Author: StAlbansChurch

Last fall Joni and I took one of those Fall Foliage tours of New England. Even though the turning leaves are never quite as spectacular as in the brochures, it was still a pretty impressive sequence of sunny autumnal settings. And there were side trips that were a surprise to me — since I didn’t set this trip up.

One afternoon our tour bus visited the Norman Rockwell Museum — we had the whole place to ourselves. Rockwell was a very successful commercial artist, and we saw the content of his paintings change over time — starting with the Great Depression, the Second World War and the Home Front, on into the fifties and later years. One painting really caught my eye — and Joni saw me spending a lot of time on it — she even surprising me last Christmas by giving me a reproduction of it — it’s titled “April Fools’ Day.”

It’s full of bizarre visual twists. A young girl holds a doll that looks like an old man. Dogs wear shoes, Mona Lisa has a halo, and Rockwell’s signature is backwards.

What does this have to do with the season of Lent we have just begun? Well, the culture around us has changed is some truly bizarre ways. Our pride as American citizens is tested daily — cruelty in place of justice. Less than 1% of our national budget used to go to the “soft power” of aid for counties poorer than ours. Sharing our country’s abundant harvests helped make us proud to be Americans — the rich sharing with the poor.

That’s all over now. America is miserly. Masked secret police roam our streets. We have been brought up to see the face of Christ in the poor and downtrodden. Our government sees those same poor people as enemies to be deported.

Of course, the Old and New Testaments have a lot to say about these realities. If Lent is a time for lamentation for sin, then during this particular Lenten season I invite us to move from personal lamentation to communal lamentation. Our book of Psalms provides rich material for a people driven near to despair by the oppression of the poor by the wealthy rich and their cruelty — Psalm 79.

O God, the heathen have come into your inheritance

they have profaned your holy temple

they have made Jerusalem a heap of rubble

They have given the bodies of your servants as food for the birds of the air

and the flesh of your faithful ones to the beasts of the field

They have shed their blood like water on every side of Jerusalem

and there was no one to bury them [Psalm 79]

When we turn to today’s Gospel, we can view Nicodemus in a different light. Rather than view him as a figure of the old law daring to explore a new teaching, I’m seeing him as a wise old survivor living under Roman occupation. Nicodemus and all Jews encountered soldiers on their streets every day — strong men who could enter houses at will and haul off anyone they chose.

The Jews of Jesus’ day knew all about resistance in the midst of daily oppression. They clung ever more tightly to the traditions of their ancestors in the faith. Their daily encounter with oppression gives a political context to their resistance to the radical message of Jesus. The Jews lived out their faith under repression.

Rome’s occupying army permitted the Jews to keep up daily worship in the Temple, but governors like Pontius Pilate placed Roman soldiers there on constant watch. So an uneasy truce with Rome prevailed — you can pray in your Temple, but know that we’re always on the lookout for revolutionaries.

Nicodemus appears twice more in John’s Gospel. Later, to an assembly of Pharisees, he asks: “Does our law permits us to pass judgment on a man (Jesus) unless we have given him a hearing and learned the facts?” And of course Nicodemus is there with Joseph of Arimathea taking care of the body of Jesus after he has been taken down from his cross.

I have been practicing a novel form of fasting this Lent — not one of privation, but of monitoring my thoughts. When I notice my mind doom-scrolling — which has to be the outstanding word that sums up our disjointed decade — I am intentional of naming those thoughts as literally diabolic.

I’m talking about the Greek roots of that word: bollein (to throw) and dia (apart) And I endeavor to turn to its opposite: symbollein (to throw together). Symbolic thinking leads to healing and prayers for a return to cultural sanity.

(A litany for Sound Government is found on page 821 of the Book of Common Prayer — # 22.)

Well.  It is the First Sunday of Lent.  Who would’ve thought it would come so soon.  Once again, it is time for reflection about turning our hearts upside-down.

It is a lot of fun to match wits in games.  There’s Fish or Uno with your children or grandchildren.  (So many excellent opportunities for cheating.)  How about a fast hot game of double solitaire on a winter’s night.  Think about the mysteries of Bridge!  Then there’s that new new, very pleasurable, New York Times “Cross Play” which is a kind of online Scrabble you play with a computer or with another actual person.

But how would you like to match wits with the Devil??  Well, I’m pretty sure we’ll say, “I don’t think so.”  But, you know, we do it all the time.

I’m not going to go into who or what the Devil might be.  More educated minds than mine have tackled this topic.   But I will say this much.  There is so much good deeply and consistently inside us.  And, at the same time, we are also deeply divided.  We can have attitudes in our minds or souls that hold us back, that promote bad choices.  We harbor resistance, fear, dislike, and negative points of view and habits.  We can be inconsistent in honoring the dignity of 100 percent of the people in this beautiful Creation.  Sometimes we do not honor animals.  Writ large and amongst the powerful, these attitudes result in the distortions in our collective systems which allow, even celebrate, the disparities in wealth, the tens of thousands dead in Gaza, the estimated two million lost in Russia and Ukraine.  You name it.  We do these things, not the Devil.  But the attitudes that lead us to doing them are in us.  This is pretty sobering.

