hard it is for us to accept the doctrine of the Incarnation—that God became flesh, that Jesus is the Son of God. There’s something about it that tends to bother us. Many of us get caught up in the biology of it, or in the difficulty of believing that the divine can become concrete in such a way. It seems like Luke’s story is written in such a way as to offend modern sensibilities. If we ask the obvious questions, our faith might shatter, so we push them away and remain content with the story.

Jesus came among us, not as a ruler but as a baby. He came to a poor peasant woman of Galilee and a poor carpenter, a couple that was engaged, not married. The shepherds who heard the angels’ message were of even lower status. They came from the fields, just as they were, muddy feet, tattered clothes, and all.

They came to worship, as we do. And that’s our mistake. We want to understand, categorize, make sense of the story. But when we do so we lose sight of the mystery of it—the mystery and wonder of God becoming flesh and living among us. That great mystery cannot be comprehended, and yes, our only response should be to worship.

And that is why this story, this night cannot be contained by our feeble attempts to celebrate it. We cannot hope to understand the incarnation. We cannot grasp what God becoming flesh might mean. But it is not ours to accept or reject. It is ours to ponder and treasure, to puzzle over for our whole lives. How might we respond to the love of God that we meet here, in this place, on Christmas? It is a love that accepts us whoever we are, however we are, wherever we are, muddy feet and all.

Let us put aside all of the trappings and the trimmings, the decorations, the kitsch, the extravagance, and like Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds, encounter Christ Jesus as a babe in a manger. Let us open our hearts to ponder this mystery, of God become flesh. Let us also, as we approach the altar encounter the love of Christ, encounter Christ himself in the bread and wine of the Eucharistic feast.

May his love enter our hearts, transforming us, so that we might show forth the love of Jesus Christ in all that we do, this day, and forever more. Amen.

Fear Not: Advent 3, Year C

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Advent 3, Year C

Grace Episcopal Church

December 13, 2009

What is it you fear most? Death, debilitating illness, loss of your job? Homelessness? Are there things you are so afraid of that you cannot even think of them? And how do you deal with those fears? Do you examine and analyze them? Or do you push them away, repress them, ignore them, or try to develop ways of avoiding or not noticing them?

For those of us who grew up in the fifties and sixties, we can remember fears of nuclear war. The threat was always there, lurking under the surface. Occasionally it broke through our ordinary lives, during the Cuban missile crisis, for example. But we came to live with it as a reality and as a backdrop to everything we did. More recently, the fear of terrorist attack has played some part in our lives; though again, that fear has receded dramatically since 2001.

Still, it sometimes seems as if fear is everywhere. Certainly, those of us who have been driving in Madison the past few days know the experience of ordinary, common activities becoming fear-inspiring. But it goes much beyond the lingering effects of this week’s snow storm. If like me, you tend not to pay to close attention to the news, it’s because you don’t really want to know what’s going on in the world, it’s all just too scary and depressing.

It’s often the case that when the world seems to be a threatening place, that the future is uncertain, people turn to religion. In fact one common refrain by detractors of religion is that religion both preys upon people’s fears, and survives by inciting fear. People turn to religion when or because they fear death, so it is said. Many people argue that religion creates supporters by inciting fear in people, fear of damnation, fear of hell.

Among the fears that religions, specifically Christianity, (or some forms of it) exploit, is the fear of the end of the world. Advent confronts us with that fear as we hear lessons that promise destruction and the second coming. Such fear drives the perennial popularity of movies like the recent 2012 that try to depict the future according to some religious text, in this case from the Mayan tradition. There was also the recent phenomenon of the Left Behind series that sold millions upon millions of copies. There is biblical precedent for such beliefs; we have heard over the past two weeks imagery of death, destruction, and rebirth that was used by Jews and Christians to make sense of the violent and oppressive world in which they found themselves.

John the Baptizer was an apocalyptic prophet. He foretold doom and destruction, and we hear part of his message in today’s gospel:

“YOU BROOD OF VIPERS! WHO WARNED YOU TO FLEE FROM THE WRATH TO COME? BEAR FRUITS WORTHY OF REPENTANCE…. EVEN NOW THE AX IS LYING AT THE ROOT OF THE TREES; EVERYONE THAT DOES NOT BEAR GOOD FRUIT IS CUT DOWN AND THROWN INTO THE FIRE.”

John preached what used to be called “fire and brimstone” sermons, promising hell to everyone who didn’t repent of their sins and amend their lives. John is one of those biblical figures toward whom few contemporary Episcopalians feel any sympathy. We like our religion nice and tidy, and usually not too emotional. We certainly don’t want to be pressured, whether it be to repent, or to give money. That’s all too unseemly. And many of us came from Christian traditions where, like John the Baptizer, preachers pulled out all of the stops in order to effect conversions. Some of us may still carry emotional scars from those day, scars that make it more difficult for us to find our way in faith.

And even if you come from a different religious background, or even none, you may have read Jonathan Edwards famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” where he describes “natural men held in the hand of God over the pit of hell” or if not that, perhaps you recall James Joyce’s wonderful description of a sermon preached at a retreat in The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. The notion of religion, of Christianity inciting fear and wreaking havoc on the psyches of individuals, and even whole communities, that notion is something with which we are all too familiar and perhaps turned off by.

