A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday in Lent

5 Lent March 21, 2010

John 12:1-8

Almighty God, the breeze of your love and grace is ever blowing; may our hearts be lifted by that breeze, and may it inspire these words and those who hear them. Amen

One of my favorite Christmas stories is O. Henry’s story, The Gift of the Magi. You probably remember how it goes: The characters are a young couple…deeply in love, and very poor. Christmas is coming and each of them wants very badly to give a gift to the one they love…something special, something that will fulfill the other’s deepest longings. Of course, this couple doesn’t have much money, but they do have two things of inestimable value: her long, thick luxurious hair which falls below her knees, and his gold pocket watch, inherited from his father and grandfather. You know what happens—she decides to sell her hair to buy him a beautiful chain for his watch, only to find out that he has sold his watch to buy her combs to hold her long, thick hair.

It’s a story rich in irony, with a bit of pathos thrown in; it’s a story too that might have us shaking our heads over the impetuousness of young love, the foolishness of their choices, the wastefulness of it all. But you know, as foolish as those choices might have been, they also represent a generosity of spirit, an extravagance of selfless love and the kind of beyond measure, and an example of truly sacrificial giving. In their pouring out of love for the other, each demonstrated a willingness to give up the only thing of value they possessed—each made the sacrifice for the other. It’s a great story.

You might be wondering why I am telling a Christmas story during Lent. No I haven’t lost track of time, or taken leave of my senses. I’m telling this story because I think it shares a theme with today’s gospel. Like the young couple in O. Henry’s story, Mary of Bethany, moved by her love for Jesus, does something that on the surface seems senseless and wasteful, but that in reality embodies the generosity of spirit and willingness to give sacrificially in service of others modeled for us by Jesus.

Today’s gospel finds Jesus in Bethany, the village that is home to Lazarus and his sisters, Mary and Martha. Jesus has, of course, been here before -- the last time he visited he raised Lazarus from the dead, an action that not gave further evidence of his power and authority among his followers but also helped to set the stage for his upcoming arrest, stoking the ire of the authorities who feared that power and authority. Now, six days before the Passover and about to go on to Jerusalem, Jesus returns to Lazarus’ home, where Lazarus, Martha, and Mary host a dinner for Jesus and the disciples who are with him.

Dining customs in the first century Mediterranean were different from what we are accustomed to. Instead of sitting upright with feet firmly planted on the floor, people reclined at the table. One unintended consequence of this was that one’s feet might be in close proximity to the head of others reclining near them. And because streets and roads were dusty, and dirty, and often reeked of raw sewage, washing the feet of guests when they arrived was more than just a gesture of hospitality—it was a necessity, and it was a job generally reserved for a servant, not a host. So what comes next was extraordinary on a number of levels.

Mary, perhaps not satisfied by the mere washing of Jesus’ feet, knelt and anointed them, using a pound of expensive perfume oil, made from nard, lavishing the oil onto his feet, filling the air with the sweet scent of the precious oil, and then wiping his feet with her hair. With this one simple act, Mary violated all sorts of social boundaries. She used expensive oil—worth a year’s wages by some accounting—an extravagant waste by most standards. She let down her hair in public—a social taboo for Jewish women. And she anointed not Jesus’ head—the part of the body we might expect to be anointed—but his feet. Why would she do such a thing?

Anointing was known in two contexts in Mary’s world. It was an act often associated with royalty—oil was poured on the heads of kings, an anointing that signified their authority. The term “christos” in Greek, or “messiah” in Hebrew connotes one who has been anointed, set apart for some special purpose. Anointing was also something done to bodies after death, part of the ritual done to prepare them for burial and an act carried out with the respect.

In a way, Mary’s anointing of Jesus’ feet reflects both these practices. Mary had already implicitly signified that she recognized Jesus as the Messiah when he came to raise Lazarus. Her anointing of his feet reinforces that recognition. But even more than that, in anointing Jesus’ feet, Mary symbolically foreshadows the anointing of his body that would normally take place before it would be placed in the tomb—an anointing that the body of Jesus actually never receives. Mary is pouring out her love for

Jesus now because on some level she realizes that he will not be with her later.

Mary symbolically pours out her love for Jesus when she pours the precious oil on his feet--an extravagant gesture, and one that some like Judas would say was wasteful. Wouldn’t it have been better to use the money to help the poor? Or to save the oil for a more appropriate occasion? But Mary’s action, just like the gifts of the young couple in O. Henry’s story, is extraordinary not because of its monetary value, but because it signifies a willingness to make a sacrifice that on the surface seems beyond reason—a sacrifice motivated by pure love.

