The First Sunday in Lent, Year B - February 26, 2012 (Genesis 9:8-17, Mark 1:9-15)

I realize she may not technically be classified as a “wild beast,” but our cat, Luna, does have a tendency to go wild on us most mornings at about…oh, 5:00am. She usually starts by purring in my face. Soon she is standing on my chest, head-butting my chin. If I don’t wake up, she begins walking around on my stomach to make the point. I can shove her off, but then she’ll just repeat her tactics with Melinda, who is usually much more patient with her. If we shut Luna out of the bedroom, then she impatiently and noisily scratches at the door until we let her back in. It’s enough to confirm my sensibilities as a dog person, although I hear they’re not much better about this.

beastly Luna on the prowl

It wasn’t until a few days ago, however, that we started connecting the dots of this animal behavior to realize that Luna’s morning antics correspond to our children’s restlessness. Sure enough, if Luna wakes us up, it is because she has sensed some stirrings in the kids’ bedroom…perhaps a wet bed or a nightmare or playing with toys before they’re supposed to. It’s all like a miniature version of the well-documented phenomenon that animals can sense something is up in the hours and minutes before the strike of a natural disaster. We’ve all heard the stories. No one really knows why or how this happens. Perhaps it’s their superhuman sense of hearing or ability to sense changes in the atmosphere. Call it raw instinct, call it some special inner sense, but animals seem to know, in many cases, when something is up. They respond to certain critical situations often before humans do.

In fact, I wonder if something along these lines might be happening in this account of Jesus’ temptation. After he is baptized, Jesus is driven into the wilderness where he is with, of all things, the wild beasts. It is the only place in all of Scripture, in fact, where Jesus is with animals,  with the sole exception of the donkey he rides on Palm Sunday. I would guess most of assume there were animals and beasts at Jesus’ birth:

“I,” said the donkey, shaggy and brown,

"I carried his mother uphill and down,

I carried his mother to Bethlehem town."

"I," said the donkey, shaggy and brown.

But, truth be told, neither Matthew nor Luke, the two gospel writers who record Jesus’ nativity, say anything about animals in the stable, even a donkey, shaggy and brown. In the way that Mark tells the gospel of Jesus, the friendly beasts show up just following Jesus’ baptism when he is in the wilderness being tempted by Satan.

And, yes, it is a critical situation. Something, you might say, is up.  This, my friends, is a turning point, not just in the life of Jesus as he heads out to an intense time of trial, but in the life of the entire world. This is a new beginning. God had once before cleansed the world with water. God had made a covenant with Noah and all the animals of the ark after forty long days of rain that a fresh new day of promise had dawned. The heavens had opened and hope had shone through in the form of a rainbow. God would never again destroy the earth in order to restore it. Now, once again, after forty long days in the wilderness, after the heavens had torn open and hope had shown through in the form of a dove, God is restoring creation through the life of his Son.

Edward Hicks, The Peaceable Kingdom (1826)

This, Mark means to tell us, is moment all of creation has been waiting for, even, it seems, the wild beasts. In the baptism of Jesus and his subsequent temptation in the wilderness, a brand new day has begun. God has announced a new chapter—the final chapter, in fact—in his plan to reconcile the entire cosmos to himself, and strangely, even before Jesus has called his first disciple, the wild beasts are gathering around him as a sign of the peacefulness and promise to come, a vision of Paradise regained. It’s fun to imagine that some of them may even be purring and head-butting his chin in playful expectation that something important is about to happen.

How about you? Do you feel the draw to gather around Jesus, to respond to his announcement that the kingdom of God has come near? Do you long, too, for a fresh beginning, a total do-over of your life, another start? Are you, worn down by years in the wilderness, searching the skies for a sign of hope? The good news from the gospels is that in Jesus this fresh start, this new beginning, is always possible, for each and every one of us. Your age does not matter. Your personal background does not matter. In Jesus, God has come to contend with the fears, the temptations, the dark forces that estrange all people from God and the good that God desires for us. This new day begins that day by the Jordan River and reaches its conclusion at the cross in a new flood of grace where God own Son takes all the all the sin the world and drowns it in love.

river baptism

For the sinner, this is made real in the waters of baptism, regardless of our age when that occurred. Whether we were a tiny infant or a college student or an older adult, our baptism is a sign that we’ve been forever included in this new covenant established by Jesus’ life and death. God has claimed us as a member of his new creation and we are united to Jesus’ life eternally. Even if we forget it or were too young to remember it. Even if we, at times, act like it never happened. Out of God’s amazing grace we are chosen and gathered as his children. And each time we reflect on our own baptisms we are provided the opportunity to reflect on just how powerful and permanent God’s love for creation is: that Jesus will be driven into the wilderness to save it. That Jesus will die on the cross to claim it. That he will rise again to show his power for it. And so,baptism is a chance to begin again. Even remembering it, as Martin Luther says, is a chance to start our lives anew and, once again, take part in the kingdom of peace and righteousness that Jesus has begun.

One Easter in the first congregation I served we baptized a man who was in his fifties. He had first ventured into our congregation with his wife earlier that year in January after having driven by the front door regularly for about six months. It took him that long, he said, before he finally got up the nerve to come inside. We used that Lent as a time to have some intentional conversations about his life and his faith and where he had perceived God’s activity in his life. We came to the conclusion that it was time for him to be baptized. For reasons unknown to him, his parents had never taken that step with him when he was young.

That Sunday, as the water was poured over his head, a new thing for that congregation occurred. He began to weep.   It caught everyone by surprise, although perhaps it shouldn’t have. The people in the choir, who were standing nearest to him, were affected by his visible show of emotion. Some of them began to cry too, confronted with the seemingly un-Lutheran reality of a grown man moved to tears in worship. I’ll never forget a comment one of them made after worship was over as she reflected on the event:  “It was like it meant something to him,” she said.

Indeed, something had happened. Something was up, and we watched as over the next months and years the splash created by his baptism rippled throughout the entire congregation, just as the same grace ripples throughout this congregation when Pastor Chris or I walk a new child of God up and down the aisle after a baptism. Something is up in the life of Jesus Christ, the likes of which this whole world has never experienced or seen before. Whether our baptism occurs as an infant, as a child, as an adult God’s purposes are made clear: Jesus is on the scene.  He has come for us.