In today’s beautiful Gospel, Jesus does match wits with the Devil.  But at the same time Jesus is doing something for us — because I think he always has us in mind.  He is directly giving us a catechism lesson on dealing with our divided selves.  So, right at beginning of the Gospel, with the Temptation in the Wilderness, the Gospel tries to turn our hearts upside-down.

In the first temptation, the Devil urges a hungry Jesus to turn stones to bread.   As a simple  onlooker, I want to say, “Yeah!  Turn the stones to bread!  That would be so cool.  And you’d get an unending supply of bread.”  But why should we want that?  It’s because we feel there is never enough.  There is not enough money, enough room, enough land, enough time, enough security. enough safety.  This story of the bread and stones is about our anxiety over scarcity.  It’s an anxiety that enlarges to the point where I want what you have.  I will make war.  I will kill you and your children.  You scare me.  You’re in my way.

Jesus never says we should give up eating bread.  And he doesn’t tell us to give up  money or land or resources and so forth.  But he does turn us toward the opposite of anxiety.  His path is every word that comes from the mouth of God.  What is this Word?  It is the repeated placement in our minds of what might change us.  The Word is a kind  of nourishment that forces us to think about our lives and salvation.  It penetrates.  It inspires.  And merely hearing Isaiah’s great words is a big, big step.  “To loose the bonds of injustice. . . to share your bread with the hungry . . . [to] bring the homeless poor into your house . . . when you see the naked, to cover them . . .”  (Isaiah 58:6-9a)  The Word is enough to make us at least think about turning away from our fears — not all at once, maybe little by little.

In the second temptation, the Devil urges Jesus to throw himself down from the top of the Temple and enjoy the thrill because the angels will rush to help him anyway.  But Jesus says that a person should not tempt or test the Lord.  What does “tempt the Lord” mean?  Most importantly for me, it means not to take God for granted —- to think of his power and love as something we can play with.  I am reminded of an old military saying: Don’t ask for permission; just apologize later.  Tempting God is like saying I’ll cheat a little (no harm to anyone!), I’ll play huge financial games as in the pre-2008 world, I’ll think only about my new stuff, and so forth because God is going to forgive me for ignoring the widow and the orphan anyway.  Tempting God is about the selfish  thrill of jumping off the Temple.  Jesus has already addressed our selfish anxiety.  Now he addresses our selfish egoism.

In the third temptation, we are faced with a really hard choice.  The Devil offers us something big and irresistible, something that Adam and Eve in the Genesis story were offered — we want to be like God, we want the power and wealth, we want the evaporation of responsibility, we want the self-reliance, the glory.  Gee, I guess I’ll worship my dark side in order to get all this.  But Jesus’ catechism tells us that, as far as worship goes, we are to worship God alone.  What does this mean?  It means to turn from self-worship.

I’ve often asked myself what worship is.  I think it is attentiveness to God in thought, word, and deed.  It is an attentiveness that pushes us mentally and physically so that our restless, divided selves can begin to rest in God.  It is for all the hours of our day.  It is not limited to church.  I would say by way of aside that church worship is a threshold to worship in daily life and vice versa.

Liturgical worship, worship in church, is definitely and traditionally our coming together in our kinship to take part in the liturgy — to sing, to learn through sermons and the spirit, to participate in common prayer and in the Eucharist.  God has granted us our apprehension of the beautiful, the inspiration and rapture, the spiritual assembly of Christian kin and our common prayer and joy.  It is not that the world outside church is not beautiful.  It’s that communal worship occurs in beauty too.

At church, we say good-bye in the post-communion prayer with these beautiful words:  And grant us the strength and the courage to love and to serve you with gladness and singleness of heart.  Love is the big signal of Christianity, and along with gladness and singleness of heart it is a great cure for restlessness.  The prayer tells us to go out and love and serve.

And so I was quite surprised actually to realize that the chapter which starts the Sermon on the Mount comes right after the Third Temptation.  (Matthew 5)  In his sermon, Jesus says a lot about how to behave in the world and how to change your attitudes and turn your heart upside down.  In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus compresses a beautiful message about us and God into a few sentences.  I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. . . Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.  (Matthew 5:44-45, 48).  This is another statement of the Law of Love:  Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.  (E.g., Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 10:28-34)  In these words, Jesus connects love and action, but also attention and receptivity.  It is truly the opposite of the anxiety and selfishness laid out in the First and Second Temptations.  This statement is advice about how to rest our divided selves, to have gladness and singleness of heart.

