The Baptism of Our Lord, Year A - January 9, 2011 (Psalm 29, Matthew 3:13-17)

Many years ago, in the summer between two semesters of college, I experienced an event in nature that had a profound effect on my faith. It has never occurred to me very often to share it because I was totally alone when the event happened, and so it became a very personal—almost private—epiphany. On second thought, however, it was an experience that, at the time, so intensely deepened my understanding of God’s grace that I think it might have helped put me on the path towards my vocation as pastor. In a way, that makes that epiphany less private, like it somehow now belongs to everyone who might come in contact with me, even if I never mention it explicitly.

The event of which I speak was nothing more than the peculiarly brilliant glow of a sunset against the snow-covered side of a large mountain in the Sierra Nevada range in California. It happened while I was on a 24-hour period of solitary retreat that was a part of a fourteen-day Outward Bound course in mountaineering. I was tired and alone in my thoughts at the end of a long day, sitting on my sleeping bag on a sun-hardened snow drift, when I looked up into the distance at the perfect instant to catch the rays of evening sun glancing off this large, white mountain. It is difficult to rate sunsets, but at the time, it was the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen, by far.

Yet it was more than a beautiful sunset. As I was moved by its brightness and intensity, it seemed to allow what poet Percy Shelley once called “the everlasting universe of things flow through [my] mind.” And, like all sunsets, it was fleeting. But in the minutes that it lasted, I was consumed by awe and thanksgiving: awe, not simply because of its radiance, but more because I felt something so beautiful in nature—and my appreciation of it—could never occur by accident; and thanksgiving, for the pleasure of seeing it (and that the view wasn’t obscured by thousands of blackbirds plummeting from the sky!) I felt, in a way, as if that sunset might have been a message sent from God directly to me, assuring me not only of his presence, but also of his constant care. I remember what affected me most about the experience was the realization that this vista, as spectacular as it was, was not a one-time occurrence. That kind of sunset happened every day, the world over. I was—and still am—sure that I experienced God’s glory and grace in that sunset, and I was thankful for the opportunity to appreciate it—if that makes any sense.

I’m sure many— if not all—of you have had similar experiences with the grandeur and power of nature. It may not be a sunset, but perhaps the sight of a waterfall, or the complexity of the atom, or the birth of a child, or a loved one making an unexpected recovery from illness. Occurrences with the natural, created world—both the mundane and the extraordinary—have always had a way of communicating something about God’s power and God’s wisdom. Often they catch us off guard, but sometimes we grow into these epiphanies more gradually. Whether or not we can explain the phenomena scientifically makes little difference. They are glimpses of what God is like and how God manifests God’s love to us.

Ancient Israel was no exception in experiencing this. They, too, lived in a natural world that was awesome and beautiful and difficult to explain. That, in fact, is what Psalm 29 is trying to communicate this morning. Psalm 29 is a unique psalm: no other portion of Holy Scripture so closely associates events in nature with the glory of God. In it, the psalmist has clearly experienced some natural event—in this case, it sounds like it might have been a thunderstorm—and he is moved to expound upon God’s power. The imagery is vivid: cedar trees are snapped, like those in hurricane-force winds; the desert shakes and the oak trees writhe and sway; rain and wind consume the landscape so much that the hills in the distance skip like young wild oxen.

The imagery is truly descriptive, but the particular wording of the psalm is more peculiar yet: each verse includes God’s name, sometimes twice. It is thought that this psalm might have actually been partly borrowed from Israel’s nature-worshiping neighbors. Israel, of course, adapted and re-worded it so that it was clear that the wind and the rain were not gods themselves, or tools of a vindictive pantheon of deities overhead, but, rather, manifestations of the one true God’s power. The first two lines of the psalm make clear where the people are to ascribe all this glory: to none other than the Lord, the God of Israel, whose name then rings out, quite repetitively, throughout the song.

And where are the people in the psalm? They are in the temple, praising God and crying “glory!” which would have essentially been the words on my lips as I sat on the side of that mountain years ago: “Glory!” But here Israel is together, hearing about or remembering this magnificent storm, making a public pronouncement about God’s power.

