Jesus Wavers but He Never Gives In Lent 1, February 26, 2012

+The Mount of Temptation. Located in the heart of the Judean desert, a few miles outside of Jericho is high, stark and full of caves. One has no problem seeing Jesus, along with Satan, standing there, wrestling with temptation. Getting to the Mount is quite the journey----I have pictures for you to look at---first we took a cable car halfway up…way up…..then, by foot, we climbed and climbed and climbed until we arrived at the entrance to a  monastery which has been built on the sheer face of a cliff. From there we spent time in prayer and then headed out onto a deck, suspended by God only knows what, and looked out over the vast expanse of the Judean desert.
As I said, I had no trouble imagining the Tempter, holding onto Jesus outside one of those caves, and showing Jesus, mocking him, challenging him to give in, to take his divine power and use it for temporal, mortal gain. I could hear the tempter’s sneering voice, urging our Lord, nudging the newly anointed Beloved Son of God to give in to his Humanity, to ignore his Divinity, trying his very best to distract Jesus from the task he’d been given, the journey he was to take, the Good News he was to spread.
In the midst of wilderness, desert, emptiness, Jesus was faced with a challenge…..Give in or endure. Quick fix or long-term change. Distraction or Focus.


The emptiness of the desert, the loneliness of the wilderness, the hunger of the fast give Jesus a chance to really consider, really reflect, really wonder just what God meant when God, as Jesus emerged from the baptismal waters of the Jordan, anointed him as God’s Beloved, God’s Son.
Jesus was in for quite the ride.
Baptized by John, anointed by God and then swooped into 40 days of hell, 40 days of denial and one can only think, 40 days of depression. What a huge change of fortune.
God’s Beloved? God’s cherished one? Nice way to show it God.
But this makes sense. You know, in a God sort of way. Armed with the power of God’s Love, clothed in the garment of Righteousness, what better time to be tempted, to be challenged, then immediately after baptism? If you aren’t ready then, when will you be?
But, you may ask, why tempt Jesus---he’s God for goodness sakes, he’s not going to give in.  And the Divine Jesus isn’t going to give in…but the human Jesus? He just might. Remember---our faith maintains that Jesus was fully human as well as divine, so his human self was just like us—he felt the same, he hungered the same, he desired the same. God came to live among us, in the flesh to fully experience the human condition.  And the human condition includes---is often ruled by----our consumerism, our perceived need for more, our attachments. We have a lot of stuff—physical, emotional, psychological. We are laden down with stuff.
The tempter zeroes in on this these human traits of hunger, desire, longing and he’s bound and determined to keep Jesus focused on the temporal, the here and now, immediate fulfillment of these desires: the tempter is banking on the human part of Jesus to give into the immediate, to forget the big picture, to ignore the loving embrace of God, to focus instead on acquiring what’s being offered—right now---- for what the tempter knows about us, and frankly, what we know about us if, we’re brutally honest---is that we’ll usually give in to the here and now, abandoning long term planning for immediate reward. It’s part of who we are and it’s what our culture reinforces---through social media, movies, music, tv and magazines. We’re a people who consume and desire more and more.
And even though Jesus didn’t have all the stuff we have available to us he must, in his humanity, have felt desire and, on some level, feared being left behind, of having less than, of doing without. The tempter’s job, in Jesus’ life and in ours, is to keep us so focused on the external, on the quick, on the immediate that we completely ignore, shut out, and reject God’s steady, quiet offer to give us everything we need. So, the Tempter takes Jesus up this mountain and strips him of everything: food, fellowship, sleep, security. And, once he gets Jesus vulnerable, fatigued, famished, lonely and unsure, the tempter strikes---“you can have this, you can have that----c’mon Jesus just say the word and it’s all yours.”
The truly magnificent thing, the truly divine thing, is that he didn’t give in.
Jesus doesn’t budge.
It’s too easy to say, “well Jesus is God, he’s Divine, he would never give in.” But the Savior I know, the Savior I love, is a lot like me….so I know he had to waver…..
And so, we’ve entered our wilderness, our Lenten observance. A time to quiet down, to simplify, to strive for a laser focus, to zero in on what we really want, what we really desire. And, if our Lenten journey is successful we’ll end up atop a mountain of our own desire, fully aware of what it is we really and only need: God’s Love, the same Love bestowed upon Jesus as he arose from the baptismal waters of the River Jordan. +

Dust Dash Dust Ash Wednesday 2012

Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return .

