The Baptism of Our Lord [Year C] - January 10, 2016 (Luke 3:15-17, 21-23)

 

 

I could be wrong, but I’m almost 100% positive that the people who determine the schedule for the National Football League never consult the church calendar when they set up the playoff schedule. Every year, the Baptism of our Lord falls on Wild Card weekend. It’s a perfect match, if you ask me, because whether you sit in a church sanctuary or whether sit in front of the gridiron, lots of folks are thinking about expectations.

Some of those here today are full of expectations that a season will culminate in a Super Bowl appearance. They can barely contain their excitement or their anxiety. Trust me: I live with one of these people. I lived it last night in my family room, in fact. Every excruciating second. It’s almost like the long regular season behind us doesn’t really matter anymore. All the focus is on the future and, for better or worse, hopes of glory and dreams of honor are pinned on a particular player or coach. People are questioning in their hearts: is destiny calling for Kirk Cousins this year? Are the Packers washed out, or might they be the ones? These Wild Card games, you see, involve borderline candidates, teams who didn’t exactly dominate this season but who now have been given the chance to claim victory. In thirty years, only 6 of them have gone on to win the whole thing, but, oh, the expectations! With liturgical devotion, somewhere around 30 million people will be watching each game this weekend with them in mind.

And so the Baptism of Jesus is an uncanny backdrop for this tension in our popular culture. When Luke tells his version of this important event, he makes sure we know that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people are watching with pulsing expectation at another set of wild cards who appear by the River Jordan: John the Baptist and Jesus. They’ve assembled there because John has been preaching and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. He’s kind of wild about it, too, calling people out for their sinful behavior and warning them of the wrath to come. He’s a long shot, perhaps, but the people wonder and question in their hearts whether John might be the Messiah. They’ve been waiting for centuries for the right person. The hopes and dreams of all of Israel, the people of God, are searching and waiting to rest on the right person. Is destiny calling him?

"Baptism of Jesus" (Joachim Patinir)

Messiah is a Hebrew word that means “anointed.” The Greek translation of Messiah is a word we use all the time but probably think of it as Jesus’ last name: Christ. Finding the Messiah was a big deal for God’s people because it meant that God’s kingdom was breaking in. It meant that God’s Spirit has selected a specific, special person who would inaugurate God’s reign of justice and peace. After centuries of oppression and dealing with foreign powers, after a long series of corrupt kings and priests, the people of Israel desperately wanted this to happen. They wanted The Anointed to show up. It’s all about those expectations.

John’s answer to those expectations might have been a bit of a let-down, but you can’t blame him for being clear. John is not the Anointed One, but, as he says, that person is coming. That person will be truly great, truly powerful. This Messiah they await will have the task of sifting through everything like a wheat farmer sifts through the harvest on the threshing room floor. He will lead in such a way that all of the chaff in our lives and in our world, the empty husks of meaninglessness, will be done away with. He will lead in a way that purifies people, much in the way that fire and powerful wind do away with things that are weak and impure.

John is pretty clear, though, he is not this leader, and unfortunately for John, Herod the ruler is even clearer. Luke tells us that pretty soon John the Baptist is arrested and locked in prison. Tough spot for any potential Messiah to be. However, apparently in the midst of those people John was preaching to out by the Jordan, the true Messiah had been baptized. Almost like a flashback in a movie, we find out that Jesus had, in fact, been anointed through this powerful experience where the heavens opened up. It’s not even clear from this story whether or not John the Baptist was there when all of this happened.

"Baptism of Jesus" (Rosalind Hore)

What is clear is that God is present. In the form of that dove that descends upon him, and in the sound of a voice from the sky, God’s Spirit and God’s presence make known that the people’s expectations are finally being fulfilled.

Historically-speaking, the baptism of Jesus is when the church year really begins. For centuries, this event kicked off the cycle that helped the church talk about and celebrate Jesus’ life and ministry. Things like Christmas and Advent were added later. The baptism, Jesus’ anointing was the primary focus. It is the first event in Jesus’ life that is attested in some way by all four gospel writers and is the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Jesus’ appearance in Judea in those waters of the River Jordan does something, means something, to God’s creation on a level that nothing beforehand had. In Jesus, God has found the leader that will assemble the people of God and purify the hearts of humankind. In Jesus, God has selected God’s very representative on earth. In fact, it is not just any representative, but God’s own Son, one whom God loves and with whom God is pleased. It is God’s way of saying that it is time to really pay attention to what this Jesus is going to do because God himself is present in him, revealing what God is like.

The funny thing is, I’m not sure Jesus always fulfills our expectations in this regard. We often want one thing from Jesus the Messiah and we get another. As a matter of fact, some of John the Baptist’s own expectations seem a little off-base when it comes to Jesus. He talks about the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Messiah like it’s a consuming, powerful fire, but when it actually shows up, it’s a gentle dove. And any expectations we might have that God’s selection of Jesus will preserve and safeguard him or raise him up on a mighty pedestal come crashing down once we start to watch how his ministry plays out.

Jesus is claimed in his baptism, but not claimed and then set away like a king in a castle for a life apart from everyone else, protected from the dangers of the world. Jesus is chosen in his baptism, but not chosen for elite political or military service, surrounded by a well-connected entourage. Jesus is selected, but he is selected so that he may serve and suffer, to seek out the lost, and to save. These are typically not the expectations we always come to Anointed, Hoped-for leaders with, which is why the cross is always such a tragic shock.