Yet for all our examples of epiphanies and for all of Israel’s poetry regarding God’s grandeur, all things pale in comparison to what happens when Jesus of Nazareth steps into the Jordan River to be baptized by John.

Imagine, for a second, bringing up Google Earth on your computer screen. There, before you, is a color satellite image of the whole earth, or maybe most of one hemisphere. The ridges of the mountain ranges are visible, as are some of the folds and creases of the ocean floor. As if offering God’s own perspective, the whole planet is in our domain…the thunderstorms, the sunsets, and everything else. Then, imagine going to the place where you type in an address or a location. What happens next? As soon as a specific location gets entered, the satellite’s eye immediately zooms in and focuses on that one particular spot. We hover, perhaps like a descending dove, just above one particular spot in God’s creation.

That is akin to what happens at Jesus’ baptism. As Jesus steps into that muddy river, and has his head breaks the surface as he comes back up, God’s glory and power and grace zoom in and become centered in one place like never before. At that point, God’s voice is heard overhead, and it is not announcing, as it was before, “This is my thunderstorm, the sign of my power,” nor does it proclaim, as I once heard, “This is my sunset, the Beautiful.” Rather, now God’s voice declares, “This is my Son, the beloved.” God is acting in a new way—a new message sent straight to us—and his glory and power and beauty and love will be visible and real to us in a way that is altogether unprecedented.

Jesus, God’s own Son, is now walking on the earth, and his baptism claims him from a private, personal existence and sets him forth as a public leader and servant. In his baptism, Jesus is lifted out of relative obscurity set forth as a God’s anointed, one who will at the same time encapsulate for Israel all the righteousness they could never muster and for God all the love for his creation. In his baptism, we not only learn to ascribe to Jesus the glory due God’s name, but God also ascribes to his Son the love and sacrifice he has for us.

For from the waters of the Jordan Jesus will rise and not go home. He will go out into the wilderness to be tempted. From there to the villages and town of Galilee of Judea, preaching God’s word and calling people to take part in God’s kingdom. From this point in the waters of Jordan, you can draw a line directly through all those things right to the judgment hall of Pontius Pilate and, from there, to the cross—and trust all along that God is still zoomed in on him.

It is a challenge to many a person’s faith—including my own—to remember that to this day there is no more positive and definitive demonstration of God’s reality, or of God’s power—and most certainly of God’s love—than in Jesus Christ, no matter how many other beautiful sunsets we’ve seen or how many loved ones we see miraculously healed. Jesus is still the focal point of God’s efforts, that Google Earth zoom effect that we can’t deny. In his small book, Life Together, Dietrich Bonhoeffer puts it like this:

“It is not in our life that God’s help and presence must be proved, but rather God’s presence and help have been demonstrated for us in the life of Jesus Christ…The fact that Jesus Christ died is more important that the fact that I shall die, and the fact that Jesus Christ rose from the dead is the sole ground of my hope that I, too, shall be raised on the Last Day.” (Life Together, HarperSanFrancisco, 1954, p54)

Those have always been challenging words for me, because I have a terrible tendency to think that everything—even God’s love—is all about me. And really, it isn't.  It's more about Jesus.  And while my experiences with sunsets and even hills skipping like young wild oxen are good grounds for believing in God’s glory, God’s action in Jesus’ life is the “sole ground,” Bonhoeffer says, in our hope of eternal life.

Interestingly, it was solid ground that the dove was seeking when Noah thought the forty long days of flooding and waiting was over. Solid ground was needed for a new beginning, a new life. And when the dove returned, descending with the olive branch, the people of God knew that the wait was over.

A new dove descends at Jesus’ baptism, and, likewise, a wait is over. Solid ground has risen up, and we may build. Baptized, ourselves, flooded with forgiveness, we may begin anew and build our lives on the sole ground God so long intended to give us. Brothers and sisters, we may build again—not with a faith too personal and private, but with a courage to be public and prophetic for the whole creation.

In Jesus, we behold God’s beloved Son, and we may build our lives in him. Again, and again…and again. And all the people in the temple shout, “Glory!”

