January 26 -- Third Sunday after Epiphany

I’m afraid that the quick (immediate) response of Andrew and Peter, James and John is more a feature of Matthew the Gospel writer than what might have actually happened.

Matthew’s text says they “immediately” left their nets and followed Jesus…they just dropped it all, which is both inspiring and intimidating when we put ourselves into the text.

Sometimes I wonder if it was more complicated than that.  Some archeological evidence is helping to confirm my wonder:  You see, fishing was big business, although I’ve always tended to think of fishing as a lower class job, stinky and for people without much in that time, archeologists and historians are showing us that fishing was actually quite lucrative.  Because of the Roman Empire’s presence there were trade channels throughout the Mediterranean and so a fisherman was actually quite connected and well paid.  So much so that it was not uncommon to become the family business…like the Zebedee and Sons Fishing Co. we hear about here today.

If fishing was just stinky low-wage labor, I think it would be much easier to follow Jesus...

Just like if we didn’t have anything, if we hated our jobs, if our families and friendships were unimportant, and if all our stuff — our homes, our valuables, our positions, our inside-industry connections — didn’t matter to us, sure we could drop the nets and follow Jesus too!

But as it turns out, I have many things.  We all do, in this context.  Many nets, many fish, many relationships, many dollars, and many-a-healthy day left.  Many blessings. [pause]  Maybe I should title the first part of this sermon “When Our Blessings Become Our Excuses.”
So many excuses...that frankly make me want to believe it was easier for the disciples because they didn’t have all the things I have.  If they did, they never would have risked it all.  “It was easier for them; they were just fishermen.”

But maybe I’m kidding myself.  To leave behind their livelihoods and their connections to “follow Jesus” in a political and economic climate as harsh as the ancient Mediterranean world was just as frightening and risky – if not more – than it would be today.
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What are your nets, friends in Christ?  What are your excuses, blessings that you’re unwilling to yield?  What do you need to drop in order to hear Christ’s loving invitation more fully?   Doesn’t have to be just physical things...Do you have obsessions that are getting in the way?  Relationships that are unhealthy and “tangle-some”?  Anger at something someone did to you, that’s pulling you under?  Anger at God?  What stuff is holding you back from letting go and following this One who proclaims, “Repent, for the realm of God is here & now!”?

Let’s engage a little more: Type, write down and answer this question (p28 is blank).  It’s one thing to say you believe in Jesus, but what is it that’s keeping you these days from following Jesus, i.e. what are your “nets”?

That’s a private question, and rather than dropping them immediately, or bringing them up front or burning them symbolically right now, take those “nets” home.  Live with that which is entangling you a little bit longer.  Hopefully you’ve named it; that’s good.  Now live with it, for a bit more.  Acknowledge that “nets” can be a companion – probably been with you for a long while.  Even our unhealthy habits – our anger, our over-consuming, our destructive relationships – can become friends because they’re what we know.

But in time, maybe later today, maybe later this week or in a month, maybe during Lent, start to let go of those, start to put down those nets.  God will give us/you the strength.

“Nets” — I wonder about the nets the disciples were carrying, even after they left their physical nets.  What were their doubts, their fears, their anger, their child-hood wounds...  even after they got on the road with Jesus?  We can engage this text on many levels...

But the bottom line is that Christ calls us.

Jesus calls you from the safety of your nets, from the security of your boats.  Jesus calls you from your blessings...and your burdens and pains, and invites you, invites us — commands us, actually — to plunge into the deeper waters and rockier roads of ministry.  All that we do is ministry: as we work in the office, as we parent our children, as we drive our cars, and as bake our bread.  All is ministry, and Christ is calling each of us deeper.  That’s why you’re here today: because Christ has a call for you.  (If you were dragged here by your mom, then that’s God working through her :)

And sisters and brothers in Christ, while this plunging deeper talk may sound difficult and frightening, and it is certainly risky, this is God’s gift to us today.  This is God’s love and God’s grace at work in many and mysterious ways.

God is offering us a richer life in following Jesus.   Following Jesus looks different for each of us; and the specificity becomes clearer as we start let go of all the baggage, all the nets.)   But I trust it looks something like ‘deeper connections,’ as we plunge into Christ’s call —
deeper connections with our neighbors, with the earth, with our own bodies.  All, such a gift!  This is salvation, in fact!