It turns out John is right-on about one thing. Jesus will purify and cleanse, for sure, but it will do it because he is called “Beloved” and he has a fiery passion to love us all. A Messiah, a Savior, who dies for the very people who turn their back on him is precisely, however, the kind of Messiah we need.

Coptic Orthodox baptism

That we have been so claimed and chosen and loved by God in our baptisms and then given over to follow Jesus into the world is always demonstrated very vividly by this congregation’s longstanding tradition of walking newly baptized children and babies down the aisle after they’ve been anointed with the oil by the altar. At first it struck me that this little stroll was just a fun and practical way to show off a cute baby in a gown, like we’re at a baptismal fashion show and the aisle is a catwalk where we do our little turn. But I’ve come to realize the practice is more profound than that. When that baby is taken from the parents arms and walked down the aisle, we are witnessing and demonstrating what baptism does to all of us.

Our baptism, like Christ’s own, pushes us into the world. It places our lives, which are certainly claimed by grace, into service and mission. Each of us, with the blessing of the Spirit and all its gifts, brought through the waters by a God who has died for us, is sent right out into the expectations of a desperate, anxious world. Of course, we hand the child back to the parents at the end, but always with the hope that they, as primary caregivers to that child, model that this is the life of faith: God says “You are Mine. You will always be mine. But you belong in the world.”

Two weeks ago we baptized a three-year-old, Abbie. As we had discussed beforehand, we decided I would not carry her, but that she would hold me hand and walk side-by-side. When we finished and climbed the stairs to the chancel, we turned around to face the congregation and, of all things, she waved. She waved to the congregation! Speaking of expectations, that was something that caught us all off-guard!

When we leave this place each week, we encounter a world that is longing for the hope we’ve spoken of here. Wouldn’t it be powerful if the church, at the very least, waved back, as if the water were still dripping from our heads, confident that Jesus, the Messiah, the Hoped-for, is walking with us?

Come to think of it, don’t you show us, Epiphany, how to keep on walking? Haven’t you shown me, Epiphany, the church named for making Christ known, how you gather and feast here, grow here, babble in the pews here? Don’t you model so well—lost and found, desperate wild cards that you are—how to keep on walking right out there, held tightly the arms of the one who loves you?

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.                                 

The Second Sunday of Christmas - January 3, 2016 (Jeremiah 31:7-14 and John 1:10-18)

 

Covering some ground.

I suspect that for a lot us, that sums up how many of us feel, one way or the other, about a change in the calendar. Some of look back on 2015 and think: I covered some ground that year. Others may look into the future, into the new year that is already upon us and we’ve resolved to cover some ground. There’s something very satisfying about covering ground, going the distance, “bringing things home.”

Jewish captives returning from exile

God who likes to cover some ground. That’s one of the things we learn over and over about God through God’s history with the people of ancient Israel. God likes to cover ground, go the distance. The prophet Jeremiah, who is normally a doom and gloom kind of guy, explains this in one of his prophecies to God’s people. He says that their time exile would eventually end, that the great distance they feel from God would one day be over. God would accomplish this by helping them cover some ground…and I mean literal ground. After years of being dispersed on account of their faithlessness to what felt like the far reaches of creation God was going to bring them back to the place they belonged. This was the hope of a shattered and scattered Israel: that no matter where they had been flung to by the invading armies, no matter how distant God had let them get through their punishment of exile, God would, in fact, remember who and whose they were and gather them back together.

And so the word goes out, as Jeremiah says, from coast to coast. It covers ground! The word is declared in distant islands, to the edges of the known world. From the farthest parts of the earth God would gather them, and not just the young and healthy, either. The most vulnerable among them—the lame and the blind, the pregnant and those even in labor—would all make this journey, walking together. And upon their return there would be great rejoicing. The young women will dance and the old men and young will throw huge parties. The land will be like a watered garden.  Grain, oil and wine everywhere. The future was going to be great. It would be a time of grace upon grace…all because God likes to cover some ground.

This also is the God we come to see in Jesus, the Word made flesh, as John’s gospel calls him. God wants his word to go to the distant islands and coastlands, except this time it will not just be announced there and declared there to bring people back to God. This time the Word itself will go there. This time the Word will become human and, out of God’s great love for us, cover some serious ground. That is the miracle of what people of Christian faith call the incarnation, a heavy-duty theological word that intimidates us, really just means to be embodied in the flesh. It is God is going to be covering some ground for us, but not really in terms of geography, traipsing off to the lands of the north and the distant islands in order to perform a rescue. It means God is going to travel the length of the human experience, as broken and lost as it can get.

This is a fundamental understanding of Christian faith: that the very essence of God, the very substance of whatever God is, chooses to descend into our midst and live as one of us. And that one person, Jesus of Nazareth, will come to God’s own people and, in a sense, bring them back to where they belong. Those who receive him by faith he will give the power to become children of God.

And this is how this incarnate Word will cover ground: He will go from appearing at his birth, which other gospel writers will tell us about, and living among God’s people, showing his glory through some pretty terrific signs. He will call some followers to assist in this ministry of rescue, of bringing the word to the people. Eventually, however, he will travel the same route that all human flesh must travel: the path to death. However, in his case it will be a death of great humility, one where he goes as far away from God’s presence as one might imagine: hung on a cross as a common criminal. This is what the real “distant islands” and the farthest reaches of humankind looks like: the darkness of sin and death, the despair of hopelessness and abandonment. Just as ancient Israel was redeemed and brought home, so to will this Word made flesh redeem the children of the earth by suffering and dying and then, miraculously, rising again.