In anointing Jesus’ feet Mary also anticipates what Jesus will do on the night before he is arrested, when he humbly kneels to wash the feet of his disciples, and then commands the twelve that they should do likewise. Jesus’ act of humble servanthood in the washing of his disciples’ feet, like Mary’s act of anointing his feet, takes place in the shadow of the certainty of his death—a death that will be the ultimate sacrifice. Jesus’ act, like Mary’s, is an outpouring of selfless love, an expression of love’s triumph over death. And this act of selfless love, of humble servanthood, of sacrificial giving becomes the model for the disciples to follow.

Perhaps it is here that Mary’s act takes on its greatest significance. Mary is not one of the “official disciples”—she is a female, after all. She appears only twice in this gospel—we won’t meet her again after Jesus leaves Bethany and goes on to Jerusalem. But in this single act of anointing Jesus’ feet, Mary embodies what discipleship means in John’s gospel. She recognizes Jesus for who he is and she kneels in service. She acts spontaneously, without asking questions, without the encouragement that the other disciples will receive, and she gives with thought of what it might cost her. Mary loves selflessly, and she acts generously, extravagantly, sacrificially out of that love. She personifies the values Jesus has preached and taught and lived.

As we approach this final week of Lent, we might do well to ask ourselves how we might be called to be more like Mary. Are we called to love more extravagantly? To act more generously? To give more sacrificially? Can we put aside our own self-interest, our petty squabbles, our selfish wants and instead live a life that is centered on loving God and on acting on that love in our daily lives? And if we were to do so, what might it mean for our families, for ourselves, for our parish, for the world?

AMEN

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent

The Second Sunday in Lent
February 28, 2010
Luke 13:31-35

The Hen roosted high on her perch;
Hungry Fox down below, on the search,
Coaxed her hard to descend
She replied, "Most dear friend!
I feel more secure on my perch.”

~Baby's Own Aesop (1887)

I suspect that we’re all familiar with the image of a fox in a henhouse. Folklore is full of stories of sly and cunning foxes trying to outwit supposedly simpler creatures like hens in order to make a good feast of them. I have a vivid memory of a story that my grandmother used to read to me of a fox who used all his wiles to convince a mother hen to let him into her house, and then captured the hen and her chicks and carted them off in a big sack so that he might dine on them in the comfort of his own cozy den. The mother hen was far too clever for the crafty fox, however, and when he stopped to nap on his way home, she used her sewing scissors (in a testimony to her cleverness, her sewing kit was tucked into her feathers) to release her family from captivity, and with the help of her children, filled his sack with river rocks and sewed it back up so that he would notice their escape, proving once again that even the wily fox could be outsmarted.

In today’s gospel we hear Jesus refer to Herod as “that fox” “Fox” was an apt descriptor for Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, and ruler of the regions of Galilee and Perea. This Herod, you might recall, divorced his wife to marry his brother’s widow, and had John the Baptist arrested and later beheaded when John condemned him for that marriage. Herod had felt threatened by John, not only because of the accusations of adultery, of breaking Jewish law, but also because John was so influential among the people that Herod feared he might incite revolution. And according the gospels, Herod Antipas was both fascinated by and fearful of Jesus, the itinerant preacher he heard so much about, and it is entirely likely that Herod did wish Jesus dead and out of the way.

Jesus, however, is not deterred by the threat of that fox, Herod. Jesus is on a mission, and he has set his face towards Jerusalem—Jerusalem, the dwelling place of God; Jerusalem, the place where Isaiah tells us that God’s glory shall be revealed (Isaiah 24:23); Jerusalem, the place where the prophet Micah reminds us that God is betrayed by those who hate the good and love what is evil (Micah 3:2). Nothing that happens in Jerusalem is insignificant. When Jerusalem obeys God, the world spins peacefully on its axis. When Jerusalem ignores God, the whole planet wobbles, and now Jesus is on his way there to fulfill his destiny.

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem,” Jesus laments, “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”

What a poignant image! Jesus doesn’t use the metaphor of a fierce mother lion protecting her cubs, nor even that of an eagle with sharp beak and talons to drive away the enemy; instead he uses the image of a mother hen, a relatively small and gentle creature who in her ferocious desire to protect her young can only draw them close to her, gathering them under the mantle of her wings, covering them with the protective blanket of her love.

Modern day Christians sometimes like to portray Jesus as a mighty warrior, to describe his power in military terms, but to me, this image of a mother hen protecting her brood speaks of a power far greater, far deeper than any power that comes in a display of force. When Jesus uses this metaphor of a mother hen it seems to perfectly captures the essence of the power he exuded, a power lived out in the love he preached and taught and lived—a love that cannot coerce but rather invites, a love that does not back down in the face of greater physical might, a love that crosses all human boundaries and reaches out to the poor, the outcast, the sick, and the sinner.