So we hear the story of John the Baptizer and we hope to get over it and through it, and to the much better story of the birth of Jesus, which we are still waiting for. Yet Luke provides us with detail concerning the Baptizer’s message that shades the image of John as a fearsome prophet.

John delivered those frightening words, “The axe is laid to the tree, everyone who does not bear fruit will be cut off and cast into the fire.” We hear those words and imagine ourselves terrified, caught between fear of eternal punishment, the wrath of almighty God, and our own weaknesses and sin. We wonder about John’s listeners, how did they respond? Why did they come out into the wilderness to hear him preach?

We don’t notice what Luke tells us about those listeners. They don’t fall on their knees in terror, begging forgiveness. They don’t run away in fear. They engage the prophet, they ask him, “what then should we do?” Unlike the televangelist or revivalist, John doesn’t answer, “accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior.”

No, John gives his listeners advice. He tells them what to do. But his advice isn’t the obvious. He doesn’t tell those who ask him to come out and join him in a counter-cultural movement. Instead, he gives them rather straightforward, and not at all that radical advice. “If you have two coats, share with someone who has none. If you have food, do likewise.” That’s what John says to the crowds, to all those who ask. Luke has other people, specific groups come to John and ask the same question. And to them, John responds in much the same way. Tax collectors ask him what they should do, and he replies, “collect more than the amount prescribed to you.” And to soldiers, John says, “Do not extort money from anyone, be content with your wages.”

Now, as you probably know tax collectors and soldiers in the Roman Empire were not simply government workers. Tax collectors made their income by taking a percentage of what they collected. Soldiers supplemented their meager wages by extracting money from the people they protected. In other words, they were both part of a deeply oppressive, and profoundly unjust system. Yet John did not demand they leave that system.

Instead, he gave them relatively simple and easy-to-follow advice. Don’t game the system, he said. Do what you can. In fact, it’s not a message of fear at all, but rather of hope. He gives to his listeners a way of living in a corrupt and evil society. The only options are not to either flee from it or to make your peace with it. Instead, you can live within it and do our best. It’s a message many of us might find appealing as we try to make our own way in a difficult world. How many of us find us in situations, in jobs that present us with difficult alternatives, in jobs that are dehumanizing or exploitative, making decisions that are far removed from the ethic of love espoused by Jesus.

Our response is often to ignore the ethical implications of those decisions, to say to ourselves that what matters in the end is keeping the job and taking care of our families. But such decisions, such jobs, can eat away at us. In such cases, John offers us a way through. Do what you can, act as justly, as ethically as possible in this corrupt and evil system.

John’s preaching offers us one set of messages for this third Sunday of Advent. Caught between God’s judgment and the ethical demands of the gospel, we waver uncertain. There is yet another, very different message in today’s lessons. Paul, writing to the Philippians says, do not worry about anything. The rich language of Zechariah includes the advice, “Do not fear, Oh Zion.” More importantly, each time an angel appears in the gospel of Luke, whether announcing the coming of John the Baptizer, or the birth of Jesus, or even the resurrection, each time, the angel says, “Fear not.”

Our faith is not a faith created or sustained by fear. Rather, our faith is a faith that has no fear. Our God offers us salvation, love, not death and destruction, we need not worry about what might happen to us tomorrow, at death, or when Christ returns in majesty.

Fear not, the angel said, fear not the prophet Zechariah said. As we go forth from this place, let us go, rejoicing in the coming of Christ who offers us hope and love in a harsh and fearful world.

Advent 2, Year C

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Blessed be the Lord

Advent 2, yr C

December 6, 2009

I sometimes think Advent is like being in a time warp. If you pay close attention to the readings, and the season, it’s very disorienting. First, there’s the fact that Advent is a season about two different comings—the coming of Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, and also about the second coming, Christ coming in majesty. Are we looking backward two thousand years, or looking ahead to who knows how many years? Or are we looking forward just two and a half weeks to Christmas Eve? Which is it?

And then there’s the reality that the world around us is in the midst of Christmas, while we are still in Advent. Advent and Christmas are two quite distinct seasons of the church year. In Advent, we wear purple, a penitential color, while Christmas is festive white, for celebration. We shouldn’t even be saying “Merry Christmas” until Christmas Eve.

If that weren’t enough, Luke adds another layer of time for us in today’s lessons. We are in year C of the three-year lectionary cycle, so we are reading for most of the year from the Gospel of Luke. Luke was written later than the gospel of Mark, which was the focal gospel last year, in year B. Like Matthew, Luke builds on Mark, relies on its overall framework, but adds considerable material. Even more importantly, Luke was not content with only writing a gospel. He wrote what was in essence a two-volume work that includes the book of Acts, and tells the story of Jesus Christ and the early church that is carefully constructed. For example, Luke uses a geographical framework that takes the story from Bethlehem, to Galilee, to Jerusalem, and ultimately to Rome and the world.