Beautiful worship in church and beautiful worship in the world make up one environment. In church, we pay attention and we learn and are inspired.  In the world, we do the same thing, but act when we must.  We learn about the acting from the worship in church — or from prayer at home or the Bible reading group.  For example, we hear the Word.  That’s how I got the quote from Isaiah about clothing the naked, housing the homeless, feeding the poor.  That’s how I started to think that Jesus must have had this passage from Isaiah in mind when  he said that when you clothed another, visited the prisoner, gave someone water, and so on as we all know, you did it to me.  (Matthew 25:21-46.)  And in the  statement in the Sermon on the Mount about the Law of Love, Jesus says “Be like me!” And “Be perfect as God is perfect,” even-handed and loving.  Not that I am ever going to be as perfect as God — that is not going to happen.  But it is a statement that centers us on singleness of heart and helps our divided selves.

This is all worship.  Actually, it sounds pretty much like life.  I wanted to close by giving you an inspiring story.  It’s an inspiring story about a real person as played in a movie about her.  Maybe this doesn’t sound very inspiring, but it seems we stumble on the Gospel all over the place.  So, here is a story that is very far from division and self-worship.  It is one of the most beautiful descriptions of being like God that I have ever heard of.  In the book Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean tells her story how she came to work even-handedly on two sides — for the men condemned to death and for the survivors of the victims of their terrible crimes.    She was very present for these condemned men.  In the movie, Susan Sarandon, who plays Sister Helen, says to Patrick Sonnier, who had committed an awful crime, that, when he went to execution, she would be the face of love for him.  I say, our faces of love are surely the face of Christ.

Who would have thought the the Temptation in the Wilderness would take us so far?  As the Evangelicals say: Thank you, Jesus!

Lord, it is good for us to be here!

This morning we find ourselves at the end of the Epiphany season that follows Christmas.

The green season of Epiphany is a sequence of manifestations, of showings forth:

first, the Twelfth night after Christmas — which celebrates the arrival of the wise rulers from the East;  then the Baptism of Jesus by John in the Jordan river; then Jesus’ first miracles, first healings, and first teachings —  all these stories show forth who Jesus is, with greater and greater clarity.

And so we come to this Sunday, the most powerful of all of these manifestations. Our first reading from the Book of Exodus gives a background to our Gospel. Moses goes up on a mountain, to receive the Covenant Law, and to encounter God.

We’re told that the glory of God settled on the top of Mount Sinai, like a devouring fire that could be seen by the people of Israel far down below. If we think of an emotion connected to this scene, it would be fear and awe — don’t get too close to this side of God, or we’ll be consumed. We would not want to say, like Peter does in the Gospel story:

Lord, it is good for us to be here!

In our Gospel reading, Jesus climbs a new Mount Sinai to bring a New Covenant.  He was transfigured before them — a new fire illuminates the followers of Jesus, on a new mountain — possibly the same location as the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus’ clothes are a brilliant white — and from Jesus’ face shines a captivating radiance. I imagine a face full of the power of infinite love — which we catch in glimpses.

Suddenly Jesus is not alone. Two personages from the past are at his sides. Moses is the lawgiver, present at that earlier manifestation of God on Sinai. The figure of Moses represents the ordered and regulated way to follow God —

     “keep the law, and the law will keep you—

     “break the law, the law will break you.”

But there’s another figure present on the other side of Jesus — the prophet Elijah. The Old Testament prophets were charismatic people, hard to pin down into law. These prophets would sometimes just go into ecstasy, and appear out of their minds. After what seemed like a trance, they would come back to earth and declare: “This is what God wants to say to the people right now. This is God’s will for you.”

The Law and the Prophets are often in tension. An inspired prophet would say that following the letter of the law is not enough — legalism is not life-giving. But if there is no regulation in society, we’re left with competing visionaries. 

At this moment of Jesus’ Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah, the law and the prophet, blend their contrasting gifts with a common focus in the person of Christ Jesus. I find it appropriate that the figure of Christ Jesus is located exactly in the tension between structure and new vision, situated amidst the weight of tradition and the ecstatic utterances that cannot be generated by any legalism.

Lord, it is good for us to be here!

Today’s Christians and today’s church need to embrace both law and prophets! Some of us are better at institutional memory, at keeping structures vibrant and humane. Others among us are better at the creative gesture, looking to what’s new, finding the creative in what others take to be mere chaos. These are innovators, visionaries, poets and artists following a muse, prophets speaking the truth to power.

Peter and James and John are overawed by this vision, and Peter shouts out:

Lord, it is good for us to be here!

So far, so good. But then Peter starts babbling about constructing a stone memorial to this living experience, as if he can take a spiritual selfie instead of just being present. We’re told that at that moment, a cloud covers the scene, and a heavenly voice tells Peter to quiet down and pay attention to what is happening here: “This is my son, my Beloved, with Him I am well pleased. Listen to Him.” Listen to Him. Listen to Him.

All of us have had some peak experience, a hint of transfiguration of our lives by love, and we may recall some time and place where it all came together for us. And yet, for us as for Peter and his friends, a cloud comes to overshadow the peak experience.

God does not want us building monuments to our transfigured insights, but rather to go about the work of living out the challenge of keeping the law and the spirit in balance. Let’s be open to new and surprising ways that we can experience God’s love, and say:

Lord, it is good for us to be here!

