Mountain of heartache (Happy Valentine's Day Weekend!)

2 Kings 2:1-14

Psalm 50:1-6

2 Corinthians 4:3-6

Mark 9: 2-9

Since it’s Valentine’s Day weekend, we’re going to start with the first testament reading this morning. Elijah and Elisha. It’s like the saddest break-up story ever. Elisha has been following and learning from Elijah, they’ve been through some stuff, and now while Elijah is on his way to the end of his life on earth, Elisha goes as far as he is able with his mentor. It seems everywhere they go there are other prophets reminding Elisha that Elijah is going to be leaving him. “Shut up, I know. Leave me alone!” he tells them. Don’t want to think about his leaving, thank you very much. Don’t want to think about the end. Elijah himself tells him that he’s being sent farther and farther away. Three times, he’s told, three times he covers his ears. “As you live and as the Lord lives, I will not leave you!” Heartbreaking, right? It’s similar to what Ruth tells Naomi: “Where you go, I will go. Your people will be my people, your God will be my God.” Often this is read at weddings, these words spoken between a mother-in-law and her daughter-in-law, both of whom have lost dear men in their lives. What a happy Valentine’s Day weekend reading, isn’t it?

Jesus tells his disciples again and again throughout the Gospel of Mark that the son of humanity will be delivered up to die and then three days later rise. They hear the words coming out of his mouth, but they just don’t make sense. “Surely this will never happen to you!” they exclaim. “Don’t worry, we’ve got your back, we won’t let the big bad Romans make a public spectacle of you.” Peter even goes as far as to say ‘even if everyone else should forsake you, I would gladly even die for you.’ We know how well that worked out for poor Peter.

And I wonder if today’s story was what Peter was thinking of when he said that. Not the Elijah/Elisha story, but the bright and glorious mountaintop experience Peter, James, and John had been witnesses to. I mean, if a guy goes up on a mountain in scripture, it’s to talk with God. If a guy goes up a mountain and there’s a bright light, there’s definitely something holy there, like when Moses spent 40 days on the mountain receiving the ten commandments. Moses had to wear a veil over his face when he came back, his face shone so brightly. It terrified the Israelites to no end. Not to mention that when Moses did come back down the mountain, the people had made themselves a golden calf to worship and there was a huge mess of folks who got killed for it. The Moses-in-the-wilderness-with-the-people story is gory and exciting and treacherous and full of miracles. I may have mentioned before that Game of Thrones has got nothing on the stories of the First Testament.

So Jesus is on the mountain, talking with Moses and Elijah. We’ve heard a bit of the Elijah story this morning, but his prophetic ministry is fascinating. He’s the one who called down three years of famine because of the terrible king Ahab and his terrible queen Jezebel. He’s the one who stayed with the widow and kept her jar of flour from running out during the famine. He raised that widow’s son back to life when he died, and he contended against 50 prophets of Ba’al on the mountain where God swallowed up the sacrifices with fire from heaven.

And it’s this Elijah who is on the mountain with Jesus and Moses, while Peter, James, and John look on. Elijah who represents the prophetic tradition, and Moses who represents the law. The defining characters of Jewish history and tradition and practice, right up there in plain sight, conferring with Jesus, when this great cloud covers them, the glory of the Lord, and they hear it spoken that “This is my Beloved Son. Listen to him!” No wonder Peter is overwhelmed. And wouldn’t it be great to stay up on that mountain where God’s glory is evident, where the founders of our faith are right there to teach us, where the rest of the world is down the mountain and has to come to where we are to experience this miracle.

No wonder Peter thought it would be a hayride from here on out. Seeing Jesus in that incredible light, it’s like falling head-over-heels in love and wanting to stay forever on your first date. The all-consuming awe of seeing the absolute best reality of the other person would give anyone a woozy head. But Jesus has already been telling them that he will be handed over and flogged. Jesus has already been telling them that the Son of Humanity came to serve, not to be served. Jesus has already been telling them that the Kingdom of God has come near, even before they had this vision. 

Then Jesus comes down the mountain with them and tells them to keep quiet about the event until after he is raised from the dead. Which means he is going to die. Moses and Elijah don’t have any recording of their death. Moses just sort of disappeared, and Elijah was taken up in that swing low, sweet chariot. But Jesus will not be taken up until he has descended as far down as it is possible to descend. Jesus will next be held up for the world to see as a bloody corpse nailed to a couple of pieces of lumber. Hardly the glorious vision we have today. But that is the paradox. To know Jesus is to know him in both extremes. The glory and the pain. Life and death. Resurrected and walking among us.