One of the things that the incarnation of God’s Word in Jesus teaches us is that no distance is greater than the length it takes to humble oneself to learn what another is experiencing. There are fewer paths in life for us longer than the path it takes to empty ourselves, like the Word did, and somehow take on the experience of another, to learn what another’s life might be like, to meet them where they are, to understand them as another human for whom Jesus has covered this ground. In an opinion piece that ran in the New York Times on Christmas Day, Peter Wehner wrote that “The incarnation…reveals that the divine principle governing the universe is a radical commitment to the dignity and worth of every person, since we are created in the divine image.” Wehner goes on to quote a secular humanist (someone who isn’t even a person of faith) who credits Christianity with introducing the notion for the first time in history that “humanity was fundamentally identical.”

When people who follow Christ cover ground in Jesus’ name, it does not matter how far we travel geographically to spread his word. Sometimes the greatest ground we must cover is sharing the experience of the person who is sitting right next to us, the family living down the street from us, the neighbor we are at odds with, the friend who is going through a rough time. And it can be difficult and involve suffering on our part. We end up having to empty ourselves, or lower ourselves, like Jesus did, in order to make that connection. Covering that ground—choosing to meet us in our experience—is how God interacts with the world. It should be the way those who have become children of God choose to interact with the world.

One of the most vivid lessons I received on this was on a Foursquare court. It was with the Epiphany Youth group three summers ago when we travelled to the farthest reaches of Appalachia, to one of the little towns that are still struggling with the aftermath of a played-out coal industry. One of our group’s tasks was to work with the youth in the town of Logan through a summer enrichment program. Without going into detail, we could say these kids were growing up in very, very different circumstances than our youth. Those differences made forming meaningful relationships very challenging.

Thankfully, there was a Foursquare court in the middle of the camp area and whenever there was some down time action drifted pretty quickly to some games of Foursquare. One of the local kids would pick up a ball and start playing. Now, anyone can play Foursquare. It draws people together. It’s played in P.E. classes across the country and its rules are pretty much the same everywhere. The Epiphany kids would line up and join in to play too, except they never got to win. No matter what, the local kids, whose court we were on, would find a way to get the Epiphany kids out every time. We were pretty sure they were just making up rules as they went in order to ensure that our youth would never advance in the game. And our youth took a beating. It was demoralizing and frustrating for them. It felt like the Logan youth were just taunting us. I couldn’t believe our youth wanted to keep playing, but the Epiphany youth realized that’s how they were going to get to know these local kids. They were going to have to stick with it. Our kids were playing on their court and they realized the point wasn’t winning the game, but winning those friendships. They had to cover some ground that week, humble themselves, and they succeeded.

Learning to play our crazed game…covering some ground…humbling himself from manger to cross…from life to death and back again. In each and every year. It was what God is all about, God’s very essence. It is the nonstop motion of the Word made flesh. When God’s people, those who have received him and been made children of the Father, learn to cover ground like this, there will be no stopping the gospel. When those who have been gathered by a gracious God become people of the incarnation, fed at the table and washed in the Word, travelling the great distance between another person’s story and their own, still more will be gathered from all kinds of distant coastlines.

Declaring the Word.  Indeed, living the Word…the Word made flesh that has lived among us. We will see God’s glory. From this fullness—this great distance— we will all receive grace upon grace. No matter what ground you've resolved to cover for the new year that is already upon us, may it be grounded in the promise that God, in the Word made flesh, has already brought you home.

 

 

Thanks be to God!

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Nativity of our Lord, Christmas Eve - December 24, 2015 (Isaiah 9:2-7 and Luke 2:1-20)

 

Tonight is a night of contrasts. It’s a night about things being put together that are total opposites, or that don’t really seem to match at all. They’re all over the place.

For example, everyone wants and almost needs tonight to be the same tonight as it is every year—the same old carols we sing in worship, the same old candles we light, the customary family recipes we’ve consumed before we got here. And yet we all also harbor an irrepressible sense that something unexpected is going to happen in the midst of it all, that there will be surprises beneath the tree tomorrow, new toys to play with, new toys to put together.

Tonight is all about contrasts. I’m talking about the fact that it is the dead of winter, we’ve been dreaming about a white Christmas for weeks now (or at least singing along with the radio about it). We’ll drink our Peppermint Lattes and our warm egg nogs, and yet here we are running the air conditioning and I’m wearing shorts under this robe. (OK…I’m kidding about the shorts).

Stark contrasts! You realize there are others, too, once you start thinking about it: like the fact that Christmas is touted over and over as the most wonderful time of the year, yet for many among us it is the loneliest, a time filled with sorrow and painful memories. Some of us claim we wish this night, this feeling, this spirit, could last a little longer, while others just want to get through it and hope it goes quickly.

