My sister Trudy has been visually challenged her entire life. A good friend who had perfectly fine corrected vision until a few years ago, is experiencing the center of her field of vision slowly fade away due to macular degeneration, while another friend has a difficult to treat form of glaucoma so her peripheral vision is disappearing. With these people constantly on my mind, I never take my eyesight for granted. Rather I give thanks daily, often when I’m out walking, that I can see the extraordinary beauty of the world around me. The blue sky, green grass, the shrubs, trees and flowers that are in bloom this time of year - what an extraordinary gift to be able to see and appreciate it all. At the same time, I’m acutely aware that what we see is only partly informed by the light waves that strike our eyes which in turn send signals to our brains that register as blue sky, green grass or whatever. The reality is we only see a fraction of what passes before us largely because we tend to see what we expect to see while failing to notice everything else. This can be problematic for law enforcement personnel trying to find out what happened during an accident or when a crime was committed when what witnesses to the event claim to have seen doesn’t agree.

One of the things that influences what we see at any given moment is what we’ve been taught over a long period of time to expect to see. I’m sure you’ve all heard some version of that rhetorical question, If you encountered Jesus on the street today, would you follow him? This is immediately followed with, Well of course you would, if you knew it was Jesus. But how would you know? What does Jesus look like after all? I know I’m not alone when I tell you I grew up looking at countless images of what I call the Scandinavian Jesus. You know who I mean, that light skinned fellow with the sandy hair in kind of a page boy and light brown eyes. The man was Semitic!! I can’t help but think that images like those I just mentioned were at least partly responsible for an exchange I witnessed during a multigenerational education time in a small church I attended decades ago. We were studying the catechism I believe and I don’t remember what triggered the question but suddenly this very precocious six year old exclaimed, Wait, Jesus was Jewish?!? Well yes, replied the vicar. Huh, Christopher gasped… I always thought he was British! Spoken like a true Anglican, responded the vicar. But really, if in every picture of Jesus he’d ever seen Jesus looked like Sir Lancelot, why wouldn’t Christopher have leapt to that conclusion? For once I can assure you this is not simply a Caucasian issue. My two favorite images of Jesus, of all the paintings and other artwork I’ve seen during my life anywhere in the world, are two pictures that hang in the diocesan center in Cuernavaca. In one Jesus is laughing, and in the other he’s looking down at a baby in his arms. In both cases Jesus is moreno, that is, he has dark hair and brown skin. I’ve read that in many churches in Africa Jesus is portrayed as black. This is not illogical when you think about it. We’re taught all our lives that we are created in the image of God. If we understand that to mean we look like God, then it’s only reasonable to conclude that God looks like us. The issue then becomes, how narrowly do we define us?

So considering all of this, I would argue that the most important seeing that occurs in our lives doesn’t rely simply on the light that strikes our eyes, but on what we see, or rather experience, with our hearts. Consider the disciples on the road to Emmaus whom we heard about in today’s Gospel reading. They spent hours, hours! walking with Jesus without ever realizing with whom they were walking. Think about that. These were people who walked the earth with Jesus. While it doesn’t sound like they were from the inner circle of twelve, they’re referred to as disciples so they surely had listened to Jesus teach, probably had seen him heal the sick, perhaps had been part of one of the crowds that he had miraculously fed. Yet they had no idea they were walking with Jesus. Why not? Because there was no way it could be Jesus. Jesus had died two days before on the cross. They hadn’t dared get too close but they’d seen him up there, they knew he’d died, that his body had been taken down from the cross and buried. Oh sure, they’d heard what the women - there’s the issue! - had reported, that when they went to the tomb this morning Jesus’ body was gone and angels told them that Jesus was alive, but come on! Everybody knew Jesus had died. Not until at their invitation Jesus joined them for the evening meal, and then during the course of the meal took bread, blessed and broke it and gave it to them did they recognize Jesus for who he was. Only then, in retrospect, did they remember that their hearts had burned while Jesus had been teaching them as they walked together. In other words, their hearts had recognized something that their minds didn’t consider possible and because they relied on their minds rather than their hearts they were unable to recognize who was right there with them. They say seeing is believing, but maybe sometimes we have to believe in order to be able to see.

So what does all of this have to do with living in today’s world? For starters it means if we have any desire at all of convincing others that being a Christian is a worthwhile way of life, we can’t rely on words alone to do it. After all, that didn’t work for the risen Jesus. Besides, the world is beyond tired of Christian rhetoric. Indeed, what is being passed off as Christian teaching by some these days is such a horrible perversion of the teachings of Jesus it makes my skin crawl. None of that is going to inspire people to become followers of Jesus. No, people need to experience behavior that touches them in a way that convinces them at the deepest level that being a Christian is not about separating oneself from those who are different, or about lording it over people deemed inferior for one reason or another, but rather that being a Christians really and truly is about loving one’s neighbor. They need to experience first hand that it’s about helping those who need help, defending those who are frightened, raising up those who have been beaten down.

Paradoxically though, sometimes living our faith doesn’t have to be about what we do, but instead can be something as simple yet powerful as taking time to be, just be, with someone who feels utterly alone. In one of his midwinter meditations Retired Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning describes being at home in New York City with his wife Patti as a blizzard raged outside. They were enjoying being cozy and warm indoors when the daughter of a friend called from Connecticut. She had given birth way too early, the baby weighed less than a pound and wasn’t expected to live. Could Bishop Browning come and baptize the baby. They went. He said that he didn’t know a human being could be that small, that he could easily have held the child in the palm of his hand. A nurse gave him a paper medicine cup of water and he baptized the baby. He said in that moment he knew he saw Jesus. He said that he had done baptisms in some pretty magnificent places, but he had never felt the presence of Jesus more clearly than he felt it that night. He added that the little boy lived, and as he wrote the meditation was a bright and busy toddler. “He does not know,” Bishop Browning wrote, “that he was Jesus to me when he was born.”

The idea of being Jesus to someone sounds pretty daunting, so we need to keep in mind that tiny infant. He didn’t do anything, he simply was. I’ve said many times that anyone who has looked into the eyes of a child has seen the face of God. It’s that sort of wordless heart to heart connection that the world is dying to experience from us. It is the spirit to spirit connection that occurs when the Jesus in us is truly able to connect with the Jesus in another person. Once that connection forms, it can carry us past a whole host of superficial differences. This doesn’t mean we’ll never again experience interpersonal conflicts. Keep in mind that Jesus lost patience with even his closest followers, was downright angry with Peter at times. He was frankly rather nasty in some of the things he said, like when he implied helping the Syrophoenician woman would be like giving the children’s food to the dogs. But he didn’t stay angry with Peter. He acknowledged the faith displayed by the Syrophoenician woman as she continued to seek help for her daughter even after he initially rejected her plea. In other words Jesus let go of momentary anger, he looked past cultural differences, in order to ultimately see and respond to the intrinsic value of every person fortunate enough to cross his path. We may or may not be able to do that, but we can at least try. Even when we fail, and we will - none of us can connect with everyone - if we sincerely look for the Jesus in other people at least once in awhile we’ll succeed in finding that holy inner being. When that happens, when the Jesus in us finds, perhaps sets free to be seen for the first time, the Jesus in another person, we will have succeeded in showing the world in a way that truly matters, what it means to be a Christian.