Is there a more powerful sentence said, directly and individually to us?
Of course, “The Body of Christ, The Bread of Heaven” is pretty powerful, but we hear that all the time…. Some days it probably really resonates, and other times we don’t even notice it.

But this sentence, this one we hear once a year. Only once a year.
And each year it seems as jarring as it was last year.

Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.

We are---all of us---have been made out of the dust and will return to the dust. That’s a definite.
What isn’t so sure, what isn’t definite, what isn’t cast in stone, is what we do between those times.

I once heard a funeral homily that was all about the dash.
The dash.
You know the mark between the date of birth and date of death on the tombstone. The sermon was all about the dash….for the dash covers the life lived. The dash is what’s between the dust we are at the beginning and the dust we end up being at the end. The dash is the life we lived. The dash is who we are.

You don’t see a lot of Hallmark cards wishing folks a Happy Ash Wednesday. There isn’t a Charlie Brown Ash Wednesday special (although, come to think of it, Charlie Brown really has the personality for the common perception of what Ash Wednesday is all about-- wretchedness, despair and heartache.) No Ash Wednesday makes most people pretty darn uncomfortable.
It reminds us of our absolute and non-negotiable mortality.
It reminds us that we are here, walking upon this earth, for a finite amount of time.
It reminds us that at the end, the sum total of our life will be wrapped up in that dash.

 Ash Wednesday is about dust, but it’s also about that dash.

It begs the question: If your life ended today, what would that dash represent? Do you feel good about that dash? Are you pleased with that dash?
And what about your Creator? How’s God feeling about that dash?
I don’t know about you, but the thought: if my life ended right here and right now, would I be proud of the life I lived?”, makes me real uneasy. Because I know, as I’m sure many of you know, that there are all sorts of things I wish we could “do over.” All sorts of things that we regret and would like to correct. Some big some little, some in between. But all of them—these are the things that separate us from God.
Our regrets, our missing the mark, our mistakes separate us from God.
But NOT in the way you think.
What separates us from God is not the things we’ve done which we now regret, it’s the regret, it’s the shame, it’s the embarrassment, it’s the anger, it’s the denial------it’s all the stuff wrapped in and around those things we’ve done, things we’ve not done, things we’ve thought, things we’ve felt—which separate us from God.

Ash Wednesday leads us into Lent, a time when we pare down and simplify. A season when we try our best to shake loose from attachments and turn away from distractions so that we can focus…focus on just what has gone into that dash and how we can make that dash something to be proud of, something to be happy with, something to present to God in joy and peace on our last day, on the day we return to the dust.
Which brings me to the Good News.
The GREAT news of Ash Wednesday.
The dash---all the stuff that happens between us coming from dust and returning to dust---is in our control . Missed the mark? Your life has gone in some unfortunate directions? Your life’s not what you want it to be? You feel off course?
No problem—Repent: that is, change course. Forgive yourself: that means stop beating yourself up and return to the Lord. For God? God is always waiting, always ready to receive us and all that goes into our dash. And Lent?  Lent is the perfect time to take stock and to take action…for we all come from the dust and to the dust we shall all return, but right now?
Right now we have lives to live, dashes to fill.

Amen.

See the Transfiguration, Feel the Transformation Transfiguration Sunday February 19, 2012