“Then you shall call, and YHWH will answer; you shall cry for help, and God will say, ‘Here I am’ (58:9a).

Friends, according to the timeless prophetic witness of Isaiah, God is always available, always attentive, and always attuned to those who work for justice.

God is far less interested in great shows of religious practice. 

For instance – our beautiful liturgies, our careful arrangements for the altar, our richly decorated vestments – all of these have a purpose. All of these are for the purpose of helping to point us beyond ourselves and towards the ineffable, towards the divine, towards Christ crucified on behalf of the world. When we devolve towards thinking that these liturgies and the candles and the music and the gestures are sacred in and of themselves, and point the finger towards anyone who “gets it wrong”, then we are closing in on idolatry. 

I, personally, find all of this beautiful and meaningful and helpful – and I”m guessing you do as well, or you would find another way of doing church. And, I admit, there are times in which the order and the beauty of our liturgical practices in and of themselves soothes my heart and helps my mind find peace when the outside world seems chaotic and indifferent to suffering. 

But Isaiah and Jesus and Paul all lift up the truth this morning, that we can follow all the rubrics, all the best practices, and not find salvation. Our worship is empty, God is not listening, if our worship does not witness to the truth of Christ crucified out of love of God and love of neighbor as self and raised as a permanent witness to justice and the eternal power of love.

God is not greatly interested in shows of religious practice. God is greatly interested in how we treat the poor and the stranger and the suffering. 

When crosses, whether worn prominently as a necklace, as the current White House press secretary does, or as happened on January 6th as large objects to pray around and then use to bludgeon police officers, have no resemblance to the cruciform practices that God chooses – offering bread to the hungry, housing the wretched poor, clothing those without clothes, appreciating and attending to your kin – which are biblically defined as all other human beings, then these crosses are idolatrous. 

Jesus stands as a direct descendant of Isaiah who himself stands in the long 300-year history of the prophets of Israel who had showed no interest whatever in public displays of piety.

Justice, these prophets said again and again, is the way to the heart of God. 

We cannot have it both ways. We cannot have the goods of the kingdom – an intimacy with Christ, the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the incorporation into the Body of Christ, the Church – and the goods of the world – power to wreak havoc on others as you maintain your own privilege and security, status of being one the few chosen ones, billionaire wealthy ones, invited into Epstein’s circle of influence, or whomever the current power broker is.

The powerful people of Isaiah’s day kept the law, they groveled before God, they wore sackcloth and ashes, they gashed themselves, they offered sacrifices of grain and oil and valuables – but it was all for nothing. Less than nothing because all it did was distance themselves even more from the Divine. What they did or said or wore or sang or prayed or gave was without meaning if it was not also accompanied by the actual works of compassion and justice.  

It was the same in Jesus’s day. And it is the same in our own day.  

Justice, all the prophets insist. Justice is what God attends to, what God listens for, what God calls out for. 

The reading from Isaiah begins

Call out with full throat, do not stint,

Raise your voice like a ram’s horn,

And tell to My people its crime,

And to the house of Jacob their offense. 

I was at a protest recently and a woman arrived with one of those air horns and began blasting it. It was indeed like a ram’s horn. Loud. Insistent. A blaring warning. 

My ears couldn’t take it and I moved to a different place, farther away. But even from farther away I could hear it. And the memory of the sound and my annoyance has stayed with me.  The truth is, prophets and ordinary people who really raise their voices, who call out with a full throat, who do not stint in their loudness – they can be annoying. They can be off-putting. It is easy and inviting to distance ourselves from them. 

And yet, there are times in which telling out the crimes of injustice and inhumanity loudly as annoying and awkward as it is – is necessary.  God bless that woman with the air horn. 

I don’t seen anywhere in the prophets or in the gospels or in the writings of the early church where we are excused from the essential practices of justice and mercy. We are light, as Jesus tells us. Because we belong to the Body of Christ, we are light – and our purpose is to shine so that our good works of relieving suffering and advancing the causes of justice give glory to God. 

How is God inviting you, as a Jesus-following people, as a Christ-saturated community, into the cruciform – cross-shaped practices of justice and mercy – feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing those without shelter, setting the downtrodden free? 

It is true that our prayers and our actions, week after week, can seem like a drop in the bucket of overwhelming injustice and need. But we are people who live and move and have our being in the power and righteousness of the Eternal Almighty. 

And the claim our long-ago faith ancestor Isaiah made has not ceased to be true – Your vindication shall march before you and the Lord’s glory shall be your rearguard, you shall call and the Lord shall answer, cry out, and He shall say, “Here I am!” 

And the blessings that our Lord Jesus claimed for the peacemakers and the pure in heart and the merciful have not lessened. These prophetic blessings are the living tradition we stand in. It is not a fainthearted one or a shrinking one or a fearful one. It is a tradition that includes airhorns calling out injustice and quiet behind the scenes works of visiting the sick, stocking food banks, going to City Council meetings, praying, singing, studying scripture together, weeping in lament and rising in resilience and determination. 