We talk a bit about this when we confess in the words of the Nicene Creed. On this last Sunday of Epiphany, as we consider how Jesus has been revealed to us, we confess that Jesus is “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one being with the Father.” Our historical creeds kind of skip over the preaching and healing and jump right from incarnation, being truly human from the Holy Spirit and the virgin, Mary, right into the suffering and death. From the mountain of glory to the mountain of the cross. Most folks in Jesus’ day would climb a mountain to get closer to God, but from that mountain, Jesus comes down into our valleys to get closer to us. He does not require us to bleach ourselves dazzlingly clean before we approach. He does not sit on a high and mighty throne and dole out blessings and curses from a far off distance. He does not tell Peter to go ahead and stay on that mountain with him. He goes down the mountain with Peter, James, and John, and continues to teach, to heal, to feed the hungry multitudes, and to lead the disciples in doing that same work.

When Elijah was ready to be taken up to heaven, he asked his faithful friend Elisha what he would desire as a parting gift. Elisha asked for a double share of Elijah’s spirit. The strength to continue on with the work he had begun with his mentor. And he received that gift. Just as we received the gift of the Holy Spirit in our baptisms, the Spirit of Jesus, to continue the Kingdom work he had begun, not in a distant place of glory, but right here among us. As Jesus walks down the mountain with us, into the valley of Lent, on the road to Easter, we rejoice in his presence, we struggle with his presence, we live in his presence, day-to-day. And on this Valentine’s Day weekend we reflect on the glory Jesus left behind out of his love for us, the life-consuming, life-giving love, which brought him down the mountain so that nothing ever again could come between us. Thanks be to God.

Homily

Isaiah 40:21-31

Psalm 147:1-11, 20c

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Mark 1:29-39

I want to tell you a story. Mostly I want to hear that poem from the prophet Isaiah again. When I was on my gap year in the middle of college, touring with a family-oriented Christian youth band, we had a camp song recapping the last half of this morning’s reading. It was easy to play on guitar and had a few harmonies that were easy to pick up on. Whenever I read or hear this morning’s portion of Isaiah I get the song stuck in my head, so I thought I’d share. <teach song> “Why do you say, O Jacob, and proclaim, O Israel, ‘my way is hidden from the Lord’? Do you not know, have you not heard, the Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth, He will not grow tired or weary. And His understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary, and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary. Young men stumble and fall. But those who hope in the Lord shall renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run and not, not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint. Halleluia.”

It’s that first part, about saying our ways are hidden from God, that catches me every time. Isaiah was written in a time when people worshiped gods who were attached to their land. It would be like worshiping the god of New York here in Chatham and crossing the border to the east to worship the god of Massachusetts. Granted, after the build-up to the Super Bowl it seemed for a weekend we were doing something like that, and discovered which football gods reigned supreme this year, but it was life and death in the early 530s BC, Isaiah’s days, when neighboring empires overran their borders and scattered the people of God like so much dust on the wind. It’s no wonder they began to doubt God’s supremacy when they had been ripped from their homes and suffered so much by the hands of their Babylonian captors.

The prophet speaks to that suffering and exile in the chapters leading up to today’s reading. But this morning we hear words of the prophet from the days of the people’s return to their old home. It has been a very long time since they had seen Jerusalem in all its glory, and there is not much glory left to it since the conquering armies had their way with it. Not many among them remember firsthand the greatness of that city Jerusalem, they have been away for too long. They have gotten old and their weak knees and cloudy eyes could not rest on the safety of those great buildings and beautiful living spaces they had known as children. But the Lord has promised to renew their strength, that the old may run as well as the young to rebuild and, more importantly, to BE rebuilt. 

This is a story we know well. How often have we cried out that God surely must neither see nor care about what we are doing or what is being done to us? “My way is hidden from the Lord.” How many times have we seen other gods vying for power, other pressures on our lives to be other than God made us to be, other powers fighting to have the last word about what we are worth.

This is why I like Isaiah the prophet so much. He shows us God’s interactions with and promises to God’s own people through their ups and downs, their injustices and their healings. They may have lives three thousand years ago, but the history of God’s people is not unlike our own. History tends to repeat itself over and over, the oppressed becoming the oppressor, cycles of violence and destruction, pain and healing, when we think life is great and then something awful happens, or when the awful has been awful for so long that there’s nothing to look forward to, this is a history we are part of, a story we are not the first to tell. But over and over again in it, there is the presence of God among us, the promise of faithfulness, the prophet’s words that, yes, God sees and knows and cares. 