As it turns out, Herod is not the only fox loose in Jerusalem, no indeed. Jerusalem is full of foxes, religious leaders, government officials, common folk, even a disciple who, seduced by some secular vision of power and might, fear, the itinerant preacher and healer who has come into their midst, fear him enough that like the proverbial fox in the henhouse, they act to betray him and have him crucified before he can stir up any REAL trouble.

But it’s a bit ironic, isn’t it? Just like in the story my grandmother told me about the hen who helped her children escape, the love of the mother hen who would gather the children of Jerusalem—the people of God—under her wings wins the day. The foxes loose in Jerusalem were “outfoxed” by Jesus whose powerful love could not be stilled by the cross, could not be quenched by earthly powers, could not be contained by death; a powerful love that is still very present and very real in the world today.

In this season of Lent, it might be worthwhile for us to keep in mind the notion of the fox and the hen. Foxes are crafty and seductive and they seek to lure us away from the care of the One who loves us. So who or what are the foxes in our own lives? Could they be the lure of material goods—the ever bigger and better TV, the more powerful computer, the sleeker car—or the promise of power? What about greed—not just that appetite for more, more, more, but the greed that makes us reluctant to share of the abundance we already have? Could our fox wear the guise of sloth, or mere laziness, the inertia that keeps us from doing even things we claim to care deeply about? Or perhaps our fox has slipped in as the urge to gossip, the tendency to think the worst of others, thoughtlessness, or even cruelty?

As we look for the foxes who might have crept into our lives, we might also recall the powerful and unassuming loved of the One who laments for his beloved who have gone astray, the One who would gather his lost children to him as a mother hen gathers her brood under her wings. And we might recall that the cunning fox does not always win the day.

AMEN

The First Sunday in Lent

February 21, 2010

Luke 4:1-13

Lord, make me a hollow reed so that Your Voice might be heard by all who hear these words. Amen.

Do you know how it feels when you’re just starting out on a vacation? The planning is done, the laundry is finished, the packing is taken care of, the dog is boarded, the mail is stopped, the lights are off, the doors are locked, and finally you are on your way, filled with sweet anticipation. That’s sort of where we are now in our church year as we enter into our Lenten journey: Epiphany’s passed, the palms are burned, the ashes smudged on our foreheads to remind us of our common humanity, and our shared mortality, and we’ve set our faces towards Jerusalem, pledging to keep a holy Lent.

Only, only that anticipation we feel? It may not be so sweet. It may in fact be tinged with a bit of dread, a sense of “let’s hurry up and get this over with.” We’ve described Lent as a long, dark journey, a time of sorrow and repentance, a time for taking up a discipline to help us turn back to God, and it may feel like it’s going to be a looonng six weeks.

But as we undertake our Lenten journey, it’s a good time to add a cautionary note, a reminder that may lighten those that Lenten anxiety that sometimes grips us. For despite our emphasis on penitence and on discipline, we need to remember Lent is not about feeling guilty or inadequate, and it’s not about being able to stick to some sort of self-deprivation just to prove to ourselves, or to others, that we can. Instead, as somber as it is, Lent—and all those things we undertake during Lent—should be a means of turning back to God, renewing our faith, remembering God’s abiding and ever-present for love for us, and taking up the hard work of discipleship. And our readings during Lent help us with this task.

On the first Sunday in Lent each year we hear the story of Jesus’ time in the wilderness and this year we hear Luke’s version. Just as Matthew and Mark do, Luke tells us that Jesus goes into the wilderness for forty days and while he is there he is tempted by the evil one, the one we call the devil. “Tempted” is the word used in most translations, but really, “tested” may better convey what Jesus experienced. We’re tempted by the candy bars merchandisers skillfully place by the check out counters, by the pull of our favorite clothing store in the mall, or by the lure of the next new electronic gadget—we all understand that kind of temptation, but what the devil dangled in front of Jesus –well, let’s just say the stakes were considerably higher. All three of the tests the devil presented to Jesus ultimately had to do with what kind of a Son of God, what kind of a messiah he would be; all three of them had to do with earthly power and might, all three had to do with the how Jesus would live into the vocation given him at his baptism.