And even when powerful emotion is not there in our faith, it is still true that the days where sin has complete power are now behind us. The days of hope and promise have arrived. God has claimed us for his grand new restoration project on earth, and each person—be they young or old, be they intimidated by the front doors of the church or as comfortable in a pew as in their family room sofa—has the Spirit-given gifts to join in on the effort.

This does not mean, it should be noted, that the Christian life will be easy, that taking part in this restoration flood will involve no tests and trials. After all, once his own baptism is over, Jesus is driven by the Spirit not into a field of daisies, but into the wilderness for a time of testing. As members of his body, we should expect the same type of experience, subjects of a kingdom whose existence and goodness is not yet completely recognized by the rest of the world.

In one of his books, former Divinity School professor and United Methodist bishop Will Willmon tells the story of a newspaper clipping he once read about a woman somewhere in Louisiana who had raised somewhere around a dozen foster children despite her low, meager income as a domestic worker. Why did she do it?  Why did she suffer so? She responded, “I saw a new world a comin’.”^[1]

A new world is a comin’. Something, brothers and sisters, is up. And as far as Mark is concerned, the animals might already sense it. You can see it in the ministry and in the lives of people in this very congregation. By the grace of God, we have a new beginning in Jesus Christ. It starts with a splash, then forms a ripple, until all of creation is caught up in the flood.

Wake up!  Turn around!  And believe in the good news.”                

Amen!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

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[1] Will Willimon, Pastor: the Theology and Practice of Ordained Ministry.  Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002. Pg 127

The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B - February 12, 2012 (Mark 1:40-45)

In life there are things we’ll touch and things we won’t…and sometimes things we must.

Several years ago, when Melinda and I were first married but didn’t have any children, our close friends asked us if we’d babysit their two kids—ages 4 and 20 months—while they went away for an interview at a congregation. We were happy to help them, and I was glad to spend some time getting to know the younger one, my godson. It didn’t occur to me until they showed up to drop them off with a diaper bag, that saying “yes” to this request was going to entail something I’d never done before: changing a diaper.

The total time they were with us was two days and two nights, and I prayed fervently that if James, my godson, had a “movement,” it would occur when Melinda was home on duty with me. But despite my fervent pleas, it still happened. First, I smelt it. Then, he began to complain about it. Melinda was still a good 6 hours from arriving home from work, so I figured I had to be the man with the plan. And if that diaper was going to get off his body, I was going to have to touch that diaper. So, I did, but I confess that once I touched the filled diaper (it was…shall we say?...still warm), I gagged immediately.  I think I gagged about 4 times in rapid succession, actually. I walked into the other room and gave myself a pep talk. Then I decided that it had to be done, and I needed to reach down and find whatever courage I could and get that dirty thing off him. I was the only option.

Jesus is confronted with a similar situation in this morning’s gospel text, but in his case, there doesn’t seem to be any balking, any gagging, and any reaching down into his soul for courage.  He’s Jesus.  He simply reaches out and touches the man, who knows Jesus is his only option. And the implications are much greater than touching a dirty diaper, too. Leprosy (and other skin diseases which were often lumped together under the same title) was considered the most debilitating and alienating of conditions.  People with a skin disease in those days, regardless of how transmissible it actually was, were themselves lumped together and forced to eke out a meager existence at the outermost margins of towns and villages, unable to approach anyone else without first yelling out, so that everyone could hear them, “I’m a leper! Leper, here!”

In the ancient hierarchical understanding of the way the human body was ordered, skin disorders were considered the worst kind of disorders to have. They affected one’s outward appearance, which was thought to be a reflection of what was inside. Grotesque, contorted features were thought to indicate a grotesque, contorted soul. On top of that, somewhat contradictorily, those with leprosy were thought to be highly contagious. Those determined unclean because of skin disorders had no hope of ever being assimilated into society again because no one would come near them, look at them, much less come into some kind of physical contact with them.  They were one of those things that must not be touched.

And that was precisely what I imagine sent this particular man over the edge, causing him to blab as much as he could about what had happened. It was one thing that he had been healed. It was another that Jesus had done it by reaching out and touching him. It was one thing that Jesus had removed a terrible affliction. It was another that Jesus had dignified the man by making physical contact with him. Jesus had not just cured him of a painful and incapacitating disease. He had somehow restored his humanity and restored him to his community.

The image on the front of our bulletin today shows Jesus almost embracing the man. Perhaps that’s what it was like—that particular posture does suggest compassion or pity—but from what I’ve read about leprosy in the ancient world, even a slight pat on the shoulder or a handshake with the infected man would have broken all kinds of boundaries. In one simple yet profound motion, Jesus demonstrates his willingness to “go the distance,” so to speak, to save this man and restore him to life. So, can we blame him for getting a little loud and excited about it? If a leper had been touched by someone, you can expect he’d want to announce it.

Christ Healing a Leper, Rembrandt (1657-60)

In fact, the man who is cured of his leprosy is just one voice in the mob of people who are spreading news about Jesus. Things, as far as that’s concerned, had gotten out of hand pretty quickly. Based on the kinds of things Jesus was doing, there was a growing awareness that God’s own special representative was on the scene. That is, the flurry of healing activity that begins Jesus’ ministry in Mark’s gospel would have left no doubt among most about Jesus’ power and authority. He teaches with conviction, he casts out demons, he raises the sick, and here, in a case that would have put an exclamation point on his special relationship to God—because only God was thought able to heal skin diseases—he cures someone of leprosy and instructs that person to present himself to the priests so that they may make full recognition of his healing. All in all, it is a systematic undoing of the forces that isolate and alienate humans from God and from one another. God’s kingdom has come near.

Yet these opening scenes are meant to establish more than just his identity and authority. They also indicate how Jesus will use this authority and what that kingdom will look like, and that is just as important. That’s why that touch, however slight it might have been, is so crucial. Jesus comes not to lord over creation as some sort of divine dictator. Nor will he somehow snap his holy fingers and magically erase creation’s pain like some kind of traveling faith healer. Rather, Jesus shows he is willing to “go the distance” in order to reach us where we are, to bridge whatever oceans are there that strand humankind from the wholeness God intends.