Our hope is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Our peace is in the broken Savior, Jesus, who could have very well stayed safe and secure in heaven but chose freely to come among us and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Our healing is in that blessed community where Jesus comes to us all, where we are, and restores us one to another. Just as he went to the home of Simon and Andrew with James and John, took Simon’s mother-in-law by the hand and lifted her up, Jesus comes with us into our homes, into our daily lives, not to remove us from them but to bring us to more fully live in them.

Why do you say your way is hidden from the Lord? God sees. God knows. You are not overlooked. You are never forgotten.

Peace, Be Still

Deuteronomy 18:15-20

Psalm 111

1 Corinthians 8:1-13

Mark 1:21-28

Jesus’ first act after calling his disciples is to teach with authority in the local parish, and immediately he is challenged by the people’s anxiety about change. Imagine being there, listening to this teacher who knows the Scripture inside and out and teaches it as one who is intimately familiar with the God of whom it speaks. It’s new. It’s exciting. It’s fresh and suddenly certainly true in ways we had always seen but still been oblivious about, and we all wonder at who this new teacher might be, when suddenly there is a disturbance in the Force. I mean, a disturbance in the congregation. A rabble-rouser. The town drunk. A quiet, well-dressed man usually friendly who seems suddenly besot with a bout of insanity. We don’t get more information than the fact he is a man, and his appearance of being under the power of an unclean spirit. How long he has been like this, we don’t know. What was the cause of his situation, we aren’t told. But the words he has to say are startling: ’Holy One of God’ and ‘come to destroy us.’ This is no theatrical trick, either. There is some power behind his words, something which strikes a chord in the hearts of those who hear, something which Jesus silences immediately.

This silencing Jesus does here, it’s recorded elsewhere in the Gospel of Mark as the silencing of the storm at sea. It’s an odd mirror to this tale, for in the midst of the storm, the disciples cry out “do you not care that we are being destroyed?” and in this story the man with the unclean spirit claims Jesus is threatening to destroy them. Both counts are answered with the word of Jesus bringing peace, casting out the unclean spirit and calming the storm.

These two stories are not, after all, so dissimilar as they may seem.

We are still in the season of Epiphany, still discovering who this Jesus is who was born to us in a stable little over a month ago, revealed in the wilderness baptism of John and the Spirit only weeks ago. Today we get the first sign of Jesus’ ministry, after his calling the disciples and beginning to teach. Perhaps his teaching should have been centrally remembered, but this disruption stole the show, so to speak, and the signs seem to stick in our memory more than the words alone, like object lessons we use to teach the kids. The disciples have been called to follow him, and they do, and when they enter the synagogue for study of the Word of God they are interrupted by someone who feels threatened. Somebody who knows they cannot take this teaching seriously and remain the same. Somebody a lot like us.

The mystics know that to be loved as totally and entirely as God loves us would utterly undo us. The people in Deuteronomy were right when they asked for a prophet to be the go-between for God and them, so they might not be destroyed by the sight of God’s face and the sound of God’s voice. God promised such a prophet, like Moses but after Moses. That prophet will be given such devastating news to share with the people that it must be spoken, must be taken seriously, must not be toyed with or taken lightly, or else that prophet will die.

When people come to the faith newly converted, rather than growing up in the tradition and with the stories as they might become rote memorization, they tend to be more zealous, more passionate, more openly curious and experimental in searching for the appropriate ways to live in response to this amazing grace which saved a wretch like me. For some, the power of that conversion moment wears thin over time and gets lost in the middle of the muddle of daily living. Others find themselves newly converted time and again throughout their lives, rediscovering the power of the Good News of Jesus Christ in recovery or by the power of the Spirit poured out in unexpected moments of grace. It may feel like new birth, like a new way of experiencing the world, like a death of the old ways, even if those new year’s resolutions didn’t stick.

And we fight against it, tooth and nail, to retain the old ways. I don’t mean the old ways of traditions which feed the soul and honor the faith of departed saints. I mean the old ways of sick habits which isolate us one from another and offer us empty promises of standing tall by our own might and power. Cycles of abuse, for example, or the classism, racism, sexism, able-ism, age-ism, homophobia, which perpetuate the lies that some lives are worth more love than others because they’ve earned it or were born entitled to it.

When that unclean spirit cries out that it knows who Jesus is, the holy one of God, it speaks truth for once. Lest we come to rely on it for our truths, Jesus silences that unclean spirit and casts it out, freeing that man to leave a life of comfort behind for the journey of discipleship ahead. Because, yes, for the things that unclean spirit represents, Jesus has come to destroy it. To destroy all that holds sway over our hearts and lives. To destroy those distractions which pull us every which way and seek to break us into dozens of pieces all serving different gods. Jesus casts out the unclean spirit and restores a clean slate for that man who carried those uncertain fears for so long, and forgiving, renewing, restoring the man to life.