+Today is a day of bookends.  The Transfiguration of Christ---the transformation of Jesus’ appearance as Elijah and Moses suddenly appear, plus a message from God--foreshadows the events of Easter, Ascension and Pentecost.  Today we get a glimpse of Christ’s coming glory but we also reflect, looking back to Jesus’ birth, baptism and early ministry of calling us to Follow Him.
On this last Sunday of Epiphany, on this first Sunday before Lent, we look ahead, we glance behind and we take stock of where we are in our own faith journeys--have we been transformed, have we been transfigured?
Episcopal priest Adam Thomas, writing in the Christian Century magazine, says that the Transfiguration isn’t so much about the change in Jesus’ appearance, or about the arrival of Moses and Elijah, or even about the proclamation of God in the cloud. …instead, says Thomas, the Transfiguration is about how a glimpse of the Holy, an experience of the Divine, transformed the disciples, and how it can transform us.
There is no doubt that exposure to the Holy, to the Divine, casts a physical change—remember how Moses’ skin shone whenever he encountered YAHWEH, and how Jesus’ face and clothes glisten with a whiteness beyond description—but the real change, the everlasting change, is what happens internally, spiritually, when one encounters the Holy.
What really matters is how that experience changes us, how we carry that experience with us in our day-to-day lives.
  According to Biblical scholar Fred Craddock, mountain top experiences are fine and dandy, but where the rubber really meets the road is what happens when we come down off the mountain, when we enter the valley; where the light has faded, the sheen dulled and the dirt and grime of daily life takes over.
 Craddock and Thomas are on to something here…because Christianity isn’t about mountaintops, it’s about valleys.  If it was about mountaintops then
Jesus wouldn’t have been born in a cave, to peasant parents from a backwater town. If our faith was about mountaintops Jesus wouldn’t have been executed like a common criminal, hung on a tree, mocked and scourged. If our faith was all about mountaintops Jesus’ followers wouldn’t have been a rag-tag band of disciples who fell asleep at a drop of a hat, doubted at the slightest turn of fortune or denied their teacher in times of greatest need. No this faith of ours is definitely the faith of the valley. This faith of ours gets lived out in our day-to-day lives because Christianity is less about fancy and more about simple.
But simple doesn’t mean less Holy. You see, what we forget is that even down here in the valley, sacred things happen all the time. The Holy can—the Holy does-- pop up everywhere.
The sacred isn’t necessarily glamorous and the Holy needn’t be in some transfigured glory. Usually, God is just right here, walking with us on our journey through the valley of regular life.
But, who can blame Peter, or the rest of us, for wanting to freeze the moment of glory atop the mountain, to linger in the wisdom and wonder of Elijah, Moses and Jesus? That’s far more appealing than going back to daily life. But Peter, like all of us, forgets that such an overwhelming experience of the Holy isn’t the transformative thing—no the Technicolor wow of an experience of the sacred, of the Holy is simply the fuel for change. Blockbuster encounters with the Holy serve as the nourishment needed to live our lives as Jesus has taught us. Strength to follow God’s directive to listen to this Jesus-- God’s beloved Son—and allow  the Good News of his life and ministry to transform the world.