The first temptation has to do with food. After 40 days of fasting, Jesus is near starvation. The very thought of bread must have filled him with overwhelming desire. But rather than succumbing, rather than turning the stones into bread, Jesus recalls how God provided manna for the people of Israel as they wandered in the wilderness to demonstrate that humans do not live by bread alone,. Next the devil offers Jesus power and dominion over all the nations of the earth, if only he will worship the evil one—and wouldn’t that be a good thing, if Jesus were in charge instead of the Romans? But again recalling the travails of his ancestors, Jesus responds with the words Moses spoke to the people of Israel as they were about to enter the Promised Land, “Worship the Lord, your God, and serve him” for it is from the Lord that all has come, and to whom all power belongs. Finally the devil takes Jesus to the top of the Temple, and urges him to jump off, for if he is truly the son of God a thousand angels would surely rush in to save him. One more time Jesus returns to the story of the Israelites about to enter their new home and repeats Moses’ words to them, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Jesus resists the temptations set in front of him by the devil; he “passes” the tests by resisting the urgings of the evil one to turn away from God, to take for himself power and might, and to test, to push the limits of his Father’s love and care. Ultimately, in passing up these temptations, Jesus has demonstrated once and for all his absolute reliance on the trustworthiness of God’s love. Jesus didn’t need the presence of thousands of angels rushing him to save him in midair to demonstrate the power of God. Filled by the power of the Spirit in baptism, Jesus trusted in the unassailable care and presence of God for all, the same care and presence of God that carried all the way through to the resurrection, Christ’s victory over death and human sin, the ultimate show of God’s power and love.

We often hear the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness as a model for us in resisting the temptations of our world, temptations that can take us away from God and God’s will for us—and it can surely serve as such a model. But I think the message of this story is even larger than that, even more powerful than that. Just as Jesus trusted completely and without reservation in the power and goodness of God, just as he trusted completely and without reservation in God’s care and provision without the need to test the limits of that care and provision, so too can we trust in God’s power, God’s love, God’s provision for us. We do not need to test God’s love for us; we can rest assured that even when we cannot see it, even when we cannot feel it, it is there. We do not have to earn it, we do not have to “deserve” it; it is there.

As we move through Lent, as we walk that road towards the cross with Jesus, as we seek to reorient ourselves towards God through our Lenten disciplines, may we rest securely in the assurance of God’s unassailable love and care for us, now and for ever.

Amen.

Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany

The Last Sunday after the Epiphany

Exodus 34:29-35
Luke 9:28-36

Lord, make me a hollow reed so that Your Voice might be heard by all who hear these words. Amen.

In our readings today, this last Sunday in the season of Epiphany, we encounter not one, but two characters being “transfigured.” “Transfiguration” is not a word that is in our everyday vocabulary—but if you’ve read any of the Harry Potter novels, you’ll be familiar with the concept. In the magical world of witches and wizards, the ability to transfigure—to change oneself into another creature—is one of the many magic skills students are taught at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. It’s clearly a useful skill, allowing one to travel about undetected, as Professor McGonagall does when she becomes a cat, or to hide from one’s enemies, as Harry’s godfather Sirius Black does, taking the form of a big shaggy dog when he escapes from Azkaban, the wizarding prison, and as the more nefarious Peter Pettigrew does as a rat, hiding out from his former master, the evil Lord Voldemort.

You might have noticed that in all the examples I’ve given, transfiguration allows one to be less obvious, to go unnoticed. But the kind of transfiguration that Moses and Jesus undergo is quite different—their appearance changes, to be sure, but rather than making them less conspicuous, helping them to blend in, or to get by undetected, their transfiguration – with glowing white robes and luminous faces – puts them right in the spotlight. Rather than hiding their true identities, the transfigurations of Moses and Jesus reveal them as who they are—prophet and liberator on the one hand; messiah, son of God on the other, and they serve as vivid reminders of God’s enduring presence in the world.

Moses, you will recall, has led the Israelites out of Egypt, out of slavery, into freedom—and right into the wilderness, where they must find their way, trusting in God to lead them to the “Promised Land.” The Israelites aren’t used to such freedom; it’s scary, and despite repeated assurances from Moses—and indeed, signs from God—they whine and complain every step of the way. When Moses ascends the mountain to consult with God on how to handle this recalcitrant people, he stay a little too long to suit the people, who, sure that they are being abandoned, quickly forge themselves a new “god”—a golden calf. When Moses, coming down with the stone tablets engraved by God, sees this idol he is so enraged that he drops the tablets and they shatter. It’s not just Moses who is angry, of course—God is angry, too, but Moses goes up the mountain again and intercedes, convincing God to give the Israelites yet one more chance. It is during this encounter that Moses is transfigured, and when he comes down, his face is shining so brightly that he must put a veil on it because the Israelites cannot bear to look at him.

You might have noticed that when Moses is transfigured, it is not during his first encounter with God. There is little doubt that each and every meeting with God, from the burning bush forward, changed Moses in some way, but this change was different, When Moses’ face was transfigured, changed so that his visage was so bright and shining that the people feared to look at him—well, that was more than Moses’ own personal transfiguration; instead, this was a sign to the people that God was still with them, and each and every time they gazed at Moses’ face alight with the glory of God, they would be reminded of that yet again.

