Sanctified for Joy

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for the seventh Sunday of Easter are here.

Happy Mothers’ Day. It is a day of many emotions. Being a mother is challenging and complicated. Having a mother is challenging and complicated. All relationships are complex and the mother/child relationship is perhaps the most. And acknowledging this, we look for the joy today: that ‘so-much-more-than-an-emotion’ feeling that we get as we ponder what it is to bring life into this world whether it be by giving birth or by nurturing another to be who they are created to be. The joy of Mothering is done with hope for the future.

For our weekly readings during this season of Easter, we step away from reading Mark’s telling of the Good News and focus on John’s version. And beginning two week’s ago when Fr. Chuck was here we get bits and pieces of Jesus’ final words with his disciples before his arrest. Jesus tells them earnestly that the point of this last sermon is so that they won’t lose their way, that they will have what they need to follow The Way even when he is no longer physically with them. He is giving them the joy of hope.

In the three chapters from John 15 through 17, Jesus speaks the word we translate as Joy 6 times. In last week’s gospel reading Jesus is speaking directly to the disciples and says “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete”. In today’s reading, Jesus is praying for the disciples and says to God, “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.”

Joy is the ‘so that’ of following Jesus. Jesus often likens the joy of living as God’s Beloved to that of a new mother. Giving birth and raising children isn’t easy, to put it mildly, there is anguish and pain and struggle bringing life into this world AND there is so much joy. Joy in watching babies discover their fingers and toes and recognizing the faces that love them; joy in seeing their personalities develop over time; joy in watching them grow and become parents themselves.

Joy is why Jesus invites us into the Kingdom of God here and now with the directive to Love God, our neighbor, and ourselves; Joy is why he tells us to be disciples making disciples, so that we can experience the mothering joy that God knows in watching us discover who and Whose we are. Joy is what happens when we simply delight in others as fellow image bearers of God, when we discover that it isn’t our job to turn others into God’s image but to journey together in the lifelong process of becoming who God created and calls each of us to be.

In all of Jesus’ teachings he never tells us to make the world perfect and he never tells us we have to fix ourselves or other people. Jesus shows us in flesh and blood how to heal ourselves and others with love and he does this SO THAT we may know joy.

God didn’t create all that there is out of duty but because the power of love is a creative power; the more love we offer the more love there is. God delights in creation, in all that God made – flowers and birds and butterflies and puppies and kittens and trees and mountains and rivers and stars and sunsets and rainstorms and oceans and dolphins and coral reefs and snakes and spiders and lions and tigers and bears, oh my. At each stage, God calls it good and then God made us and all of creation was ‘very good’.

It was when we humans decided we could know better and do better than God that things went sideways. And from this moment God has invited us back to his presence, to the joy of remembering who and Whose we are. Joy is what God saves us for. Joy is why God calls us to love and serve the world in God’s name. Joy is the reason Jesus says ‘follow me and share God’s love with others, remind others that they are image bearers, too, SO THAT they can know the Joy of being God’s beloved’.

This is what Jesus is praying for – that in the midst of the struggles of this world we can find hope and strength and courage to keep loving better and better because we know that we are God’s beloved. Joy is knowing we are God’s beloved, regardless of our circumstance. As I was working on my sermon this past week, I did a little digging into how the word we translate into English as ‘world’ is used here and one of the definitions was ‘ungodly multitude’ which made me laugh probably more than I should have. Another commentator described it as those who don’t yet know the truth of God’s love. This is how Jesus sees and wants us to see the people – not as projects or something to fix and not as our enemies, but as fellow image bearers who don’t yet know the joy of God’s love.

Let me tell you a fun secret about Jim – he loves Little Debbie’s Honey Buns and there is always at least one box in our pantry. Currently, on the back of the little Debbie honey bun box is a picture of a honey bun being dunked in a cup of coffee with the words ‘pure joy’. Now, honey buns and coffee may be what makes Jim so sweet but when Jesus prays for us to have joy he wasn’t talking about our morning pastry and beverage choices. We can, and do, spend a lot of energy trying to pass the happiness of things outside of ourselves off as joy but true joy isn’t dependent on our circumstances. Joy comes from the very core of who we are.

Joy comes from being who we are created to be, when we let go of who we think others want us to be or who we think we should be to earn God’s favor and let the Way of Jesus and God’s love reveal to us who we are: God’s beloved people.

Joy doesn’t mean that we won’t ever have struggles or hardships. Joy means that even in the difficulties we are aware of God’s presence with us and we hold on to the hope of God’s promises. Joy is a choice and joy takes intentionality.

Jesus says we are sent into the world sanctified by the Truth. Being sanctified means to be set apart, to be made holy. The joy of God’s presence with us, knowing we are God’s beloved is the truth that sets us apart so that we can show the ungodly multitudes, I mean those who don’t yet know God’s love, the truth of who and Whose they are. We are created to live in this world so that all people can come to know the truth, the joy of God’s love.

I’m going to invite you to do something this week: as you leave today, don’t drop your bulletins in the recycling basket. Take it home with you and read Jesus’ prayer each day. Or better yet, dust off your Bible and read the whole of it in John chapter 17. The last thing Jesus did for his disciples before his arrest was to pray for them and he prays for us. Jesus prays for us! Read Jesus’ prayer as often as you can this week; let the words permeate and percolate; be aware of God’s love for you and experience the creative and healing power of that love. We are all created and called to share God’s love in this world so that others can know the joy of God’s mothering love, too. Amen.

Sheep, Shepherd, Love

A reflection on the lectionary readings for the fourth Sunday of Easter.

It’s been a long time since I wrote a reflection for a Sunday I wasn’t preaching. And I’m not going to promise that I’ll do it regularly again because I’ll just set myself up for disappointment. But, I do want to get back into the routine as much as time allows because it isn’t so much as I haven’t had time but that it’s just fallen off my radar.

During this past season of Lent, I led a quiet day at our church and we pondered how we can stop glorifying being busy and stop equating success with an overly full calendar. We have all the time in the world and we choose what we fill it with. More time doesn’t enable us to get it all done, but prayerfully and carefully considering what are our priorities and making time for what makes us thrive and letting go of what prevents us from thriving does. To do this well, we have to get to know ourselves, really know ourselves, looking deep within at our own motivations, looking honestly at the impact our behaviors have on others, and taking stock of what we let disciple us. And then we have to choose who or what we want to be disciples of and be intentional with our time and energy.

Disciples are students of life. In the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry – 1st Century Palestine – rabbis (teachers of life) called who they considered to be the best and brightest to follow them and learn to be just like them. Jesus called people who were just going about their ordinary lives to follow him and learn how to thrive in God’s love and mercy and justice in the midst of their ordinary lives, regardless of the political atmosphere and culture they lived in. This is what Jesus calls us to, how Jesus calls us to live.