God is offering us our integrity and our health in this summons.  (The word salvation, of course, comes from salvus which is all about wholeness and health of body, mind and spirit.)

So many of us live divided lives.  Hidden secrets, immense baggage from past experiences.  And we tend to pad that pain with stuff, we tend to busy our lives so much that don’t have to hear Christ’s command, Christ’s beckoning:  “Drop that stuff.  And follow me, Marie, Kate, Richard, John.   Let’s go fish for people.  We’re going to plunge into the world, and find lost, lonely, stuck, angry, sad, hopeless people.  We’re going to pull them out from the depths of despair, from death itself, and into the radiance of God’s grace and mercy.  How ‘bout it?  That’s the kind of fishing we’re going to do now…

“And I am here with you,” Jesus assures us, “as you leave your abundance and your pain, your lucrative busy-ness and all the noise in your lives, your determination to be secure, I am here,” Jesus says, “holding you and calling you this day to come and follow me.”

The road will be rocky.  The seas will be choppy.  But when we are held in the arms of Christ, there is true peace—the peace that passes all understanding.  That peace is yours...even today...even now...even before you drop anything and decide to follow.

But let’s let go of those nets.  That’s the gift.  God’s got you and Christ’s peace pours down on you...this day and forever.  AMEN.

January 19 -- Second Sunday after Epiphany

Didn’t we just read about Jesus Baptism in Matthew last week?  Yeah—actually named the entire Sunday last week after it, colored the altar in gold, lit the Christ candle, splashed the kids at the font, read a special prayer...remember?

So why are we reading about it again in John today?!
It’s the year of Matthew after all!  (You guys aren’t feeling my frustration ;)

Friends in Christ, here’s what we need to know about John’s Gospel:  it’s the brightest and highest of all.  It’s too shiny and glorious to have an entire year of John.  We would go blind.  We have to take it in small doses, inserting it from time to time into our 3-year cycle of Matthew, Mark and Luke.  Fascinating book I’m reading* and loving right now looks at the four gospel as a journey of transformation, where Matthew is about facing change, next Mark is about the suffering that comes when we face that change, then John comes third on the journey, and is that moment of coming into glory, clarity and joy.  (Luke-Acts finally is about going back with that clarity of justice, with that joy to the world, it’s the road back to our communities.)  But John is the apex, the mountain top experience.  The bright, shining star.  The epiphany.  Martin Luther called John’s Gospel the eagle because “it soars above the rest”.  It’s too much.  You can’t eat caviar and drink the best campaign every day...

But we’ve got John today! And Christ’s baptism and the calling of his first disciples is so important...
that in case you had any question about who that was who got baptized last week in Matthew, John’s gonna clear it up for us today: “Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.”  John the Baptist doesn’t even splash water of Jesus, all he does is point at him and sings a hymn.

My NT professor (she came and preached here at my installation) Dr. Audrey West says in her commentary on this text, "’It is not about me.’ That is the message whenever people in the Fourth Gospel ask John the Baptist who he is.”   In the Gospel of John, I think John the Baptist would be more appropriately called John the Pointer.

And here the radiance that’s almost too bright (just going to slip it in here).  It’s like coming out of a dark cave into a clear, snowy winter’s day:  this Jesus, walking along, is not not just God’s son.  Jesus is God!  Love divine, all loves excelling.  Come down to be among us, to save us and this whole world, to forgive us and this whole world, to love us and this whole world unconditionally!  We have to squint and protect our eyes from that much brilliance.

Baptism is central to the Christian journey.  We have to look at it again today, in John’s telling: even more radiance.  “Lamb of God who takes away sin, who conquers death and the devil, who shines like the sun.”  What a text for our long nights, right?  For any of our seasons of pain and loss and hopelessness.  What a text for this moment.  It’s like January is the season of baptism.  We watched last week talking about Eastern Orthodox, I showed a video in adult ed of Russian Orthodox Christians dunking into icy lake in January to celebrate these texts of Jesus’ baptism, and remember their own baptisms.  Yeah, this is the season of baptism... showered with gifts by the magi, showered with water last week, showered with glory and brilliance and praise from John today.

So what?  What does Jesus’ baptism in John have to do with us?   So what?  What does this have to do with me?