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost [Proper 7C] - June 20, 2010 (Galatians 3:23-29)

Only very rarely does my wife like to dress our two young daughters in matching outfits when they go out in public. Because they are separated in age by only eighteen months—and because they both have the same hair and eye color—they are often mistaken as twins. I suppose she thinks that they already have so many things in common that at least what they're wearing might help with differentiating the two, or might develop their sense of individuality. I know, however, that there will likely be a time in their life where they won’t be caught dead wearing the same clothes together. In their youth it might be cute and adorable, but when it comes time to choose that first ball gown or prom dress, I can imagine considerable effort will be made to put on something very different from each other. One must only glance out at our own congregation this morning to learn that, if given our preferences, we will always choose to wear something different from everyone else. Even the stereotypical Fathers Day necktie gift is selected with an eye to make dad stand out in some way.

But what if everyone were to wear the same thing? What if we did pull ourselves out of bed each Sunday morning, stuff down a bite of breakfast, and arrive for worship to find that someone had put us all in matching outfits? Well, as it turns out, the apostle Paul said that’s precisely what has happened. “As many of you as were baptized into Christ,” he says in his letter to the Galatians, “have clothed yourselves with Christ.” As it turns out, our baptisms have clad us each in an identical garment, a pure, resplendent one that sets us apart not from each other, but from the world.

At one part in his letter to the church in Galatia, when he is trying to explain how they are to regard each other, Paul reaches for this metaphor of clothing. The point is that Christ’s death and resurrection has formed a new creation in which many former distinctions are no longer ultimately valid, where people view each other simply as another sinner for whom Christ died and rose again. “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, no longer slave nor free, no longer male and female,” Paul continues, elaborating his point. These individual ethnic, social or gender distinctions that would normally be divisive no longer set the believers apart because Christ has united them in his death. When we pass the waters of Christ’s death and resurrection, we essentially receive a uniform, of sorts, matching outfits which enable us to cover over any distinction the world may place on us and instead take on his characteristics of faithfulness and love. That’s what we wear. It’s the inspiration for the utterly un-fashionable robes that we worship leaders wear. It’s also speaks to the white robes that all people traditionally wore right after their baptism, like the one that two confirmands helped Greg Parker step into a few weeks ago immediately following his baptism.

This point Paul is making is radical. He lived in a world that was no less prone than ours to find stability in labeling people and sticking them into different boxes. To proclaim that Christ had effectively done away with those distinctions and put everyone on the same level with everyone else not just in God’s eyes but in each other’s eyes, as well, was earth-shattering. It was life-giving, of course, but also earth-shattering. In fact, the church in Galatia had found it a little too earth-shattering, and they had begun to retain some of those earlier distinctions within their membership.

Apparently what happened is that after Paul had brought them the gospel and helped to set up their congregations, some other missionaries came after him who convinced the Galatians that in order to be a real follower of Christ, all men needed to submit to a certain Jewish practice, the one where they receive a certain little snip. It was a sign of God’s covenant with Abraham, obedience to the law.

When Paul gets word that the Galatians were doing this, it sends him into orbit.  He is furious. Nothing, he reiterates, can add or detract from the faithfulness of Jesus Christ. No law, no practice, no custom, was useful in establishing their relationship with God. Christ alone had accomplished that for them. Jesus had brought about this new creation of righteousness based on faith, and the church is charged with living out that new reality, much like a group of people who have all received the same new clothes to wear. Making people submit to any aspect of the law and its requirements only served to break apart that community by setting up distinctions. “All of you are one in Christ Jesus,” Paul says at the homiletical climax of his letter to the Galatians. “And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.” Done deal.

Written two-thousand years ago to a group of smallish congregations in Asia Minor that may not even exist anymore, Paul’s words about the gospel are no less radical and no less hard to live today. That is because the new community that the gospel creates is no less radical today. The gospel does not seek to create a homogeneous community, where everyone is a mindless clone of everyone else, but it does create a community where Christ’s faithfulness alone binds us together. It strives to be a place where no one labels another or creates the atmosphere where one group seems more “saved” than another. Any distinction that we bear due to ethnic group or language group or nationality or socio-economic class or even gender does not ultimately matter in our faith. The church now may not be guilty of the particular problem that the Galatian congregation had—and we can thank heaven for that!—but we still fall short of the vision that Paul puts forth.