Friends, I am so glad to worship with you in a beautiful liturgy, wearing beautiful vestments, for the purpose of taking our worship out with us to do the work we are called to do – being the Body of Christ in the world, working for peace, for mercy, and for justice.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness–on them light has shined.” 

The theme of darkness and light stood out to me this week and although I tried to write my reflection earlier in week, I ended up not sitting down till last night to put into words what has been heavy in my heart. At the onset, my initial reaction was, kind of feels like where we are right now, in a dark time for our country and for the world. Yet it isn’t for everyone. Although in my social media algorithms and communities there is outrage at the actions of ICE in Minnesota and across the country, I know that is not the case for everyone. 

I know that there are people who believe the actions of ICE are appropriate and possibly not enough. That the reason they are not able to succeed is because there are immigrants, others who have taken away their opportunities, have caused them harm. That this is the path of righteousness and it is their right to protect their way of life – and for some their god given way of life. And for them this is their light, the end of their darkness.

And that reality is hard to sit with. To know that for someone else, because I am a refugee, an immigrant, that to them I am a foreigner and have no place in this country. Regardless of whether or not I was sponsored legally as an infant, or have spent my professional career as a public servant, or am a fellow Christian, I am not welcome. It is not new, this sentiment, as a minority, an outsider to not be welcome; it has existed through the ages from the stories told in the bible scriptures to those reported on the news today. It is why the scriptures continue to hold their weight. 

“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose.”

The current darkness and division that exists is not just among us as a country, however as Christians as well. There are Christian families who have members that are ICE officers and there are Christian families who have members in detention centers. I think of the ones in the detention centers this week, the ones who saw the opportunities to work and provide for their families now living in fear for their future and those they were taken from. I think of the children torn from their parents or taken with them. The ones who are in literal darkness. And I think about when we look back at history, how do we know that we will be on the right side? 

What can we take from Jesus’ teachings that continue to resonate to this day. We know there are those that are still oppressed, those that are poor, and those that are hungry. Where do we stand as Christians whom Jesus has saved. Where do we turn in our times of darkness? How do we find light when we may feel like we’ve been cast away? Who will help us now? Who will answer the prayers of the oppressed? How do we break the rod of the oppressor? 

A lot of questions and not a lot of simple answers or solutions even. Yet I can imagine, for the faithful, even in their darkest hour they still turn to prayer and the Lord. Have you ever, when in times of despair or heartache turned to prayer? I know I have. And I can imagine that there are those in the detention centers who are turning to their faith, because even in their darkness, they know that their salvation is still in the Lord. 

And that faith, that is the light. That light continues to move through the generations so that there are always those willing to fight the oppressor, willing to speak out and act. And just as there is darkness and light, there is still injustice. 

That is a hard reckoning, that injustice has existed through the ages and will likely continue. Because just as there are those that are willing to fight the oppressor, there are those who believe that they are superior and have the right to control others. From the days of Pharaoh’s enslavement of the Israelites to the enslavement of Africans in the United States, there has been darkness. Yet through those dark times, there was light and some freedom, albeit hard fought. 

For many who feel that this is a dark time, you are definitely not alone. It can be easy to dwell in, and it was hard these past few days to see where there is light, which is part of what felt so hard about this reflection this week and especially yesterday. And just as I was writing about the current darkness, I got a little sign of light.

In a group chat, a friend sent pictures and videos of him and his daughter holding a small candlelight vigil with a sign that said “Honk 4 Alex, Renee, Keith, Parody and Silverio.” In the video, his five year old daughter with a childhood seriousness mixed with joy let us know that she had gotten 7 honks and one thumbs up. It pains me to think that at such a young age she is learning that bad things sometimes happen to good people and that she has to do something to fight against it. Yet it is in that teaching of the next generation and reminders as we listen to the weekly scriptures that Jesus stood up for the oppressed and weak. That as long as we are willing to believe and act in good faith for the least, then we are staying true to the Lord’s message. 

“the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned.”

While sitting in darkness, let us continue to seek the light. Let us care for each other and for those unable to speak up for themselves. There will always be those who seek to oppress others and we must continue to live Jesus’ message to care for the sick, weak, and oppressed. For where there is darkness, we must hold and shine our own lights.  

To paraphrase the Christian mystic and civil rights leader Howard Thurman: Do you believe that life, your life – is not finished yet? That you are potential. Regardless of your age – that you are potential. That life is dynamic and always presenting newness. Do you believe that? 

Because the hard thing when you get old is to keep your horizons open. The first part of your life everything is in front of you, all your potential and promise. But over the years, you make decisions, you carve yourself into a given shape. Then the challenge is to keep discovering the green growing edge.

And I don’t believe he was just talking to 60, 70, 80, 90-year-olds – The challenge to keep discovering the green growing edge is for 30, 40, and 50-year-olds as well. 