Amen.

Poor Thomas. Poor, poor Thomas. We have nicknamed him “Doubting Thomas”, and I think it is a most unfair nickname. He already has one, Didymus, which means “the twin”, but think of other nicknames people have received. Simon Peter—Peter, the Rock. That’s a good, solid, strong nickname. How about “the Beloved Disciple”? I’m pretty sure John gave himself that nickname, but it’s a good one. We still call John the Beloved Disciple today. Mary Magdalene is quite likely a nickname. For many years people thought it was Mary of Magdala, but archaeologists have failed to find a town called Magdala. Scholars have come up with the idea that it is “Mary Magdalena”, meaning “Mary the Tower”. They are all great nicknames, but “Doubting Thomas”?

For my sermon I am going to make an argument, and the argument is this: I am going to defend the proposition that we need to rebrand Thomas. No longer Doubting Thomas, but what can we call him? We’ll try to figure that out together.

For the evidence of this argument we are going to look at the three stories we have about Thomas. The first is from the story of the raising of Lazarus. That is the first time we learn anything about Thomas. Before they go to Bethany for Jesus to raise Lazarus, Jesus gets word that Lazarus is sick and that he should go and heal him. But Jesus says he is not going to do that. A few days pass, Lazarus has died, and Jesus says it is now time to go. The other Disciples think this is a crazy idea. He’s already dead, so what’s the point. And they remind Jesus that they tried to kill him the last time he was in Jerusalem. Why go back there? And Jesus said, it is good. We must go back for the glory of God. Thomas is the one who responds by saying, All right, Jesus, let’s go so we can die with you! That’s not very doubting, is it?

The second piece of evidence: the night before Jesus died, after the last Supper, after the Washing of the Feet, Jesus has a long, multi-chapter monologue of teachings, and Jesus says, in my Father’s house are many dwelling places or many mansions. He goes on to say, I am going to prepare a place for you, and you know the way. Thomas says, wait a minute. We don’t know where you are going. How would we know the way? And Jesus says, I am the Way, the Truth, and the Light. Thomas is not doubting, he’s questioning, bringing up a point of order—we don’t have the information that you think we have, and we need that.

Now let’s fast forward to the first day of the Resurrection. It says all the Disciples are gathered together in a room, and Jesus shows up. Thomas is not there, so the other Disciples tell Thomas about Jesus’s appearance, and Thomas says, I’m not going to believe you until I see with my own eyes and touch with my own hands. That’s why we call him Doubting Thomas.

If so, the other Disciples should also be called “doubting”. We should have Doubting Peter and Doubting James and Doubting John - Doubting Beloved Disciple - because they had already heard that Jesus had been risen from Mary Magdalene. She saw Jesus and she told them, and they didn’t believe. The other Disciples have now seen Jesus, but Thomas hadn’t and didn’t believe, so why is he the doubting one when the rest of them aren’t?

The next week Thomas is there with them and he gets his opportunity to see Jesus. Jesus appears and says, you can have everything you want, Thomas. You can see me with your eyes, you can touch me with your hands. Did you notice that Thomas does not do that? In that moment Thomas simply says, my Lord and my God. He did not need the very thing that he claimed he needed, the basis of his so-called doubt. I’m not sure that is doubting as much as wondering, questioning, insisting on what everyone else got.

So what other names could we use for this Thomas, formerly known as The Doubter? How about Inquisitive Thomas? The one who raises his hand to ask the question, the one who says, I need more information. Maybe Inquisitive Thomas would be a good nickname for him.

How about Courageous Thomas? “We’re going to die? Fine. I’m in it with you, Jesus.” That requires some courage (with perhaps a bit of stupidity—Stupid Thomas?) It was courageous to stand up to Jesus when no one else does. It takes courage to be willing to die, and to stand up to Jesus, and to stand up to all his friends. They had all seen Jesus, but Thomas does not believe them. He doesn’t give in to the group, but says I want a bit more. He also has the courage to keep hanging out with the Disciples. The others had had the experience and Thomas didn’t feel like part of the group anymore, but he still goes on with them. He still holds on to the hope that he, too, will have that experience. He stays with the group, seeking, wondering, questioning. We can add doubting to the mix because of some of the things that were going through his head. But what Thomas did required some courage to stand up to his friends.

Courageous Thomas. Inquisitive Thomas. How about Faithful Thomas? Isn’t faith a meal peppered with a little certainty and uncertainty? He certainly has both. Isn’t faith peppered with questions and wonderings and seeking and longings and desires and needs? Isn’t faith showing up even when you haven’t gotten what you need, yet, keeping on that journey to learn and grow and seek? I think that is all a part of faith. Doubt and belief are both a part of faith. I think Faithful Thomas might be a nice name for him.

Inquisitive Thomas, Courageous Thomas, Faithful Thomas. It sounds like he is a good model of the faith for us in our faith journey. To have some courage when things are tough. To have some wondering, some questions, but to keep seeking and showing up. To enjoy those moments of certainty and confidence and not give up when we have uncertainty. It seems like Thomas might be a wonderful model with all of his complexity, and all the adjectives that we could give him. Thomas would be a good model for us in our faith.

AMEN.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Happy Easter, my friends, Happy Easter!

On this day, we celebrate the Good News of that historic moment nearly two thousand years ago that changed the world when Mary Magdalene found the tomb empty and discovered that Jesus had been raised. All four Gospel tell the story a little bit different, but they all agree on two facts: Mary Magdalene was there - sometimes by herself, sometimes with others – and the tomb was empty for Christ was alive. This was an event that showed that that Rome’s brutality – and let’s say it, evil – did not get the final word. It was a moment that showed that death did not get the final word.

But this celebration is not just about the past. This is not an anniversary celebration. Easter is a celebration of an ongoing reality. Did you notice in those opening words of the liturgy that they are in the present tense? Alleluia, Christ is risen, not Christ was risen. Our opening hymn put it a little bit more overtly: Jesus Christ is risen today. Last night at the Vigil, we sang a 400-year old hymn that began “Christ the Lord is risen again.” Our faith teaches us that Easter is not a one-and-done event, but a truth of the world. God is bringing up new life all around us.

Sadly, this is not just true of Easter. It is true of the Passion. Last week, we sang the old classic hymn Ah, holy Jesus, which explores who is responsible for the crucifixion, and the answer of the hymn is that I am. I, here in this present moment, am responsible. Good Friday is most certainly an ongoing reality. Crucifixion - literal and metaphorical - happens around the world and even here close to home. Sometimes it takes the form torture from brutal regimes; at other times it is summary execution in the streets by paramilitary forces. Sometimes it is the powers and principalities of this world declaring war. Good Friday can hit awfully close to home when the suffering is the pain we feel in our fragile bodies from illness. The Passion continues when relationships fall apart, or jobs are lost, or food is insecure, or we are under the threat of detention, or we or a loved one are incarcerated. The Passion is ongoing.