In our lectionary readings for today, John writes a letter to people he loves dearly. He calls them beloved, brothers and sisters, and little children. Little Children was a kindly address used by rabbis for their disciples. It was not meant to be demeaning but endearing, as a parent loves their children. John wants the people he loves to know that they are loved by God and to let all that they think, say, and do come from that love.

Jesus talks about shepherds and sheep, something we need to make sure we understand from Jesus’ perspective, not our own 21st century, western culture minds. Sheep in our 21st century minds are considered stupid and to call someone sheep is an insult. But that is not at all how the people hearing Jesus’ words as he spoke them or the recipients of John’s letter would have thought. Sheep were well cared for because they provided clothing and food. Shepherds were responsible for the well being of their sheep and took that seriously. It wasn’t just a task or a job, it was their identity.

It goes back to the story of creation. God created all things and told us to tend and care for what God made. We aren’t given power to dominate (as we understand that word in our day and time) but power to equip for thriving. Jesus gives us in flesh and blood what this type of leadership looks like. The power God gives us to participate with God in the building up of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven is love. Love. Not hate, anger, political vitriol, physical might, coercion, or fear. God gives us the power of love to equip all people to thrive.

Lent is over and we are in the fourth week of the season of Easter. But the political atmosphere is well charged around us and we must be aware of who and what we are letting ourselves be discipled by. The giving up and taking on of Lent is to prepare us for our lifelong learning Journey. Our emotional and spiritual growth doesn’t just happen for six weeks a year. As Resurrection People, what we do in Lent, with God’s help, equips us for the other 46 weeks of the year. Do we give 25+ hours of our week to our favorite news outlet? We are being discipled by that. Do we give the majority of our time to ‘keeping up with ? We are being discipled by that. Do we shape our life around our political party or our sports team or our favorite celebrity? We are being discipled by that.

We are discipled by what we let shape the structure and flow of our time. To be a disciple of Jesus, to follow our shepherd, we need to structure our time on the foundation of God’s love for all people, for all creation, for us. To be Resurrection People is to live differently that those who don’t yet know the power of God’s love.

Jesus calls us to follow him and learn how to thrive in God’s love and mercy and justice in the midst of our ordinary lives, regardless of the political atmosphere and culture we live in. Let’s not add to the hate and vitriol. Let’s add to the love around us. Let’s follow Jesus and be Resurrection People.

In Joy and Wonder and Disbelief

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas. The lectionary readings for the Third Sunday of Easter are here.

Many years ago, when my son was 11, we went to the Grand Canyon. As we walked the rim, around every curve a new view opened up to us and I just kept saying, “WOW” over and over again. At one point, my son looked at me and said, “Mom, you need a new word.” This past fall, a quarter of a century later, Jim and I went to the Grand Canyon. Around every curve and new view, I said, “WOW”. I just can’t come up with any other way to vocalize my amazement at the beauty of the Canyon. And, I can’t imagine ever letting the awesomeness become commonplace, even if I lived there. I want to say “WOW” every time I see the Canyon, or the beauty of a sunrise, or an eclipse, or wildflowers along the roadside. But sometimes we get distracted from the amazing by the ordinary routines of our days.

Imagine how awed the disciples must have been when Jesus appears among them, the man they had watched get arrested and crucified, the man they had seen put in a guarded tomb. I think for most of us this is an impossible imagining, I mean we celebrate it at Easter and we shout Alleluia as loudly as decorum allows, but do we stop to imagine even this one impossible thing before breakfast each day?

This one thing is the heart of all that we say we believe. Christmas and Easter are the bookends of the Good News that God IS with, in, and among us all. All creation is good because it all comes from God. Humanity is what tips Creation from good to very good – ‘a vessel well suited’* for God to become one of us and to do astonishing things not just in the physical body of Jesus but in and through each of us, even in the ordinary routines of our days.

Jesus’ resurrection gives us all the imposs-ability to be resurrected through changed hearts and minds. And we live into this impossibility each day as we follow Jesus on earth as in heaven.

Jesus’ Resurrection doesn’t “cheat” death; Jesus isn’t a ghost. He physically presents himself to the disciples to show that the power of God’s love is greater that any death dealing force in this world. And yet, God created our physical bodies to experience physical death and God gives us the hope and possibility of everlasting life. What life after our physical life is is a mystery; we aren’t given this knowledge. But we are given the wisdom to live as God’s beloved children and to know that everlasting life begins with following Jesus to become more and more like him in this life.

To become more and more like Jesus is to live as Resurrection People every day. It is a steady, continuous, lifelong journey that we walk with each other. There is no goal, no endpoint, only a Way of Life. There is no individualism in The Way. There is no fast lane in The Way.

One of my favorite modern Theologians, Eugene Peterson, wrote a book called Practicing Resurrection: a Conversation on Growing Up in Christ. Each year as I prepare to preach on these post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, I’m tempted to just read y’all the book, but that would keep us here way too long, so I’ll just share a few quotes and perhaps we’ll all read it together as a study soon.

In talking about this continuous, lifelong journey of Following Jesus, Peterson says, “There are no shortcuts in growing up. Maturity cannot be hurried, programmed, or tinkered with. There are no steroids available for growing up in Christ more quickly. Impatient shortcuts land us in the dead ends of immaturity. The path to maturity is long and arduous. Hurry is no virtue. There is no secret formula squirreled away that will make it easier or quicker. But stories help.”

“But Stories help.” Stories aren’t just what we read in a book somewhere, they are what we create as we do life together as God’s beloved children. When we gather together and talk of the events of our lives, we create Story.

When Jesus appears to his disciples after the Resurrection, he is with them and eats with them and gives permission for them to touch him – all things that are impossible without a physical body. And, yet, we are told, that even in their joy, they were disbelieving and still wondering. They were in awe. I imagine them staring and saying “WOW” over and over until one of them said, “we need a new word” and someone said, “alleluia!”

And Jesus speaks into their wonder and disbelief with the ordinary. He asks, “do you have anything to eat?” Don’t you love that question?! It makes me laugh with joy. If we look at the stories told in our scriptures merely through an intellectual lens, this seems such an odd thing to ask. Why does the resurrected God need food? And we get distracted from the purpose of Story. Story is about life, real life, lived life, experienced life. Story is about why God created us and all things. This amazing book we call the Bible is a library of stories that tell of who and Whose these people are, identity stories of God’s people. And the library may not be receiving any new books, but that doesn’t mean God’s story is complete.

We are participants in the ongoing Story, creating Story as we gather together to eat and talk and share our own stories with each other. Our times of fellowship, the conversations that happen before and after our worship time, the events outside of St. Francis we attend together, seeing each other at the grocery store, our FEASTs and potlucks and Bunco and craft times, these are all just as holy as any of our structured worship that takes place in this building.