Jesus will use his identity as the Son of God to show us how human he is. He will use his authority as teacher and healer by humbling himself and putting himself at great risk in order to save us. And God’s kingdom will look like one where people are, one by one, rescued from the segregating forces of sin and put back into true communion with each other, even when that involves touching those we’ve determined “untouchable”—especially when that involves touching those we’ve determined “untouchable.”

Yet we must resist making this story into a lesson about the virtues of human touch, however powerful it may be. Just this week our youngest daughter came down with an illness that, thank God, can easily be healed with a round of antibiotics. We knew once we got some of that medicine in her she’d feel so much better. But we also knew if we held her and rubbed her head she’d feel a lot better, too. It occurred to me someone would have to have a heart of stone to see her languishing on her bed in misery and not want to hug her, not to have compassion on her. However, it’s not entirely clear, at least in this instance, that Jesus was moved by pity or compassion. Some of the earliest sources of Mark’s gospel actually say, “Moved by anger, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched the leper.” That may sound strange to us, even a little off-putting, but in a way, it makes perfect sense. It’s not the leper or the leper’s request that Jesus is angry with, but rather the condition that has afflicted him so, as well as the misused laws of religion that have banished him so harshly to the edges. Jesus’ touch is a rebuke of that condition and that banishment—almost like a slap in the devil’s face. Again, in this scenario, he shows he is willing to “go the distance” to restore this man to dignity.

Whatever his motivation—be it pity or anger and frustration—we are still left with the uncomfortable information at the end of this story that Jesus doesn’t want him talking about it, that Jesus wants it kept a secret. We are still left with the peculiar situation at the end of this account that Jesus can’t walk around openly anymore. A man who has already traveled such great distance in his opening hours of ministry is left somewhat isolated himself, stranded out in the country. After such remarkable displays of power and such daring examples of “going the distance,” why wouldn’t Jesus welcome this man’s praise and adoration? Isn’t that the point of the gospel, to share it with others?

Night at Golgotha, Vasily Vereshchagin

It is strongly suspected that the reason Jesus wants his disciples and others who have witnessed his love to remain silent about it is because at this point they have no idea yet just how far he’s going to go to save us and establish God’s kingdom. That is, when they see him, for example, touch the man with leprosy, they’ve gotten a big and important part of the picture of Jesus’ identity and mission.  But they still have no idea of the defining brushstroke, the one which will demonstrate the true depth of his love and compassion and anger at the powers of sin. Jesus bridges a great distance when he risks his own health and scorn from breaking religious and social taboo when he touches the leper, but it pales in comparison to the distance he’ll go on the cross. There he will die in order to bestow ultimate life. There he will fully define his identity and reveal his authority as one who suffers  in order that God may rescue all creation from sin and death. That is the picture he wants us to have in regards to who he truly is. That is the message we are to share with others and seek to embody as his people.  Spreading the word before that picture is fully composed risks finding a short cut to the great distance he means to travel.

A couple of years ago, a member of our congregation shared a story with me about her childhood in North Carolina during the Great Depression. Her father owned a small store in Charlotte that was not too far from the airport. Those were the days of segregation, when black Americans were not permitted to eat in most restaurants or eat with whites, which meant that most of the employees on the runway at the airport had nowhere to eat or even buy a meal. Moved somewhat by the potential to increase his business but no doubt also by compassion for them and maybe even a little anger at that system, this man began driving his truck out to edge of the terminal where they worked to sell them some food. In the winter, his wife would cook hot soup, and he’d load that, too, in big pots in the back of the truck,  drive out to the edge of the runway, and ladle it out to them. The men were deeply appreciative of his efforts.

But then came plans to expand the airport’s service, which meant a longer runway and more construction. Apparently not caring (or knowing) about the plight of the black employees, the airport cut off his access to the workers in order to achieve the airport expansion. When he protested, they demanded that he drive an alternate route around the perimeter of the airport each day to reach them. He told them his soup would be stone cold by the time he got there. Persistent in arguing his case to the authorities and in presenting the need of the segregated workers, they finally agreed to close down the runway for a few minutes each day at lunchtime and halt all airplane traffic so his little truck could serve soup. Unable to figure out how they’d achieve the necessary communication to set that up, it was decided that his daughter, our member, Martha Gladfelter, would run across the runway every day and up the air traffic control tower to tell the controllers to stop the planes. When he was finished, his truck safely off the runway, she’d scurry down and return.

Across the runway and up the tower so a segregated population could be served: I think that’s symbolic of the kind of effort Jesus would like from his church, followers who know and begin to understand the risky efforts Jesus has gone to for us. Aware of the human pain that still strands so many, outraged by injustice and all that cuts us off, and choosing, like Jesus, to go the distance.  That may mean reaching out to the sick infant on the sofa, the refugee in the camp, the sixth-grader being bullied, the person feeling trapped by mental illness--indeed, all those who must be touched, so that all will know Jesus is on the scene.

Yes, the Lord of life is risen and on the scene.  He has arrived, I tell you, and is out in the country here, healing and working.  We know this because we, too, have been restored to life.  We find ourselves compelled to tell others. 

And, considering that great distance, can they really blame us when we do?

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B - January 15, 2012 (1 Samuel 3:1-20 and John 1:43-51)

A story is told of a game warden out in Louisa County who got wind of a poacher who was illegally shooting deer out of season on his property way out in the boondocks by the river. The poacher had been up to this for some time, but no one had been able to catch him in the act. One morning the game warden finally decided to sneak up to the man’s property unawares, spy on him poaching, and arrest him.

Before dawn, he left his car out by the road, hiked deep into the woods, and quietly made his way into the thick brush just behind the poacher’s cabin. A few minutes went by in the still of that morning, and then he saw a light come on in the cabin. A few minutes later and the back door opened. The man stepped out into the cold air. He cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted out, “Hey, warden, you want to come in for a hot cup of coffee?” The warden was dumbfounded. He sat there for a second, but figuring his cover was blown and there would be no use in sitting out there in the cold for the rest of the day, he stood up from his hiding place and said, “Sure.  Sounds good.”

The two men went into the cabin and sat down for coffee. After a few moments, the warden looked across the table and said, “I have just one question. How did you know I was out there this morning trying to spy on you?”

The poacher said, “I didn’t, but every morning I open my door and call for you, just in case you might be there.”