The Annunciation to the Shepherds (Daniel Bonnell)

Tonight, though, all of those people are all in the same room together tonight to hear the same message. And it, too, is a message of contrasts, powerful, glaring contrasts. “The people who walked in darkness,” says the prophet Isaiah, “have seen a great light.” An Emperor takes an orderly census of his far-flung, mighty empire based in his thriving metropolis of Rome, and yet there is hardly room to squeeze in one more baby here on the fringes, in an old royal city that is now little more than a backwater. Shepherds, brown-collar workers ion one of the lowliest trades of the ancient era, quietly biding their night shift on the edge of town, suddenly find themselves surrounded by a huge choir of bright angels. A random field of sheep becomes the epicenter of the announcement that there will be peace on earth. And, of course, there is the greatest contrast of all: that the Lord of all, the Messiah, the King of Kings is nestled in a feedbox. It is a night of contrasts, and I’m not sure we can fully make sense of it. We are gathered here simply to marvel at it, worship it, and, like Mary, ponder them in our hearts.

It makes me ponder a particular contrast that caught my eye just the other day as I set up my sterling silver home communion set just inches away from a Chromebook laptop on a dresser top in the apartment room of one of our homebound members. What an altar to the Lord!  Granted, pastors are accustomed to these makeshift worship spaces when we make our visits, but the juxtaposition of these items really made me stop and think. We had just finished scrolling through photos on the Epiphany Facebook page she hadn’t seen before. I wasn’t sure what she’d think of them, but with each click her face would light up as if she were looking through a family photo album. On each photo she found one, two, sometimes three people she recognized.

“There’s Ken Reckenbeil…oh, and there’s Georgianna!...Is that really Taylor Williamson? She’s grown up so!”

“Yeah, she teaches Sunday School now,” I said.

After a few minutes of communing with the saints through digital media, she politely shut the computer down and asked for Communion of the sacramental kind. And seeming more like an angel to me, she then leaned in toward her stereo, which had been playing this whole time in the background, and turned up the volume. “For unto us a child is born. Unto us a Son is given…” I think we had reached one of her favorite parts of Handel’s Messiah, and soon the sounds of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and choir started to drown out the noisy dialogue and comings and goings of the people in the hall outside her room. She, the angel, and I, just a shepherd being visited…it occurred to me that beside this laptop and on top of this ordinary dresser is a perfectly suitable place to receive the Lord’s presence.

God apparently loves to work with contrasts. God is at home here, in our humble dwellings and our humble hearts, just has God was this night so long ago, gathering shepherds and angels, kings and mangers in one room. Things that we would never put together, especially in relationship with the divine, God is quite comfortable with.

However, the true message of this evening—the more important news of Christmas—is not that God simply likes contrasts or that God engineers these paradoxes all over the place. God goes one step further, beginning with this birth. God is going to switch places with these opposites. God isn’t just going to partner for a while with the lowly and the common. God is going to use them, infuse them, become them, be them, so that they may become like God.

The message of this night is that a great exchange is going to happen between the one who Created us and those he has created. Even though we are broken, even though we have taken what God has given and squandered it, even though we have misused our own lives and each other’s, God still decides to dwell among us and live alongside us. In Christ Jesus, God decides that humankind, in all its messiness, in all its tendencies to betray each other in all of it its fascination with other gods and other promises is worth saving and redeeming.

And to do so, God exchanges what we are for what God always is. “For to us a child is born,” Isaiah proclaims, “unto us a Son is given.” Not leant. Not just to look at. Not just to project our ideal selves upon, our dreams and hopes for the future. But, rather, given. Exchanged. Because God loves us. And in the end, the contrast of this exchange will humble us completely. For we will give him death. But in return he will give us life.

Maybe one of the best depictions of this Great Exchange, this great combining of contrasts, appears in “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which turns 50 this year. The second-longest-running Christmas special of all-time, Charles Schutz’s Peanuts characters’ grappling with the commercialization of Christmas and the holiday’s true meaning broke barriers in 1965 just as it does today. Of course, a lot of attention gets placed on Linus’ famous speech where he boldly recites from the second chapter of Luke’s gospel, something unheard of on mainstream TV.

However, the scene that most vividly portrays the Christmas message, the length to which God will go to overcome the contrast between heaven and earth, comes right before the final credits roll. After the pageant ends, of course, Charlie Brown brings his little pathetic Christmas tree outside to decorate it, but stops in his tracks when he notices that Snoopy’s over-the-top, garish doghouse decorations have already claimed first place in a contest. Disgusted and defeated, Charlie Brown skulks away, leaving the tree standing cold in the snow. The contrast couldn’t be more obvious. Then the pageant gang appears and, in a surprise move, takes all the decorations from Snoopy’s house and places them on the small tree. It’s grand and glorious at that point, and Snoopy’s house stands in the background, stripped bare, reminding us somewhat of Calvary.

When Isaiah says that the Son is given to us, he means that we receive him and all that he is—his forgiveness, his mercy, his love—and that we give him our brokenness, our rudeness, our failures. It means God looks at us as the bare, scrawny trees that we are and yet still bestows first prize of heaven upon us, cloaking us with glory, all because of Jesus.

Tonight is all about contrasts, isn’t it, then? Communion with the holy in the surroundings of the ordinary. Shepherds and angels. “The people who walk in darkness have seen a great light.” Highest heaven and lowest earth. God is quite at ease here, in our land of scrawny trees. Perhaps, then, we can learn to be so, too: at ease because God is with us. I suppose then we can announce to one and to all, to those who seem like us and those with whom we always seem to contrast, to those who have stirrings of great joy and those who are in great grief, those who get a white Christmas, and those who have to settle for a wet one: “Glory to God in the highest heaven AND on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

 

The Annunciation to the Shepherds (Nicoleas Berchem)

                                              

 

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent [Year C] - December 20, 2015 (Luke 1:39-55)

 

Where would we be without the faith of Mary and Elizabeth?