Being a disciple isn’t about passing some theology exam with a settled set of doctrine. Jesus didn’t sit his disciples down in a classroom each day and lecture them. Yes, he taught them, but he did so by doing life with them, showing them God’s amazing presence with them in all that they did in the ordinary tasks of their lives. Now, don’t get me wrong, the studies we do are important – they help us learn the stories of our faith ancestors and to discern the wisdom of asking ‘how do we do life as God’s beloved in our day and our time?’ We are still walking in God’s Story every day. God chooses to love and care for all of Creation through us and all that we do. And we should never stop being amazed at the enormity of God’s love and mercy and grace. And we should never stop learning and discovering who and Whose we are. And we should never stop saying, WOW or Alleluia with great enthusiasm.

Being a disciple is a human endeavor in which we live in the blend of joy and wonder and, yes, even times of disbelief. If all that God did were ‘believable’ God wouldn’t be an astonishing God. Miracles are supposed to initiate astonishment, to make us ponder what is and isn’t possible, to open our hearts and minds to all that God can do in and through us and God’s Creation. The same “wow” we exclaim at the beauty of God’s creation should escape our lips every time we catch a glimpse of God’s image and God’s amazing love in each other.

Start each day wanting to be “wowed” by God and in your awe and amazement, feed each other and those who are hungry for God’s amazing love, literally and figuratively. We are Resurrection People. Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

*https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/4/10/faith-and-doubt-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-easter-3

The Symbols of Easter

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church in Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for Easter Sunday are here.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Easter is the most Important Holy day, holiday, of our Christian faith; it is the foundation of all that we believe and proclaim with our worship and the way we live our lives as Jesus followers – as Resurrection People, living on earth as in heaven, participating with God in bringing hope and peace to the hurting world we live in. Easter is also the basis for the most prominent symbol of our faith: the empty cross – the instrument of death redeemed by God to be a symbol of hope and new life.

Do you know how some of what have become symbols of this holiday, such as eggs, come from? The egg is an ancient symbol of new life. Our Christian association of eggs with Jesus’ resurrection on Easter is a backward looking association connecting two historically unrelated things. There are legends that say Mary Magdalene either had a basket of eggs with her at the tomb on the first Easter morning or after the ascension gave one to the Emperor to explain the resurrection. In each story the eggs miraculously turned blood red. The word “egg” only appears once or twice in scripture depending on the translation. Luke gives us the words of Jesus, “if you child asks for an egg, would you give her a scorpion?”

Decorating eggs for Easter is a tradition that only began about the 13th century and they were dyed red to symbolize Jesus’ blood. Eggs were a forbidden food during the Lenten season so people would paint and decorate eggs to mark the end of the period of fasting, then eat them on Easter to celebrate.

And did you know that the Bible makes no mention of a long-eared, fluffy-tailed creature who hops around and delivers decorated eggs to well-behaved children on Easter Sunday? Nope. No bunnies at all. Nevertheless, the Easter bunny has become a prominent symbol of Christianity’s most important holy-day. The exact origins of this magical mammal are unclear, but rabbits, known to be prolific procreators, are like eggs an ancient symbol of fertility and new life.

A bunny bringing eggs to good girls and boys seems to have begun with German Lutherans. The idea that the bunny actually laid the eggs first arrived in America in the 1700s with German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania and brought their tradition of an egg-laying hare called “Osterhase” or “Oschter Haws.” Their children made nests in which this creature could lay its colored eggs.

Eventually, the custom spread across the U.S. and the rabbit’s Easter morning deliveries expanded to include chocolate and other types of candy and gifts, while decorated baskets replaced nests. Like leaving cookies and milk for Santa, Children often leave out carrots for the bunny in case he got hungry from all his hopping and that’s why we have carrots at Easter.

As for the chocolate, we can joyfully credit Cadbury’s, the first chocolate company to produce a chocolate Easter egg in 1873 and the first to figure out how to mass produce hollow chocolate bunnies so that they would be affordable to the masses.

The only other modern Easter symbol that is mentioned in scripture is the Lily. In the Sermon on the Mount, in telling us not to worry, Jesus says “consider the lilies of the field how they neither toil nor spin yet are more beautiful than any of Solomon’s robes.” The lily is a symbol for purity as well as new life and hope. Legends tell us that on the day of the resurrection, lilies sprang up wherever Jesus blood stained the ground, both in the garden of Gethsemane and on Golgotha.

I delight in the bunnies and eggs and flowers at Easter and I definitely have no problem with chocolate, except when there isn’t enough of it. Eggs, bunnies, and flowers are all things appropriately associated with life and new birth – the very gifts God gave us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And through the past 2000+ years, people have, with the best of intentions, used these items to help others understand the power of the Jesus’ resurrection to change everything with the Good News: God took the very worst the world could do and offers us the very best: abundant life in the Kingdom.

Many of us will have feasts today around bountiful tables with people we love. So much of Jesus’ ministry was feeding and tending to others with the invitation to come and see what life is like in God’s kingdom on earth, the abundance of love and peace and hope, with no one lost among the margins.

What if we made the tables and feasts our most prominent symbol of our faith? The Table that is at the climax of our weekly worship sometimes seems less visible that the symbols we use for the grand holy days, perhaps because it is what we do regularly. The Feast of God’s Table is what Jesus told his disciples to do to remember. What God did through Jesus’ death on a cross is so that we can feast at God’s Table and invite the whole world to join us.

Jesus came to proclaim the Kingdom of God, a kingdom built of relationships, bound together by the love of God flowing through us into the broken and hurting world that desperately needs to hear the message of life and love.

For Jesus and his followers in first century Palestine, the world was just as politicized and polarized as ours is today. The Jewish religious and Roman empire leaders who were against Jesus didn’t just disagree with what he taught. Their control of the population was based on fear and intimidation and Jesus’ message that we should all treat each other from a foundation of love threatened their power. The leaders wanted to completely and totally silence him and his followers and the best way to do that was in death.

This wasn’t just some horrific and unexpected turn of events. Jesus was never plan B. It was God’s plan all along to come and live among us, as one of us, to experience the pain and suffering of being human, and to reveal himself to the people of the world who had forgotten him as their creator. To show that not even mortal death was more powerful than God’s love.

What we celebrate on Easter is the gift of grace and hope and forgiveness that can only come from God. By what God has done, we are given the inheritance of God’s kingdom so that we can live aware of his presence now. By what God has done, we can trust that the God who created us in love, to be loved, and to love will someday reconcile all things and put things as he intends them to be.

When Jesus asked Mary ‘why are you weeping, whom are you looking for’ he was doing more than just speaking words of comfort. He is giving her the true meaning of life for every human being. All that we think we are looking for can be satisfied by the new life we are given in our relationship with God.