As an adult of any age, it’s very easy to cave to the shape our previous decisions have carved into us – to continue, day by day, making similar decisions to those we made yesterday – and so gradually close down our horizons and shave off those green growing edges without ever even seeing them. 

One of the things I love about being a liturgical church is that our calendar routinely puts in front of us opportunities to re-look at who we are, and to find those growing edges and move, maybe ever so slightly and awkwardly, but continuously in those directions.  Here’s what I mean: 

Advent is the beginning of our liturgical year. It is the four weeks prior to Christmas, and year after year, we encounter the surprising and frankly fearful ways God entered Isaiah’s life and John the Baptist’ life, and Mary’s and Joseph’s lives. In Advent we encounter God or life disrupting plans and catapulting ordinary people in new directions. 

In the twelve days of Christmas, we encounter the awe of newborn life, the wonder of God coming to us in flesh and blood and mess and joy. This is a time to go out under the night sky and stretch your imagination to hear angels singing in the heavens. 

Epiphany stirs curiosity and action. What if you joined the wise men who saw a star and didn’t just wonder what it might mean but took the next steps of going to find out. What if you joined the Magi who when they found the newborn King – fell down in worship and offered their resources to fund this new life. The gold they offered most likely helped save the life of the Holy Family as they fled violence and joined the stream of refugees seeking safety in another place. 

And now here we are – in the season after Epiphany.  This is a time we remember that God is constantly continuing to reveal God’s self to us. 

And on this first Sunday after Epiphany, we are stepping into the baptismal river water with Jesus. We hear God reveal how beloved he was, and how much pleasure his Divine Father took in him.  That was enough affirmation to set Jesus off into a very public very bold ministry that continues to reverberate through the centuries. So here is this season’s question – how is God revealing God’s self to you now?  What is the green growing edge for you? What is stretching your horizons? 

And I don’t care if you are 90 or 19 – I believe that God wants to encounter you this morning – in worship or coffee hour or in the store doing your weekly shopping afterwards. And I’m speaking to those of you joining us online as well. 

Maybe it is to prod you forward or sideways, or encourage you, or comfort you, or challenge you. Maybe it is to bring something or someone to mind for you to forgive, or ask for forgiveness, or say thank you to, or simply call and be in touch and maybe renew a friendship with. Maybe it is to participate in some work of justice or mercy or maybe just set down your phone and go outside more. Maybe it is simply to encourage you to sit and wait – which can be the hardest thing of all. 

Because here’s the thing – it’s quite possible for that voice of the Lord to speak through silence. For there to be no message that you can pin down or put any kind of shape to. Darkness and the silence, my friends, is also the voice of the Lord. It doesn’t mean you are doing anything wrong. It is simply part of the path. A hard part of the path. 

Because it is hard, particularly with all the quick fixes and loads of distractions – it’s hard to be silent. To admit that we don’t know. To not be able to Google  “what is God revealing to me?” or “where is my green growing edge?” To not have any heavenly Siri we can ask. 

Without any technological crutches – we are asked to stand up and walk again and again into our Baptism. Into Beginnings. Into Listening – maybe to something. Maybe to nothing. We are asked to listen to that baby thing just beginning to form – that might just be a feeling of discomfort at what is, and maybe an intuition of what might be. 

And of course, beginnings are exciting, but they are also anxiety producing – so here is the good news. The same foundational wisdom the Heavenly Father gave to Jesus as he emerged from the baptismal waters is given, through Christ, to us as well: You are God’s beloved – God is well pleased in you.

All green and growing edges arise out of this Jordan River voice. You are God’s child, God’s beloved, deserving of love and respect. God will use you to change the world. 

If thou wilt foil thy Foes with joy, then Flit not from this Heavenly boy!

This verse is the last line of an English Renaissance poem by Robert Southwell. It’s part of a Christmas song cycle: a Ceremony of Carols, by Benjamin Britten: The choir sings this carol so fast, that for years I missed this final line: 

If thou wilt foil thy Foes with joy, then Flit not from this Heavenly boy!

It shows a militant spirit, fitting if we think about ourselves in a spiritual struggle.

I heard a sermon preached last year over at All Souls, where Joni and I worship most Sundays. It was the Sunday after Donald Trump was elected as our President again. The preacher was their young associate Emily B., and she anticipated that many of the parishioners were sad and disoriented.

So she began her sermon with a lengthy and solemn recital of the Prologue to the Gospel of John — you know it well — “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” These powerful verses recall the cosmic origin story from the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” John’s prologue continues: “The true light that enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, but the world knew him not.”

Over my lifetime of ministry and preaching, I realize that I sometimes mute the dualism I find in the Gospel of John. After all, after each of the days of creation, found so beautifully in our stained glass windows, God call the world “good.” And on the seventh day, God sums it all up as “Very good.”

But over this last year, I’ve shifted back to the insight of the duality in John’s Gospel —   He was in the world, and the world was made by him, but the world knew him not.” This hostile world was the context for Christ’s birth. The Roman empire decreed a census of the colonies, including Palestine. This census meant dislocation and a secular pilgrimage, catching up Mary and Joseph in its decrees.