It’s hard to say.  I’m sure that God would have found another way for the good news to break into human history to bring about his kingdom, but God didn’t have to: Mary and Elizabeth come through. Mary and Elizabeth, in a day and age that so much of the time overlooked women become the people through whom the Lord of grace makes his entrance. In a day and age when women were often given little voice, Mary and Elizabeth shout and sing and become examples of the power in believing…in believing that God might be up to something new…in believing that the miraculous might happen.



fresco at the Church of St. George
in Kurbinovo, Macedonia

Where would we be without the faith of Mary and Elizabeth? To begin with, look at Mary! She takes off to see Elizabeth up in the Judean hill country all by herself. Who does she think she is? Most historians tell us that people didn’t just up and travel unless they had some compelling cultural reason. And women would almost never do something so bold, especially while carrying a child! By going onto something like secluded bedrest for five months, Elizabeth had done the more socially and medically expected thing. Clearly Mary believes she must be blessed, that the baby she carries in her womb can ward off danger on the road.

And then look at Elizabeth! Immediately upon seeing Mary, she shouts out in joy. The child in her own womb kicks right when Mary enters in the house. Elizabeth overflows in her blessing of Mary. We can just see them, can’t we, throwing their arms up in the air and hugging each other over and over, happy to see each other, happy for new beginnings. Elizabeth becomes the first person in the story of Luke to call Jesus “Lord,” which is, interestingly enough, what Jesus will mainly be called after his resurrection. Here, right at the beginning, just as he does after his resurrection, Jesus is already bringing signs of new life. And Elizabeth is the first to notice it.

And then there was Mary’s big “yes” to the angel Gabriel in the first place. That’s the truly astounding part of this, what gets the whole ball rolling. What would we do without it? In contrast to Elizabeth’s husband, the priest Zechariah, Mary believes the messenger’s news and consents to the miracle of Jesus’ birth.



a painting of the Visitation at the church of El Sitio
in Suchitoto, El Salvador

Martin Luther had a very interesting take on the annunciation to Mary. He said there were really three miracles present here. First, there is the miracle that God and humankind would be joined in a child in the first place. That’s pretty amazing. Second, there is the miracle that Mary should conceive before she is married. However, neither of those miracles, Luther said, were a big deal for God. The Creator is able to bring about whatever the Creator wants to bring about. The third miracle is that Mary ever consented to this plan, and that’s the one with which Luther was most impressed. “Most amazing of all,” he says, “is that this maiden should credit the announcement that she, rather than some other virgin, had been chosen as the mother of God.”^[1]

The faith of Mary and Elizabeth is where it all begins for all of us. The angels will eventually sing about peace for the whole Earth, but only because these two women display peace with God. God’s kingdom will eventually take up residence within every nation on earth, but only because this lowly, vulnerable soul decides not to let the duty fall to “some other virgin” and first lets God take up residence in her body.

And in spite of the danger this whole condition might put her in, we see more of Mary’s faith and foresight in the song she sings after Elizabeth blesses her. It’s clear that she is beginning to understand how far-reaching her decision will be: down the road all generations, not just Elizabeth, will call her blessed, which is something I’m doing this morning.

She sees a world where God has put everything to rights, where the people who are proud and who have everything and who cling to power are removed from everyone’s list of role models and those who are humble, weak, and lowly are lifted up as the examples to follow. She sings of a world where the hungry and the needy are satisfied with more than leftovers and where those who have a lot finally learn to live with less. We don’t typically think of it as a Christmas carol, but in many ways is the first one, and maybe the most essential. And it all begins with her recognition that even her little lowly, easily forgotten, first-century Jewish female soul can magnify the Lord.

Earlier this week I was visiting one of our homebound members with Holy Communion and I had chosen this lesson for us to speak together like the verses of a song. This particular woman suffers from macular degeneration, making it difficult for her to see, and before she could participate, she had her husband fetch her magnifying glass so she could read it. There before me was this kind, older woman—maybe like an Elizabeth, warmly welcoming me into her home—too feeble to join in worshipping with the congregation she so loves. She was reading Mary’s song with a magnifying glass, and it drove the point home for me in a fresh new way. That is, when Mary says that her soul can magnify the Lord, it’s like she’s saying that the almighty Creator of the universe will use Mary as a magnifying glass so that the whole world can read and understand the gospel.

Where would we be without Mary? Where would any of us be without any of God’s little magnifying glasses all around—those who have shined with the power of faith in spite of the odds, those who have borne Christ to us and enabled us to read how much God loves us. More often than we’d probably care to admit, it is the faith and belief of the lowly and the humble—the ones we’d least expect, the ordinary, the unspectacular, the rough that surrounds the diamonds—that pops up out of nowhere and bowls us over with grace.

It may sound corny, but I’ve noticed that the truth of Mary’s faith and the echoes of her song show up even in almost all of the secular stories and movies of our culture at this time of year. In one after the other, power is spoken and transmitted through the weak and overlooked characters rather than the super-talented or the super-human. None of our favorite Christmas movies never feature people like Superman or Batman or even (dare I say it?) Luke Skywalker. No, it’s the likes of Tiny Tim, Cindy-Lou Who, Rudolph, George Bailey from “It’s A Wonderful Life," Buddy the Elf...even Macaulay Culkin's character in Home Alone...who save the day. All of them are just variations of Mary, examples of how in God’s plan, it is the meek and marginalized who, despite the odds, become the entry point for grace…who become the voices to help restore justice…who become the unlikely people who speak a new reality into existence. Where would our culture’s Christmas be without these little versions of Mary, the magnifier?