Peter sees the Transfiguration but fails to feel the transformation.
Everyone has experienced this in one form or another---we have some momentous experience—a moment when we feel truly touched by God and we swear, we swear that this is it, we’ll change our ways, we’ll never forget, we’ll turn over a new leaf…but it doesn’t last. It doesn’t last because the high of that moment, the amazing moment of awareness that shining moment of enlightenment cannot be sustained.
It can’t be sustained because it isn’t on the mountaintop where life happens; it’s down in the valley.
In the Holy Land there are two sites considered most probable as locations for the Transfiguration. At one of these sites, Mt Tabor, a stunning church has been built on top of the mountain. The day I visited was very sunny and the view from atop the mountain was as stunning as the interior of the church. I didn’t want to leave, I took many pictures, trying to freeze the mountaintop moment. I felt as if I could stay there forever.
In this way, I guess I was a lot like Peter. But soon, Iyad our tour leader was saying “Yella” (which is Arabic for “let’s go”)…and suddenly we were heading down the mountain, back to reality. Jesus, James, John and Peter do the same thing. They trudge down the mountain and back into their reality where throngs of people have gathered around the other disciples and are, frankly, pretty ticked off because the disciples were unable to perform the healings the crowd sought. The reality of Jesus’ world—the valley of his life is on full display—infighting among his followers, clamoring people desperate for his healing touch.
And it is here, at this point of the Gospel, that the true meaning of transformation becomes clear.
For all the bright shiny white garments, all the glorious sun splashed mountaintop views, all the unremitting wonder of God’s voice booming from the heavens doesn’t heal our world.
All the experiences of the Holy, all the sacred feelings, all the Transfigurations doesn’t bring God’s kingdom to earth.
What heals this world, what brings the Holy right here, right now, are people. People who’ve listened to God’s Son, the Messiah, the Chosen One, and try our best to live as we’ve been taught. We are to find the sacred in the mundane, we are to find the holy in the ordinary and we are to be transformed by the routine. For our faith is not the faith of royalty, it’s the faith of peasants. Ours is not the faith of the powerful, it’s the faith of the weak and ours is not the faith of the mountaintop it’s the faith of the valley.
So today, staring right into the approaching Lent, we put our alleluias away as we prepare to live into the fullness of what the incarnation—God in the flesh---requires us to do: to journey with Jesus to Jerusalem, onto the cross and into the tomb. Today we climb off the mountaintop of the nativity and the Epiphany to walk in the valley of real life ---- not a walk of despair and hopelessness but a walk of transformed faith and transfigured hope rejoicing that we, along with God’s Son, are Beloved by God. Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