But, my friends, so is the resurrection, for Jesus Chris is risen today! God is doing amazing things: God is creating Good News that is begging to be shared. Our faith is not a faith of the past. Our faith is grounded in the past, for sure, but it is a faith lived in the present with an eye to the future. We have a faith that asks us to offer praise for - and even to join in with - all of the goodness of the Lord in this world. And we have a faith that asks us to look expectantly forward in hope.

This is the Easter life we are invited to live as followers of the Risen One. We must train our eyes to see the Good News; and we must to train our lips to speak it. We cannot give in to the forces of despair and nihilism that cry out to us. We are an Easter people; the tomb is empty. Remember, death does not get the final word, life does. The powers of evil and darkness do not get the final word, love and light do. Live this Easter life. Amen.

On Tuesday evening, a group of about 20 or so of us gathered together for the Stations of the Cross. The Stations are a different way to approach the Passion story that we just heard. You could say it is a more embodied approach. During this meditative service, we walked from station to station, carrying a cross as we went. And at each of the 14 stations, we looked at the image with our eyes while we listened to the story with our ears.

The telling of this story wasn’t exactly straightforward. Along with hearing from the Passion story itself, we also heard from other parts of scripture. For instance, when we got to the station about Simon of Cyrene helping Jesus carry his cross, we heard the gospel section about Simon, but we also heard from Jesus earlier in his ministry telling the disciples that they would have to pick up their crosses and follow him. At the station about Jesus meeting his mother, we heard the gospel story about Mary at the cross, but we also heard the story of when Jesus was 12 and he gave his parents a fright by going to the temple instead of coming home with them.

At station six we heard a section from Colossians, and this one line in the reading that I have read or heard hundreds of times, stood out to me in this inexplicable way, as if I was hearing it for the first time. The line is this: “Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God.” I have been ruminating on this line all week. Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. Nobody has ever seen God. God is invisible. An annoying fact that opens up so much room for doubt and uncertainty. This invisibility also opens up room for charlatans to try and take advantage of people by offering their own self-serving image of God.

But this line from Colossians reminds us that while God might be invisible, God is not concealed. Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God. If we want to see God, we are invited to gaze upon Jesus. We can see God when we look at Jesus as a baby lying in the manger – the all-powerful creator of everything, vulnerable and dependent on his mother. We can see God when we look at Jesus healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and weeping with his friends over the death of their brother. We can even hear God when we listen to Jesus’ teaching about the primacy of love in all things: Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, and soul, and love your neighbor as yourself, on these two hang all the law and the prophets. I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God.

Today, we glance at Jesus hanging on the cross, and we see the image of the invisible God. This is not quite the image of God as the philosophers of old imagined: God omnipotent, immutable, omniscient. No, this is a wrongly convicted man beaten down by the powers and principalities of this world. This is a picture of frailty and anguish. Yes, this is a sovereign God who is ruler over all – the word King is even placed on the cross with him – but God has traded all that power for true solidarity with humanity. There is a certain intimacy with humanity in this image of God entering into our darkest and most horrific moments. The image we are presented with in the Good Friday story is of a God who knows that true strength is found in weakness; true might in vulnerability; true power in love.

Swindlers and grifters try to tell us that God is violent, demanding, and forceful. They peddle this God for personal or political gain. And you will see this image of God everywhere in popular culture and media. You will hear it from many pulpits. But this is not God. At least this is not the God that we see when look upon Jesus Christ who is the image of the invisible God. Especially when we look upon Jesus hanging from the cross. We do not have a muscular God; rather, we have a tender one who stretches out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross. The cross is hard. The world is hard. Not our God.

Today, on this Friday that we oddly call Good, turn your gaze to the cross, and behold the one that was nailed to it. This one who is the image of the invisible God. This is a God who is not distant, but is intimately close to us in all of our imperfections, frailties, and limitations. This is a God of affection, compassion, and kindliness. This is a God who loves you more than you can ask for or begin to imagine. Amen.

In our Gospel today we are introduced to the character Nicodemus. Nicodemus was a wealthy, well respected member of the community. He was also considered to be a leader among the Jews. He had been hearing about this Jesus guy and was intrigued. He had some questions, and so he goes to Jesus to try and get his questions answered.

The Gospel says he went in “the dark of night”, which could be because he wanted secrecy. He might also be concerned that he would lose his reputation if he ends up following Jesus. John’s is also a highly metaphorical Gospel, and when he talks about darkness and light there is usually a deeper meaning. The darkness and night could also represent confusion in Nicodemus’s mind about what is going on. But he is interested, and so goes down in the dark of night, lurking in the shadows, and asks Jesus some questions. Jesus gives answers, and there is some back and forth. I get the sense in this Gospel that Nicodemus probably left a little disappointed, that his questions were not as clearly answered as he would have liked. If this was the end of Nicodemus’s story, it would be easy to say that he had just been a foil for Jesus’s teachings. There are a lot of great teachings in this section of the Gospel: For God so love the world that He gave his only begotten Son; being born anew with water and the Holy Spirit. It would be easy to think Nicodemus was just a foil to get these teachings out, but Nicodemus shows up again in the Gospel.

The next time he shows up is when Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Festival of the Booths. Jesus has been getting a lot more people around him. He has been going to the Temple to teach during the day, and the religious leaders, of which Nicodemus is one, are getting upset with Jesus. They think he is committing blasphemy, and some are calling for him to be killed. Nicodemus is there for one of these conversations with other leaders who are figuring out ways to arrest Jesus, but have been unsuccessful. Nicodemus tips his toe in the water of what it might mean to defend Jesus. He doe not give a full-throttle defense of Jesus. He does not say I am following him, or yes, he is the Messiah, or yes he is the Son of God. He asks if Jesus should not have a trial first. Shouldn’t he be given his due process before we execute him? Nicodemus puts forth a very basic, simple defense. Perhaps he is testing the waters as to what would happen if he came out in full support of Jesus.

Nicodemus gets a lot of push-back from his friends, clearly showing that if Nicodemus had gone to see Jesus in the light of day, he would have been shunned by his friends. He might have lost his position in the community. This is the end of the second story of Nicodemus.

Nicodemus comes a third time in the Gospel, at the end of Jesus’s life at the crucifixion, after Jesus has died. Remember that almost all of Jesus’s friends had abandoned him, but there are a few who don’t. The women don’t abandon Jesus, the beloved Disciple is at the foot of the cross, and there are two more men, Joseph of Arimathea, and Nicodemus. He is there when almost every else has abandoned Jesus, and with Joseph they take his body and bury it. Nicodemus is the one who provides the oils and perfumes and spices, about 100 pounds of them. This is a big investment that he is making in caring for Jesus’s body. They are hurrying to do this before it gets dark. The first time Nicodemus comes to Jesus it is in the dark, and here we have Nicodemus in the light where everyone can see that he is by Jesus’s side.

