The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany [Lectionary 4C] - January 31, 2016 (1 Corinthians 13:1-13 and Luke 4:21-30)

 

The Apostle Paul often catches a lot of flak for being very long-winded and wordy. And rightly so. Even though the things he writes are important, and sometimes really profound, in reality his New Testament letters are chock-full of complicated, convoluted sentences that go on and on and on. As a result, many people find his writing hard to untangle and follow, kind of like...sermons. As someone once said, there is a fine line between a long sermon and a hostage situation. But that’s how Paul writes so much of the time!

"Paul Writing his Epistles" Valentin du Boulogne (17th c.)

That’s what many people feel like as they read the Apostle Paul—like they’re hostage to horrible writing—until they get to the thirteenth chapter of his first letter to the church in Corinth. Suddenly, out of nowhere, he waxes poetic. He trims his sentences down. He follows a clear pattern. Choppy, awkward phrases disappear and flowing, lyrical lines take their place. And the result may not be any easier to grasp, but at least it’s pretty to listen to. The thirteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians is considered by many people to be the most beautiful piece of prose in all of Scripture. Couples often choose it to be read at their weddings simply because it sounds so nice, even though it doesn’t really have anything directly to do with weddings. This short chapter and then the book of Ruth from the Old Testament were the only examples from the Bible that made it into my 10^th grade world literature class textbook. I have to think, though, that it’s not simply Paul’s graceful language that adds to the beauty and charm of this beloved chapter. It also probably has a lot to do with the fact he’s talking about one of everyone’s favorite subjects: love.

Ahh, yes, love. Now, I know some of you are probably rolling your eyes and wondering to yourself those words of another famous Paul. You think that people would have had enough of silly love songs, that the world is full of them. But even though we might get the point that the Apostle Paul and Sir Paul might approach the same subject a little differently, they both agree on one main point: love isn’t silly. It isn’t silly, it isn’t silly at all.

It isn’t silly because, at least for the Apostle Paul, love is the gift, the tool, which becomes the key for using all other gifts in the Christian community. Without love, Paul says, nothing else works. It is the mortar which helps bricks form a building. It is the musical staff which allows the notes to be arranged in a meaningful melody. It is the heat that turns the batter into a delicious cake. Without the application of love, any one of these things would just turn into a mess, no matter how strong the bricks are, or how original the notes are, or how high-quality the ingredients are.

This lesson on love was particularly important for the Corinthians to understand because, as it happens, they’d been arguing over who among them were the “best ingredients,” which individuals in their community had the best gifts. There were several gifts that they were particularly enamored with, like speaking in tongues and displaying great wisdom and prophecy. Congregations may not exactly argue over particular gifts anymore, but every community tends to rank certain attributes and skills on a scale, consciously or not. Paul wants his congregation in Corinth to know that the strength or depth of each skill is not nearly as important as the love with which that skill is applied, because love, as he says elsewhere, builds up.

I’ve been told that one of this congregation’s former associate pastors, Mark England, had a question he would often get people to ask themselves in order to gauge the effectiveness of an idea or activity for ministry. He would ask, “How does this idea or activity we’re doing build up the kingdom of God or the body of Christ?” If that question was too difficult to answer, then they would hold off or change the idea. That is the question that love asks. Paul would have liked that question a lot, because he goes on to talk about love not just as a thing, but more like a person who has feelings and thoughts and abilities. It’s helpful to know that love is critical to community life, but only if you know what love is like. And so Paul anthropomorphizes love, using a style of writing that was typically used in the ancient world for praising people. It’s been translated differently through the years. Here’s how Eugene Peterson puts it in his contemporary language version of Scripture, The Message:

“Love never gives up.
Love cares for others more than self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
doesn’t have a swelled head,
doesn’t force itself on others,
isn’t always, ‘me first.’”^[1]

As the Corinthians continue to rank themselves according to the level of gifts they’ve received, Paul wants the church members to understand that love always involves the other. Brilliant prophecy may be nice, wisdom and knowledge may get you far, inspiring displays of faith are wonderful at times, but only love can really bear all things and endure all things. It hopes and believes all things, too, which doesn’t mean love turns a blind eye to abuse or manipulation, but that it always has an eye out for God’s future, confident that justice and mercy will ultimately rule.