The story of Jesus’ transfiguration in many way parallels that of Moses. Jesus, accompanied by Peter, James and John, climbs up a mountain to get away from the crowds that are always with him, to rest and to pray. As Jesus prays, his whole appearance begins to change – his clothes become a dazzling white, and his face begins to shine like the sun. And if that weren’t enough, Moses and Elijah appear beside him, and the three engage in a spirited discussion of what will come next for Jesus. Peter, James, and John, sleep-deprived as always and struggling to stay awake, don’t know what to make of this, and their wonderment and confusion must’ve only increased when the voice of God thundered from behind a cloud, “This is my son…listen to him.” When they came down from the mountain, they told no one of their experience, but surely as Mary did earlier, they must have pondered it in their hearts.

As it was for Moses, the timing of Jesus’ transfiguration was not accidental. Jesus’ ministry is drawing to a close, and he has begun to warn the disciples about what is to come, warn them that they, too, must be prepared to take up the cross. Peter has declared Jesus to be the messiah, the chosen one, but Jesus must have known that the disciples really didn’t understand who he was and what they would have to face. And so, witnessing the transfiguration of Jesus, seeing him reflect the glory and majesty of God, hearing God proclaim him as his son would’ve been for them like seeing Moses’ shining face was for the Israelites, a potent reminder of God’s on-going presence in their lives, a reminder that would become evermore important as they traveled with Jesus to Jerusalem and the cross.

The placement of these readings in our lectionary is not accidental, either. On Wednesday we’ll begin our long passage through Lent, retracing that road to the cross. Even though we have the assurance of the resurrection, the promise of Easter, this can be a dark, lonely and painful journey. We are asked to examine our lives, our hearts, our consciences; we’re asked to face up to our faults, to seek forgiveness, to turn away from those things that separate us from God and from being our best selves. We are asked to acknowledge not only Jesus’ suffering, but also our own and the world’s so that we may be truly prepared to enter into the joy of the resurrection at Easter.

Today’s readings remind us, as we undertake our Lenten journey, of the majesty and the glory of the God who created us, and of the promise of the God who does not, will not –has not ever—leave us on our own. Just as Moses’ shining face was a reminder to the Israelites that God will not abandon his people, no matter how difficult those people are, so too does it reassure us of God’s on-going presence in our lives. And just as Jesus’ transformation in the presence of Moses and Elijah proclaimed him as the messiah, the chosen one of God, so too does it affirm for us, that in Jesus, God’s promise to be with us always reaches its fulfillment. In that promise we can rest secure, knowing that we are held safely in God’s embrace, no matter how long or how hard the journey.

AMEN

Sermon for Epiphany 3, January 24, 2010

Third Sunday after the Epiphany
January 24, 2010

Luke 4:14-21

Almighty God, may your Word be our light in the darkness, and may these words help to spread that light in the world. Amen.

Over the course of the last few weeks, we’ve focused on the season of Epiphany as a time of ‘revelation’ and how, during this season, Jesus is being ‘revealed’ to the world in Luke’s gospel. Luke is, of course, a consummate story teller, and in his gospel, he spins out a tale that takes us from the annunciation of Mary’s pregnancy through the birth in Bethlehem, the visit from the shepherds, the presentation of the infant at the Temple, Jesus’ lingering at the Temple as a preadolescent, his baptism, and now to this story, about the beginning of his ministry. At each point in the story, something about Jesus’ identity, his power and authority in the world, and his vocation as the messiah, the anointed one has been revealed, and this week, as Jesus preaches in the synagogue, we hear Jesus himself not only affirm that identity but also reveal his mission statement.

Luke’s narrative has Jesus’ ministry start out on a different footing that it did last week in John’s account. John places a great deal of emphasis on the ‘signs’ performed by Jesus, and he uses the story of Jesus turning the water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana, the first of these signs, as a way of revealing Jesus’ power and authority in the world. But when we find Jesus in the synagogue today, in Luke’s telling of the story, he is fresh out of the desert where the Spirit led him after his baptism. Jesus has resisted the temptations Satan placed in front of him there, and he’s preached in a few synagogues along the way with favorable reviews, but he has yet to call a disciple, he has yet to perform a miracle; he is still largely unknown among the people when he returns to his hometown of Nazareth. On the Sabbath, like any faithful Jewish man, he goes to the synagogue for prayer, and there he stands to reads Torah, selecting passages from the prophet Isaiah.

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because 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."

And then, returning to his seat he says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

Wow.

I expect that it took a while for the full impact of what Jesus had just said to those gathered to sink in. And as we’ll hear in next week’s gospel, the reaction of the congregation was not entirely positive. But in fact, the congregation of this small synagogue in Nazareth, full of men and boys Jesus had grown up with, played with, studied and worked with, were the first to hear the proclamation of Jesus’ own mission statement.