Easter isn’t just a one day a year celebration nor just a 50 day season in the church. Easter is the way of life for all who follow Jesus. Like Mary we are to follow Jesus into the hurting world to share the message of love, participating with God in building God’s kingdom on earth, making more and more room at the feasting table. And that’s better than anything you can fit in an easter basket. Alleluia! Christ is risen!

Will and Affections

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for the 5th Sunday in Lent are here.

Y’all may have picked up on the fact that I’m not shy about substituting words in the Book of Common Prayer; I modernize the use of thees and thous because, like many Anglican theologians before me, I believe that worship and scripture should be in the common language. I use words that include both men and women when referring to humanity as a whole and sometimes I add the name of women who have too long been hidden. Today, you may have noticed what I did with the word ‘sinner’ in our opening prayer.

If you were here a few weeks ago on the first Sunday in Lent, y’all know how I feel about the labels ‘sinner’ and ‘wretched’. Time may move like molasses when it comes to revising our prayer book – and I do love our Book of Common Prayer – but our understanding of human psychology and the use of demeaning labels has grown since even the last revision in 1979 and I believe that our theology must evolve with this understanding.

And, so, I’ll say what I did then: We must be careful with the labels we assign to ourselves and others. When we define ourselves or others by our worst characteristics or behaviors, we cover up the beauty of the image of God in all people. We are not sinners, we are not wretched, we are human beings, beloved of God, who sin, who choose our own way of defining good and bad rather than God’s way. We have unruly wills and affections. Yet sin does not delete the image of God within us nor does it erase God calling us good.

Our scriptures are full of stories of folks not so different from us who had unruly wills and affections. Our faith ancestors felt free to tell their identity stories with both positive and negative episodes. They seemed to understand far better than we do the importance of acknowledging what they got wrong as well as what they got right. Acknowledging we have strayed from God’s ways like lost sheep comes from a desire to be in relationship with God; from an instinctual understanding that we are most human in relationship with our Creator. Berating ourselves or others doesn’t draw us into closer relationship with God. When we choose to berate ourselves or others, we are saying that God’s name for us is incorrect and God’s gift of forgiveness isn’t sufficient.

Remember that God created us good and yes, sometimes God calls us ‘stiffnecked’ but really, can we say God is wrong with that? We can be stubborn about wanting to do things our way. Psychologists tell us that a little feeling of guilt is good, it guides us away from harmful behavior and towards what is right. But when we let guilt ferment into shame, we’ve let it stew too long. Guilt is about our behavior: “I feel bad because I did such and such and it caused harm to others and myself and I want to do better.” Shame is about our identity: “I am a bad person because I do bad things.”

Our true identity comes from the image of God within each of us. And, yes, we have unruly wills and affections, but the Good News of Jesus, the good news that God has worked to convey to everyone since, well, the beginning of creation, is that we are created and lovingly designed for LOVE and community. It is when we choose another way that we miss the mark. We have a choice to let God shape us as God’s beloved or not.

Jesus asks the question, should I pray for God to rescue me from the pain and suffering I must endure for the sake of all and answers his own question – no, because this is the purpose for which Jesus came and all that Jesus did was for God’s glory.

Committing ourselves to God’s Way, the Way of Love that Jesus walked in flesh and blood, is the way our our heart, soul, mind, and strength are oriented to the true joy of God’s Way. This is how we bring Glory to God, by living as God created us to live and showing the world God’s Love.

We give up our way – we let go of the life we may want to craft for ourselves that puts us at the center – and we receive the life God has in store for us, following and serving Jesus for God’s Glory. Like a seed, we must die before we can grow and bear fruit.

When we chose to live for the glory to God’s kingdom with all that we think say and do, it changes the world even when we can’t see it on the evening news. There are still wars and famines and natural disasters; still shootings and killings. There are still people so in love with power that they think nothing of oppressing and abusing others to maintain that power. There are still people so in love with themselves that they are blinded to the needs of anyone else.

In all of the hate and fear and anger and war of this world, people are crying out “we wish to see Jesus” even if they don’t use these particular words. When we see and experience suffering in this world and our hearts are troubled we follow Jesus’ example. God doesn’t cause us to suffer for God’s glory but in suffering, we know that God is with us and we help others see God’s love, by our prayers; by our actions; by our listening; by our words; by our giving of work, wisdom, and wealth.

The new Covenant that the prophet Jeremiah speaks of is the divine assistance, the power of the Holy Spirit in us, that writes God’s law of love on our hearts. We no longer live for ourselves but for the greater good of all, together, side-by-side, following Jesus, doing what is ours to do and equipping each other for Kingdom work, all the while being shaped by God’s love. This inner transformation, this taming of our unruly wills and affections, will one day render the idea of sin obsolete because we will no longer desire our own way but only God’s way of love, justice, and humility*.

We follow and serve Jesus as we love God, our neighbor, and ourselves with our whole being – heart, soul, mind, and strength. And God, throughout the whole of our life, trains our unruly wills and affections toward the Kingdom on earth as in heaven.

Next Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, the most important week of the church year – the week we walk though the very purpose for which Jesus came: to show the world that God’s love is more powerful than any force in this world. These dark forces thought they were burying Jesus but instead, like a seed buried in the ground, he rose to bear the fruit of God’s Kingdom so that we too, could participate in this transformation of power.

Begin planning your time now so that you can participate in all that Holy Week has to offer – the entry into Jerusalem, the fellowship of Jesus with his closest disciples as they celebrate the Passover together, and yes, the pain and suffering as they watch his arrest and crucifixion. And finally, the joyful triumph of Jesus’ resurrection. All for the glory of God, as we give ourselves over to God’s Way, following Jesus in the faith and knowledge that God works through even the worst this world has to give to bring love and forgiveness to all.

We are a resurrection people in covenant relationship with our Creator. We have received the gift of forgiveness through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. With this gift comes great responsibility to show the world, or at least our small corner of it here in the Hill Country of Texas, the power of Love so that those who wish to see Jesus can find him with us. Amen.

*https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-lent-5

The Word is Love

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church in Canyon Lake, Texas.

The lectionary readings for the third Sunday in Lent are here.

During the season of Lent, it’s an option to recite the Ten Commandments at the beginning of our worship service. I’ll confess I am not in favor of doing it mainly because what we know as the Ten Commandments have been so misused by some and so over used by others that we don’t really stop to consider their original intent and purpose. They’ve become something we hang on the wall and used as a political and religious weapon to force Christianity upon non-Christians; a line in the sand to determine who’s in and who’s out.

It’s quite fortuitous that this past week we discussed the Ten Commandments in our Bible in a Year group. If you remember the story, God spoke these words to Moses and the people promised to obey and before the ink was dry on the stone tablets – well, you know what I mean – the people were already breaking the covenant these words represented. And God forgave and kept the covenant knowing full well, we humans would break the covenant over and over again.