Amen.

I do choose. Epiphany 6 Yr B 2.12.12

+If you want to, you can make me clean.  If you choose, you can make me clean.
I do want to. I do choose.
Jesus chooses to make the man with the skin disease, the leper, clean. Jesus isn’t happy about this though---the translation we’re most familiar with states that Jesus was filled with compassion, moved with pity—at the leper’s plea. Recent scholarship, however translates Jesus’ affect as “being incensed” being angry.  Jesus was furious.
It would be understandable to think Jesus was incensed, angry, ticked off, because he was, once again, being harangued. It would be understandable that he just wanted to take a break, to have some peace, to have uninterrupted time to pray. But nothing suggests that this is why Jesus is angry. Nor does anything suggest that his anger is directed at the leper—that somehow Jesus is disgusted and just wants this unclean interloper to leave.
We don’t know why Jesus is having such an intense emotional reaction to the man with the skin disease, we just know his reaction was intense.
Reams of paper have been dedicated to the translation of Jesus’ emotional response –the tone used---to the man’s request.
Less attention has been paid to Jesus’ actual verbal response—not how he said it, but what he said.
Leper: If you want to, if you choose, you can make me clean.
Jesus: I do want to. I do choose.
The man doesn’t try to convince Jesus of his worthiness, or lack thereof. This man knows it isn’t a question of him earning the healing, it’s all about Jesus making a choice. That all it takes is for Jesus to want to heal him, to choose to make him clean. Somehow this man zeroes in on the choice Jesus can make. You can heal me, sir. I know this. But what I don’t know is if you’ll choose to do so.
Some may contend that “choosing” is part of Jesus’ Divine nature. That God—the Holy and Undivided Trinity, makes choices all the time—healing this person, denying that person. That somehow there is a checklist and the three persons of the Trinity meet over coffee and decide who gets what today.
Of course, that’s not how it works. We don’t have a meddling God. We have a loving God who oversees God’s creation confident that we, humanity, will live how God intended, how God longs for us to live.
I contend that the “choosing” in today’s Gospel speaks more directly to Jesus’ humanity, that “choosing” speaks more to what Jesus has in common with us.
We choose. Each and every day. Many times a day.
You, each and everyone of you (well maybe not the kids Mia…Finn….Aiden and Isabel….) chose to be here today.
Each and every one of you will choose to listen to this sermon. Or not.
When we are dismissed by the deacon [or at 8 when I dismiss us] we can choose to go out into the world seeking and serving Christ in all whom we meet as is our departing charge, or not.
This morning at the 10:30 service we are baptizing (we baptized) Finnegan Matschke. Melissa, Finn’s mom, has chosen to have him baptized. Those gathered will (did) choose whether or not to support Finn in his life in Christ [will you who witness these vows do all in your power to support Finnegan in his life in Christ.
(BCP 303)]
Finn’s mom, grandparents, godparents will choose (chose) to renounce and support all sorts of things as outlined in the “Examination of the Candidate.” They [will] renounce[d] all forces of wickedness which stand in God’s way, they [will] renonunce [d] all who reject the forces of good in the world, they commit to trusting God through Jesus Christ. They, by virtue of having Finn baptized, publicly choose to live as faithful people, supporting Finn all the days of his life. Through the recitation of the Baptismal Covenant (Nicene Creed, Affirmation of Faith) we choose to live our lives as faithful followers of Christ, as faithful lovers of God.
No one is making you say these words, no one is making you love and serve the Lord.
You choose to do so.
I don’t know about you, but that is, all at the same time, liberating and terrifying.
We have a big part, a big say in how all this goes, don’t we?
Each and every day we choose to live as Christ’s light in the world. Or not.
Each and every day we choose to respect the dignity of every human being. Or not.
Each and every day we choose to love our self as much as God loves us. Or not.
Each and every day we choose to accept the love of God as given to us through God’s ultimate gift to us, Jesus Christ. Or not.
What convicts me about all these choices, what terrifies me, is knowing that as I walk out these doors today---even as I chat with you all at coffee hour----I have a responsibility. A responsibility to see each of you. And to choose. To choose to see you as a beloved child of God, as someone who probably needs healing of some sort or another. For we all are broken, aren’t we? We all need repair in areas of our life. The choice I must make is whether or not I will really see the injury, be ready to notice it, be ready to see it for what it is and, moved with pity or incensed with rage over the unfairness of what has befallen you, choose to walk with you through it. Or not.
This is the choice facing us all.  We all have a choice to make. How do we see each other? Not only the ones we call friend, but the ones we may not call anything, the ones we may rather avoid?  How do we see them?
How do we see the stranger, the foreigner, the visitor?
As we do each and every time we participate in the baptism of a new member; each and every time we say the Peace of God be with you, each and every time we greet one another in the name of God, we are choosing to walk with each other through this new life we all have, in Christ.
If we so choose, we can walk as children of the light, as children of God.
Do you so choose?
Do you?
Do all of us, so choose?
Amen. +