Where would the world be without Mary and Elizabeth? Eventually Mary’s faith and Elizabeth’s blessing draw a straight line to the cross, for this new world where the mighty are brought low and the lowly are lifted up will not fully be brought about until Jesus shows us just how low the Almighty God will go in order to bring us new life. There we witness the most amazing miracle of all: that God’s own Son will grow up and then offer himself up for us to remember the promise of mercy.

Where would any of us be without the faith of others who have borne God’s presence for us, who have, through humility and surprise, through calm words or persistent pestering built up our own trust in God and presented us with the joy in believing? Who has helped you remember the power in faith? Who has been that magnifying glass who’s been fetched from the side of the room that person, who has approached you through the treacherous hill country of Judea, who has unexpectedly allowed you to understand and experience God’s grace in Jesus? Because those folks around us even now, more often than we probably care to admit. They were here at Jim Anderson’s funeral yesterday, for sure, milling around in Price Hall, offering words of grace, giving hope to his family and congregational family.

And they’re around us now, these echoes of Mary, giving delivering the Lord once again, telling us that, in spite of all we see, God’s exciting new day is here and that you—even little you—can proclaim it.

 

Visitation (Fra Angelico, 1434)

 

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.                  

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[1] Roland H. Bainton, ed., Martin Luther’s Christmas Book, Augsburg, MN, 1948 pp14-15

The First Sunday of Advent [Year C] - November 29, 2015 (Mark 21:25-36)

 

For the second year in a row, the Martin family set up their Christmas tree on the weekend following Thanksgiving. Yes, this is something that’s a little difficult for this former Advent snob to admit. I grew up in a family that was somewhat strict about holding off on as much Christmas for as long as possible—but this is how I ended up changing my tune: Melinda and I looked at the December calendar and, after penciling in all of our obligations and the kids’ obligations, we realized there’d be no way to even have a tree unless we got it while it was still November.

It’s crazy! I don’t know if your Decembers are like this, but everything fills up so fast! Instead of letting the month roll out with some kind of normalcy and excitement, building to a big, mysterious finish, we find we have to start with the daily planner open at December 25 and work our way back to make sure we get everything in that we need to do and want to do. At one point I thought we were going to have to start scheduling our potty breaks.

I hope it does not sound like I’m complaining, because it really is wonderful to be healthy and active. It’s great to have these occasions for gathering and celebrating. They’re part of why this is such a beloved time of the year, but it’s kind of ironic that modern life has interfered so much with the spirit of anticipation of this season, that sense that time is suspended for a bit as we prepare ourselves for this news about Jesus. So, as it is, the Martins find themselves a little busier than usual, and some long-held practices about Advent and waiting have to be compromised. At some point Melinda and I just came to the realization that Jesus doesn’t really care when you put up your Christmas tree, or if you even put one up at all. And so even though it was 71 degrees and sunny yesterday and it felt like we could just have easily been going to the store to buy tomato plants, we ventured out to the local Christmas tree stand and wandered around the Frasier firs in, you know, our flip flops. It’ll probably be brown and crispy by December 25, but that’s OK.

No, Jesus doesn’t probably have too many opinions about the specifics of our decorating, but if he did, I’d bet he’d steer us away from evergreens. He’d want us to put up a fig tree in our homes—yes, a fig tree with little green leaf-buds just beginning to form at the end of each righteous branch. Instead of going to Costco for a fresh Frasier Fir or Target for a faux Frasier Fir, he’d say to head on over to Lowes for a bare-branched maple or cherry tree, something that would make you think of winter just finally coming to an end.

The symbolism of the evergreen is nice, of course. It makes us think of the continuation of life in the dead of winter, but with the arrival of Jesus, you see, a whole new world is coming.

All the time-worn decorations we haul out of the attic this time of year are fun for re-creating our familiar holiday atmospheres, but with the arrival of Christ, a whole new life is coming into existence.

All our traditions and customs become a way for us to mark time and call to mind the days of our childhood, but with the coming of the Son of Man, a whole new day is dawning. A newly-budding fig tree will be just perfect. It’s brown, bare limbs might look a little lifeless to us if it weren’t for the small burst of light green pushing out here and there, pointing with each little twig to sunnier and brighter times.

That is the message Jesus has for his disciples as he nears the end of his road in Jerusalem. This was the place of Israel’s glory and splendor. Everything from the gigantic Temple on Mount Zion to the hustle and bustle of the city marketplaces and the walls around the city proclaimed that. But, as Jesus makes clear even as they stand in the midst of that glory, God is going to bring about something completely new. It will be sunnier and brighter times.  This new creation will be so complete, so far-sweeping that the entire cosmos will be involved. Think you’re anticipating the release of the new Star Wars movie this Advent? You have no idea! This coming redemption is not just about clearing out or tearing down the Temple and convincing everyone to re-focus on the important things. Jesus explains that God intends to redeem the whole of creation. When his disciples anticipate his next arrival they will be anticipating something grand and powerful, an event that will be unmistakable to everyone who lives on earth.