Every morning…every year…every moment…God’s call to follow and to serve comes to us and God awaits a response…just in case we might be listening. We may not hear it. More commonly, we may not recognize it. Even more likely, we may be paying attention to something else, preoccupied with ourselves and our own agendas, but God’s call is nevertheless issued, God’s Word is still sent forth with a persistent urgency and with a gracious frequency we could never expect.

I suppose that is the level on which many of us can relate to this story of the call of Samuel. The Word of the Lord, we are told, was actually rare in those days, but it certainly is prolific and patient with young Samuel! Before he has even known the LORD or begun to study his word, like any good temple assistant would, God issues a call not once, not twice, but four times—finally even coming to stand in the room with him—before Samuel rightly discerns how he is being called. And Samuel misinterprets the source of this summons each time. Instead of responding directly to the LORD, Samuel first runs to his mentor and guardian, Eli, the, blind, aging and—truth be told—ineffective priest, wondering what his master might need. After three of these missed calls, Eli finally figures out that it is the LORD who is calling the boy, and so he gives him the words with which Samuel will respond: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”

The young Samuel had been left at the temple as a toddler by his mother, Hannah, as a fulfillment of the promise she made to God if God blessed her with a child. She had prayed day and night to conceive—Eli even accused her of drunkenness—and when she finally did give birth, she named the child Samuel: “I asked the LORD,” or more directly, “God hears.” And now as a boy, living under the charge of Eli, that boy’s life comes full circle: Samuel is the one who hears the LORD’s repeated requests.

I suspect if you were to speak to many women and men who are in priestly vocations, pastors or other rostered leaders who serve the church in ministries of Word and sacrament or word and service, you would find that many of them finally responded to a call after ignoring or misinterpreting it for some time. I know that is true of my own circumstance. Without going into too much detail, I can tell you that my years at college and afterward were spent running to various stand-in Elis as I wished someone could help me interpret my gifts in light of the strange, imperceptible longing most people have to serve or just be useful in this world. I am thankful that God was similarly patient and persistent with me as he was that night with Samuel as he lay in the temple of the LORD. And although I sometimes might wish it had all happened sooner, by and large I can give thanks that I learned something about myself, the world, and the LORD in the process.

But this hit-or-miss call-and-response is certainly not limited to pastors and priests. You need look no farther than your own lives and your own paths of discipleship in Jesus’ name to see the same. On the one hand it may seem that the word of the LORD has been rare, that God’s voice has too often seemed silent or unclear and ambiguous, yet nevertheless you continue to listen and learn and follow. You are here, for example, and in the midst of your lives you consistently discover many different ways to respond to God’s call and show forth faithfulness to the word of God that has found you.

Yes, the grace of God’s call is certainly one of the themes we celebrate as God’s people, especially as Lutherans. God calls all people into God’s service: all ages, all races, all nationalities, all educational levels…Tim Tebow fans and—blasphemy!—Tom Brady ones, too. This relentless grace is affirmed again and again not only in Scripture (look again at skeptical Nathaniel!) but in the lives of all the saints. Yay for us!  We are called even in spite of ourselves!

However, if the only thing we note about God’s call to discipleship and service is its relentlessness, its gracious, repetitious invitation, then I fear we’d better watch out! If the only thing we choose emphasize about Jesus’ summons to hear the Word is its radical insistence and urgency to have us on board, then we’ve got another thing coming. In fact, that’s essentially what Jesus tells Nathaniel, who is bewildered and a little excited upon his call to ministry once Jesus locates him under the fig tree. “You have another thing coming, Nathaniel!” Jesus says as Nathaniel bursts out with his new-found confession of faith. That is, “You will see greater things than these.” And as the gospel plays out, he will. We will too, to be sure. Believe it or not, we will see much greater things than the unique ways in which we are being summoned to service to God’s kingdom.

Because as edifying as it is to find out that God has somehow spoken directly to each of us—in the words of Scripture, in the counsel and prayer of friends or mentors, for example—the point of Jesus’ kingdom is not about us and those unique calls. No matter how wonderful it is to discover that our set of gifts may align with a certain mission or missions, it is important to remember that we are not the primary emphasis of God’s vision. God’s primary focus and emphasis is Jesus…yes, that one from Nazareth. God does not call us so that we may be the focus of God’s ministry, but so that we may be involved in some way in what God’s word is doing in the world. God’s call is not only about hearing his word and discerning God has claimed us, but it is also about bearing that word…and bearing God’s word can be painful and uncomfortable and awkward.

Samuel reading to Eli the judgments of God (Copley, 1780)

That is precisely what Samuel discovers once he finally responds and reports to the right person that night in the temple. The set of words that Samuel must declare on God’s behalf is not a cheery, bright, pleasing pronouncement. In fact, Samuel must stand up the next morning and pronounce a harsh condemnation on Eli’s entire family. Scripture says that after Samuel heard God’s word, he lay there until morning. I bet he did! I imagine all kinds of things were racing through his head. I suspect he didn’t get a wink of sleep now that he was faced with the prospect of launching into a call that would begin with such conflict. How was he going to tell his own guardian and guide—the one who had raised him and that had now directed him to the LORD’s service—that God had told him their days were numbered?

For young Samuel, hearing God’s call and now bearing his word involved speaking truth to power. For him, that power was the corrupt priests in the family of Eli who had cheated and led astray hundreds of people. For some, that power might be the brokers of a financial system that empowers the wealthy and overlooks the needs of the poor. For others, those powers might be or the leaders of a system that discriminates based on race or ethnic group. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream,” for example, did not just make our ears tingle because of its inspiring rhetoric that motivated the masses. It spoke a profound truth to powers of prejudice and racial privilege in this country that was dangerous for those in authority and hard for some to hear.

But the powers to which the people of God bear the truth don’t need to be so grand-scale.  For some of us, the powers of injustice could be the bullies in the school cafeteria or the peer group that pressures others into cheating or doing drugs. It could be the influences of a culture that idolizes sexual gratification and profits from the objectification of the body. Or it could be the powers of apathy that are startled when someone with vision and energy arrives on the scene.

When it comes to hearing God’s word and responding to the call, Dr. King and other servants knew what young Samuel had to learn so quickly that evening as he lay awake: that the call to service is just the beginning. In a sense, get over it and move on. We have another thing coming—indeed, the world has another thing coming! We have a word to bear to the world, as difficult to share and as out of touch as it may be.