There is an arc in the Gospel of Nicodemus moving from wondering and questions, lurking in shadows, to dipping his toe in the water, to having the courage to be there by his side when everyone else says Jesus is a criminal. It is a remarkable transformation that Nicodemus has over the course of the Gospel. Tradition tells us Nicodemus went on to be a follower of Jesus who was ultimately martyred for the faith. Many churches and denominations throughout the world have a Feast Day for Nicodemus in August.

This transformation is interesting when we put it in contrast to the conversion stories of other Disciples. The stories that we heard during Epiphany, of people like Peter and Andrew and Nathaniel. Peter is fishing, and Jesus says come and follow me. Peter drops everything, leaves his home, leaves his family, leaves his fishing and follows Jesus, just like that. Andrew does much the same thing. When Nathaniel first hears about Jesus he has some questions, but as soon as he meets Jesus, that is all put aside. He is there, following Jesus. We might also think of St. Paul on the road to Damascus, the blinding light moment that made him turn his entire life around. These are the standard conversion stories that come to mind when we think of conversion stories of those who became followers of Jesus.

But Nicodemus offers us a different model of how some come to the faith. Not one with blinding lights, not one with a sudden transformation, but one that has questions and wonderings and doubts. It is a slow transformation of the heart and mind and soul that eventually gets there when it matters most.

If you have had that kind of blinding light road to Damascus moment, that is wonderful. That is fantastic. But if you haven’t, that is also wonderful and fantastic. It is not the only way to have faith. I have talked to many people over the years who have had those great transformative, epiphany mountaintop moments of faith, but I have talked to more over the years whose faith has come slower and more questioning. Sometimes there is an insecurity in this process that people have expressed privately to me. I think Nicodemus is a good model for those who have that experience. I am not saying one is better than the other, but I will point out that Peter abandoned Jesus and denied him three times. Nicodemus, as slow as it might have been, had the courage to be there when it really mattered.

Sometimes I think of Nicodemus as the first Episcopalian, because I know many of you have faith like Nicodemus. You have questions, you have wonderings, you lurk in the shadows of the back pew for years, sneak in and out. But you know what? It is meet and right. It is good because you are here. Anglican spirituality is not one that has put a strong emphasis on those big flashy moments. People have them, don’t get me wrong, and they are good. We spent an entire season of Epiphany celebrating those big flashy moments. But Anglicanism is a spirituality that puts its energy on the slower transformative process. It is one that is not trying to look for the flashy conversion. We are not going to have you come up here and give your testimony about when you came to follow Jesus. This is a tradition that says week in and week out, year in and year out we try to draw closer to Jesus. We try and learn more, bringing all of our questions, all of our wonderings, all of our worries and skepticisms to Jesus. We invite Jesus to answer them, and try slowly to come closer. We try slowly to become one with Christ.

During this Lenten season, my friends, I invite you to take this time to draw closer to God. Take another step, bring another question, engage in another practice that might nourish your soul. You might not necessarily get there all the way, but this is OK. You can try again next year. We just keep at this, bit by bit, bringing our whole selves to Christ, asking for that transformation in the way of love that He came to show us. Draw closer to that way, draw closer to Christ.

AMEN

Perhaps like you, I got smudged this last Wednesday.

The 18th, as you may recall, was Ash Wednesday, the first day in the season of Lent. It’s a day that dares us think about this thing called life, but also about this thing called death – a day in which we are reminded of the dust from which we were created and the dust to which we shall return. Perhaps more than anything, though, it’s a day that reminds us of our humanness, that in the midst of being real, fleshy, messy human beings, a need for the Holy still exists. Maybe that’s why, for a whole lot of folks, the Lenten journey becomes one of turning around and changing directions and sometimes even showing a little repentance too.

But on Wednesday, just as I got smudged, I also did a fair amount of smudging, at a local hospital no less.

Over the last five months, I’ve spent every Tuesday and Friday, and this last week, Wednesday, earning clinical hours at a hospital outside of Oakland, California, where I live. We called ourselves chaplain interns, for ours was a CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) unit to complete, some for purposes of ordination, some because they want to be hospital chaplains when they grew up, some because they just wanted the 20-hour-a-week volunteer experience.

And I’ll tell you what, Ash Wednesday hit differently this year, perhaps because life and death and the stark reality of what it means to find a home in a human body couldn’t be avoided. To patients and babies, families and staff, I looked them in the eyes and invited them to take a deep breath and think about this thing called life. To all of them, including those who had only been breathing for less than 24 hours and to those who only had another 24 hours left to breathe, I put a thumb to forehead and said, “Remember you are God’s beloved dust, and to God’s beloved dust you shall return.”

It was beautiful and raw and holy and precious and haunting, in so many different ways – the stark reality of humanness more real than ever before.

Now, lest you think I’m simply offering another Ash Wednesday reflection instead of a sermon on the first Sunday in Lent, hold those initial musings for a moment as we return to this morning’s Gospel reading – because in Matthew 4, the humanity of Jesus, and subsequently, the dichotomy of life and death and then of two things both being true at once, takes center stage.

Perhaps the passage is familiar to you: the Spirit leads Jesus into the wilderness to be tested by the devil. For 40 days and nights the God-man does not eat. Afterward, Matthew notes, he is quite famished. Well, yes, of course the Son of Man is famished, and at the end of his strength – at the end of nearly seven weeks, as one writer notes, he feels “socially alone and friendless … spiritually struggling to hang onto his identity as the glow of his baptism recedes into a hazy, pre-wilderness past.”1 Jesus, the human, the man, is in a state of vulnerability, and it is in such a state that the tempter tries to pull him away from his belovedness, his vocation, his identity – because prior to this encounter in the wilderness, Jesus had been baptized by his cousin, John the Baptist. A voice from heaven had said, “This is my son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.”2 Even in the wilderness, Jesus knew who he was – that he was God’s beloved son – and still, he was at the end of his rope physically, spiritually, socially.

As one theologian says, “Is it no accident that Jesus ends up in the wilderness after his baptism,”3 for it is here that like bait thrown to a hungry animal and the devil tosses out a number of “if” statements: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.” “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you.’” “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” To each of these temptations, Jesus quotes the ancient words written on his heart; he is taken from one location to another and to another still. It is not until after the third, unsuccessful “iffy” attempt, that the devil flees from him and a flock of angels swoop in.