On one hand, nothing.  On the other, everything.

But let’s start with nothing.  On one hand, Jesus baptism has nothing to do with you.  That’s the whole point.

That’s the point Dr. West is making:  For once in your life, in other words, get over yourselves!  

It’s not about you!  (Or me. I hope you know I’m preaching to myself here too.)  John points away from himself and away from everyone else.  Simple.  It’s about Jesus.  Simple.  And yet so profound in our selfie culture, right?  Social media is a great indicator…just scroll through.  If an alien landed here and started scrolling through our Facebook feeds...what a self-focused culture.  Guilty — I take and share selfies all the time:  “Look at me...and whoever else can fit in the frame.”

In a way, this second week of Jesus’ baptism is a second chance to shift the focus away from us.  Often the angle on Jesus’ baptism is: Jesus was baptized therefore you, you, you...You are loved, you too are named child of God, you too are called and sent out — all great and true, but...

...Let’s just bask in the point, today.  The pointing of John the Pointer.  Let’s just worship God — not ourselves — for a minute here this morning.  (“worship”, again, from the OE worth-ship, i.e. what’s worthy of our sacrifices).  We do worship ourselves.  Make sacrifices for ourselves most of the time, if we’re honest, right?  As Mother Teresa said, we draw our circles, our frames, our definitions of family, too tightly.  Me and whoever else can fit in my frame.  We make sacrifices only for that inside, small group.  (By the way, on the other hand, this was one of the most radical things about those early Christian communities: they were way ahead of the curve on drawing wider and wider circles, opening up bigger and bigger, in another era where circles were super tight.)

Today, let’s bask in the point.  The pointing of John the Pointer.

On one hand, this has absolutely nothing to do with us, for a change.  This is about God’s glory and grace shining through.  There’s nothing we can do about it...except give thanks and praise...like John did…more than once.  “Behold the Lamb of God,” he proclaimed one day and the next.  That’s why we sing it over and over, every Sunday at Communion “Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world”: to remind ourselves, for one thing — it’s not about me.  (story - Adam’s plane ride: “Well, I believe in myself.”
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And then on the other hand...when we stop and worship God.  When we look at what John the Pointer is pointing at.  Gaze as the majesty of the the Savior of the world, the forgiver of all our sin, the conquerer of death itself, the very brilliance of God...when we stop and really see this, everything changes.  And suddenly everything is about us.  Everything that the radiance of God in Christ shines upon is our concern.  Every person, every creature, every landscape, every beat of our own heart and of our neighbor’s heart — humans and beyond — all of it is our concern.  All of it is about us.

And Jesus invites us with Andrew and Simon Peter to “come and see”.  On one hand, it’s not about us, and on the other, it’s all about us and the whole cosmos.  Jesus cracks us out of our rusty old frames, and presents us again this day in 2020 a new vision.  An expansive embrace.  A fuller mission.   A cosmic joy.  A more glorious union.  In this broken, sinful, self-centered, cruel, sick and twisted world...this. is. our. call. from Jesus.  today.  We are a part of this radical grace and glory.  “Come and see,” the rabbi says.  So, let’s go.
AMEN.

* Heart and Mind: the Four-Gospel Journey for Radical Transformation, A.J. Shaia, Quadatos, 2019.

January 12 -- Baptism of Christ Sunday

Grace to you and peace, from God in Christ Jesus...

There may be things that we do in worship, that we may not be 100% behind; but we do them anyway, because that’s what we do in church.  Do you ever feel like that?  Do you ever come to church and you’re not 100% there, but you just come anyway.  (I think I may have just described all of us.)  It’s as if the Holy Spirit is whispering in your ear:  “Just go along with me here.”  And somehow, when we do just that “go along”...when we join in the hymns, read along with the prayers, something happens at times, and we are swept up with the assembly of the faithful -- not always in a completely dramatic way, not like a raging river, but in the way a small current can help you swim or float a little easier.  (Jordan River as a polluted, little stream.)

One example: I have a colleague-pastor who says to her critical and very academic friends who won’t say the Nicene Creed because of this part or that, in which they can’t believe...that she doesn’t generally say the Nicene Creed either, except when she’s with the community, because when she’s with the community, they carry one another in faith: the part I can’t believe today, your faith carries me, the part you can’t speak today, my faith carries you.  Like a small current our shared and borrowed faith helps us swim a little easier.