The congregation I served on my internship was partly made up of two ethnic Sudanese refugee congregations who had been bitter rivals in their former southern Sudanese homeland. Even though they were both Christian tribes, they remained mutually suspicious and distrustful of each other in Cairo. We found they had brought their old divisions with them into our congregation. They regarded each other as different tribes. Eventually my supervisor had caught on to their conflict, especially when it came time for them to divide the offerings and Christian aid packages among the members of their respective congregations. They were unable to do it without accusing the other congregation of malpractice. So, my supervisor withheld their authority to divide the offerings themselves until they each agreed to worship together once a month with Holy Communion. Within only a couple of months, something amazing happened. They began to regard each other as fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, recognizing each other not mainly as Dinka or Nuer, but as a community which had received the extraordinary gift of faith. Pretty soon, they not only took on the authority of dividing the offerings, but even started planning other events together.

That is perhaps too easy example to get our heads around—pointing out the mistakes of others—but what about the different tribal and affiliations that affect us here in the United States, or even within our denomination? There are many ways in which we still have a hard time realizing we all wear Christ. I think that keeping this in mind is highly important, for example, in the current debate our denomination is having about issues of human sexuality and the definition of marriage. Without realizing it, we can use terms and language that immediately set up unhelpful distinctions within the body. When one group, for example, repeatedly describes themselves as “progressive” or “reconciling” Christians on this issue, they immediately set up a pejorative distinction, leaving others who don’t agree with them feeling as though they are backward or reactionary. As my colleague Pastor Price has noted, when still others set themselves forth as “orthodox” Lutherans, they imply that others who don’t agree with them are heterodox; that is, outside the Christian family. The disagreements that congregations and denominations are having are indeed important, and thoughtful dialogue is vital, but a community of the new creation in Christ should not, as Paul notes, use language and create distinctions that denigrate or belittle a brother or sister who has put on the same baptismal outfit as everyone else.

On the other hand, another pitfall the church must avoid, is in thinking that the church should merely look and feel like an episode of Glee, the new hit series on Fox which follows the triumphs and tragedies of a hapless show choir in a high school in Ohio. For those who haven’t seen an episode yet, the show choir in Glee contains a member of just about every racial, social, and gender group or clique that you can think of in the American high school. There are cheerleaders, jocks, nerds, a guy in a wheelchair, a couple of Asians, an African-American, a homosexual, a townie, and a prep. Part of the reason why I think the show is such a phenomenon is because it does embody and project onto the small screen all the images of a new community based on a Hollywood’s idea of diversity, a world where social and racial and gender distinction don’t seem to matter. As the show choir rallies around the common goal to perform musical pieces with creative gusto, they learn to appreciate one another’s differences.

The community created by the show choir’s director is an inspiring one. They are a new group that somehow manages to eke out a name for themselves by being an intentional hodge-podge of outcasts and misfits, and they genuinely learn to “get along.” But where the community in Glee falls short of the new creation in Christ, by contrast, is that it is still a community based on each member’s trumpeting what they perceive as their own individual identity—and the rest of the members just have to make space for it. In short, they haven’t “put on” any meaningful unifying characteristic. For all the choir director’s efforts, no one has made the choir members truly one: they are members simply because they want to be, and their individual distinctions still seem to matter.

That, in short, is where all human community devoid of Christ falls short, and a church that continues to seeks to lift up such differences as hallmarks of diversity is still missing the point. We can not truly be made one by any other person than Jesus Christ, and the only new creation worth living is the one where we learn to regard each other not as loveable or worthwhile in our own right, but loveable and worthwhile purely because Jesus Christ has died for us. We are loveable and worthwhile, and we learn to live together, because Christ is our ultimate common ground. And our unity is based not in our ability to overcome our obstacles, but in Christ’s victory over even the greatest obstacle. Said another way, if we preach the gospel of Christ, all diversity will take care of itself.