Now, it’s often at this point in the reading that I can find myself utterly grateful: well, thank God, God, you got through that utterly human obstacle and can go back to being your full God self now. Perhaps this stems from the tradition in which I was raised, a tradition that sometimes seems far from the smells and bells of the Episcopal Church. There, we tended to want our Jesus human …but not too human.4 We were fine with him experiencing his human side for a little while there, but couldn’t he just get back to turning water into wine and calming the storms and healing the sick already? Couldn’t he get back to doing the really real God stuff? There, we called Jesus, “God in the bod, 100% God and 100% man.” His was a math equation we didn’t always know how to explain, a story problem that still somehow always seemed to err on the side of divinity when all was said and done.

But if this reading and the season of Lent and a day marked by smudged ashes on foreheads have anything to show us, perhaps we are invited to “grapple with the appalling messiness of humanity,”5 both of Jesus and of ourselves, just a little while longer.

What are we to say of our human selves that “can be loved and hungry at the same time,” that “can hope and hurt at the same time”? What can we say of a “trust that when God nourishes, it won’t be by magic?”6

Calling yourself a Christian, or more specifically to our context, an Episcopalian, doesn’t mean that you get a holy get-out-of-jail-free card, that bad things aren’t then going to happen to you now that you have accepted the cloak of belovedness placed upon your shoulders. Wilderness is still going to come into our lives – to us and to those we love, to our neighbors here in Eugene, but also halfway across the country in Minneapolis and in other cities here in the U.S. affected by a surge of federal detentions and deportations, and around the world in countries like Sudan, Ukraine, Myanmar, and Gaza where war is ongoing.

Perhaps the invitation in these inevitable wilderness places, during this season of Lent when we confront life face-on and “embrace all that it means to be human,” is to chew on what it means to be “human and hungry, human and vulnerable, human and beloved,”7 at the very same time. We think of Emmanuel, God With Us, who is “with you always, even to the end of the age,”8 who “has already gone ahead of his followers, even to the most forsaken places of the wilderness,”9 even here, even now.

As writer Debie Thomas says of this tension, and perhaps of the invitation that arises from this passage specifically, “we can be beloved and uncomfortable at the same time. We can be beloved and unsafe at the same time. [Because] In the wilderness, the love that survives is flinty, not soft. Salvific, not sentimental. [And} learning to trust it takes time.”10

So learning to trust we will, as we cling to our identities as beloved children of God, beside and through and with one another, in this holy communion of saints.

Amen.

[1] Debie Thomas, Journey With Jesus: https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2541-tempted

[2] Matthew 3:17

[3] Audrey West, Working Preacher: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-in-lent/commentary-on-matthew-41-11-3

[4] Thomas

[5] Thomas

[6] Thomas

[7] Thomas

[8] Matthew 28:20

[9] West

[10] Thomas

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit and shine your light into our hearts today. In the name of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, One God. Amen.

Two Sundays ago Bingham spoke to us about the theme of light that runs throughout the scriptures. From John’s Gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the LIGHT of all people. The LIGHT shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the LIGHT, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the LIGHT but he came to testify to the LIGHT. The TRUE LIGHT which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:1-9). In Advent we prepare for the coming of the light and at Christmas we rejoice that the light has come. In Epiphany the magi are guided by the star to discover the light of God come into our world. Throughout this season of Epiphany, we see revelations of the light of the world through Jesus’ baptism where the Holy Spirit descends and God claims Jesus declaring him beloved, at the wedding feast in Cana we see the light of the world in the first miracle, through Jesus’ teachings that we heard last week in the blessings, not as the world sees blessings, but as Jesus declares the radical new world order of God’s blessing and care for the least, the last and the lost. And if you recall, Bingham gave us a preview of what was to come from Jesus and the light, how Jesus would instruct us on how to be light bearers in our world today.

Here we are this Sunday where Jesus tells us to be salt and light. “You are the light of the world.” We too are light as we seek to follow Jesus, to receive, shine and share that divine light in our world. Jesus tells us and shows us how we are to be light, to shine and illuminate our world today. “Let you light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to God.”

Our world is FULL of darkness right now. We are living in a time where it is hard to find, or shine light. There is darkness in our personal lives: family members struggling with substance use disorder, relationships failing, crumbling, loss of jobs and medical benefits, ongoing battles with chronic pain, teenagers overwhelmed with anxiety, friends, good friends, active and full-of- life parish members who receive cancer diagnoses, rapidly deteriorate and die too soon, too quickly, Latino parishioners afraid to come to church because of ICE, teenagers worried about losing moms and dads to detention and deportation, political leaders disregarding the dignity of human beings and turning to racist tropes, and on, and on, and on. Our world is dark. There is not denying it.

And yet, we are called to be light, to shine the light of Christ in our world today.

As God spoke to the people of Isaiah’s time, God speaks to us. How DO we shine? How CAN we shine? What are we to do? First, remember always that the smallest of lights dispels darkness and that together, together, our light will grow and grow and grow until it shines like the dawn. Remember too the words of John’s Gospel: “…The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.” The darkness of our world has never, does not now, and will never overtake the love and light of God. PERIOD. This week I have seen the light as people came together to support one another in grief over the loss of our beloved parishioner Katie Thomas. I have seen the light as we gathered to sing and show a better way of peace and love at the federal building on Tuesday at noon. I have seen the light as I travelled to Grants Pass to be with the priest who baptized me, prepared me for confirmation and supported me in my priestly discernment, the Rev. Jim Boston as I anointed him and prayed with him and his wife Pam. I have seen the light.

The prophet Isaiah tells us how to shine light, how to shine so that people see our good works and give glory to God. “…Loose the bonds of injustice, let the oppressed go free, break every yoke, every thing that holds people down, share your bread with the hungry, house the unhoused, clothe people, be reconciled and care for your kin. Then, then, you light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing spring up quickly, when you call out to God, God will answer, “Here I am!” and your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday. The Lord will guide you and satisfy your needs in parched places, make your bones strong, you’ll be like a watered garden, like a spring of water that never runs out. Such beauty, such light, life, and restoration Isaiah describes for us and our world when we shine bright with God’s love.

My siblings in the light of Christ, SHINE! Be the light of Christ in our broken and desperate world today. When we come to be with one another in grief, we shine and our light grows. When we come together to pray and praise and be fed at the table, we shine. When we stand and sing and hold signs and decry injustice, we shine. TOGETHER we shine. We need each other. I need your light. I share my light and I combine it with yours and on and one we go. We need one another’s’ light. Together we must shine the light that will change our world. Light that will usher in God’s dream of love and equity for all.

This little light of mine, I’m gonna’ let it shine (3x)

Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Amen.

These past few weeks, we have been working our way through the opening of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians.

In today’s installment, Paul asks a question that always piques my interest: “Where is the debater of this age?” See, I used to do debate, sometimes called policy debate or cx debate, in high school and college, traveling all over the country to tournaments. So, when Paul talks about debaters, I notice.

His question here, however, is not a serious question. In the Roman world and the Greek world before it, debate was popular, all forms of oratory were. And all educated people, of which Paul is certainly one, would have been trained in the art of debate. Paul knows exactly where to go to find a debater in that age. No, this is not a serious question, it is a rhetorical question designed to mock. Ultimately, he is trying to set up an argument for why the faith we proclaim is better than the values of the world.