I find this to be true, as well, with singing the great hymns of the faith...particularly at Christian funerals:  “Beautiful Savior”, “Abide with Me”, “Amazing Grace”.  If you can sing — and I don’t mean if you can sing in key or with a perfect voice, but — if you can get the words of the hymns out, then sing out as well has God gifted you, because there are others there who can’t, and they need you to carry them.  Another day, they will carry you, like a small current helping you swim a little easier.
Today in our Gospel lesson, Christ Jesus asks John to baptize him — a strange request as John the Baptist quickly identifies: “Wait a minute, Lord: you should be the one baptizing me!”
But what does Jesus say?  “It is necessary to fulfill all righteousness,” he says, [whisper] “just go with me here, John.”

Theologian and scholar Dale Bruner puts it like this:  “The first thing Jesus does for the human race is go down with it into the deep waters of repentance and baptism.”  

Jesus didn’t need to be baptized, but in so doing we are carried as Christ allows himself to be carried.  In other words, Jesus enters the stream, Jesus too gets washed in the current.  In other words Jesus joins with the community of the faithful, and receives and accepts God’s blessing and God’s call to serve in this world.  It is necessary to fulfill all righteousness.

And through Christ, because of Christ, we accept and receive the same thing from God above: the name “Beloved”.  Peace.

I like to take Confirmation kids in our first session of Confirmation (it was this time last year...we have some amazing kids!) — I like to take them out to discuss for 5 Saturdays the 5 parts of our baptismal covenant.  (Turn to p. 236) “Living among God’s faithful people.”  [explain]  These long-time members, of our church, describe how God has been with them through it all: through walks in the evening, through the death of children and siblings, through holidays, and job changes, working through the daily grind...Necessary to fulfill all righteousness — it’s not just about going to church, doing religious rituals (although worship is central): it’s the whole package — like a small current helping you swim a little easier.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, Jesus comes among us, is baptized in the same earthly waters as we are, washed in the same current, sharing with us in this life and the many and various ministries we do.  Christ gets down with us.

You are all “at ministry” during the week!  Whether, that’s at home, or in a government building, or on a ship, or in a field, Christ is there and “gets down with us” in our daily lives, as we make decisions, follow instructions, create, lead, prosecute, lecture, diagnose.  Christ has entered your same water ways (as polluted as they may be), and like a small current, carries you through our days.

And...Christ is with you when the sun sets and the temperatures drop, when the distractions of the daylight are gone, when doubts and fears can overwhelm, as we worry, as we age...as a beautiful hymn in our red hymnal puts it: “when memory fades, and recognition falters, when eyes...grow dim and minds confused, as frailness grows and youthful strengths diminish”.  Christ is with you at the end of the day too, like a small current carrying you through the night.  Christ enters our waters in order to fulfill all righteousness, in order to help us understand the holistic nature of this life of faith — that even as we simply walk and talk, eat and play, worry and  lose sleep, Christ is with us.  Through all the changes — reading a new scholar who says the Gospel of Matthew is all about living through both small and large-scale changes — through it all God, Emmanuel, is here and still calls us Beloved.  Through this life and ministry, and into the next, Christ is with us, and so we then are able to carry others at one moment, and we ourselves are carried at others.

Christ enters the waters, and is baptized.  “Just go with me here, John.  This is what it means,” Jesus says, “to live among God’s people: I too must be baptized for I am in this flow of the faithful.  I am at the center of it,” Christ says.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, you too are part of this flow of the faithful, and you too are named Beloved — not by any human necessarily, but by God, who showers down affection, parental pride and love, and grace upon grace, forgiveness and new life.  In these waters, in this flow we serve, we reach out, we love and we care for one another -- we can’t help ourselves.  The gentle current has got us.  Thanks be to God.  AMEN.

December 24 -- Christmas Eve 2019

Henry Ward Beecher wrote: “Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry [one] above others for [their] own solitary glory. [One] is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of [their] own.”  

I got that — not from being a student of Henry Ward Beecher — but from the book and the movie Wonder, which has enthusiastically made the rounds in our household, a few years ago, and watched it together again this past year.  And what a Christmas message it is!  (Check out Wonder in these Twelve Days of Christmas, if you haven’t already.  It’s a way to really get into the ‘incarnation celebration’ we have before us.)

“Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry [one] above others for [their] own solitary glory. [One] is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of [their] own.”

Grace to you and peace from Jesus who comes to us this holy night in peace.  AMEN.

It is perhaps the hardest thing in the world, dealing with a bully.  I’m thinking more about bullies these days, have encountered the story Wonder...but also reflecting on our lives and our world...  

I’ve had a few experiences myself, one in high school that I’ll never forget.  The visceral feelings come back even now, just thinking about it: heart racing, sweat beading down, ready for anything and nothing at the same time — not sure if our stand-off was going to end in fists swinging, and blood dripping, or what.  He was way bigger and stronger than I was, had this threatening smirk, big ol’ biceps, veins sticking out…But he was making fun of a friend of mine in the weight room, and something in me kind of snapped.  And I couldn’t take it anymore and stay quiet.  I mouthed off back at him.    

And probably, fortunately it ended the way it should have, anti-climactically, with a coach breaking up our heated stare-down.  But I didn’t sleep well that night, and I fretted about that bully for a long time after, even while nothing ever happened again.  

Bullies are tough, on one hand:  They can really eat you up, physically for sure, but I think the other wounds they inflict can last even longer:  They can embarrass you, get others laughing at you too.  They can make you cry just with their quick words, or a mean picture that they draw.  And how bullies can go to town on social media...  Here’s probably the worst: bullies can even make you turn on yourself — start to cut yourself down, make you laugh along with everyone...at yourself.  

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If you’ve never been bullied, praise God.  

But the Christmas story is for anyone who’s been bullied.  

I recently asked my kids once how they deal with bullies and bad dreams in these tough times...and one of the things Katie said was “stay calm and let an angel help you.”  (Maybe that coach was the angel, in my case: kept things from getting worse?)  This Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke is for anyone who’s been bullied, anyone who’s been haunted by cruelty. 

The shepherds in the field were pretty beat up, bullied, haunted by a cruel world — hearts pounding with anxiety about how they’d get their next meal, paycheck, or rent paid.  Ready for anything and nothing at the same time.  Shepherding was not an easy life.  They were on the edges.  They were nobodies.  But an angel came, and they stayed calm, and they let that angel help.  

Micah — when I asked him once how he deals with bullies — said that both laughing and singing helps.  (few years ago)  He also said, “Remember and give thanks for your family.”  

Do you see all these components in our Christmas celebration here at church this evening...as we gather, and try to stay calm, even as stresses creep in all the time, even as bullies can haunt? As we pause to reflect on the multitude of angels who have come to our aid over the years?  Friends, family members, coaches, mentors, spiritual guides, rainbows, dogs, authors and actors, teachers, nurses — so many angels.  As we gather at the manger of the one “whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own”?  Jesus the Christ.   In this holy place, under perhaps stressful conditions, laughing and singing help, and we give thanks for our family of faith too.  

God’s strength is not made manifest in the big-bully muscles of world leaders or cool-kid group ringleaders, not in the mean words or the name-calling, not in threatening smirks or frightening stare-downs, and certainly not in fists flying.  No, God’s divine power is instead made manifest this holy night... in a baby.  In peace.  (I got to hold a little baby again on Sunday for a baptism!  Couldn’t imagine anything farther from a bully.)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer points out: “God is in the manger!”  

How do you feel about that?  In this season we also reflect on John’s Gospel, where we find and confess this Jesus is God, not just God’s son.  One God, three persons.  God is in the manger.  

The word becomes flesh and dwells among us!  This almighty God has humbled, shrunk, all the way down to become the child of a poor refugee couple, born in the middle of nowhere in the middle of nowhere!  A stable, a manger.  Revealed first to bullied and scared shepherds.  

This God in the manger is strength that “carries up hearts”.  Christ.  Is.  Born.  To you.  For you.  In you.

Let’s laugh, let’s sing, let’s let angels help us, let’s stay calm and kind, and let’s share this Good News with everyone:  God carries up, lifts up our hearts, for God is here today.  

Will you pray with me:

He came down

to earth from heaven

who is God and Lord of all.

And his shelter was a stable

and his cradle was a stall

with the poor and mean and lowly

lived on earth our Savior holy.

AMEN.