And all of that bright, shiny-new space can be unsettling. All of that clean can make us frightened of doing anything else which might make a mess. But God knows this process of becoming who Jesus calls us to be is a long and arduous journey, full of mistakes and experiments and learning and fighting and being put back together over and over again. In so many ways Jesus has come to destroy this world’s power of fear and anxiety, and in so many ways Jesus has come to speak the kind of peace which springs up from the depths of God’s love. Jesus speaks that peace with the authority that makes it so. The unclean spirit was silenced, the storm calmed, the sinner forgiven.

This is what Jesus does with his authority, the first sign we have of who he is and chooses to be. He instructs his people in the word of God and commands more authority than our fears. He plants in us the Spirit of life, and dies with us each time we die, and raises us up to new life. Where have you heard Jesus speak peace in your life? Where have you known Christ to turn your worldview inside out? And don’t worry if you can’t put your finger on it. Oftentimes God is sneaky in getting to our hearts with that love above all loves. Primarily Jesus lives it out boldly one moment at a time, and on this side of the resurrection of Christ, while we await our own resurrections, the Spirit is the one working those small wonders among us. With stories like today’s Gospel, we grow to know and to trust that Jesus works healing and peace within and among us, even when we fight against it. May it ever be so.

Prisoners for Freedom

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Psalm 62:5-12

1 Corinthians 7:29-31

Mark 1:14-20

***

My kid sister was a broom ball goalie in high school. She was awesome at it. So awesome that the team kept giving her nicknames, like ‘Margo Nel-Awesome!’ and, because our last name is Nelson, they even called her ‘Nelson Mandela' for awhile, not knowing who that was, but only that nicknames are cool. So one day after a game, mom heard my sister’s new nickname and asked if Margo knew who Nelson Mandela was. They didn’t do a lot of African history education, even in multicultural public schools ten years ago, so Margaret had no idea. Mom started off her explanation by saying, “well, Nelson Mandela was thrown in prison…” And Margo asked, “so was he a bad guy?”

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was last Monday, and he spent a good deal of time in prison. Was he a bad guy? The local ecumenical theology on tap group is reading German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who even has his own collection of “Letters and Papers from Prison,” so was he a bad guy? 

I hope we know enough of our history to realize how often power gets misused, and people protesting unjust laws end up getting punished by those laws before they get amended. That Mandela, King, and Bonhoeffer, were in good company. After all, today’s Gospel reading starts with John the Baptist getting thrown into prison. It may seem like a side comment, thrown away simply for setting up the timeline for Jesus’ next action, but paper and ink were precious in the days these stories first were written down, and no words were wasted.

So John’s in prison, and here comes Jesus, continuing and advancing John’s message, even taking it further, and calling people to follow him. Take that in for a minute. The first guy to preach this way was hauled off to jail, and now the guy John was preaching about has arrived on the scene to proclaim the kingdom of God has come near, one would expect that Jesus will also land in jail, if not worse. I mean, we know he gets the full wrath of the corrupt system, but at the time of today’s story, on the other side of certain things happening, those disciples didn’t know he’d get himself crucified (even though it probably wasn’t terribly surprising, given who the occupying powers were). 

Knowing the previous preachers of this movement had been jailed, why would anyone in their right mind answer the call to follow the next guy in line for civil disobedience?

We live in a relatively calm, cool, and collected area. Violence is pretty rare, crime is sort of.. what. Do we even see or hear any crime around here in the village? It’s a pretty comfortable place to live. So maybe this question seems to come out of left field, but just to experiment, I’m going to ask it anyway: What would you go to prison for? In some cities, it’s against the law to feed the homeless in public places. In others, it’s illegal to offer a warm place to sleep without the right zoning and proper permits. If anyone has seen the film “Selma,” there’s a not-very-distant history of our country seeking to live up to the values it was founded on. What would you march for? What would you give up pay for to go on strike about? What would you sacrifice for a greater cause? Some of you already have made great sacrifices, but we know we haven’t made a world which is equally safe and secure for all people even to express their ideas without ridicule. And I mean the big ‘we,’ because it’s all connected somehow.

Jonah went into the middle of the great capital city of Nineveh, right into the deep center of that nation which had sent his own people into exile. Granted, Jonah preached to those people he loathed more than anything just to get God to leave him alone. Jonah wanted to see Nineveh burn, but God wanted to see Nineveh receive mercy. It would be like sending a veteran to ISIL just to say ‘hey, re-read your Qur’an! God is merciful!’ and suddenly the people we call terrorists would set down their guns and receive forgiveness. 