Debate is ultimately about wins and losses, and you are to strive for the wins. Victory and success. The whole point is to convince the audience or judge or judges that you are right and that your opponent is wrong. This was as true then; it still is today. In debate, there are winners and losers.

To win, to persuade people of your rightness, every debater would have used Aristotle’s three-fold approach to persuasion, found in the book Rhetoric. Everyone would have read this book in school, Paul most certainly read this book in school. In Rhetoric, Aristotle argues that you need to use some combination of your own ethos (your presence, expertise, position), the pathos of your audience (their worries, fears, anxieties), and your logos (your words, the carefully structured logic – logos/logic – the carefully structured logic of your words). Ethos, pathos, and logos.

But the logos Paul really cares about is not the logos of our arguments, but the Logos of God. Logos means Word. In the beginning was the Word, the Logos, and the Logos became flesh and lived among us. Paul points to the true Logos. Not the debater’s logos, not Aristotle's logos, but the true and ultimate Logos, the incarnate Logos, the incarnate Word: Jesus Christ.

And the image of the logos with which Paul starts the argument of this letter is the Logos hanging there on the cross. "The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God." This is counter to everything that the debater - of Paul's age, of our age, of every age - cares about. Losing instead of winning; failure instead of success.

The cross: that shameful tool of execution of the Roman State, designed to make a point to the whole body politic by publicly humiliating the victim. The cross: the ancient equivalent of the electric chair or the lynching tree or the gun used in a summary execution by an agent of the state on the street.

The Cross - this horrendous thing - is the foundation of true wisdom, true knowledge, true discernment, true boasting. The cross is the foundation of Paul's argument – remember we are just starting this letter, he is still laying the foundation for his argument that will unfold – the cross is the foundation of the argument that is going to take him into his wild claims later in the letter about what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, a baptized member of the Body of Christ - when he will claim that even the weakest, lowliest member is not only necessary, but often the most valuable - and his audacious claims about the primacy of love over every other gift.

This argument is an echo what Jesus proclaimed from the mountain that we heard in the Gospel today: blessed are the poor, the mourners, the meek, the hungry, the thirsty, the merciful, the pure, the peacemakers, the persecuted. Jesus lifts up the lowly and proclaims that they are blessed.

What kind of blessings are these? Certainly not blessings as the world understands blessing. These are not things that the typical debater is going to use as evidence of blessing. But these are the way of Jesus. These are the blessings of the way of the cross. "Foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved it is the power of God."

Winning is seductive. Success pulls at us constantly. Power is like the siren calling out to Odysseus. And yet, as Paul reminds us, winning, success, and power are nothing compared to God. The foolishness of God is greater than our wisdom; the weakness of God greater than our strength. Winning, success, and power are all useless in the light of the cross.

This argument is also an echo of Micah in our first reading trying to plead his case before the mountains. And yet, proclaim he must and proclaim we must, to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God.

What foolishness it is to do these three things in our world that seems to delight in injustice, to love meanness, and to run arrogantly from our God, run arrogantly as if we were God. All foolishness. But it is the foolish wisdom of God. And we have to keep proclaiming this foolish wisdom.

Keep proclaiming justice, kindness, and humility. Keep proclaiming the love taught in the words of the Beatitudes. Keep proclaiming the cross. These are the way of Jesus. Do not weary of this of this proclamation. Even as the world calls you foolish for prioritizing service over power, humility over arrogance, love over fear. Do not weary. For that power of God will carry you through to the end. Amen.

There is a thread through most of our lessons. Not in the Epistle, where there is a little insider stuff. The Epistle is rarely selected to match the other lessons, except on special days. Generally, we read through one of Paul’s Epistles, as we are working our way through 1st Corinthians now. The Epistle does not match the other lessons today, but the first reading, the Psalm, and the Gospel are selected to have at least one thread that connects them. There is a thread that is pretty clear in these readings today, and it is light.

As we heard in Isaiah, “the people who walked in deep darkness have seen a great light. Those who lived in a land of deep darkness, on them light has shined.” And in the Psalm we hear “The Lord is my light and my salvation. Whom then shall I fear?” And in the Gospel we heard Matthew quote Isaiah in a slightly different translation, “the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light. And for those who sat in the region and shadow of death, light has dawned.” We see this thread of light.

This is the same thread of light that we have been seeing for the last couple of months. During Advent and Christmas and Epiphany, this thread of light is there through these seasons. I like to call these three seasons “The Trinity of seasons of light” because there is this thread through all of them. In Advent we heard about the coming of the light, and we lit another candle on our Advent wreaths each week as we anticipated the coming of the Light. Then at Christmas we have the birth of the Light into this world. As we heard in the Christmas season from the prologue to John’s Gospel, “The beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And all things came into being through Him. What came into being through Him was life, and the life was the Light of the world.” Jesus is the Incarnation of God’s light into this world.

And now in Epiphany, the light is going out into the world as various people in their epiphanies have the experience of seeing the Light. The Magi, people at Jesus’s baptism, the people at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, the Disciples and their calls, the healings and teachings of Jesus, are all moments in which people see this Light in their midst.

This thread of light isn’t just through these readings or just through these seasons. We see this thread of light through all of Scripture, from the beginning to the end. It is there in the very first chapter in the very first book in Genesis in the creation story. In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the first thing that God said is, “Let there be light, and there was light, and it was good.”

That light continues on until the end of Scripture, the very last book. In the Book of Revelation we see the light again when God creates the New Heaven and the New Earth. There is no longer the greater and lesser lights, the sun and the moon. It is now the Lamb of God as the Light in the midst of the New Creation.

This thread of light keeps showing up all through Scripture. It is in the story of Moses’s call: he gets called from the light of a burning bush. As Moses is freeing the people from their enslavement in Egypt, they are led at night by a light, a pillar of fire. We this light in many of the Prophets, and we see it in Jesus: the prologue of John, and in today’s Gospel when Matthew frames Jesus’s ministry by saying he is the coming of the Light. And, of course, Jesus himself taking it to the next step: I have light, but you also have light, and let your light shine. This thread of light that we see through Scripture is from the beginning to the end, and all in between.

Why? Why is there this strong thread of light through all of Scripture? It is because the darkness has always been here. There has always been darkness in this world. Jesus himself was born into darkness, the darkness of empire that uprooted his family and made them, when Mary was nine months pregnant, go to another city. The darkness of them having to flee to Egypt as refugees because the thin-skinned King Herod tried to kill Jesus, and killed every little Hebrew boy in the effort to get Jesus.

We see the darkness in Jesus’s ministry. As Matthew said, he is coming into this darkness. What is that darkness? The darkness of people in Galilee being crushed under the oppression of an empire that is trying to extract all the wealth. Galilee is the breadbasket of the region. A lot of us have the image of the Holy Land as all desert, but that is not at all how it is. It is a varied geography, and Galilee is a gorgeous place with grass and plant and animal life. Orange trees are everywhere. It is an amazing region, and the empire was trying to extract all of the resources, and it was crushing the people. There is a great darkness that Jesus had come into.