Yet we cannot forget that the one who bids us to follow, the one who sustains us in this perilous journey, is also the one who showed not just with words but with his very life how to speak truth and compassion and justice to the powers of sin and death and decay. The one who did not let any of Samuel’s words “fall to the ground” is also the one who will lift up the Word made flesh so that the whole world will be drawn to him. It is the One who is there in Galilee, strolling along the roads extending the invitation to disciples skeptical and eager alike. It is the One who, in his suffering, opens his arm in forgiveness and love so that we may learn to embrace greater things than selfishness and our own desires. It is the One who there, rising from the tomb, walking right out into a world that is dead and deaf to the possibility of new life and wondrous new beginnings.

And he is here, speaking from the font and from the altar, speaking in the words of Scripture and the words of selfless friends…again and again he steps out into the cold morning of the world, cups his hands to his mouth and calls us in…

Come, my friend, and have a cup of coffee.

Come, my friend, and have a cup of wine and a bit of bread.

Come and see greater things.

Come…and see.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

Christmas Day - December 25, 2011 (Isaiah 52:7-10 and John 1:1-14)

“How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news!”

On the weeks leading up to Christmas we love the sound of the doorbell at our house. It doesn’t get rung too often during the rest of the year, but these days it’s more common, and the chime of the bell means one thing: the UPS delivery man has done it again. A messenger who brings good news: there is a package—or maybe more!—on our front step. No matter how quick we are to respond, the delivery man is usually already off the porch before we arrive at the door. We catch a glimpse of him scurrying back to his vehicle, bounding into the driver’s seat, on to the next stop, on to the next doorbell. In his wake, our excitement is just beginning. We bring them in, squirrel them away in secret, and wait for the proper time to wrap and then open them. The doorbell is kind of a fun by-product to on-line shopping.

And what a job: to deliver the presents, to deliver the news! Of course, if you are receiving a package from the Martin family this year, that doorbell will be ringing after Christmas since we were kind of behind the eight ball in that department lately. And with Christmas cards. But I digress. In any case, it will be a glad sound, and those are beautiful, parcel post feet.

The Epiphany Youth group spent some time this week as those “beautiful feet” on the front porches of several of our homebound members. The youth were not delivering any packages, per se, but they were delivering good news. They went, you see, to sing Christmas carols to them, and, so long as the Holy Spirit made it possible, to spread a bit of the cheer of that good news of Jesus’ birth. It was a wonderful evening. The weather cooperated nicely, and our caravan of about 10 vehicles managed to make it to three members’ homes before we had to come back here for supper. We learned, among other things, that not everyone knows all the words to “What Child is This?” by heart, but we managed to mutter through on the strength of a few clear voices. We also learned that they’d like us back more often. One gentleman, confined to his house by advanced Parkinsons’, stuck out a wavering arm and invited us to come again next week.

Singing Christmas carols to the homebound is actually something my own church youth group did when I was a kid. It was a yearly thing. We’d spend one night right before Christmas making the rounds, visiting different homes and assisted living facilities with our rusty-voiced Christmas cheer. Occasionally the person to whom we were caroling, although frail, would be able to make it to the door and join along in the singing. Sometimes, if it was too cold, they’d stand behind the window and peer out at us, our faces barely lit by the glow of the small candles we held in our hands. We never actually went in anyone’s house, however. It would have been too crowded, too much of an imposition.

One year, however, our pastor took us to sing at the home of Bob Snow, an elderly member who was in the final stages of cancer. And by “final” I mean the last few days. He was bedridden, already on a respirator or oxygen or some other apparatus to aid his breathing. An unused bedpan or two were stacked up on his nightstand. There was no other way to sing to Bob than by standing in his bed room. By his bed. Where he was dying. And so we all traipsed in there, well past the front porch, through the family room, and encircled his bed. The only lights in the room were provided by our candles.

The last we’d seen Mr. Snow in church was months before, and he looked much different now. He was wan and skeleton-like. His weak face, which was as white as his name, was already sunken in from the toll of the disease, and the whole scene made me, a middle-schooler, feel downright uncomfortable. I was barely at ease in my own skin in those days, and I didn’t know how to look at his. I remember elbowing my way back from the front row. “Why did his wife bring us in here?” I thought. “Surely he could have heard us from outside.” And there, in that room, as the breathing apparatus gurgled and hissed, we sang Christmas carols at death. We lifted up our candles, whose glimmer now reflected off the wet cheeks of his family members, and sang these happy songs—these songs of good news about someone’s birth—to some who was obviously dying.

Hark the Herald Angels Sing, glory to the newborn King!...Joy to the World! The Lord is come!...Silent Night!  Holy Night! All is calm, all is…bright?  Indeed, although maybe not in the way I could recognize.  “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger of those who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation, who says to Zion, ‘Your God reigns!’”

At that time, in those teenager days of robust health and raging hormones, it didn’t make much sense why we would do something like that, why we would make some of us so uncomfortable at such a joyous time of the year, why we would pull back the curtain that hid the dying from our light and think on such sad things. To sing songs of a birth while someone was dying? What kind of a cruel, insensitive endeavor is this?

But they—the wife, the sons, the pastor, and Mr. Snow, no doubt—were thinking about this: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us.” The good news that we were announcing—the good news that we have brought to us this great morning—is not simply that Jesus is born, but that Jesus is born to die. And if, as the prophet Isaiah says, our God reigns at all, it is because God has reigned in places like Bob Snow’s bedroom the week before he died.  When we say that the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us, we mean that he lived the full extent of the human experience. He suffered what flesh suffers when it encounters the brokenness of creation. He endures what our flesh endures as it lives in a world prone to danger and disease. God has miraculously been wrapped in our skin, as wan and weak and pale as it can sometimes be. When we hear that God’s Word—God’s very essence and very happening—became flesh and lived among us, then we hear the length that God is willing to go bear his arm and make us his forever.  We hear of the lengths God will go to restore human dignity.  And that is precisely what Mr. Snow would need to hear.  As it turns out, maybe it is those lesser-known words of “What Child is This?” that say it best, and that bear being taken to heart:

“Nails, spear shall pierce him through

The cross be borne for me, for you.