A covenant is intended to establish a relationship, with responsibilities on both sides. It isn’t conditional or transactional but an agreement in which both parties say they will behave in certain ways for the good of the relationship between them.

God’s covenantal words given to Moses were intended to give the people great responsibility not entitled privilege. They aren’t “arbitrary prohibitions but loving limits”* intended to guide God’s people in a way of life grounded in justice and mercy. These words are about living every day life in response to God’s goodness, not earning God’s favor by completing some checklist.

When we love God and seek to know God, we let God’s love be our ultimate authority in all that we think, say, and do. When we love and seek to know God, we see the image of God in others and don’t need any other image of the God who created all. When we love and seek to know God, we don’t do ungodly things to others in God’s name.

As God’s people, knowing who and Whose we are, we live in the rhythm of work and rest as God designed all of creation; we don’t try to elevate ourselves above God claiming we don’t need to rest or avoid resting in our attempt to prove how much we can get done. We do as God did. We rest and worship on a day set apart from our other days so that this holy day shapes all that we think, say, and do the other six days. This is the pivot point, the fulcrum that balances our relationship with God and our relationship with others.

When we seek to love as God loves, we honor each other, we value all life, we stay true to our commitments, we don’t take what isn’t ours, and we are content and satisfied with what we have because we know that our relationships are far more valuable than any thing we may think we want.

But, what, you may be asking, does any of this have to do with Jesus getting angry with the folks selling sacrificial animals in the temple marketplace? Aren’t they just doing what God told them to do?

Well, yes and no. But let’s get a little background first – “the temple’s sacrificial system depended on the marketplace to supply both the animals suitable for sacrifice and the special coins permitted in the temple.” To shut down the marketplace was to strike a blow to the whole sacrificial system itself – the very system God had told the people to participate in as part of their covenantal responsibility.

Jesus doesn’t condemn marketplaces in general, but the way the temple market had become a corruption of what God had intended. The temple’s focus had become the sacrifices themselves rather than the relationship between God and the people that the sacrifices were to serve. The temple economy lived by the surface and literal interpretation of the commandments. As long as they didn’t actually take someone’s physical life, it didn’t matter what harm they might cause to their soul by treating them as less than God’s child. As long as they made the sacrifice it didn’t matter how they treated their parents or anyone else for that matter. As long as they didn’t take any material possessions it didn’t matter if they took away another’s peace of mind or well being.

In driving out the marketplace, Jesus is shutting down the old and bringing in the new way of being in relationship with God, the way promised by the prophets of old. And when questioned about his authority to do such a thing, he speaks of the destruction of the temple, a statement that the temple leaders take literally and as a threat but the writer of this story makes clear is a metaphor for Jesus’ body, a revolutionary vision of the new era when all who choose to follow Jesus will abide in him and “thereby abide in the house of the Lord”.

Jesus was telling them “The old sacrificial system must end; there is no longer a need for a market to sell the animals or exchange money. A new day, a new era, has begun.” The era of God with Us, in which we make up the temple of God’s presence. The era in which the sacrifices we make are about giving up our personal desires and our egos for the greater good of all as we walk in relationship with God every moment of every day wherever we are.

God’s ‘commandments’ are an invitation to learn to live relationally rather than transactionally. When we walk with God in humility and love, living in the rhythm of God’s creation, knowing who and Whose we are, we have no need for violence or thievery.

When asked what he thought was God’s greatest command, God’s greatest Word, Jesus says that all of the laws and prophetic words throughout the history of God’s people hang on one thing – Love. Being God’s people is about loving well – God, others, and ourselves. We come to worship together as one of many ways we maintain our relationship with God and each other. We do life together because we know that God created us for community and relationship.

Jesus’ clearing of the temple marketplace was a spring cleaning of sorts, removing the clutter that got in the way of people’s relationship with God, removing the stumbling blocks and barriers between the people and God’s presence, dusting the cobwebs off of God’s loving words of relationship, making room for the abiding presence of God within each of us.

For us, in our day and time – without sacrificial animals and temple marketplaces – this story leads us to the question of how and where do we put up barriers to keep others from knowing God’s loving presence? In what ways have we let God’s words get lost in the cobwebby corners of our lives? Where do we ‘do’ the outward activity of church without the inner transformation of becoming the body of Christ? How do we behave as if being God’s people was a privilege instead of a responsibility?

The Psalmist tells us that “The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul”. God’s law, God’s word, God’s commandment is to love with our whole selves so that we proclaim the good news and reveal God’s image to the world. Amen.

*I am so very grateful for Salt Project! Most weeks, their blog offers me a way to organize my thoughts to begin preparing my sermon. Some weeks, like this one, the blog helps me craft a word for my congregation when I am close to overwhelmed by all that needs to be done. Thank you, Salt Project! https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/2/27/why-is-jesus-angry-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-lent-3

Finding Treasure

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The Lectionary readings for the first Sunday in Lent are here.

When I was a kid, about once a year, my dad would declare, “we’re cleaning out the garage this weekend!” And believe it or not, this was something we looked forward to. It was an adventure, a treasure hunt of sorts, a family journey through the wilderness that our garage had become over the past year. The garage was key part of our daily living – through this space was our most common entry and exit to the house, from it we began all of our outside play, in and from this space the maintenance and repairs of our home were done.

We’d get up early on a Saturday and have a big breakfast and then we’d take everything out of the garage, not yet evaluating anything, just laying it out on the driveway. Next, we’d sweep every nook and cranny, clearing out all of the cobwebs, dust bunnies, dead bugs, and dirt that we couldn’t see because of all of the stuff that had accumulated.

And finally it was time to sort through the piles of stuff we’d laid out on the driveway. Some of it would be put back in, neat and orderly, visible and available when needed. Some of it would go into a donation pile, still useful but no longer needed by us. And some of it would go to the trash, serving no purpose for us. The best part of this day would be when one of us would exclaim “I’ve been looking for this!” A lost treasure re-discovered under something that should have been discarded immediately rather than tossed on the shelf “just in case I might need it”. And often, we’d come across something and say “I don’t remember this but I sure can use it now!”

At the end of the day we’d admire our work and enjoy the tidiness and order of the space that was such a hub of our life. For a while anyway. Soon, as we rushed through one of us would toss something haphazard on a shelf or the floor; too busy to properly dispose of a box or empty container, we’d leave it for a later that wouldn’t come; slowly the cobwebs and dust bunnies would regain their space in the corners. We’d have the best of intentions with keeping it tidy, but our humanness would prevail and year’s worth of new clutter would accumulate until Dad declared “we’re cleaning out the garage this weekend!” and we’d journey again through the wilderness we called a garage.