As many of us who have been baptized into Christ, have clothed ourselves in that awesome reality. I don’t know if you’re as happy with this new garment as I am. To be honest, it doesn’t always fit like I know it should, but wearing it with you here on a regular basis is helping to take it in where it’s loose and let it out where it’s a little tight. I can’t help but notice the first thing Luke says about the man from Gerasene who is miraculously cured of his demons: he is found “sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind.” That’s us, clothed and in our right mind—when we’re sitting at the foot of the one who has made us one. I’m quite glad we’ve got these new clothes, because in a world that is increasingly fragmented and apt to live by labels, to break us apart into little isolating islands of personal preference, I’m pretty confident that Jesus Christ and his wonderful garment of unity is the only thing out there that can pull us together.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Day of Pentecost [Year C] - May 23, 2010 (Acts 2:1-21 and Romans 8:14-17)

“When the Day of Pentecost had come, the apostles were all together in one place.”

That is how Luke begins his 4-verse account of the bestowal of the Holy Spirit. He does not explicitly say why they were all gathered together in one place, but we can assume it is because that is what the Jewish people did on the fiftieth day after Passover. Pentecost, which literally means “fiftieth day” in Greek, was actually the Jewish festival of Shavuot, the commemoration of Moses’ reception of the stone tablets containing the Ten Commandments on Mt. Sinai.

According to the time tables given in the Old Testament, the Israelites arrived at Mt. Sinai fifty days after having left Egypt through the Red Sea. They had persevered through the harsh landscape of the desert, escaped the brutal Egyptian army only by the grace of God, and had found themselves camped out at the base of a rather nondescript but yet imposing mountain in order to get further directions from God as to what he wanted them to do and what type of people they were going to be. That was the basic idea behind Moses’ tablets: a definition not only of what they were to do, but also who they were to be. They were but a hapless little community of brick-laying slaves, yet the law would give them clear identity and purpose. It was an instance of divine grace. The Israelites knew they had done absolutely nothing to receive these gracious laws and commands, but having them—and living them—would set them apart from the rest of the world.

As it happened, in Jesus’ day, the festival of Pentecost, or Shavuot, was one of the three main pilgrimage holidays whereby families would gather themselves together and take a trip to Jerusalem. I suppose you may think of it like Thanksgiving, except everyone who had the resources to make the trip was descending upon the same place, and things in Jerusalem could get a little rowdy. So, in a way, I guess it was like Spring Break. Thanksgiving and Spring Break, rolled into one, all on the occasion to celebrate God’s gracious outpouring of his law.

So, it is in this context—in a Jerusalem filled with pilgrims from all over the known world—that we find the disciples of Jesus gathered together in one place. Little did they know that as they would gather—as, in fact, as their risen Lord had directed them to—God would once more miraculously pour out his grace yet again, showing them what God wants them to do and what kind of people they are to be.

This time, however, God would really not hold back. The very bond of love and power that had radiated between the Father and the Son from the beginning of creation would be issued down upon the believers not like stone tablets, but like a mighty rushing wind. The very entity that had given life and shape to the Father’s relationship with the Son would be sent to dwell among human beings. Here, at Pentecost, when most of the people around the city would be remembering the day when Moses came down the mountain with his face glowing like fire because he had been in God’s presence, God would shower tongues of fire to light up the faces of all believers.

So, then, what does Pentecost for those apostles turn out to be? It turns out to be about receiving God’s grace, once more, in the form of God’s own Spirit. It is about receiving a new law, but this time one that is written upon people’s hearts and that is how they are set apart from the rest of the world. Pentecost is about the formation of a new movement, a new pilgrimage of faith that will take the message of Jesus and his resurrection not to the city of God, but in the other direction—to the ends of the earth. All types and groups of people will be drawn in to know what it means to know that Jesus is risen: Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, and all those other far off places that are difficult to pronounce. We may as well add residents of the West End and Glen Allen, and parts of Richmond technically belonging to Chesterfield County. All of these diverse, different peoples are brought into the family of the Spirit known as the Church. Just as Jesus, in his resurrection, has declared victory over sin, death, and all that separates creation from God, the Spirit, in its outpouring, has put an exclamation point on that victory by drawing people into this movement and giving them the power to share the good news.

This is what Pentecost now celebrates, for those who follow the Lord. This is what the Holy Spirit does. It gathers. It unites. It calls together. It breaks down barriers. It helps embody forgiveness and selfless love among people of all kinds. And just like the Spirit gathered an unsuspecting community of disciples that first Pentecost in Jerusalem, the Spirit is still doing that today.