When it comes down to it, we’ve already given up a lot of our freedom. Unless I’m the only one here with credit card debt and a mortgage-size student loan to repay. But Jesus comes to say that the kingdom of God has come near, and even though John the Baptist is in prison, he is a freer man than most.

Let me illustrate here a moment: In our conference we have an ecumenical ministry to the local prison. I get to hear snippets of stories from the chaplains who serve there, who meet inmates serving long sentences and get to bring the Good News of love and forgiveness into a place which is organized around punishment. One of those stories is of a man serving time who grew up in an abusive household and didn’t know any better than to think it was normal. This often happens, when kids who don’t know any different think their growing-up situation is just the way life is supposed to be. This man continued the abuse on his own spouse and children until the day he saw his adult child abusing his grandchild and realized how wrong that behavior was. To break the cycle, he turned himself and his child in to the authorities, and although he will be in jail for a very long time, he says he is more free now than he has ever been in his life.

So maybe the question isn’t ‘what struggle would you give up your freedom for,’ but ‘what would you give up for freedom itself?’ 

Solitude? Lots of folks see independence as the American Dream, but we weren’t created to live isolated from each other. Maybe giving up an ideal of being self-made for the sake of living with others in community is what is needed for true freedom.

Success? I’ve brought this one up before, because it’s so hard to measure and yet we race after it as though it will be the ultimate satisfaction. But without the freedom to fail, are we stuck in chasing after success in a way that leaves no room for learning and forgiving?

Anybody know the song “seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and its righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you, alleluia”? It comes from scripture and might lend a hint to these questions. Jesus came proclaiming that the kingdom of God has come near, and we spend the rest of the Gospel finding out what the kingdom of God is like, where the hungry are fed, the rejects are welcomed, and the sinners are forgiven. Where there is a freedom bigger and stronger than any prison walls, a freedom which cannot ever be taken from us.

This freedom, I think, is what the disciples followed. They caught glimpses along the way, and, like us, they spent their lives finding it in the strangest unexpected places, when they weren’t prepared or weren’t even looking.

I feel like I’ve asked a lot of questions this morning, but this last bunch is my goal: where have you caught glimpses of that freedom? Where has the kingdom of God come near in your life? How have you been reassured that you are enough, that God is enough, that you are loved and accepted and really truly deeply free? Because you are. You are loved. You are free. The kingdom of God is near in this news: God loves you, for Christ’s sake, and will never let you go. There is nothing that will keep God from loving you, nothing that will prevent God from walking beside you, nothing that will make God break God’s promise of faithful compassion and mercy. The kingdom of God has come near. Whether you find yourself in prison or all tied up at work or playing broom ball or stuck in traffic or waiting in line at the grocery store or arguing with a friend or waiting for a doctor or shoveling out from another snowstorm or… you get the point? 

After John was arrested, freedom came, announcing that the kingdom of God had come near. And it has. And it does. And it always will, until our final days.

God sees in the dark*

1 Samuel 3:1-20

Psalm 139:1-6,13-18

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

John 1: 43-51

Who has ever heard of ‘Jacob’s ladder’? Isaac, Abraham’s son, took Rebekah to be his wife, and Rebekah conceived and carried twins who fought each other inside her. Esau, the firstborn, was ginger and hairy all over, and he grew up to be a hunter. Jacob, the second born, came out of the womb grasping his brother’s heel, and Jacob was quieter, staying in the tents, his mother’s favorite of the two men.

Jacob and Easu did not get along very well, and Jacob cheated his brother, not once, but twice, out of his birthright and the inheritance of their father’s blessing. His mother helped him get away with it, but regardless, once the deed was done he fled for his life from the wrath of his bereaved and vengeful older brother. As the story goes (Genesis 27:41) “Esau hated Jacob because of the blessing with which his father had blessed him, and Esau said to himself, ‘The days of mourning for my father are approaching; then I will kill my brother Jacob.’” Rebekah overheard Esau comforting himself with thoughts of revenge, and she told Jacob to get up and run away, and Isaac from his deathbed also encouraged his son to get away. The story (Genesis 28:11ff) continues: Jacob left Beersheba and went toward Haran. And he came to a certain place and stead there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring [who will be like the dust of the earth, and will be a blessing]… I am with you and will keep you wherever you go… I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Did you catch the reference Jesus made to Nathanael? That ladder, with the angels ‘ascending and descending’ brought Jacob some amazing news while he was on the run from the wrath he had earned. Jacob was as far from home and safety as could be, alone and sleeping on a rock, and this vision reaches him in his sleep with a promise of new life and faithfulness.