Hail, hail the Word made flesh,

the babe, the Son of Mary.”

            Earlier this week, as my family sat down to eat our dinner, our five-year-old daughter requested to say the blessing. She said thanks for the food, but before she said “amen,” she inserted a final petition with the most serious inflection: “And God,” she said, “help us remember that we can’t open our presents until Christmas. Lord, Have mercy.  Hear our prayer.”

Well, it’s Christmas! No time for holding back! Ring the doorbell and rip open the gift, the gift of Jesus. Tell the good news…on the porch, at the table, at the bedside, in the tomb: Salvation has come. Our God reigns!

Orthodox icons of the Nativity of Jesus often depict his birthplace as a cave, evoking his place of burial.

Merry Christmas! 

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The Fourth Sunday in Advent, Year B - December 18, 2011 (2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 and Luke 1:26-38)

Melinda and I do not watch a whole lot of television, but if there is one show that can suck us both in like no other it is “Househunters International” on Home and Garden Television.  It only takes the opening five seconds of the program to get us hooked, and then we find we have to sit down and watch all thirty minutes, even if it keeps us up past our bedtime. 

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the program, the concept is very simple and can be explained in a matter of seconds.  Each episode features an individual, a couple, or a family who is in search of a new home in a new country.  A real estate agent takes stock of their purchasing price range and then shows them three potential properties.  As you can probably guess from its title, “Househunters International” tends to feature home searches of the cosmopolitan and well-to-do.  It may be a couple who made their living in London’s busy financial district who are now looking to retire to a farmhouse in the south of France.  Or maybe it’s a young urban professional who’s just been transferred from Seattle to Buenos Aires.  Whatever the case, the program begins with a discussion about the homebuyer’s wish list for their new property and ends with a build-up to the homebuyer’s final decision.  Along the way, the real estate agent showcases those three fascinating properties that contain any number of cool and unique characteristics.

What I think we find so compelling about this otherwise ordinary reality show is that each time the final decision manages to surprise us in some way.  The homebuyer always goes for the property we think they’d rate lowest, either because they discover new priorities along the journey, or because they become enchanted with some aspect of a house they hadn’t expected.  But, without fail, when the show is over, I feel I’ve wasted a valuable half-hour of my life, voyeuristically watching the deliberations of someone else’s luxury.

Despite that, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say that this is not too different from what the people of God experience as they await their salvation from on high.  Will their God hunt a house among humankind?  If so, where might it be?  What, pray tell, is on that wish list?  And will this grand, sweeping episode of reality contain a surprise twist at the end?

detail, Michaelangelo's "David"

As you might imagine, the scope of Scripture’s witness contains many clues as to what God is looking for as God begins to imagine a home among mortals, and we are probably not surprised to learn that God is not in the market for a villa in the south of France or a flat in Buenos Aires, technically-speaking.  Then again, we wouldn’t exactly look first to the ancient kingdom of Israel, either—a wandering, hapless group of backwater tribes who had spent a great many years ranging around and attempting, with spotty success, to settle the land promised to their ancestors.  Yet there is God, hunting for his home among them, drifting from encampment to encampment in a temporary tabernacle that houses the Ark of the Covenant.  Before a simple shepherd named David rises to power as ancient Israel’s second king—which is sometime around a thousand years before Jesus is born—God’s people were nothing spectacular.  Often prone to internal fighting, they were not a military power.  With no merchant class or fertile regions for farming, they were not an economic power.  Lacking a major center of population or learning, they were not a cultural power.  They really had little going for them, but this David helps to change that.  Finding favor with God, he rises to the throne, unifies the people of Israel, and establishes a capital city by conquering the Jebusite stronghold of Jerusalem. 

This stronghold turns out to be as much of a curse as a blessing as history plays out, but for the time-being, the kingdom begins to flourish and expand.  Would God choose his home here?  While it may seem the most logical spot from our standpoint, it turns out that God has other priorities, other options to consider.  Even after David decides to bring Israel’s long days of wandering to an end by getting the ark out of the camps below and building it a permanent structure up in the city, God makes it clear that that’s not his vision. In a prophecy revealed to Nathan, David’s prophet, God explains that he was quite content going to and fro in that temporary tabernacle as Israel wandered in the wilderness: “Wherever I have moved about among all the people of Israel,” the word of the LORD says, “did I ever speak a word with any of the tribal leaders of Israel, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’”  In fact, God hadn’t asked for that.  Turning the tables somewhat, God explains further what he is looking for: David will not make a home for God, but God will make God’s house from David.  David will not be laying a foundation for God to dwell in Jerusalem, but God will be laying a foundation in David to dwell with the people of the earth.  No fancy flat or sun-drenched villa just yet—God’s wish list is looking a little different!

David's Jerusalem (ca. 1000 B.C.)

To that end, the LORD makes it clear that his home in David will contain these virtues.  First, it will provide a great name.  Second, it will entail a place where they can be planted to receive protection and refuge from their enemies and other evildoers.  Lastly, it will ensure an eternal relationship with God, one that is firm and solid and established forever.  That is God’s idea of a home, and a deluxe cedar suite in Jerusalem will not provide it.  Somehow David and David’s family will be that home, at least for now. Through this particular king and his rather ill-fated line of descendants in this particularly disorganized group of tribes God will seek out a great name, a place of sanctuary and a steadfast relationship with God’s people.

Interestingly, the intensity of God’s search for a home seems to go cold for a while.  King Solomon, David’s successor, does end up building a temple in Jerusalem.  It is a bejeweled, awe-inspiring edifice.  Israel’s worship and religious devotion becomes centered there, off and on, for about a thousand years.  Prophets come and prophets go.  Commercial breaks interrupt the drama here and there.  At one point the Temple gets destroyed and then rebuilt and eventually added onto. 

It would seem that God had almost settled on that structure in that city, but one day in a very remote small town far outside Jerusalem, God finds favor with someone else.  An real estate angel named Gabriel drops by the home of a young girl engaged to a man named Joseph, who happened to be a long, lost descendant of that ancient David.  The town is Nazareth, a place hardly on anyone’s radar.  And Gabriel’s message is something no one ever could have expected, a surprise twist that we never saw coming.  God will hunt his house in her womb.  If she consents—and she does—God will move in through a miracle of the Holy Spirit and become a resident of creation in a way only possible to a God whose love knows no bounds.  God turns down a house of cedar and temple of stone to live in a house of human skin and bones.