I ask you this: where else will you find a gathering this multi-generational, this demographically diverse, this…well, let’s be honest…random, on a regular basis? Where else will you find such an otherwise disconnected group of people coming together, week after week, to learn and speak together a new language of love, no less? In this place, and in others like it throughout the world, we share our hopes for our children, our desires for a better world, our prayers for healing and wholeness. Look around you. The church of Christ—this peculiar movement that is 2000 years old and going strong—is the only place where this type of interaction happens, and it is the Spirit who enables it.

In his recent article entitled, “Reasons to Join: In Defense of Organized Religion,” Episcopal priest Garret Keizer remarks, “If I were asked to say in one sentence what was the chief benefit of all my years in church, I might say that it forced me to hang out with people I’d not otherwise have met" (The Christian Century, April 22, 2008, p 30). In a culture that continues to glorify personal preference and idolize the power of the individual, the Holy Spirit draw us back in to each other, forming a community that transcends time and space. In societies that are hell-bent on breaking us apart into groups and getting us to concentrate on our differences, the Holy Spirit speaks to us the word about Jesus, reminding us that in baptism we are all made children of God, “and if children,” the apostle Paul says, “then God’s own heirs.” That is the type of people we are to be—God’s own heirs. Can you imagine it?—and the types of things we are supposed to do will flow naturally from this new identity.

In fact, in this movement we are so renewed by Christ’s grace we will be empowered to go do things for and in the world that, left completely to ourselves and our own desires, we would never normally do: deeds of service and selflessness that will set us apart in their very extravagance. We are so transformed by the words and language we hear here—so free, Paul says, from our old spirit of slavery to sin—that the world will at times think we’re drunk, that we must be out of our minds.

Earlier this week I was at a conference in the Rocky Mountains, invited to be a part of a conversation with other pastors and lay leaders about the future of the church, especially when it comes to Christian education, confirmation ministry, and equipping people to live the faith in their homes. It was a stimulating discussion. We talked about the challenges and the strengths of youth and family ministry, and shared each of our congregation’s best practices. We lamented the statistics that show an appallingly low percentage of Lutheran youth—15 percent—remain active in this movement called the church as they become adults. We wondered allowed about what might be behind that statistic, what trends it might portend, and how it might be changed. We considered a future where this movement includes, for whatever reason, fewer and fewer young people sharing their gifts to be the community of God’s own heirs.

But perhaps what I remember most about the conference I attended this week was that I couldn’t catch my breath. Quite literally, I found it difficult to breathe. My east coast, near sea-level lungs didn’t know quite how to function in the thin Rocky Mountain air. And so I ended up doing all my body knew how to do: I kept feeling the urge to breathe deeply in an attempt to fill my lungs. Air rushed in—first to my lungs, then into my bloodstream, then into my individual little cells to provide the oxygen needed for survival. It was an instinctive reaction to get my body to adjust to life at a new altitude.

Confirmands, as you stand at the edge of your own adult-level participation in the church, may the breath of God rush into your own lungs. And may you never feel like you get enough. May you always find yourselves to be gasping for more of God’s Spirit—that mighty rush of wind—and let it fill you up so you may adjust to life in a new kingdom. Because more than any other aspiration you may have, more than any other career goal or educational priority, the Holy Spirit will determine what you are to do in this big world and what type of people you are to be. God’s heirs. People of a new movement.

Furthermore, this movement will need your gifts. This eclectic, multi-generational gathering will need your input, and without it, we will be deficient. Just a warning: you will never be able to convince anyone that you don’t have any of the Spirit’s gifts. We have seen far too many of them evidenced in you already.

“When the day of Pentecost had come, the apostles were all together in one place.” No, Luke does not tell us explicitly why we are all gathered in one place, but, deep down, we know. It is to breathe. To celebrate God’s grace and to breathe together the Spirit. To breathe together the Spirit and begin the adjustment to a new altitude, a new attitude, a new kingdom that is rapidly approaching and claims us all in the love of Christ.




Thanks be to God!



The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.