Many people find this to be the really poetic part of an already poetic chapter, but interestingly enough, the particular kind of love that Paul is talking about, the kind of love that does the building up and bringing together, is often anything but poetic or lyrical when it’s acted out. The kind of love that never gives up, that cares for others more than self, that doesn’t keep score of others’ wrongs is most often painful and unpopular and even ugly when it’s demonstrated.

Ina recent opinion piece on the website Medium discussing the extreme polarization of our public discourse on political and social topics, writer Sean Blanda talks about the necessity of being humble enough to lay down our opinions on any given contentious issue so that we can accurately phrase and understand the viewpoint of someone who is on what we’ve often labeled the “Other Side.” This lack of arrogance and boastfulness is essential to growth and maturity, he says.  “We won’t truly progress as individuals,” he writes, “until we make an honest effort to understand those who are not like us.” He issues a dare for the next time we’re in a discussion with someone we disagree with.  “Don’t try to ‘win,’” he says. “Don’t try to convince anyone of your viewpoint. Instead, try to ‘lose.’ Hear them out. Ask them to convince you and mean it.”

What he is encouraging is a practice of painful, unpopular love, which Paul reminds us, isn’t rude and doesn’t insist on its own way. And it’s not just good for the progress of individuals. It helps the whole community. And eventually it grows outward, not just inward, which is important: the quality of the church’s internal life together is almost always its greatest tool for reaching new people.

That, in fact, appears to be the problem with the Nazareth crowd’s reaction when Jesus attempts to bring them God’s Word and demonstrate how God’s love works. Initially, the message Jesus brings them sounds good, but immediately, Jesus recognizes, they think of themselves first and insist on their own way. They want to keep score, wondering why Jesus won’t perform for them the same wonders the other towns in Galilee got. But the love that Jesus comes to bring, the love at the center of his Father’s very being, is never given to self-preservation. It is directed outward, even towards those on the margins, those with the gifts, Paul would say, that everyone looks down on. And after he gives the Nazareth synagogue a few real-life examples of how God’s kingdom is often built up from the edges, bringing outsiders in, they rise up to silence him by throwing him off a cliff.

But they forget that love endures all things, that this love of God never ends. It’s not pretty and it’s definitely not silly when this love eventually goes to the cross and does die. It’s not poetic and it’s not aesthetic when love stretches out its arms and breathes its last, reminding us all that this kind of self-giving love lies at the center of everything God is.

That is why Paul can say this love is the greatest…even greater than faith and hope. Love is the thing that God does. God doesn’t believe things or need hope, as important as they are for us. God loves…and there will come a day, you see, when we will see that this love is completely victorious over all, when we reside in nothing but God’s eternal presence. There will be no need for belief in things we can’t see or for hoping in good things that haven’t happened yet because we will finally see them and they will be happening! Love will be all in all, and all will somehow be built up in Christ, and all will somehow, in God’s grace, be brought together. Full-grown in Christ, we will have learned the true value of listening to one another and trying to “lose” to them so much so that we realize there really isn’t an Other. There won’t be “them” and “us,” people with awesome knowledge and people who can’t speak in tongues. There won’t be folks from the hometown and folks from the other side of the tracks…there won’t be anger about widows from distant Zarephath who get the special attention or frustration with Syrian outsiders. There won’t even be a need for our different wonderful gifts anymore, because the kingdom they are to be used for building up will be fully built up. We will know everything about him, just as God has already, all along, known everything about us—and still loved us and claimed us—since the time we were formed in the womb.

Now that’s truly beautiful, my friends, no matter how you put it. That’s truly beautiful. Love never ends…especially when a silly love sermon really needs to.

 

 

Thanks be to God!

 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] The Message//Remix, NavPress 2003 p 1683ff

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.