Because that’s what it was, really. We’re accustomed to the whole notion of “mission statements” these days---every church and civic organization and corporation has one: a vision, a set of guiding principles that when well done captures the essence of what the group is about. We have a mission statement here at Trinity—it’s on our web page, and over the next year or so we will likely be revisiting it. I doubt, however, that the phrase “mission statement” was in the lexicon of Jesus or his audience. But when Jesus stood and read the prophecy from Isaiah, and then proclaimed that prophecy to be fulfilled in their hearing, he was claiming his identity and boldly staking out his mission in the world.

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.” At Jesus’ baptism, Luke tells us, the Spirit descended on Jesus in the form of a dove. That same Spirit led Jesus into the wilderness, and filled him when he returned to Galilee. And now, using the words of the prophet Isaiah, he asserts that he is full of the spirit because the Lord has anointed him.

We should not miss the import of those words. To be anointed was not such an unusual thing—kings were anointed, others in special positions were anointed—but Jesus is laying claim to a special anointing—by the Lord—an anointing that sets him aside as the chosen one, the one, the longed for hope of the Jewish people—the messiah. But it gets even better.

…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

Because we are familiar with the themes of Jesus’ preaching, we know the audiences to whom he preached, we are perhaps not as shocked by this claim as were those who first heard it. Isaiah of course wrote it in the context of the Babylonian exile, speaking of an Israelite people who had been oppressed and held captive. But when Jesus proclaims it as his mission, he is focusing on those not just politically held captive by the Roman Empire, but also on those held captive in poverty, in disease, in the oppression that comes in a social system weighted in favor of the wealthy. Jesus is foreshadowing a ministry in which he reaches out to the poor, the excluded, the outcast, and he’s foreshadowing his call to his followers to do likewise.

We’re more comfortable with the notion of “mission statement” than Jesus’ audience in the synagogue that day, but likely we we’re just as uncomfortable having those words directed to us as they were. Because when we take those words seriously, when we recognize Jesus’ mission statement as our own, it can rattle us to our very roots. We are called, as I say here almost every week, to love God, and to love our neighbor, but we often have a limited vision of who that neighbor is and what that love means. Jesus reminds us that we’re called to bring good news—the gospel with all it entails---not just to the neighbors who are like us, but also to the poor—the poor in spirit, and the poor in fact. We are called to not only bring that good news, but also to live it, to be forces of liberation in the world—liberation from poverty and disease and oppression of all sorts. And that’s a tall order.

In just a little while we’ll recess to the parish hall for our annual meeting. The temptation is great to view this meeting as something just to get over with, a necessary but not particularly exciting piece of business to take care of. And there certainly are those aspects of it. But I invite you this year to come to this meeting not only to do the required business, not only to review the year gone by, but also to look to the year ahead. We are undertaking a new thing here, you and I, in our ministry together at Trinity. We have many challenges and many opportunities ahead of us in the months and years to come. What better place to start than with Jesus’ very own mission statement? How can we use that statement to shape our own ministry here and out in the world, where we are, in the words of St. Paul, Christ’s very own body?

Amen

2 Epiphany January 17, 2010

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 27, 2010
John 2:1-11

Almighty God, may your Word be our light in the darkness, and may these words help to spread that light in the world. Amen.

Our gospel this morning is perhaps one of the best know stories about Jesus, a story that continues with our Epiphany theme of revelation—this time the revelation of God’s power and authority working in Jesus. Sometime shortly after his baptism and after calling his first disciples, we find Jesus attending a wedding in Cana—an ordinary event, to be sure but also a joyful and celebratory one. At the wedding, the supply of wine runs alarmingly low, and although he at first seems reluctant to do so, Jesus uses the most basic of elements—water—to demonstrate the power of God working through him by turning it into wine.

Turning water into wine, in the grand scheme of things, seems almost frivolous, and yet that is the miracle that first reveals Jesus’ power. In an act that is both understated and generous, Jesus demonstrates the abundance God holds for us; in doing so Jesus foreshadows a kingdom in which there is abundance for all, an abundance of those things which sustain physical life to be sure, but more importantly an abundance of the grace and love of God that sustain us spiritually.

In light of this week’s events, however—the horrific earthquake in Haiti, the unspeakable suffering and devastation in a country already living on the margins—it is hard to see that abundance; it is hard to see God’s love for the world at all. A disaster like this can test our humanity, test our faith, can move us to cry, “Where is God in all this?”

This is of course an age old question: How can evil and suffering exist in a world viewed as good at its creation by its creator, a God thought to be all knowing, all powerful, and loving? It is a question that is voiced throughout scripture, in the laments of the psalmists, in the cries of the prophets, in the plaintive voice of Job, and even in the cry of Jesus on the cross. Where are you God, and why have you forsaken me?