 

 

Try as we may, we cannot predict where or how God the Creator of heaven and earth will choose to reside with us, his creatures, just as David was unable to build a structure to house the LORD.  Try as we may, we could never foresee that God would choose something this risky, this unprecedented, this common—to take up shop as the quickening flesh of a young Jewish maid, to knock on the door of someone so seemingly insignificant.  Martin Luther says, in a sermon on the Annunciation, that “Mary was possibly doing housework when the angel Gabriel came to her.”  Kings and queens would have died for this kind of opportunity—provided they could keep it from upending their system of authority—but it comes to a woman who is put in an unlikely predicament.  David made an offer of cedar timbers to make way for such an arrival, but God puts himself at the mercy of a young unwed woman’s faith. It may seem like the whim of a finicky homebuyer to us, but God will always choose to interact with the world on God’s own terms, not ours.

"The Annunciation," Paolo de Matteis, 1712

And that wish list, as it turns out, is still valid.  It ends up being completely fulfilled through the womb of this Mary, once and for all.  The great name will be Jesus.  In Hebrew: The Savior of the people.  He will plant a place, on a hill right outside Jerusalem, in fact, where people will finally find refuge from their greatest enemies, sin and death.  And his life and death will establish an eternal relationship based on love and forgiveness between God and God’s people from now until the end of time.  As should be expected from a God as gracious as this one, those wishes on that original wish list shared with King David were not really wishes for God, but wishes for his people!  All of them, wrapped up in human flesh and growing, right now, in the womb of Mary.

For when it comes to taking up residence with us, God will call the shots.  God will order the world the way God wants to and cut his deals on his own terms.  And when that happens, a great name is given to a nothing people.  The proud get scattered and the lowly are uplifted.  The hungry get filled and the rich are sent away empty. A holy place is planted in the most vulgar of surroundings.  And the most insignificant, vulnerable soul, as it turns out, can magnify the LORD.  This is what happens when God makes his home among us.

At this time of the year, as we approach what is arguably culture’s biggest holiday, there is a lot of talk (and sometimes whining, especially among Christians), about finding and upholding what this season is really all about.  We lament the over-the-top commercialism and crumble under the weight of the busy holiday schedule.  We debate the difference between saying “Happy Holidays” and “Merry Christmas.”  All the while, we want to re-capture some elusive spirit or “true meaning of Christmas,” as if it’s something we can grasp with our hands.  Ironically, it is King David who inadvertently stumbles upon it one thousand years before the fact: that God’s grace it never something we can control or get a handle on.  It is not something we can conjure with any amount of doing good.  God’ grace just happens.  It hunts a home where we’d least expect it, entering at the corners, checking out property on the margins, turning down the fancy cedar gift in exchange for something more ordinary, more delicate…like human flesh.  Or bread and wine.  All it is looking for is that “Yes” so graciously modeled by Mary.  God’s is a rare grace that first hooks us and then promises a twist of surprise:  He is promised.  He is born.  His is crucified.  He is risen!

But be warned, you people of God, because this grace will suck you right in.  For thirty minutes…for thirty years…and if God finds favor, for the rest of your life.

Is it wasted time?  Nope.  It is nothing less than the beginning of it…

Mary, Theotokos (God-bearer)

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.

The First Sunday of Advent, Year B - November 27, 2011 (Isaiah 64:1-9, Matthew 13:24-37)

Let me tell you a story of failed expectations. It is a story of failed expectations on a grand scale, of monumental proportions—not small-claims disappointments like the Christmas wish list item that didn’t get fulfilled or the Thanksgiving turkey that got burned in the oven. These are failed expectations that affect every outlook on life and infect every possible view of the future.

The year is sometime in the 5^th century, B.C., and it is the story of the people Israel’s return from two generations in exile to their Promised Land and their beloved holy city, Jerusalem. For approximately fifty years the people of Israel had been forced to live far outside of Jerusalem with its awesome and ornate Temple in the heathen city of Babylon. As they struggled, day by day and week by long week, to live there as a displaced people, with only their stories and what they could remember of their traditions to keep their faith and community alive, they longed for the day they might return. They hoped and prayed for the day when God would actually do something profound and unbelievable that would enable them to move back there, resettle their old olive groves and re-farm their old sheep pastures and, most of all, rebuild their old Temple in Jerusalem.

And just when it looked as if they would always be a people separated from that homeland, just when it looked like they might get assimilated into the great melting pot that was Babylon and forever disappear as a distinct people from the face of the earth, that profound and unbelievable thing happened! Cyrus, the King of Persia, and then his successor, Darius, conquered the Babylonian Empire and—unpredictably—practically pave the way for Israel’s people to return home. It was a miracle!

Yet, when the people of Israel finally get there—after crossing the wide wilderness—and start to re-settle those olive groves and, most importantly, re-build that Temple, disappointment settles in big-time. All kinds of factions form within their own people and begin to pull them apart. Families and houses quarrel with one another. Competing visions of the future of their people rise up amongst them, and no one can seem to agree on which direction their reborn nation should take. Selfishness and greed take over and, before they realize it, their hopes for a grand restoration are dashed to the ground. They are face-to-face with their utter inability to control their destiny, their incapacity to put back together what was broken, their powerlessness to form something beautiful—anything!—out of the wreck around them. These are failed expectations on a grand scale. Such high hopes had become such shocking loss and disorientation.

Israel's return from exile

And that utter frustration is precisely what gives voice to our Scripture from Isaiah this morning: Standing before their priest at the Temple they cry out to God above,“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, that the mountains would quake at your presence!” In the case of ancient Israel, mountains were a metaphor for everything that was beyond their control, everything ominous and oppressive and overbearing. Israel looks around and sees nothing but its own failures. They look at their neighbor and see little but his own ineffectiveness and stubbornness. What’s more, they look inside and see little but their own sinfulness: “We have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.” The translation of the Hebrew there is perhaps a little too lenient. A better translation is “soiled underpants.”  “Our good deeds” the people of God realize, “are like poopy diapers.”