These readings may seem a little out of place in terms of how we view this time of year, but really these words of Jesus speak exactly to where Christians find themselves all the time. That is, we’re waiting for Jesus. Our Savior, who came among us once already, preaching and healing and spreading the news of God’s kingdom, has been crucified and is now risen. We now expect the full, decisive conclusion to what God began in that resurrection of Jesus. It is justice and righteousness for all of God’s people. It is the end of war and death’s destruction. It is the full reclaiming of all people from sorrow and grief because God’s sacrifice of love on the cross will no longer be clouded by the lies of the evil one. It is the kingdom of God. This is what we are waiting for, and its arrival is neither totally predictable, like a little block on a daily planner that says, “December 25,” but neither is it completely unnoticeable as it approaches.

The stories in C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia capture this spirit of anticipation brilliantly, and what the coming change means for everyone in the snowy kingdom. The children of the first book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy, have only recently arrived in this new world and they don’t really understand exactly who or what they’re anticipating, but they sense that the unfair, icy grip that winter has on the entire kingdom is already loosening. The color green has started to show up for the first time in ages. At one point, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver usher the children along through the snowy forest, explaining what they know about this great One who is arriving any minute to do battle with the evil White Queen. The children just figure that the one they are awaiting is an ordinary man, but they are surprised to find out the truth:

"Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion."

"Ooh!" said Susan, "I'd thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion."

"That you will, dearie, and no mistake," said Mrs Beaver; "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly."

"Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy.

"Safe?" said Mr Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

"I'm longing to see him," said Peter, "even if I do feel frightened when it comes to the point."^[1]

 

The children tell it like it is: we wait for the arrival of one who makes us feel a mixture of fright and desire, one who is never really safe, but always good. Christ brings fright to those who are committed to the same-old, same-old ways of this world as they cycle over and over, fright to everyone who gives in to complacency with the current world’s systems of injustice and definitions of power. But Christ’s advent brings joy to anyone who has tasted pain and regret, anyone who has faith God’s creation was designed to be better than this. Christ is unsafe for anyone who thinks that no change will be needed from them to receive this new kingdom, unsafe to all who believe whatever’s coming won’t cause us all to live differently than we do now. But Jesus our redeemer is also good to the core because we know he is the Son who lays down his life for others. “Heaven and earth will pass away,” he reminds us, “but his word—the word about God’s eternal love—will never pass away.”

And so we wait, my friends, realizing each gesture of forgiveness and reconciliation we see is a bud on the tree of this new kingdom. We wait, confident that every story we hear where someone’s sacrifice leads to another’s joy and life means that he is one step closer. We stay alert, knowing that each can of food collected and distributed at LAMB’s Basket, each board nailed together through Habitat for Humanity, each meal provided for homeless Veterans through Liberation House is a step towards receiving his kingdom.

Yesterday I dropped in on the women here who assemble quilts for distribution through Lutheran World Relief. Normally they meet and work in Price Hall where they can really spread out, but they were displaced to another room in our building because we were hosting a funeral for a member of the expatriate Liberian community, a pastor who had died rather suddenly, leaving a young family and many bereaved friends and relatives. As I visited with the quilters, this little metal tool—no bigger than the end of your thumb—lying on the table next to the fabric they were stitching caught my eye. I picked it up, perplexed.

“What is this thing?” I asked them.

“It’s a needle-threader!” they responded.

“How does it work?” I asked.

And they showed me.

My friends, each little needle threaded and stitch sewn in those quilts is a way these women are waiting for our king’s arrival. It was a striking contrast: the sharp, disturbing sounds of grief as the mourners wailed for the coming of this new world in the same building as those working to hasten it. Curious, I later Googled, “Liberia,” “Lutheran World Relief,” and “quilt.” Sure enough, it is very likely some of those quilts will likely make it to someone in Liberia, just like some did in the mid-90s, send to alleviate some of the suffering of that country’s civil war.

The times are crazy. We live in busy, burdened blocks of time which often leave with a sense that it controls us. Too bad our Frasier Fir is already in the stand. I might try to return it for that fig tree, something that will remind me that as one of the redeemed children of God, no matter how much time controls me, I am still held in the hands of the One who controls all time. We are all held by the one who has died and is risen for us, the unsafe but good One who is bringing a bright new day for us…any…minute!

 

Thanks be to God!

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. C.S. Lewis.

Christ the King [Year B] - November 22, 2015 (John 18:33-37)

 

The first time they tried to catch him he was just a baby. They sent armies—men with swords and probably torches—in order to hunt him down, killing indiscriminately anyone who matched his description. His crime, if you could call it that, was simply that is birth was inconvenient to some. It’s hard to believe the armies would come after him before he could barely speak, but the word had already gotten out that he was some kind of a threat. In fact, he didn’t need to be able to say a word at all because he himself was the truth. But, being born into dark and risky times, the truth immediately had to flee.

Matthew tells us all about it, about how the father was warned in a dream to leave for Egypt in order to escape the slaughter. He does so, scurrying and hurrying his frightened family out of town while it was still night. They cross the border and, as far as we know, were welcomed in a foreign land for a number of years.

So, you see, the child who was born to give us refuge became first a refugee himself. The child who was born to rule over every land first knew the vulnerability of having no land. The one born to give freedom, began his life on earth captive to fear. That was the first time they tried to catch him, but he got away.

The next time that they tried to catch him he was preaching in the synagogue in his own hometown. There were no armies this time, but instead angry townspeople—probably some of the people who knew him best. There were no swords and torches, either, but a cliff at the edge of town they wanted to hurl him over like their ancestors had done to some of the prophets.