Over the years there have been many attempts to explain this paradox. We probably all have our own implicit theories that guide our thinking—for better or for worse. Probably one of the most common notions is one that we heard bandied about in the news this week from a well known conservative Christian: Evil and suffering are God’s punishment for sinners—people are just getting what they deserve, and haven’t we all been warned? For those of us who believe in a God who loves creation, who promises care and protection for the innocent, this type of explanation is not only inadequate but also offensive. And in the face of it, rarely are the “most evil” the ones who suffer; far more often it is the innocent—can we look into the faces of children who cry for their lost parents and really believe that they are deserving of the wrath of God being visited on them in this way?

If suffering isn’t divine punishment, could at be, as some speculate, that suffering is necessary somehow to elicit the moral qualities of empathy, compassion, and care in humans which otherwise would not be cultivated? Suffering – at least the suffering of others – does sometimes bring out the best in us—witness the outpouring of aid flowing towards Haiti right now—we do often rise to the occasion—but what about when we don’t? What about when evil begets evil and perhaps more importantly, what about those who are afflicted, those whose lives are simply destroyed by what they must endure?

Of course, we could just avoid the question of why God allows suffering and evil altogether and focus on eschatological hopes for redemption. We could embrace suffering as something to be borne because at the end time the glory we will experience in the presence of God will more than compensate for it. This approach, however, allows us to ignore suffering in the here and now and to simply shrug off the conditions in the world that we might otherwise work to change. At its worst, this kind of thinking might actually glorify suffering.

For me, these understandings of suffering and evil make no sense. They are inconsistent with my understanding—from scripture, from prayer, from experience—of a loving and beneficent God, a God whose Son became incarnate for our redemption, whose love for us seems to know no bounds. Why would a God who loves us and who created us to delight in us allow suffering, often unmitigated, to be so prevalent in the world? At the end, it remains a mystery to me, and I am forced to consider that perhaps all my attempts to make sense of it are themselves misplaced. Perhaps we are not meant to understand evil and suffering, only to live with it.

It is here that the work of contemporary theologian Wendy Farley^[1] gives me some hope, in fact, saves me from despair. Farley reminds us that we live in a world that is by nature less than perfect, a world that although created by an all powerful God, operates according to natural principles. In Farley’s view, creation is inherently defective even though created by a good God; because creation is separate from God it must be less than God and thus less than perfect, and in this fact lies creation’s “fatal flaw.” In such a defective creation the very diversity and variety that contribute to its goodness also give rise to conflicts that make suffering inescapable. The natural order of the world too contributes to humanity’s suffering. Worst of all some suffering seems irredeemably unjust.

What Farley contends is that in the face of the inevitability of suffering our energies are wasted in attempting to understand it. What is more important, ultimately, is our response to that suffering—our response and God’s.

For the God who lovingly created us, the God who showers us with abundance, the God whose authority was revealed in deeds as small as changing water into wine and as large as raising Lazarus from the dead—that God, our God, suffers along with us. And in that suffering our God works through us to make God’s presence felt.

And so, we find God in the hands that wipe away the tears of those who mourn their loved ones, we see God in the survivors who, as one eyewitness report tells us, huddle on an open field singing hymns well into the night and greeting the morning with prayer. We find God in the doctors and nurses who work in unspeakably poor conditions to heal the wounded, we encounter God in the offerings of food and medicine and clothing and money that are flooding in around the world. We find God in the outpouring of prayers for the people of Haiti, in the torrent of compassion, in the unity we find in reaching out to those who suffer.

Here’s the thing though—we shouldn’t wait for tragedy to strike to see God, to do God’s work in the world. Just as Jesus first revealed his power and authority in a relatively mundane way, turning water into wine at a wedding, rather than waiting for some more dramatic occasion, so too should we look for God’s grace and act as Christ’s body in our quotidian activities.

And so when the emergency is, when the dead are buried and the wounded are healed, when the rebuilding is over and life returns to some semblance of normality, in the space before the world’s next cataclysmic event, we must not abandon our role as Christ’s body, doing Christ’s work – in Haiti, or in New Orleans, or in Palestine, or anywhere else where there is need. For where there is suffering, there too is God—calling us to be there with him, calling us to love our neighbors as ourselves, calling us to be partake of that abundant grace God holds for each of us. Amen.

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[1] Farley, Wendy (1990). Tragic Vision and Divine Compassion: A Contemporary Theodicy.

Westminster/John Knox Press.