Samuel received a vision in the dark, too. Before he even knew what the voice of the Lord was supposed to sound like, when visions were not widespread and there were plenty of other people older, wiser, more deserving of such a responsibility, Samuel heard the voice of the Lord in the dark, by the sacred ark of the covenant where he slept. He confused that voice with the voice of the priest Eli, and it took Eli a few interruptions of his own sleep to finally grasp that it was the Lord calling the boy in the first place. When Eli’s own vision had begun to get cloudy, he still had the imagination to allow for the possibility that God was still speaking. Even in the dark.

Deep in the dark, God formed us in our mothers’ wombs, knitting together those precious and delicate proteins of DNA, molding fingers and toes, shaping hearts and minds, loving every last little piece and the whole process of creation, too. It might be a hard thing to fathom, loving the process of making art every step along the way, regardless of how it turns out in the end. We tend to shy away from crafts we don’t feel competent in because we don’t want to have our finished product laughed at, but you only have to look at a kid with fingerprints to remember how much fun it is just to create. We are all creative people, from Hank’s skills at fixing cars, to Larry’s ability to see detail and get things done, to Linda’s work with the Tag Sale and all of our Sunday School teachers’ work with the kids telling stories and making macaroni and cheese. Being creative is part of how we reflect our creator. And our creator is a master crafter, knowing the ins and outs of the craft - like Betty, who knits dozens of lap blankets even with a broken wrist, or my friend Aaron who can fix store-bought knits without a pattern. That’s the sort of skill that can almost serve as a metaphor for the intimate detail of God’s knowledge of, and love for, each of us.

Which brings us back to the Gospel reading. When Nathanael first hears about Jesus, to say he is skeptical is a nice way of putting it. He’s outright racist about Nazarenes, it seems. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” he asks Philip. But when Jesus acknowledges him at the more personal level, commenting on the content of his character rather than the color of his skin, Nathanael is taken aback. “How do you know me?” he asks. Jesus replies with a word we can’t really grasp in the English language. Jesus says that he has ‘seen’ Nathanael under the fig tree. Jesus says it in the way that in the movie “Avatar” the Na’vi greet each other with honor and reverence by saying “I see you.”  The way we are not truly free to be known until the roles we play and the labels we carry are stripped away and we are seen beyond those things placed upon us. Jesus sees Nathanael, and sees us, in the way only the one who has made us in the secret depths of our mothers’ wombs can see us. 

The Gospel reading almost makes it look like Jesus was checking up on Nathanael before Philip called him. But of course there is nowhere we can hide from God’s presence, from God’s love, even from God’s calling. In the years after Jesus’ resurrection, we have been struggling with what this means. The Corinthians, for an example from today’s reading, tried to live double, secret lives, with their religious life separate from their sexual lives. Paul reminds us, and them, that our entire selves belong to God. That body, soul, sexuality, spirit, intellect, joy, sorrow, doubts, wonder, light and darkness, all belong to the God who knit us together, who calls us by name, who sees us. Once that love has seen and called us, Jesus invites us to ‘come and see’ what God is up to in our daily lives, in the lives of our community, in the world around us. God sees you and has always loved you, from the very first. God calls you and has always walked with you, from the very first. God invites you to ‘come and see.’

*disclaimer: I've been reading Barbara Brown Taylor's book "Learning to Walk in the Dark" this week, and it is marvelous. I highly recommend it. It's where my mind has been in preparing this sermon.

I dropped my drop!

Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11

My friend Aaron has this children’s message he gives from time to time that I am going to outright steal and use this morning. Or, I suppose since I’ve already let you know it’s not something I came up with, I guess it’s alright to go ahead and use it. Just so we remember we all depend on each other more often than we are probably aware of… which is sort of my point, but I haven’t gotten to it yet, so let’s start with that children’s message.

See, what happens is Aaron stands over the Baptism font with the kids and looks a little lost. “I’ve dropped it!” he says. “I’ve dropped it and I can’t find it!” Of course the kids ask what he’s dropped. They want to help, as they so often do. But this is truly an impossible task, for what Aaron has dropped is a drop of water. Into the font. How in the world is anyone going to be able to extract that one individual drop of water out of even a small bowl of water? Can’t evaporate it until there’s only the tiniest bit left. Can’t freeze it and shatter it into tiny bits. Can’t soak it up with a cloth and squeeze out only that one particular drop. Once a drop of water joins other drops of water, once the river joins the sea, or the rain falls into the lake, there is no going back. Sure we have water cycles to circulate moisture throughout the air and the land across the world, but as the sages remind us, you never step in the same river twice.