Community and Solitude

+Thursday was the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord  in the Temple. A significant day in our church year, the Presentation (this year) marks the mid point of Epiphany. A point when we turn from the celebration of the Nativity and that cute baby lying in a manger, to the adulthood of Jesus, to the ministry of the Man brought to us as God in the flesh. It’s a subtle shift, but now our attention, turns toward that long walk to Jerusalem where we, along with Jesus will climb the hill of Calvary, cry out at Golgotha and rest in that freshly hewn tomb: Our Epiphany journey has left Christmas behind and is headed toward Lent and Easter. There’s a sadness to this shift, and there’s also a pressure—a pressure to get the work of Jesus going…. For suddenly it seems like time is running short. The pressure, on this 5th Sunday of Epiphany, is on….
And Jesus has been busy:
He’s taught in the synagogue, he’s exorcised demons, and, above all else, he’s formed a community: calling Andrew and Simon Peter, James and John, Nathanael and countless others, to leave their old life and to follow him. It’s been a busy time. Today, Jesus, and the others walk over to Simon Peter’s house for dinner, where, we can only suppose, Jesus figured he could get some rest and rejuvenation—but once there he discovers Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is ill and in need of his healing touch. Word spreads and instead of a restful Sabbath afternoon, Jesus spends the day healing sickness and casting out demons. Suddenly the community Jesus has so carefully formed may be getting a bit confining, so, early the next morning, Jesus sets out to find a quiet place to pray, to have some Jesus and God time.
After a day like he’d had, he needed to be in the quiet presence of the holy. For even the most community-minded savior needs some unplugged, quiet time.
But it’s not to be. Simon Peter and the rest come rushing up to Jesus, after apparently spending some time looking for him. As commentator Pastor Delmer Chilton puts it, Simon and his companions come upon Jesus “like a herd of zealous church secretaries. When they find him sitting quietly alone they say, ‘Good, you’re not busy. Everybody is searching.’ ” You see, it’s hard for people to realize that the work of community requires that all members of the community, take time away from the community, recharging their batteries, allowing the Holy to take hold once again.
Making ourselves available to God, listening for God’s call to us, living into the mission, the vocation of that Call is the task of each and every Christian. And it’s the task Jesus is outlining in today’s Gospel. You see, when Simon Peter and the others clamor for Jesus to return to Capernaum Jesus, quietly yet firmly says, “Yes, we should be on or way, but not back there. For the work I have come to do is for everyone…. we must move on, spreading the Good News to neighboring towns and villages. “But,” I can just hear the disciples imploring, “what about my cousin? My brother in law, my neighbor, what about OUR PEOPLE?”
 Undeterred, Jesus moves on, for what He knows is this: His mission will only work if his followers –his community-- pick it up and carry it on.
The mission of Jesus, his work, is not the work of one individual. It is the effect the work of Jesus has on countless others. The key is how the mission takes hold, takes on a life of it’s own. They key to Jesus’ mission is the community he and then his followers, formed. And continue to form.
This, my friends is, the Original Web of Grace.
Bishop Bill is a great fan of the Web of Grace as the way forward in this diocese. With apologies to our dear Bishop let me offer a synopsis of his “web of grace”  :
--God has a vested interest in us, and is involved in giving us every opportunity to experience God’s presence right here and right now.
--That presence is God’s grace and
--We get a steady dose of that grace through the Word and the Sacraments…
--Which is what we, as a community of faith, get here every week.
---Strengthened through this nourishment we can live more fully into what and who God intends us to be. Therefore, to truly be God’s instruments in this world [and isn’t that what Jesus came to teach us, once and for all?] we must regularly gather in community; for when we do that, this web of grace is strengthened, the web of grace expands, and God’s mission, as given to us in the person of Jesus Christ, is fulfilled.
As we wind down toward the last three weeks of Epiphany, as we turn our focus away from the miracle of God come to us in the flesh and toward the miracle of the empty tomb, we need to settle into our identity as Christians, as followers of this man from Nazareth, as members of a Web of Grace which is the Church of the Good Shepherd [Ascension]. …Which is the CED…. which is the Diocese of WNY…which is the Episcopal Church USA, which is the Anglican Communion, which is the whole of Christendom, which is the whole of God’s miraculous and loving creation…. and do the work Jesus began, and we’ve inherited.
Jesus has been busy this Epiphany, busy setting up a community, a web of grace, which continually strives to shatter the veil of darkness and despair which afflicts so many of God’s children. A web of grace which never stops evolving and adjusting. A web of grace that is always looking for new ways to bring the Holy into this world.
Bringing the Holy into the world. That’s the whole point isn’t it?
Quiet time, sitting in and with the Holy doesn’t look like much. We don’t look particularly busy when we’re listening for God… reading the Bible….praying the psalms….contemplating an icon or just sitting in silence, waiting…
But all of us, not just the Savior of the world, need time to turn off, to tune down, to recharge and renew. We all need, as Jesus tried, to be unavailable.
For only in being unavailable to the world do we make ourselves available to the Holy.
Now wait a minute Cathy, didn’t you just spend 10 minutes talking about the importance of community? And now you’re talking about solitude. Which is it?
It’s both.
Every community of faith relies on the sum of its parts to prosper, to flourish, to grow. So as individual members of this community of faith, as cogs in the Web of Grace begun by Jesus over 2000 years ago, we must, as Jesus modeled for us, take time to let God have God’s way with us.
For once we make ourselves available to the Holy, once the Holy is given free reign to occupy every corner of our soul, then we return to community, where this presence of the Holy will spread, where the grace of God will do its best work. Where we will, rejuvenated and re-energized, do the work, Jesus has given to do. +
©The Rev’d C