 Their improvised shelter in a barn was only a prelude to the life of refugees, fleeing Herod’s mad decree when he sent soldiers to slaughter little boys. The power of the state was brutal and uncaring for the poor. Those who hoped to make their way in that world, conformed. Those opposed to it, died — as Jesus would do when his human life ended upon a cross.

If thou wilt foil thy Foes with joy, then Flit not from this Heavenly boy!

My pride as an American citizen is being tested daily — perhaps you feel the same. The richest man on the planet has pulled back the curtain on worldly power: Elon proclaims: “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.” :|| Less than 1% of our national budget used to go to the “soft power” of aid for counties poorer than ours. Sharing our country’s abundant harvests helped make us proud to be Americans — the rich sharing with the poor.

On Day One of this administration, USAID was ended. Food sat in warehouses, medical aid was stopped, workers were fired — and of course people died. But you know all this. We can no longer rely on the state to do our Christianity for us. We have been brought up to see the face of Christ in the poor and downtrodden. The Gospels show us, in the teaching and deeds of Jesus, that God powerfully shows what liberation theologians call a “preferential option for the poor.”

In a unusual way, the “joy of giving” is now linked with showing that Elon is wrong about empathy. Our society, and our world, is stronger when people are fed, when medical aid flows freely to the sick — deadly epidemics are less likely to spread, and the resentment that the poor have toward the rich is greatly reduced.

If thou wilt foil thy Foes with joy, then Flit not from this Heavenly boy!

In the 1960’s and 1970’s, the Christian peasants in Central America had a saying: “Their tanks will rust; our songs will last.” That’s joyous! The hymnal of Israel, which we call the Book of Psalms, speak of the swords being made into pruning hooks, the wheel of chariots (those tanks of the ancient world) are being stopped.

Joni and I found solid joy in peaceful non-violence at a No Kings protest in El Cerrito, among hundreds of our neighbors just happy to be there together, greeting members of the El Cerrito Police as they walked among us, ensuring our safety. These nation-wide protests are a joyous celebration of peaceful dissent. Let the Speaker of the House claim that we are “antifa, illegals, Hamas.” Our government has, sadly, lied to us before — so we’re used to it by now.

This last year has refocused my hopes even more on the basics of my Christian faith. My modest generosity to those in need of assistance has a keener edge today — my exercise of empathy is (to use a 1960’s term) “counter-cultural!” Seeing Christ in the faces of the poor “subverts the dominant paradigm” of the state.

If thou wilt foil thy Foes with joy, then Flit not from this Heavenly boy!

Today is the first Sunday of Christmastide. And it is my birthday! Most years, my birthdate, December 28, falls on the Feast of the Holy Innocents. This year, however, the Feast has been transferred to tomorrow. Now, counting the day of my birth, I have visited this day eighty-one times. This means I get to say a few words about the Holy Innocents before turning to the readings for the first Sunday after Christmas.

I think you know the story. But I’ll summarize. (Matthew 2:1-18)

The Wise Men from the East came to Jerusalem and said they were looking for the child who was born King of the Jews. They had seen his star and were coming to worship him — not bow and scrape before him, but worship him. King Herod, who was really upset by the news, asked the chief priests and scribes where the child was to be born, and they said the Scriptures pointed to Bethlehem. Herod talked to the Wise Men privately and asked when the star had appeared. Presumably, they told him. So, in line with what he’d been told, he said they should go to Bethlehem to find the child. Herod was relying on the Wise Men to tell him where exactly the child was. He told them that he wanted to worship the child too. Right. The Wise Men did find the baby Jesus and gave him their gifts. Then, warned in a dream — or maybe just figuring the lay of the land — they sneaked away and returned home. King Herod was “exceeding wroth” at being tricked. (Matthew 2:16) He was left in a predicament: that is, the Wise Men told him when the star appeared and so he knew how old the special child was, but he didn’t know exactly which child to destroy. So, Herod, left high and dry by the Wise Men, ordered a deliberate overkill. That is, he had every male child in Bethlehem two years old and younger killed. Fortunately, the Holy Family had already left and found refuge in Egypt.

Matthew closes the story with a quote from the prophet Jeremiah. “[There was] a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning. Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.” (Matthew 2:18; Jeremiah 31:15).

So, what is this story telling us? Maybe it’s that King Herod is one of the first to believe in the Incarnation! Seen this way, the story presents a particularly savage view of the hatred for Jesus right from the beginning. This heralds how, later in his life, the authorities will seek a means to put Jesus to death. (e.g., Matthew 12:14; John 11:47-53) Death is always dogging Jesus’ steps. And, as we are made eventually to understand, it is his purpose. So, the story of the Innocents sets the stage for what will happen later in Jesus’ life.