Can you guess where this is going? Today is the celebration of the Baptism of our Lord. We began worship with a thanksgiving for Baptism, calling to mind some of the wonders God has done for the world through water. Creation, the Flood, the Exodus across the Red Sea, and of course the Baptism of Jesus - and ours. Our Baptism wraps us all up together in much the same way that one single drop of water becomes part of the whole font. This might be cause for rejoicing. This might be cause for rebellion. Or confusion, seeing as there are so many people who claim the labels we claim - be they Lutheran specifically or Christian more generally - and yet they do and think and say things we would never consider to be part of our faith heritage. For example, the attack in Paris was carried out by people who called themselves Muslim, and yet Islam is a religion of peace and justice. Or the Westboro Baptist Church calls itself Christian while spouting all sorts of hate. We would really like to distance ourselves from these practices and the people who perpetrate them in the name of our faith. Even in smaller cases, if one Christian finds her doctor at Planned Parenthood and another in the same community frequently protests outside of that office, it can certainly stir up some contention.

But being caught up in Christ does not mean that we all are suddenly exactly the same. Being Baptized does not mean that we all believe and think and practice like Stepford wives or automatons. What it does mean is that we are tied up in each other, for better or for worse, living with our disagreements and differences, teaching and learning from each other while still thinking for ourselves, just like I could have easily decided not to use that lost drop of water illustration Aaron shared with his kids at his church. We are tied up in one another, dependent and interdependent, because the same God has loved us all and claimed us all in these waters of Baptism.

And even with that good news, it is not quite the Good News of today’s reading. There have been arguments through the ages about why Jesus had to be baptized. He was without sin, he is God incarnate, when we Baptize, we Baptize in his name, for crying out loud. But he stepped into John’s baptism, which was a baptism of repentance, of turning around, changing course, and it led him out into the wilderness and on to the cross, for our sake, and I’m getting ahead of myself again because the reading doesn’t take us that far. Where the reading takes us is to that intimate moment between Father and Son, where the heavens are torn apart and the Spirit descends looking like a pigeon or a dove, and Jesus is told in no uncertain terms that God loves him and delights in him. Here is Good News for us, because even if we do not have pigeons flying around at our baptisms, it is still God’s word to us in these waters that we are loved and chosen and children of God.

One of those drops of water now lost in the great bath of the world is God, who once brooded over the waters at creation, bringing forth light and life out of the chaos of that primordial soup. One of those drops of water now mixed in with the rest of us is the very One who created each of us. One of those drops of water is Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, and today, and forever, who is as near to us as these drops of water are to each other. In the coffee we drink and the water we wash our faces with. In the frozen snow and the summer rain. In the River Jordan and the waters of the Kinderhook. Jesus who has bound us all up in each other is bound up with us in this crazy sort of freedom which means we will never be separate from the love of God, no matter where we go or what we do. Yes, God loves the shooters in Paris and the Westboro Baptist Church, and the victims of all of their violence, too, because that is just who God is, and God's love for us does not depend on us. And maybe if those who act in violence knew that love of God truly and deeply there wouldn’t be so much violence. But the love of God has caught us all up, and come to join us to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in our Baptism. We have been united with him in a death like his, and so will also be united with him in a resurrection like his.

There are promises we make at Baptism, to be part of the community, to study the Word and come to the Eucharist, but even they are not as important as the promise God makes to be always in covenant relationship with us, where there is forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation. Jesus is here in the waters with us, was there at the waters of creation when all was dark and chaos, and will be with us wherever the Spirit leads, wherever we choose to go or feel we are thrown by the waters. That's just who God is.

Light shines and the darkness goes "wha...?"

Jeremiah 31:7-14
Psalm 147:12-20
Ephesians 1:3-14
John 1:1-18

They say that to win a fight you have to know your enemy. God entered fully into the darkness with us, got to know it intimately, but the darkness just couldn’t win. The light shone in the darkness and the darkness did not, could not, overcome it. Could not understand it. Could not grasp it or make sense of it. God made the world and brought light into every darkened corner of shame and fear and hiding. God gave strength to the light that was already there. And the darkness cowered, and fought back, and bit and scratched and yelled and even threw its worst at God by betrayal and mocking and murder on a cross, but that light just kept shining. And the darkness just didn’t get it.