The darkness is sill here today. It has been here through all of history. The darkness of grief at the death of a loved one, the death of a relationship, the death of a dream. All of us know the darkness of grief. The few people who don’t know about the darkness of grief have another darkness, which is a life tragically cut short. If you live you love, if you love you lose, if you lose you grieve, if you grieve you know about the shadow of death. There is a darkness always around us.

There is the darkness of injustice in the world, like the state execution of an innocent man. That was the story yesterday, and that was the story two thousand years ago when Jesus went to the cross. But what does the cross show us? The cross shows us that the darkness does not get the final word. The prologue to John that I quoted earlier, “The beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. And all things came into being through Him. What came into being through Him was life, and the life was the Light of the world.” The next sentence is, “And the darkness did not overcome it.” Because the light of Christ, the light that God is shining in this world is more powerful than the darkness of death and despair. The darkness of grief and injustice do not have any thing on this light. It cannot put it out. The cross and the crucifixion are not the end of the story. The Resurrection is, and the light of Resurrection always gets the final word. In the midst of the darkness that we find in this life, God is trying to show us that there is a light, light to give us hope, light to shine a path on the way forward, a light so that we do not trip, a light so that we do not despair. Do not despair, my friends, of the darkness you see in this world. It has happened before, it will happen again, and in the midst of it is the Light.

Keep focused on the Light. Grieve, of course, we have to grieve. But do not let that grief overcome you. Do not fall into despair, but keep an eye on the Light and it will shine on the path out of it.

Look for that Light, and don’t forget the words of Jesus to shine the light yourself. You who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of the Incarnation of Light are meant to shine that light out into the world. As Dr. King said, “Darkness dues not drive out darkness, only light can do that.” In another point in that sermon when he talks about responding to hate with hate, he says that doing that is like adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.

In the darkness, my friends, be the star. Be the light for somebody. Shine out the Light of Christ that is within you. Shine out the Light into this world so that people have hope, so people can see a path forward, and people can know that Light. Shine the Light, for the darkness does not get the final word. Only the Light of Resurrection does.

AMEN.

We don’t talk enough about the Psalms, so today we are going to talk about the Psalms. The Psalms are an important book in the Bible that are unlike any other. We read a Psalm every single week. It is the only book in the Bible that we do that with. We read a Gospel every week, but there are four of them to pick from. The Psalms, in their entirety, are found in the Book of Common Prayer. It takes up over 200 pages. It would be a lot thinner if we didn’t have the psalter in there. But we do because it is so important to our faith and to our worship.

The Psalms were important to Jesus. He quoted from them frequently, including on the cross. He very much understood his life in light of the Psalms. Many people throughout generations of the faith have found the Psalms the center of their spiritual life. Almost every monastic community, if not every single one of them, puts the Psalms in the center of their worshiping life. They have various cycles of how often they will read the Psalms that go anywhere from once a month to once a day. Can you imagine reading all the Psalms every single day? The Psalms are unique and special. They are sometimes called “the prayer book of the Bible.”

The Psalms also have a different place within the canon. We generally say that Scripture is about God speaking to us, that we are meant to hear the word of God through Scripture. That is a complicated sentence that we can’t unpack today. But we will say that generally God is speaking to us through Scripture. The Psalms have some element of that, but more than anything else, it is about us speaking to God. In the Psalms we will find people bringing the full range of emotion and experience to that conversation with God, from the lowest lows to the highest highs, from moments of elation and joy and celebration down to moments of despair and anxiety and fear and anger.

There is a group of Psalms called Imprecatory Psalms which are all about violence and bringing vengeance on people. Those are not meant to be a moral model for us, they are not aligned with God’s dream of a reconciled world. We don’t read them on Sunday, but they are there and they show us that we can bring our full selves, even those messy bits, to God. We don’t need to hide any of it from God. Every moment of frustration, anger, and doubt we can bring to God, just as the Psalms do.

The lead singer of the band U2, Bono, wrote an introduction to the Psalms in a book a couple of decades ago. He said that the Psalms are like the blues. If you know the blues, you know the Psalms, and you know Bono is on to something.

Our Psalm today is Psalm 40. Speaking of U2, there is a song called “Forty”, which is based on this Psalm. Psalm 40 begins by talking about this moment of despair, very low moments that the Psalmist has been through. It talks about it in the past tense, it talks in terms of having gotten out of it. So it is a celebratory way to talk about it, but in the way the Psalmist talks about it, we know it was a very low moment of despair, a moment of mire and clay, a moment of being in a desolate pit, and then being pulled up on to the highest cliff with sure footing. It must have been really bad, whatever the Psalmist went through.

In the very first line it says, “I waited patiently upon the Lord,” and I think it is a most misleading translation. It sounds like I’m patient, everything is fine, God can take all the time he wants because I’m a patient person. But that is not what this means. It is not what the Hebrew says. What we have here is a waiting that is very deep. One translation reads, I waited and waited and waited. I think that is a good translation.

The word patient also a sense of hope to it. The Jewish Publication Society translation says “I hope in the Lord,” which is a better translation than “I waited patiently.” Personally, I think we should translate it “I waited in hope for the Lord,” because it would bring out both elements of waiting and hope, although it doesn’t quite get to the depth of it. My preferred translation is “I hope beyond hope.” I think it gets to the depth of what the Psalmist felt, and God pulled the Psalmist out of that.

An interesting thing happens in Verse 5. “Great things are they that you have done, O Lord, my God,” and we think the Psalmist is talking about the great things that God did for him in the first four verses. But then it says “How great your wonders and your plans for us.” The Psalmist makes the transition from the individual experience of God pulling him up out of the desolate pit with its mire and clay, to understand it in a larger story of the ways that God has pulled God’s people out of mire and clay and set them on sure footing. The Psalmist is grounding the experience he has had in the greater story of salvation, the greater history of salvation that we read in Scripture. He is talking about the hope beyond hope that Sarah and Abraham had and the promise to give them a child. He is talking about the hope beyond hope that Jacob and his family had during the famine, and suddenly a long lost son and brother is able to pull them in, save them, and bring them into Egypt. Generations later, there is hope beyond hope in their enslavement when they were crying out to God for eighty years before Moses was sent. A hope beyond hope that God is faithful and true. And God comes through and pulls them out of the mire and clay of their enslavement, and brings them into the high, sure, safe ground of the Promised Land.

It is not just pulling out, but having the experience in life of going back and forth. We have many moments of mire and clay in the history of salvation, and in our own lives. But God is there in all of them, constantly working to bring us up out of it in alignment with his dream for this world.