Throughout our holy scriptures, wilderness time is a time of disruption and reordering. The Greek word we translate as wilderness means “of uncertain affinity” – not quite sure to whom or where we belong. It’s an in-between time, a liminal space that offers us the opportunity to let go of what is harmful and rediscover what lies underneath all the clutter that we’ve let accumulate- the hurt and anger and resentment, the self-serving ways of hate and the need to control others.

Saint Mark gives us the most succinct version of Jesus’ baptism and time in the wilderness. And yet this is the 3rd Sunday since the beginning of Advent that we read overlapping bits of Mark’s version of Jesus’ baptism. I think perhaps it is important. As I’ve said before, we should never cease to be amazed that Jesus, God incarnate, steps in along side us in this new life of love. Jesus is our guide for our wilderness journeys.

Mark doesn’t go into any detail about how Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, only that he was. From Matthew and Luke we learn that with each of the tasks which Jesus is asked to do, or tempted by, what he’s really being asked is to stop trusting in God’s timing and way of living this life on earth as in heaven and take matters into his own hands, to choose for himself what is right and wrong, to chose self-gratification instead of participating with God in the building up God’s Kingdom.

Our annual church season of Lent is meant to mimic Jesus’ wilderness time, and is a time of intentionally stepping into the wilderness activities of disruption and reordering. Cleaning out our heart, soul, mind, and strength – our whole being – and letting go of that which has hidden the treasure of Who and Whose we are. It is a season of reflection and, yes, of repentance but remember that repentance isn’t punishing our selves for what we don’t like about ourselves. Repentance is changing our hearts and minds, reorienting our life to God’s Way.

And before we can repent, we must admit we need to. Being penitent is our acknowledgment that we need God and accepting God’s forgiveness for having chosen our own way.

Repentance is returning to our original identity as God’s beloved. Uncovering this amazing treasure that we’ve let get buried under cobwebs and dust bunnies of trying to survive this life on our own terms and joyfully exclaiming “hey, I’ve been looking for this!” From the very creation of all that is, God created us in God’s image and said we are good. God did not create us sinners; that is a label of our own making and our own choices.

Throughout the Old Testament, the Hebrew word that the NRSV translates as sinner is mostly used only in the wisdom books of psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. The only time Jesus uses the word we translate into sinner is when he says that all of heaven rejoices when even one sinner returns to God, when the one who has missed the mark and been labeled by the worst part of their character is restored to the community of God’s Kingdom.

We must be careful with the labels we assign to ourselves and others. When we define ourselves or others by our worst characteristics or behaviors, we cover up the beauty of the image of God in all people. We are not sinners, we are human beings, beloved of God, who sin, who choose our own way of defining good and bad rather than God’s way.

To be clear, I’m not saying that we don’t often get things wrong, or miss the mark. We absolutely do, more often than most of us would like to admit of ourselves. We are human as God created us with the free-will to choose God’s way or to define good and bad on our own terms. My point is that we need to start our definition of who a human being is with Creation not with our departure from God’s intended way for us. Our original identity is that God created us good.

We can acknowledge our mortality, our humanness, without labeling ourselves or others as ‘wretched’. We can admit we have chosen not to follow God’s Way without labeling ourselves or others as ‘sinner’. We can repent, change our heart and mind and be open to the shaping of the Holy Spirit, tuning our will to God’s will without beating ourselves or others up. We can step into intentional wilderness time with each other as a way of healing and restoration from the harm that is done when we label others or ourselves by the worst of our behaviors.

Wilderness time isn’t punishment, it’s renewal and growth, reawakening to Whose and Who we are. Lent is a time to intentionally take stock of what in our hearts and minds is causing our own souls and others harm, hiding the treasure of our true identity under the dirt and cobwebs we let accumulate over time. A time to exclaim “I’ve been looking for this!” as we find the lost treasure of our true selves that’s been hidden under something that needs to be discarded. This is a time of growth when we can come across something and say “I don’t remember this but I sure can use it now!”

The treasure we need to uncover from the debris and dust of our lives is our original identity – beloved children created in the image of God. There is nothing wretched in that! Remember that you are God’s Beloved. Amen.

Have you heard?

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church in Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for the fifth Sunday after the Epiphany are here.

Once upon a time, in preparation for a great family feast, a young mother sliced a couple of inches off the end of the ham before putting the ham in the roasting pan. As she slid the pan in the oven, she asked her mother, “why do we slice the end of the ham off like that?” Her mother thought for a bit and said, “I don’t know, it’s just how Gran taught me to do it.” So, they went in the living room where Gran was playing with the kids and asked, “why do we slide a chunk off the ham before roasting it?” Gran looked very puzzled and thought for a long time before saying, “I have no idea why you do it; I had a small roasting pan and small oven and Grandpa always picked the biggest ham at the butcher shop so I just had to make the ham fit.”

Knowing our ‘why’ is important. Why do we do what we do? Why do we think as we think? Why do we believe what we believe?

In his letter to the Jesus Followers in Corinth, Paul says he does what he does for the sake of the Good News so that he may share in the blessings.

But just what is the good news and what kind of blessings? Let’s ask these questions through the lens of our reading from Mark’s version of the Good News. After spending his first few days back from the wilderness calling some disciples and teaching in the synagogue, Jesus and his newly invited disciples have gone to Simon’s house – Jesus hasn’t yet begun calling him Peter – and Simon’s mother in law is quite sick.

Jesus goes to her, takes her by the hand and lifts her up. And her response to being restored to wellness is to serve those around her.

In the church I grew up in, this is one of the passages from the gospels that was used to say women were put on this earth to serve men. I’m so grateful that smarter folks have shown me how to read this story differently. Simon’s mother in law isn’t healed for the purpose of being in a power-driven servant/master relationship; she is responding in gratitude to being raised up by joining the disciples and Jesus in serving the Kingdom together as all who were sick were brought to Jesus to be restored to wellness. She’s right there with them.

On a significant side-note, it bothers me when women in scripture aren’t given names, so let’s give her the dignity of a name, let’s call her Irene. That was my grandmother’s name and she is my role-model for hospitable service for God’s Kingdom on earth. Ok, back to our story.

Jesus heals Irene with the touch of his hand and then he lifts her up. Mark uses the same word later for Jesus’ own resurrection. In her healing, Irene is restored to her community, her family, and she shows her gratitude by stepping along side the disciples to assist Jesus as he heals the multitudes that show up at her door.

The word Mark uses that we translate as ‘served’ has the same root word as our word deacon – diakonos – which is translated literally as “to kick up dust”. ‘Serving’ as Mark tells this story is practical, active, change the world kind of work.*

Irene is lifted up to serve in God’s Kingdom – resurrected, restored, made new for ministry, as we all are. We are raised to new life with Jesus through our own baptisms, not for our own individual gain but so that we can flourish in the abundance of the community around us. And, if we are all living a life of Kingdom service, focused on tending to each other, we can do so with the confidence that our own needs will be met as well. Y’all have heard me say this before but it’s the difference between a soup kitchen and a potluck supper – and at St. Francis we are professional potluck-ers.