This time his crime (if you may call it that), was preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives, sight to the blind and freedom to the oppressed. It was suggesting that God’s kingdom was breaking in. The people in the synagogue recognized those words from their Scriptures, but in their judgment he was speaking them dishonestly. He came speaking truth, but the people did not want to have it.

Jesus is in the synagogue at Nazareth

Luke tells us about this episode, how the people stand there, not believing their ears, and wanting him to perform some signs of wonder. If he really is who he implies that he is—that is, the one who brings God’s kingdom—they want to see examples of it right there in Nazareth. To their minds, the things he had done in Capernaum and in the other towns—the healings, the powerful teachings, for example—do not really mean anything until they are duplicated here.

But he does not humor them. Instead, he takes the opportunity to remind them that God’s kingdom does not have national boundaries, that God’s kingdom has always had a habit of occasionally breaking in among foreign people, that God’s truth and grace is often witnessed by people beyond the margins, by those who speak other tongues. And he gives them examples to underscore this truth, examples they would have known: “Remember how the prophet Elijah was sent to the widow way out at Zarephath, and how the Lord did a miracle there? And what about Naaman, the Syrian,” he says, “who was cleansed by the River Jordan at a time when there were plenty of lepers in Israel who could have used a good healing? None of them were our people, were they?”

It’s the truth, but all this does is make them enraged. They rise up against him and drive him to the edge of the cliff. No more of that truth! That was the second time they tried to catch him, but again, he somehow got away.

There were a few other times they tried to catch him. It is mainly John who tells us about those. For example, once a crowd tried to capture him in order to make him king because they were so happy with the way he multiplied bread. The other times, however, he was viewed as an outlaw because the religious authorities didn’t trust his take on the truth even though he told them knowing the truth would make them free. It was the truth about God’s love for the world and the truth about their sin. It was the truth that the Father of the universe was somehow present and active in the life of this one man. It seemed less and less possible that any of them would ever see that, and so they conspire to catch him, to lay their hands on him and do away with him.

"What is Truth. Christ and Pilate" (Nikolai Ge, 1890)

Eventually they succeed. The people capture him and bring him before the leading authorities, and he doesn’t get away. Thinking that swords and torches will be needed they come armed to the hilt, but little do they know that he will remain defenseless. He will remain completely defenseless except for one thing, that one thing he’d had from the beginning: the truth. He holds in his power the truth about God’s almighty love and forgiveness and the truth about their brokenness. As it turns out, that is all that he’ll need to respond to their false accusations and their fear of his agenda.

The representative of the occupying Roman power, Pontius Pilate, is left to question him in his headquarters in Jerusalem and there we see in stark relief just how different these two kingdoms are. The one that Pilate embodies—that is, the one that Pilate and all the Herods and Pharaohs and chief priests and Nazareth and townspeople are party to—is the one that uses swords and torches and violence and bombs and drones and boundaries to influence people and bring them under control. These kingdoms occasionally bring peace and justice, occasionally grant freedom to the captives and hope to the poor, but overall they operate in a world that is broken and afraid and doesn’t always know how to admit it, that they’re methods are incomplete.

The kingdom Jesus lifts up, the one he has represented since he was just a little child, operates according to God’s love. Like God’s mercy, it has no real boundaries, but is always fluctuating, always growing, albeit sometimes with painful slowness. Like God’s compassion, Jesus’ kingdom will always be reaching to pull more people in, rather than push people out.

And that basically sums it up. We could go on, but clearly time with Pilate is running out. The people want this whole episode over, just as they’ve wanted it over ever since Jesus began preaching about it. The truth is too much. They don’t like it. They don’t believe it, and so they do what they know always silences the truth. They nail this King of the Jews to a cross.

Except…it doesn’t silence it this time. This time God changes the course of history, raising up this man and making him victorious over all those attempts to push him out. The Scriptures tell us that Jesus returns, he speaks and preaches a little more to his disciples, and then sends them the Holy Spirit before returning to the place where he began at the foundation of the earth, robed in majesty, and girded with strength at the right hand of his Father.

We are told that we will see him again, in all his glory, and when that time comes, it will be his turn to capture us and all of God’s people. At that point it won’t be about us getting a hold of the truth, but about the truth finally getting a hold on us. The full splendor of God’s glory will spread over all of the universe, and things—all actions, all intentions—will be named for what they are.

In the meantime, the community which he has claimed for himself through the blood of his cross will feel the tension of living in these two kingdoms we see in opposition in Jerusalem—the one Pilate represents and the one brought about by Jesus’ death and resurrection. In the meantime, we get to participate in his Risen life which means we will have the opportunity to see him still among us, to remember him standing in weakness before Pilate. We will have the opportunity to remember him, for example, as a child refugee crossing borders in the night, to remember him graciously pronouncing God’s grace to the poor and the captive against the will of his home people.

In this meantime, as one kingdom slowly crumbles and the risen one takes over, we get to testify to the truth that we, too, follow a religious extremist—one who demonstrates love and peacefulness to the extreme, one whose love knows no boundaries, not even the boundary of our death.

In these mean times, let us then to testify to his truth with Word and Water, with morsel of bread and sip of wine, with service to our neighbor and peace to our enemies…the truth that despite the terrorism and despite the poverty, that despite the sorrow and despite our sin, that this Jesus the Crucified really is the King.

And that, because of his love, God will not ever let us get away.

 

 

 

Thanks be to God!

 

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.