But the story is also about babies and toddlers and how much we love our children. and how they are nevertheless not immune from the world’s violence. We have a visceral, fundamental, wordless love for our children. The massacre of the Innocents is an extreme example that points us to this love. It brings up a grief that, as Simeon tells Mary, the Blessed Mother, is a sword that pierces the heart. (Luke 2:34-35) The point is strengthened by the quote about the lamentation, weeping and mourning for children at Ramah. Grief is an odd but exceptionally powerful way to describe love. It makes us sensitive to a deep consideration: That is, maybe babies are really the only thing that matters to the human race. As Jesus said later in his life, “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” (Matthew 19:14)

Now, let’s move onto today’s Gospel.

I find that the older I get, the more I examine what I learned, not as a baby, but as a child. And so I come to the Gospel passage for today. This is a passage that was read out over and over when I was a child. It closed every single Mass. At the same time, we were being taught to memorize The Apostles’ Creed and, eventually, we got to the Nicene Creed. Knowing from my childhood that these creeds and this Gospel passage existed is kind of exciting for me.

As for creeds, this year is the 1700th anniversary of the formulation of the Nicene Creed. I once read someone’s complaint that the Nicene Creed is a waste of time, that it is not “relevant” or does not connect to us. Well, I admit that, on the surface, it looks like a kind of a scholar’s document. But it was written by bishops who thought the big question it tries to answer was important and demanding enough for them to trudge great distances — not easy in the fourth century — and come together in Nicaea which is now in Turkey. This whole business was really relevant to them.

And as for today’s Gospel passage, John the Evangelist was answering the same question that the Bishops at Nicaea were trying to answer. In fact, John’s whole Gospel can be seen as giving an answer to the question.

So, what is the question that was so important to the Nicene Creed and to Saint John? This is a question that Jesus asked his Apostles and therefore asks us. We have all heard this question. The question is: “But who do you say I am?” (Matthew 15:16. Also Mark 8:29 and Luke 9:20) The Apostles had to answer this question. They were standing right there. The bishops of Nicaea had to answer it. They were standing right there. And we have to answer it because we are standing there too, basking in the happy light of the Incarnation.

Peter answers Jesus’ question with something like: “You are the Christ. You are the Messiah. You are the Son of the living God.” And therefore, through the Gospels, we know that Jesus is someone unique and special. This Gospel passage and the Nicene Creed is a declaration of Jesus’ everlasting existence and everlasting divinity. It is a declaration that everlasting divinity became incarnated as a human being of flesh and blood like ours and then suffered and rose from the dead purely for our sake. This is Jesus’ work, and he accomplished it. And he is coming again somehow, sometime. This is our hope, our blessed assurance, in what I will call the “between times” that we actually live in — that is, the time between the Annunciation and the Last Day. This is the point that Saint Paul emphasized over and over again in his letters.

Let’s not make what happens in these “between times” and what we are instructed to do during the “between times” to be the only things our faith is about or the only thing Jesus is about. What we do in the “between times” gets its foundation and its meaning and its commands only from the Incarnation and Jesus’ subsequent work of salvation. What I am trying to say is that, of course, we should clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit the sick, help the poor, seek justice, and so forth. But that does not mean that Jesus is nothing more than a sociologist, or a do-gooder, or a protestor, or a social justice advocate. We do what he has told us to do by grace and with love in accordance with the gift of the Incarnation. We do them also with our eyes on the prize, as maybe Saint Paul who loved sports might say. (See, e.g., running and boxing in 1 Corinthians 9:24-27) We do them because Jesus is God and has done so much for us and promises us more. This is the bedrock of our good acts, our obedience, our love. This is the bedrock of our faith. Without this bedrock, nothing really has meaning.

I think that a good definition of faith is the word “awe”. Awe is a mix of happiness, joy, and solemnity, of a smile that is just starting to form. Dear People, awe is wrapped up in today’s Gospel passage and in the Nicene Creed and in Peter’s answer to Jesus’ question. They are all about our practically dumbstruck aspiration as humans to know about God. The beauty of the Creed is the same beauty as in today’s Gospel. They are both aspirational and open-ended. They are attempts to put awe into words.

On the first Sunday of Christmas of the Incarnation, we too are challenged to answer Jesus’ question? “But who do YOU say that I am?” Actually we will wonder about how to answer this question our whole lives, while we are looking through a glass darkly. But we are impelled by awe, by faith, to wonder about the question even while we are doing the good things that Jesus has asked of us. For people of the Way, like us, this combination of wonder and awe and our deeds in this “between time”, while we wait for very much better times, is joyful.

The saint known as the Venerable Bede lived in the north of England in the 600s and late 700s. He was a writer of history and theology. He wrote a short prayer that I read on a placard placed on top of his tomb in Durham Cathedral. I think it tells about the joy of awe and faith as we wonder about things in these between times and wait for the better times. Let’s pray it.

“I pray, merciful Jesus, that as you graciously granted me to drink from the sweet Word which tells of you, so you will, in your kindness, grant that I may come at last to you, the fountain of all wisdom, and to stand before your face forever”. Amen