I’m a little disappointed in the Lectionary reading for stopping at Verse 12 of this Psalm, because it makes it sound like all the bad stuff happened in the past and the good stuff is now. But Verse 13 of this Psalm says “for innumerable troubles have crowded upon me.” The rest of the Psalm is talking about how he is back in the mire and clay, and is again crying out to God to bring him up out of it. Back and forth.

It is the same for us in our lives, whether individual lives and individual mire and clay we find ourselves in, but also for us as a community. It is the same thing. We have moments of mire and clay, and yet God is in the midst of it bringing us up out of it. The Psalmist is doing an amazing thing as he keeps one eye on the past to remember the goodness of the Lord, keeping one eye on the future, knowing in hope beyond hope that God will come through, not sitting back waiting patiently. In the great depth of despair there is still the height of that hope that the Psalmist knows because he is keeping his eye on both the past and the future. He invites us to do the same.

Tomorrow is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day, and we can look at his story and see that he understood his life in the same way as the Psalmist. His life and work, and the struggles that he engaged in were part of this bigger story of mire and clay that the people of God have always found themselves in. Dr. King help hope beyond hope that there is a better way, a beloved community that he was proclaiming, that God’s dream for this world was something that could be realized and something that he could help proclaim. One eye on the past, one eye on the future. In all of Dr. King’s work, he understood that God is faithful, and God’s dream is sure, and we can trust in it.

One interesting thing about all these stories of mire and clay and God’s assurance that he will pull us out of it, is that it never seems to go in our time frame. Abraham and Sarah had to wait twenty-five years or so before their promise was realized. Eighty years between the birth of Moses and when he was finally sent, even though people were crying out that entire time. Forty more years in the wilderness. Hundreds of years on the issue of racial justice in this country, trying to create a beloved community, and we’re still not there. It is not on our time frame. Whatever challenges we are facing right now, it is not in our time frame. But God is in it. God is working to bring us up out of it.

So, my friends, do not despair. We have been there before, and God is with us. God is in the midst of it, and God, who is faithful and true, just and loving, is stooping down and hearing our cry. We will be taken up on that high cliff with a sure footing.

Keep one eye on the past to know the history of God’s faithfulness, and keep one eye on the future, hoping beyond hope.

AMEN.

Let us pray: Come Holy Spirit, speak to us of our beloved status and new life of grace in Jesus Christ your son. Amen.

I love this story of the baptism of Jesus and it’s one that I often share with people who are struggling to find worth or forgiveness. In today’s gospel Jesus comes to be baptized by John. At first, John protests, but Jesus insists and John baptizes him in the river Jordan. And just as Jesus is coming up out of the water the heavens break open and the Holy Spirit comes down like a dove fluttering above Jesus’ head. And the voice of God speaks: “This is my son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” In this scene we have all of the members of the Trinity assembled. Jesus coming up out of the water, the Holy Spirit coming down and resting on Jesus, and the voice of the parent and creator God affirming, claiming, and assuring Jesus. What’s so powerful about Jesus’ baptism and this amazing Trinity moment, is that it’s an example and prototype for each and every one of us.

I LOVE baptisms. They’re such joyous events, aren’t they? Welcoming a new member into the body of Christ on this earth, the church. Happy family and friends, smiles, pictures, candles, maybe even tears of joy. The prayer just after baptism has a lot to say about what’s going in the sacrament of baptism:

Heavenly Father, we thank you that by water and the Holy Spirit you have bestowed upon these your servants the forgiveness of sin, and have raised them to the new life of grace. Sustain them, O Lord, in your Holy Spirit. Give them an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love you, and the gift of joy and wonder in all your works. Amen. (Prayer after baptism, B.C.P., p. 308)

At out baptism we receive the Holy Spirit. At our baptism we receive forgiveness of our sins. At our baptism we receive the grace of God.

Just after the baptism we welcome the newly baptized with these words:

We receive you into the household of God. Confess the faith of Christ crucified, proclaim his resurrection, and share with us in his eternal priesthood (B.C.P., p. 308)

Welcome! You’re a part of God’s family, the Christian community. Together, with us, trust in the power of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Join in sharing God’s love forever. Did you notice the verbs here? Confess, proclaim, join. These are all commands. Ok, here we go, join us, it’s time to get to work.

In the back of the prayer book, starting on p. 845 is An Outline of the Faith commonly called the Catechism. Page 858 lays out for us the amazing transformation that takes place at baptism. I invite you to turn to page 858 with me now…

Q. What is Holy Baptism?

A. Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ's Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God. We are adopted by God. The Creator of the universe has invited us to be full members of the family with all the rights and privileges of membership. We are inheritors of the amazing dream that God has in store for all of humankind. Through our baptism with water, in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit, we also receive spiritual grace.

Q. What is the inward and spiritual grace in Baptism?

A. The inward and spiritual grace in Baptism is union with Christ in his death and resurrection, birth into God's family the Church, forgiveness of sins, and new life in the Holy Spirit. (From the Catechism/Outline of the Faith, B.C.P., p. 858)

In our baptism we are united with Jesus in his death AND in his resurrection. With him we conquer death, like him, NOTHING, not even death, can separate us from the love of God. In baptism we are adopted, forgiven, and filled with the gift of the Holy Spirit to guide, comfort, and accompany us. There is a rarely used prayer for a baptism NOT followed by Eucharist, that sums it up quite well.

All praise and thanks to you, most merciful Father, for adopting us as your own children, for incorporating us into your holy Church, and for making us worthy to share in the inheritance of the saints in light; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (B.C.P., p. 311).

I encourage and invite any of you who are considering baptism for yourselves or for a child, grandchild or other relative, to reach out to me or to Bingham to schedule a time for preparation for this amazing celebration. In the church year, Lent is a great time for baptism preparation and the Easter vigil or the Easter season are great times for baptisms. For those who are already baptized, I remind you that the anointing with the Holy Spirit and the words of God to Jesus are also for you. When you or someone you know is feeling down, feeling like they’re not enough, beyond forgiveness, not worthy to be welcomed or loved, nowhere to belong …these words are for us, ALL of us:

You are my child, my beloved, with you I am well pleased. The God of love, who is love, speaks these words to us again and again. Can you hear them and take them into your heart? You are my child. I know you. I love you. I claim you. You are mine, now and forever. When I think of you, I smile. When I think of you, I am ever so proud.

I close with a poem from author Kate Bowler:

A Blessing for What’s True about You

by Kate Bowler

When God thought you up, it was a good day,

a lovely dream realized in God’s imagination,

a celebration from before you were born.

You were made out of God’s overflowing love,

in who you were, and are, and would become.

God saw it all, from way before the beginning, ‘til way past the end.

And saw that it was good.

This one, God said, this one I love.

I delight in the beauty, and the promise,

the wonder and the glory that is this one whom I have made.

And my gaze is ever upon them,

constant, and warm like the sun at golden hour,

gentle as starlight, transforming and continuing,

calling forth all the growing, all the becoming that is to be done.

Remember this truth:

You were made by love, for love, to love.

Amen.