In other words, the mountains are everywhere—both within and without—and they have led to failed expectations. At this point, only looking above, to God Almighty, will bring any hope. The mountains will only quake now if God decides to do something. Their expectations of grand restoration—living as the people they had been created and redeemed to be—will only be fulfilled if God decides to take action, if God tears open the heavens and comes down to get directly involved.

We don’t have to look too hard to know that we still live in a world with plenty of failed expectations. We don’t need ancient Israel and its poopy diapers from 2500 years ago to remind us of the disappointment in our human condition. Whether it’s the European debt crisis and the potential break-up of the Euro currency, or the tents of the Occupy Wall Street movement, or the ongoing protests in Egypt and the rest of the Arab world, or the hyper-partisanship of U.S. politics at the moment, one gets the sense that there is a palpable, if not increasing, level of frustration and disorientation with the way things are.

And, despite the voices of optimism about the humancondition that ring out every once in a while (especially at this time of year), we then realize the other facts of the state of our race: there are, for example, still something around 3 million children who die every year from issues related to hunger or food stress that we could prevent. There are still going to be 70,000 new AIDS orphans this year, added to the roughly 20 million that already eke out their sad living. While millions of people worldwide find themselves throwing elbows in order to have access to clean water, holidayshoppers here will throw elbows to get discounted electronic goods. Thumb through the newspapers, catch some of the news, listen to the cry of the victim and it’s there: heaps of failed expectations. Mountains of worry and disaster and sorrow.

Advent is, perhaps more than anything else, a time for blunt honesty. We often think of it primarily as a time to get ready for Christmas, when we’re asked in ways subtle and strong to reflect on the inherent goodness of humankind and the determination of the human spirit. But, really, like ancient Israel, we need to be brought face-to-face with our failed expectations, our utter inability to control our destiny, our incapacity to put back together what has been broken. We need to look both around and within and come to terms with the mountains that loom large on every horizon. It helps to join our voices with those that cried out so long ago: “O, that you would tear open the heavens and come down!”

Because when we do, we realize that if there is a way out of this mess it will not come from inside of us. We cannot even put our hope, as many often do, in the generation that comes after us. Despite the vigor and idealism we see in their eyes, their diapers will be just as poopy as ours are (trust me, I live with two of them in my house). In fact, the prayer of the day for this first Sunday of a new church year does manage to phrase it with appropriate Advent bluntness: “awaken us to the threatening dangers of our sins.” It is a plea that our eyes actually be opened to what we read in the newspapers, and what we hear on the nightly news, and what we understand from the cry of the victim, and to pay attention to what those things say about us—that we are creatures of failed expectations. It is a petition through which we acknowledge that things cannot continue on like this forever. This is not the way God wants the world—it is not how we want the world, either—and that we await a change.

Thankfully, however, we await the act of a God who is all too acquainted with failed expectations. We must not forget that our salvation from amongst all of these mountains comes from a God who has chosen to work already once before with the stuff of utter disappointment. As ancient Israel also had to admit: God is a potter, and therefore he works with mud.

For a brief moment yesterday I watched the Epiphany quilters piece together another quilt in the fellowship hall. They worked in silence—no Christmas music playing in the background for them—steadily piecing together the portions of cloth to form a piece both of beauty and function. On a day when they could have been getting good deals in the stores, they were working with scraps of cloth so that people on the other side of the world might have warmth or shelter. And the thought occurred to me: if God is a potter who forms things out of muddy people like you and me, then God is also a quilter who works with scraps and leftovers, the remnants who feel, quite honestly, destined for the garbage bin.

The beauty God comes to fashion is made, then, from the most tattered parts of the human experience. For the last time God opened the heavens and came down he was born into a cattle feedbox. In his ministry, he surrounded himself with relative disappointments, people who never could quite get it together, who deserted him in his hour of greatest need. The culmination of his ministry was not on a throne or in a palace or even valedictorian of his rabbinical class, but rather on a cross, arms spread open in agony and with parched lips breathing words of loneliness and rejection. And he entrusts this legacy to the hodge-podge likes of you and me. His Spirit enriches even us with gifts of every kind.  He nourishes us with a meal that, on the surface, does not look all that extravagant, but which changes us out of our poopy diapers each and every time. This is how God has opened the heavens once already and come to us. And we have his word that he will come again.

Michaelangelo, "The Last Judgment"

And so, just as our Advent began with blunt honesty about our human condition, it also begins with a promise of wonderful hope about God’s desire to do something about it. It begins not only with a story of our failed expectations, but of a story with great promise: Jesus says, “heaven and earth may fall apart altogether—but my words will never pass away.” As they stood there before the disappointing rubble of Jerusalem, its faded glory a mere reflection of what it once was, the ancient Israelites essentially wanted God to resort to his old ways of working. Some of them were so dumbstruck by their disappointment that they were unable to see the new way that God was calling them to be his people in the world, a people whose faith would not be centered completely in that Temple and its religion, but in the hearts and lives of God’s people everywhere.  As we wait for God to come down once more, as we wait for the return of our Lord, we should remember ancient Israel’s lesson: we are still God’s people, called to be that tapestry of warmth and shelter—salvation and resurrection—he is stitching in the world.  We have the Spirit's gifts.  We have been washed and fed.  We know the mountains loom, but God calls us to work through these failed expectations to trust more on him and that, because one day—rest assured—he will put that final stitch in this amazing quilt.

In the parable Jesus tells to his disciples and everyone else about his own promise to come again, the chief error of those slaves who are caught off-guard is not their lack of knowledge about the end times or when it will occur…or their incorrect doctrines about God…or even in their evildoing. Jesus warns them chiefly against falling asleep, against not using the gifts that have been given to them in the tasks that he had commanded.

At a time of the year when it is so easy to fall back into routine, when the Christmas Muzak heard in the background of every department store serves to lull us into the sentimentality of this holiday season and deafen us to our filthiness, let us not fall asleep on our job of being God’s people in the world, of God’s people amidst even these failed expectations. And let us neither stand dumbstruck at what we’ve become. Let us, instead, sobered by the threatening dangers of our sins, place our hope on him whose words will never pass away, on God the potter who works with mud—or a quilter who works with scraps—on the promise of a day and age coming soon when the scraps of all our lives will finally be knit together into a holy fabric that spans eternity…all according to God’s wonderful expectation.

Now that is a view of the future for which we can be hopeful.  Get to working!

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.