Luke is also concerned to connect the story of Jesus Christ and the early church with themes from the Jewish tradition and the Hebrew Bible. Nowhere is that more true than in Luke’s version of the story of Jesus’ birth. There are themes, images, and motifs that return us to the Hebrew Bible again. The song of Mary for example, the magnificat, is by and large a reworking of the song of Hannah from I Samuel, which she sang after giving birth to her longed for son, Samuel.

These themes and resonances come out especially in the story of John the Baptist. Luke depicts him as the last of the Hebrew prophets, dressed as they dressed, delivering a message straight from their works. But perhaps the strongest example of the connection between past and present, between God’s working in the history of Israel and God’s working in the present is the song of Zechariah, which we read together a few minutes ago: “Blessed is the Lord the God of Israel, he has come to his people and set them free.”

These words of Zechariah were the first words he spoke after first hearing that his wife would give birth nine months earlier. It is his response when his son John is circumcised, and one can imagine someone thinking for those nine months of just what to say if he ever got his voice back.

In fact, the words are Luke’s creation and demonstrate Luke’s powers as a writer and poet. Luke ties the birth of John to salvation history, to the story of God’s mighty acts in saving God’s people.

If you are familiar with the Daily Office, especially with the service of Morning Prayer, and I would encourage you to familiarize yourself with it; you would recognize the Song of Zechariah as one of the canticles that are recited or sung on a regular basis. It was in that context that I became familiar with those words, and other wonderful biblical hymns, like the Song of Simeon. As is so often the case, when we repeat things often enough we can memorize them. Sometimes memorization means that we never pay attention to the words, but it can also mean that those words become engraved in our memory, and come back to us often and at random.

Our lessons today, and throughout Advent, are full of such familiar words. “For he is like a refiner’s fire” or “And he shall purify” from the Malachi reading, and of course, Handel’s Messiah. We know them from Messiah but barely notice what they are saying. “Who can endure the day of his coming and who can stand when he appears? The images Malachi presents us with seem full of violence and the promise of the destruction of God’s enemies. Even the words of Zechariah seem directed at the same end. God promised to save God’s people from their enemies. Violence and destruction lurk just beneath the text.

And of course, there is violence to in the imagery used by John the Baptizer. John leaves the settled area of Palestine, leaves Jerusalem for the wilderness, where he takes potshots at the culture he has abandoned and threatens the coming of destruction from God. He demands repentance and promises a world upended by divine intervention: “every valley shall be filled and every mountain and hill made low.”

Violence, too, lurks just beyond the world of the text. Luke takes great care to place his narrative in the political context of the Roman Empire. He is writing after Rome has brutally suppressed the Jewish revolt and destroyed the Temple. Luke is writing with those terrible events in mind and one of his goals is to offer an alternative. That may be why he so carefully and completely delineates the powers arrayed against John, and by extension against. He lists seven names, beginning with the emperor Tiberius, and extending downward to Pilate and Herod, and including in the mix the high priest. Seven powers challenged by a voice, crying in the wilderness.

Rome promises violence and oppression, Zechariah hopes for a God who will deliver God’s people, will save them from their enemies. The nature of that salvation isn’t completely clear. Perhaps it will be violent, but the end will be radically different. Zechariah’s hymn ends with the hope that God’s tender compassion will come down from and how and that God will “to guide our feet into the way of peace.” In fact, peace is one of Luke’s central themes. He uses the word more often than all of the other gospels combined.

I couldn’t help thinking of that promise of peace this week. It is a sentiment we hear repeatedly this time of year, the words of the angels in Luke’s gospel easily roll off our tongues “Peace on earth, good will toward all.” Yet we live in a world in which there is no peace; our nation continues to be at war, increasing its military presence in Afghanistan with no end in sight and apparently no real plan nor real hope for bringing stability and order to that part of the world. Apparently, we fight because we fight.

It’s hard for us to take peace seriously in such a world, it’s hard to believe that God’s in-breaking into the world might bring peace. It’s hard to even imagine what it might be like for us to have a faith like Zechariah’s. In some ways, we might understand John a little better. We might imagine ourselves, or a different version of ourselves, getting so tired of everything—the religious establishment, the political establishment, a culture that focuses on White House party crashers and adulterous golfers rather than the intractable problems that face us as a society and a world community—we can imagine getting so sick and tired of everything that we go off into the woods, or go crazy, and start preaching on a street corner or screaming from that wilderness that it’s all going to come to an end.

We might even think that John is somehow more faithful and more responsible than Zechariah, his father. Last week, I talked about the irrelevance and futility of lighting advent candles in the growing December darkness. I spoke of the difficulty of paying attention to that light, of how hard it was to discern the signs of the times.

Zechariah saw, and knew. In the baby that was born to him and Elizabeth in their old age, he recognized the dawn from on high breaking in and he expressed his hope and faith that God would deliver God’s people. His hope was not a hope limited to himself, to his family, or even to his religious and ethnic group. His hope of peace and salvation ultimately extended to the whole world, even to the universe. Such a hope is the hope of Advent. Such hope should be our hope now and always.