Sermon for the Baptism of our Lord January 10, 2010

The First Sunday after the Epiphany
The Baptism of our Lord
January 10, 2010
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

The great protestant reformer Martin Luther is reputed to have proclaimed passionately to his audiences, “Remember your baptism!” For those of us who were baptized as infants, that is just about impossible. But if you are like me, perhaps the gaps in your memory have been filled in by family stories. I don’t remember my baptism, but I know that it took place on a hot June Sunday, in an Episcopal Church in North Carolina, long before anyone thought of air-conditioning churches. My whole family was gathered—my parents, and my grandparents and a couple of aunts and uncles, along with some of my parents’ closest friends, and of course, the congregation. I was wearing the long white dress my older sister had worn at her baptism a few years earlier. Because I was a chubby baby, and perhaps a few months older when I wore that dress than when my sister did, the arms were too tight, and my mother tells the story of how, in the rush to get to church on time, she simply took the scissors and snipped a few threads in each sleeve to make it more comfortable for me.

More than 50 years later my little granddaughter Julianna wore that dress at her baptism, the sleeves still bearing the mark of my baptism day. Julianna likely won’t remember her baptism day either, but she’ll be able to see the pictures, and she’ll hear the stories—how it was hot in church that night, too, even though it was only April, and how the smell of the incense wafted through the congregation, and how her family gathered, church goers and non-church-goers alike in the candle light, as her Amma baptized her with water and marked her by the power of the Holy Spirit with fragrant oil, sealing her as Christ’s own forever.

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Even if we don’t remember our own baptisms, chances are that we all know the story of Jesus’ baptism. It’s told in all four gospels, and we hear it each year on this Sunday, the first Sunday after the Epiphany. It is, I think, no accident that this story is told in the season of Epiphany. “Epiphany” means a revelation, a showing, and in Jesus’ baptism and the actions that followed it, Jesus’ identity, his true identity, is revealed—not for the first time, certainly, for as we’ve heard over the last few weeks, the angel Gabriel revealed Jesus’ identity to Mary at the annunciation, and again to the shepherds on the night of his birth. The infant John leapt in the womb, revealing this identity to Elizabeth when Mary went to visit, and Simeon and Anna caught glimpses of it when he was presented at the Temple. And in last week’s gospel, when Jesus lingered in the Temple and told his parents that he was in “his father’s house” he seemed to have had some inkling of who he was.

The revelation in today’s gospel, however—when the heavens opened up and a dove descended, and a voice proclaimed, “You are my son…” – did more than just signify Jesus’ identity. These words marked the beginning of Jesus’ ministry in the world; they set him on the journey that would culminate with the cross, and the empty tomb. When Jesus was baptized and received the Holy Spirit, he received not only an affirmation of who he was, he also received a vocation.

That sense of vocation is something I fear we sometimes miss in our practice of baptizing infants and young children. Don’t get me wrong—as you may be able to tell from my story about Julianna’s baptism, and from last week’s baptism of little Jacob, I love baptizing babies. When it is time to mark the sign of the cross on their foreheads with the holy oil, and to utter the words, “You are marked by the Holy Spirit and sealed as Christ’s own forever,” I get a chill. Something very real, very powerful happens when we pour that water over an infant’s head, when we Chrismate with that oil—and it’s not something I’d want to give up.

But—and there is a very real but coming—but when we fail to take the promises we make for the child being baptized seriously, when we fail to take those vows to heart for ourselves, when we fail to recognize that each and every one of us is given a vocation at baptism, then I fear that we miss the point of what we are doing. For baptism is more than a social occasion, it is more than a moving liturgy. We consider baptism to be a sacrament—an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace—because baptism is transformative. It is life changing. And it is through baptism that we are called to live as Christ’s own forever, with all that entails.

We may not remember our baptisms, and we may not always recognize the impact baptism has on our lives. But lucky for us, we are given the opportunity to refresh our memories as it were and to revisit what baptism means for us whenever we witness a baptism, and whenever we celebrate a “baptismal occasion” as we do today as we celebrate the baptism of our Lord. In just a few minutes we will stand and we will renew our baptismal covenant—those promises that were made for us by our parents and godparents, or perhaps that we made for ourselves if we were older. And in an act meant to fully reconnect us to the power of that moment in time, we’ll be sprinkled again with the holy waters of baptism.

This may seem like so much show, but I invite you to enter fully into this moment. Think about the promises you are making, and what they mean for your lives—as individuals and corporately as members of this parish, as members of this community, as members of the body of Christ. Pay attention to what you are promising—not only that you believe, but also that you will “proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, “ that you will “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself,” and that you will “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.” And if these promises seem daunting, pay attention to the responses we make to each one, “I will with God’s help.”

I will with God’s help. And that brings us full circle. In baptism we receive our vocation as Christians, but we are not left to do it all on our own. Instead we are given God’s grace and we are empowered by the Holy Spirit, just as Jesus was empowered by the spirit on the day of his baptism. We are empowered by the spirit and we are called into the community of the church to do the work of Christ in the world. And if we take this seriously, then our baptisms will be transformative not only for us, but for the whole world. Think about what that could mean.

And now, let us stand and reaffirm the promises of our baptism…