With a soup kitchen, there’s the servers and the served. I have something you don’t have and you don’t have anything for me. At a potluck, we all bring what we have and all partake of what each other has, there’s no us and them, no haves or have-nots. There’s only all of us around the same table. This equalizing lack of competition is what we are freed from and for.

We are freed from the bondage of having to prove we are better than anyone else, freed from the bondage of having to earn or deserve God’s love or to show ourselves worthy of inclusion in the Kingdom. We are freed for serving each other in God’s Kingdom.

Have you not heard? Do you not know? God Loves and wants us to love. And it’s not that God wants us to love him back so God can feel good about himself. Being in relationship with God and each other is the very purpose we are all created for! This is our biggest and most foundational ‘why’. Love. This is the blessing we all share in.

Let’s look again at what Paul says to the people in Corinth. When Paul says he’s a Jew to the Jews and to the gentiles (those outside the law) a gentile and all things to all people, he isn’t having an identity crisis, he’s stepping firmly onto the foundation of his identity as a citizen of God’s Kingdom. He is painting for us a beautiful picture of inclusion; taking down any barriers to the potluck supper table. He’s living the resurrection life of putting the greater good of all above his own individual desires, just as Irene did when Jesus lifted her up. Paul is sharing in the blessings of God’s Kingdom.

When loving God, our neighbor, and ourselves is our purpose in life, we are truly alive as God intends for us to be. All that we choose to think, feel, and do will flow from this love. Choice is key in our understanding of our ‘why’. God could have made us all little robots that served God and the Kingdom without question. But that’s not love. Love as God loves requires free-will, our ability to discern and choose what it best for God’s Kingdom, to think outside of ourselves for the greater good of all. And, so God gave us the beautiful and dangerous gift of free-will knowing full well we’d mis-use it for our own individual gain, knowing that we’d miss the mark.

So then, God offers to us forgiveness. God touches us, takes us by the hand and lifts us up, restored in relationship so that we can, together and with God’s help, kick up the dust of this world and serve in the revolution of love. This is the abundant life we are created for; this is our ‘why’ as we follow Jesus on our lifelong journey in God’s Kingdom on earth, as we all share in the blessing of our everlasting potluck supper.

Why do we keep showing up at this place? Why do we keep showing up with and for each other? What good news do you hear and how does this good news shape your resurrection life so that those who are searching for God’s love experience the good news?

We share in the blessings of the Good News of God when we choose to be citizens of God’s Kingdom, God’s beloved children first and foremost and let what we think, say, and do be guided by God’s love. We’ve been lifted up for the purpose of showing others the freedom and abundance of this lifted-up life. Amen.

*https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/progressive-lectionary-commentary-epiphany-5

Kaleidoscope

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake, Canyon Lake, TX.
The Lectionary readings for the third Sunday after the Epiphany are here.

What would it take for you to hear someone say “follow me” and you immediately drop everything – your job, your life as you know it – and go? Can we even really imagine a life so terrible that we’d even consider doing such a thing? Dig deep in your compassionate imagination and consider what kind of life these men must have had that an invitation from a stranger would cause them to drop everything and go. Galilean Fishermen in first century Palestine were near the lowest rung of the caste system ladder. Most of us simply think of fishing as a leisurely sport but these men worked day and night to make barely enough to feed their families. Roman law demanded they sell every single fish they caught into the Roman Economy. The best of the catch were sold to the elite and wealthy and what was left, if any, to the very fishermen who caught it. The money they were paid for the fish they caught was barely enough to buy fish to feed their families.

In our gospel reading today, Mark tells us of Jesus’ arrival in Galilee to take over when John the Baptizer was interrupted — proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “the time IS fulfilled, the Kingdom of God HAS come near, repent, and believe in the Good News.” And he offers these fishermen an invitation to live in the economy of God’s Kingdom, an economy built not on using people up but on building each other up with companionship and collaboration.

And they are willing to drop their nets and follow. They needed genuine good news and they were willing to follow Jesus to see if what he said was true. Perhaps, probably, for the first time in their lives, they are given a choice, given the permission and authority to decide how they will live their life. In our 21st century, middle-class, North American world, we really have no idea what it is to not have choices about how we live. And yet, we still have a tendency to let ourselves get caught in the currents of tribalism, exclusivity, and scarcity, none of which offer much good news or freedom.

In the Kingdom life, we are freed from our self-created struggles of building our own kingdom by proving ourselves, needing to be admired, to be the strongest, the smartest, the happiest, or the one with the most or best stuff. The Good News is that God’s Kingdom is ‘at hand’ as some translations put it, right here among us and it is available to all of us if we change our hearts and minds and believe that God’s Way is what we are created for, who we genuinely are – people loved by God so that we can learn to love each other better and show the world they are loved, too.

When Jesus tells these fishermen that he will show them how to fish for people, Jesus is saying that relationships are the building blocks of God’s Kingdom, not money, not bricks and mortar, not prestige or political power or military might. These men lived in a culture that said other people were simply a means of getting what I want and except for the form of official government I don’t think our consumerist culture is much different.

Is the person on the other side of the cash register there only for your benefit? How can you be a blessing to them and show them Jesus by who you are? Are folks of the “other” political party your enemy? How can you love them as Jesus asks us to do so that they know God loves them, too? Do you see those who are seeking a better life in this country as trying to take away the life you feel entitled to simply because you were born here or with more than they were? How can you learn to see them as Jesus saw these fishermen?

We can change our hearts and minds with God’s help and in companionship with each other. The good news of God is hope not despair or destruction. The good news of God is that we are all loved. The good news is that we don’t have to wonder if we are enough. Jesus tells us we are. We are already on the journey of the Kingdom we were born for, all of us together, making each other whole and holy with the light of God’s love shining through all of us, like a kaleidoscope.

A Kaleidoscope is filled with seemingly random bits and pieces that are each beautiful but when viewed together with a light shining through them they create amazing pictures that change as they move together. Their combined and reflected nature is so much more than what the bits could be alone. The amazing beauty of a kaleidoscope comes from all of the bits and pieces being tumbled around together in the light.

This is how I picture God’s Kingdom. This Kingdom life isn’t always easy and we get tumbled about sometimes but together and in God’s light we make something wonderfully beautiful. This is the life of companionship and collaboration, seeing others as companions in a life of abundance rather than competitors in a world of scarcity. Jesus invites us into a life lived rooted in abundance, believing that the treasures of God’s Kingdom – love, joy, peace, hope – increase the more we offer them to others. We are more, we are whole, we are holy, when we live with each other rather than against. We are most fully human, God’s beloved people, who and Whose we are created to be when we answer Jesus’ invitation to follow God’s way.