I mean, who offers forgiveness while they are being beaten bloody? Who shares a meal with someone when they know that someone will soon betray them? Who gives and gives, while we take and take, and continues to give even when the gifts are smashed and used as weapons between those to whom they are given? Who cleans up and shows up time after time no matter how messy it gets and how often we run the other way? Who gives up their comfort to sit with us in our pain, or gives up the fruit of the vine and wheat of the field to be hungry with those who are hungry? Who willingly enters into darkness to embrace those who hide there?

Darkness doesn’t do that. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that. Fear cannot overcome fear. Perfect love casts out fear. Light shines in the darkness, and those things which had sought to hide can hide no more. Truth sets us free even when we would rather hide in comfort. We could just keep our heads down and hand over the lunch money when that schoolyard bully shows up, or we could stand up, talk with the teachers, say no to the bully, find out what fear the bully is hiding in, and heal together.

Back in seminary, when I was open and honest with my home synod about my bisexuality, they were afraid for me, afraid I would not find a parish call, afraid I would be bullied and that my presence would cause more harm than good. They were afraid because, after our denomination openly affirmed ordaining those who identify as Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender, they had experienced great loss of many parishes they honestly and deeply loved. But if I were to keep my head down, to stay in the dark, to remain in secret about who God has made me to be, I would be fighting fear with more fear. I could not lead honestly and from a place of freedom if I felt silenced. We know far too well that darkness abuses power by making us ashamed, by cutting us off from each other and making us afraid of what might happen if we are honest about our dreams and our doubts.

Another story from recent news: Leelah Alcorn, a transgender teen in Ohio, killed herself this past week because her family was ashamed of her, cut her off from her friends who had offered support, and did so in the name of their Christian faith. She and her entire family were struggling in a darkness of secrecy and shame, leading up to her stepping in front of a semi truck. But the light of hope that sprang from her suicide note, from the many trans* adults who reached out and spoke up about their lives, the Christians who stood up to say that their faith supports and celebrates human diversity, the light of hope which came from the tragedy is still spilling over in words and actions of welcome and acceptance for the many, many teens and adults who have been frightened into hiding and slowly dying under their secrets.

There is a Rabbinic parable I heard ages ago, wherein a teacher asks some students how to tell when night is over and day has come. One student guesses that it is when the last star of the evening has gone out. Another supposes it must be when the sunrise first brings rosy light to the sky. The Rabbi tells them that night is over and day begun when one person can look at a stranger and see that one as their own family. When the light reaches our hearts and changes our vision, both of the other person and of ourselves.

An addict’s first step toward healing is to come into the light and admit there is a problem over which he or she is powerless. Whether it’s our sexuality, poverty, feelings of failure, hiding from the realities of our own lived experiences just increases the darkness. Anybody have that one uncle or estranged second cousin that nobody talks about at the holidays? How awkward does that make family dinners?

To bring our secrets into the light takes away their power. And in those times and places when we do not have the strength to name our illnesses, the light still comes to our darkness. The light still opens prison doors, the light always unlocks the chains which hold us back from living in freedom and love. And when we have grown too comfortable with our chains, too familiar with our prisons, when we do not want to leave them, the light stays there with us, never abandoning us even in our death.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not understand it, and the light keeps shining. When God baptizes someone among us, we give a candle, lit from the Paschal candle, to the newly baptized, with the words, “May your light so shine, that all may see your good works and give glory to God in heaven.” We do this for many reasons, but we do this because that light which shines in our Baptism is a light we carry with us into the rest of the world. The light which is Jesus in our lives shines forth into the lives of those around us, shines hope and healing into the dark places of fear and uncertainty. The light does not give us all the answers, does not mean that we will never be afraid of anything again, but Jesus does remain with us, to feed and to carry and to guide us through every darkness of this life. He is light we can neither control or hide, but only reflect. He is the light of the love of our God, who has made this world, who walks with us in this world, who is always bringing life out of death, always doing a new thing, always loving and forgiving and restoring creation, including us.

This Second Sunday of Christmas, we continue to celebrate the Light coming to us wherever we are. We continue to marvel at God living in our skin, walking among us, pointing out and shattering the lies, of every size, which have held us captive for far too long. And in this infant, who grows up through childhood and adolescence into adulthood, God does the work of saving us from those lies. And we have seen his glory, full of grace and truth. Grace which loves us without end. Truth which sets us free to live in that love. And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The grace just keeps coming. The light just keeps shining, surprising, renewing. Jesus keeps showing up among us, making us into children of the light. God in Jesus entered fully into the darkness with us, but the darkness just couldn’t win. Can’t win. Won’t win. Because even when it doesn't look like it, Jesus wins. Light wins. Love wins.