Demons and Authority, Epiphany 4 Year B January 29, 2012

+I think I know why people got so angry with that cruise ship captain who abandoned ship after it ran aground. It was a terrible accident—many people died--- while the Captain jumped (or fell) into a lifeboat rowing away from the disaster and toward safety. But the real disappointment in the whole thing, I think, is that the Captain, by virtue of his title and by virtue of the assumptions we associate with that title, is expected to wield a certain amount of authority. We grant him that authority. He was the captain and captains are expected to go down with the ship, and he didn’t.
Using the same logic, had a meek kitchen worker on the boat led the rescue efforts, speaking with calm yet firm authority, he would have been viewed as a hero-- as one behaving above and beyond the scope of his job and of society’s expectations. We don’t expect a meek kitchen worker to do the rescuing, we expect the captain to. The captain’s authority? Expected. The meek kitchen worker? Surprising.
That’s the authority that catches our attention—the surprising kind.
I remember many years ago when I had an odd bug bite on my leg. My doctor said, “hmm, that looks funny.” He then brought out a textbook, looking it over until he found a bite mark that matched. Good for him that he looked up something he wasn’t sure about but… his “hmmm” and checking out the textbook didn’t engender confidence in his authority.
We want our doctors, our lawyers, our teachers, our Bishops, our cruise ship captains, to exude authority, to teach with conviction, to lead without blemish.
When someone, in a time of crisis, calmly takes charge and leads people into safety, we are comforted. Comforted by their  authoritative  teaching, speaking and leading.
By the same token, it’s terrible when someone who is expected to wield authority , doesn’t… like the ship’s captain…. or when someone acts as if they ‘re in control but they really have no idea what to do or how to do it. A weak leader is a dangerous leader. So maybe, in the long run, it was better that the cruise ship captain abandoned ship. If he couldn’t lead he shouldn’t have attempted too.
Jesus was clearly an unexpected leader, a surprising voice of authority. Today we meet Jesus just after he’s called his first disciples, people who willingly left their families, their livelihood. Why? Well, there was something about this guy—Nathanael says it’s because Jesus knew all about him. The others are quieter on the why, they just felt something, were drawn by his authority, compelled by his leadership.
It’s about a 10-minute walk from the shore of the Sea of Galilee up to Capernaum. The synagogue sits on the edge of town, overlooking the sea…. I can picture it: Jesus, walking into the synagogue and without paying any heed to the other people gathered, speaking and teaching with an authority unlike anything those in attendance had heard or seen.
Even though his authority was surprising, it was easily recognized. Folks took notice right away...because people notice genuine authentic authority. It is clear, it is compelling and people respond to it.
So do demons.
The demon in today’s Gospel recognized Jesus right away—it notices how Jesus exhibits a genuine, authentic authority and it immediately begins to try and challenge him—for although the demon recognizes Jesus’ true identity, the demon doesn’t know if Jesus realizes it yet.
Which is precisely why we read this story in Epiphany—the season when we, along with Jesus, learn the full scope of Jesus’ nature.
The demon’s clever: because if Jesus hadn’t realized his divine authority yet, the demon may be able to gain the upper hand, but Jesus didn’t flinch, speaking “harshly to the demon, commanding it to come out of the afflicted man.” The demon, no fool, realizes he has met his match, and departs. The demon recognizes the authority and responds to it by departing, just as the one who was speaking with authority, commanded.
Jesus, with the authority granted to him by God, with the authority exuding in the confidence and firmness of his harsh voice, leads the action, avoiding the attempted hijacking by the demon. Jesus takes charge and with God given authority and his own divine willingness to exercise that authority—he kicked the demon to the curb, making room for the manifestation of his mission—to bring the presence of God into every nook and cranny of the human experience.
 For just as Jesus figuring out his identity and his mission was his Epiphany task, our Epiphany task is to continue that mission, being Jesus’ hands and feet, eyes and ears, here on earth. Our task is to speak the Good News with authority. Our task is to challenge the demons of our own lives with that voice of authority, breaking open space in our lives for the Kingdom of God to flourish. Right here and Right now.
To do this, we need to accept the authority granted to us at our baptism.(“you are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own, forever.” BCP 308).
To do this we must recognize the demons in our lives and speak harshly to them, kicking them to the curb, making room for the Holy Spirit.
What are your demons, where do they hide? Do they recognize your willingness to grasp the mantle of authority or do they recognize your hesitancy to stand up for the mission outlined by Christ and given over to us?
In some ways it would be nice if our demons were as overt and obvious as the one in today’s Gospel. Truth is, most of our demons are quieter, subtler, and more insidious.
They can be difficult to identify and they can be even more difficult to release, to throw out. You see, our demons have a certain pay off for each of us, there are things about our demons which entice and seduce us, making it easier, in the short run, to stick with them instead of kicking them to the curb, allowing space for the Holy Spirit to move in and do her work. For as much as our demons keep us in the old familiar places, the Holy Spirit almost always takes us to places unfamiliar and uncomfortable to us; risky, scary and  strange places.
For it is only in the risky, the scary and the strange that true growth happens.
Look around. Each and everyone of us here this evening has risked a lot to be here---folks from Ascension and Good Shepherd have seen your share of demons: of losses, of changes, of challenges. Trust has been violated, promises broken and hopes dashed. Yet here we all are,  willing to try something all together new, willing to kick those demons to the curb, opening up space for the Holy Spirit to lead us into the risky, scary and strange places of growth and renewal. +