One of my favorite still living theologians, Os Guinness, says that all human beings have two calls in life. Our primary call is toward God. It is God’s desire to be in relationship with us and God calls to us, inviting us to be aware of God with us in every moment of our lives. Jesus offers us this invitation in flesh and blood. Our second call – and yes, each of us has this secondary call as well – is to live vocationally. Whatever it is we do – teacher, accountant, janitor, maintenance worker, engineer, server, business owner, retired, whatever – we are to do it from the image of God within us, as citizens of God’s Kingdom, for the glory of God and the wellbeing of all. We all have a choice to live in the economy of God’s kingdom, choosing companionship over competition, abundance over scarcity, compassion over exclusion.

So, what are the nets we need to drop so that we can focus our attention on God’s Way? How do we need to change our thinking, our hearts and minds and let God’s Way illuminate the beautiful Kaleidoscope of God’s Kingdom? How do we offer this Good News to others by the way we live?

“Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works.” Amen.

How Many Days

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The Lectionary readings for the Baptism of Jesus are here.

When was the last time you had an epiphany? Well, if you were paying attention, you might have had one yesterday which was the Feast of the Epiphany. On January 6, 12 days after Christmas Day, the Church celebrates the arrival of the three men from the East at the home of Mary and Joseph with their seemingly odd baby gifts. Despite the millions of manger scenes that depict otherwise, tradition and a few clues from our scriptures tell us that it could have been as long as two years after Jesus’ birth that these men showed up. So, technically, yesterday’s Feast of the Epiphany is the end of Christmas 2021. That’s way more than 12 days but 730 days of Christmas would be an impossible song to write much less sing!

Matthew tells us that the star the men followed guided them to Mary and Joseph’s home, not the stable in Bethlehem where he was born and not on the same night as the shepherds and angels. But their arrival is important enough that the Church has given it it’s own Feast Day. And the time between January 6 and Ash Wednesday is marked by the number of Sundays after the Epiphany.

These men, wise in reading the stars and evading Herod’s treachery, were not Jewish, not Roman, not local folks congratulating the family on a new arrival. In their profession of reading the stars, they discerned that there was a grand shift in Creation, something extraordinary and awesome was occurring, and they wanted to acknowledge it. They had an epiphany. An epiphany is much more than just an aha moment. It is the manifestation of divine insight. Epiphanies are God revealing to us the divine intent so that we can participate with God in the goodness of the Kingdom on earth as in heaven.

Remember a few weeks ago when we talked about Mary and I said she may have not have been educated but she was far from illiterate about the God who asked her to bear God’s Son? Mary would have understood the significance of the odd gifts these men brought. Gold belonged to royalty, Frankincense was burned as incense to symbolize prayers being lifted up, and Myrrh was used for embalming. These were not items possessed in any significant amount if at all by common people; they are gifts given by and to the wealthy and powerful. These odd baby gifts only make sense alongside what the angel had said to Mary. Perhaps in the two years between the birth of her baby and the arrival of these men, Mary and Joseph had settled into a typical life with their new baby, Joseph earning a living, Mary running the household, both waiting and wondering when and how all of the amazing things the angel told them would take place.

Imagine Mary’s wonder as she receives these men into her home and they present the gifts that assure her that God is still at work in her little family. Now, that’s an Epiphany!

So, although we may distinguish one day a year, January 6, as the Feast of the Epiphany, we have many stories in our scriptures of Epiphanies and when we seek to live awake and alert to God’s presence in this world, we continue to grow through the epiphanies we have of God with us in both our struggles and joys.

Now, today, the first Sunday after the Feast of the Epiphany, we jump forward approximately 30 years to the story of Jesus’ baptism and another epiphany moment. And who said time-travel was impossible?

And, again, if our reading today sounded very familiar as we just read it a few short weeks ago on the second Sunday of Advent. In the story of Jesus’ baptism, we should never lose the amazement that Jesus is being baptized. The baptism John proclaimed was a sign of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And Jesus gets inline with the rest of us in a sign of solidarity with us, God truly with us as one of us.

This is the model Jesus gives us for our lives as we follow him, a lived example in flesh and blood of sincerely humble collaboration and compassionate fellowship. Jesus teaches us that we are most complete, most whole, most holy, when we are together, not just in the same place but in sync with each other, striving for the greater good of all of us and our wider community, knowing that each of us is necessary in the whole. Sincere humility isn’t saying ‘I’m less than you, or I have nothing, or I’m not good enough, or I’m not needed; humility is about our view of others, knowing that we are all God’s beloved, we are all created for God’s Kingdom; not trying to portray ourselves as less than others but seeing all of us together as whole and holy. We cannot see the true worth of others if we don’t know our own worth as God’s beloved. Each and everyone of us, each and every human ever born or who will be born is loved by God. And there is absolutely nothing any human can do to make God love us more or less than God loves. We are just not that powerful, my friends.

It is not quite clear in our reading just who saw the skies open and heard God say “this is my beloved in who I am pleased” but imagine the ongoing epiphany of those who followed Jesus remembering that he was baptized just a they were – God choosing to be one of us!

Jesus steps in line with us and then says follow me in the Way of Love, together we will show the world the life we are all created for, a life of humble collaboration and compassionate fellowship. If we try to convince ourself or others that we are more or less than God’s beloved it is pride, not humility. Jesus knows who he is and wants to help us discover who and whose we are.

In our baptism covenant, after we proclaim what we believe, we make promises about how we will live. We promise, with God’s help, to continue the whole of our life to learning who and Whose we are, to do life together, to share all we have, both grounding and framing our life in prayer. We promise, with God’s help, to accept responsibility for our own actions and admit it when we harm others so we can learn better how to live in collaborative fellowship with each other and God. We promise, with God’s help, to look for the epiphanies of God’s image in every other human being we encounter. And we promise, with God’s help, to live on earth as in heaven, living for the greater good of everyone, in the sincere humility of knowing that we are all God’s beloved.

I may have paraphrased the actual covenant a bit. If you want to check my interpretation you can find the actual words in the Book of Common Prayer.

All that we do in here on Sunday mornings and all that we do on this campus throughout the week is about living our life every day of the year. The coming of God in our lives isn’t just during the Christmas season; epiphanies of God’s presence isn’t about one feast day; reorienting ourselves on God’s path doesn’t just occur during the six weeks of Lent; bearing witness to God giving of God’s Self to us isn’t confined to Holy Week and Easter. Our baptism isn’t a one day event. These are the foundation and framework of every moment of every day of our life as God’s beloved as we follow Jesus in the Way of Love, doing life on earth as in heaven together and with God’s help. Amen.