Epiphany 3 Yr A: To Fish is to Notice, Realize, Understand and Act

+Jerusalem, where Jesus died, is split in two…west Jerusalem is modern, clean bright and bustling; it's part of Israel. East Jerusalem  is old, kind of dirty, dark and very crowded; it’s part of the West Bank. In the center of East Jerusalem is the ancient walled city of Jesus’ time. The Old City, as it's known is especially dark. The walls are 40 feet high and sunshine fades early in the afternoon.
Bethlehem, where tradition has it, Jesus was born, is also surrounded by a wall. This wall isn’t ancient, like the walls surrounding the Old City, it’s relatively new, erected by the Israeli government to keep terrorists at bay, to secure the safety of the Israeli citizenry. The Palestinians say that the wall was erected to further thwart the agreed upon return of Palestinian land taken in one of the several intifadas (wars) between Israel and Palestine.
Regardless of the why, the wall casts a long and foreboding shadow over the whole of Bethlehem.
Nazareth, where Joseph brought Mary and Jesus to live after their escape from Herod, is, when you drive up from Jerusalem and Bethlehem like a breath of fresh air. Nazareth is nestled into the Judean hills—the only walls surrounding it are made of rocks, cactus and desert sand dunes. While much less oppressive than Jerusalem and Bethlehem, Nazareth is small and I can imagine, for a young Jesus trying to find his way in the world, Nazareth might be a bit confining.
Capernaum resembles a resort town. It’s flat, it’s bright and it sits right on the banks of Lake Kinneret, otherwise known as the Sea of Galilee. The views are stunning, the water is warm, the beach inviting and the light pronounced. Capernaum is nice.
And it’s where Jesus retreats when his world begins to fall apart,  as we hear in today’s Gospel.
We may not like thinking of Jesus as rattled, scared, lost, or questioning but, and you’ve heard me say this many times, since Jesus was fully human, he had all the emotions, all the moods, all the frailties that we have. A big part of our human existence, including Jesus' experience, is spent figuring out who we are, who we want to be, what we want to do. It's about noticing, realizing, understanding and acting.
Epiphany is about all these things: understanding for Mary and Joseph about who this son of theirs was, understanding for us about who this savior of ours is…understanding for Jesus about who He is…understanding for the Body of Christ, the Church, about how to be Christ in the world.
Epiphany is about noticing, realizing, understanding and acting. For us and for Jesus.
When Jesus heard that John was arrested he noticed that the movement John headed quickly fell apart without John at the helm; he realized that he was going to have to be a different kind of prophet; he understood that this was not going to be easy. He noticed he realized and he understood, but was he ready to act?
While Jesus knew, on some level, that he would eventually take over for John, it seems clear  that Jesus wasn't expecting such an abrupt changing of the guard. I think it caught him by surprise.
“Now when Jesus heard that John had been arrested he withdrew to Galilee. He LEFT HIS HOME IN NAZARETH and made his home in Capernaum, by the lake."
After John’s arrest, Jesus pulled up stakes. He went from the dusty workshop of a stone-mason
to the water workshop of fishermen. He left his home and began something altogether new. He withdrew from the familiar and went to someplace unfamiliar and in many ways, foreign.
It was his turn. He needed to step up and take the mantel handed to him…but he had to do it differently, he had to learn from John's mistakes and create something as bold and challenging as John's, but somehow make it more user friendly. John blustered his way through the Jordan valley with sermons of fire and brimstone, baptisms of life risking submersion. People didn't so much engage with John as they watched and listened slack jawed and a bit shocked.
The noticing, realizing, understanding and acting of Jesus, plays out in response to John's arrest.
Jesus noticed that when John was no longer in the picture, the movement fell apart.
Jesus noticed that it fell apart because it relied wholly on the person of John to work.
He realized that to make his own ministry work he needed to lead in a different way. He understood that he needed to knock down some walls: the walls of expectation regarding how a prophet behaved, the walls of what people thought a messiah would be and do, the walls of home and family, the walls of personality driven movements. He had to break down the walls of expectation and tradition and create something all together new.
So he moved to the Lake attracting with love and light and healing instead of fire and brimstone. Teaching more than dictating,
engaging in relationships more than wowing with rhetoric.
On some level Jesus understood that his movement needed to be one that was of and in community. That the light of salvation wasn’t his to bestow and others to receive, it was his to share and others to spread.
And it worked. For 2000 years people have been invited to join this movement, they've been attracted to this movement, they've been saved through this movement.
Jesus says to Andrew, Peter, John and James: Come and follow me, I’ll show you how to be fishers of people.
Jesus says to you and to me: Come follow me, I'll show you how to be fishers of people.
So, go out from here, illumined with the light and love of relationship to spread the Good News of Christ.
To notice the hurts of this world
To Realize that you have the power to do something about it, and
To Understand that you cannot wait for others to do the work we've all been given to do, that we all must Act.
It's what Jesus encouraged his ragtag band of apostles and disciples to do in Capernaum and it's what he encourages us to do now-- notice, realize, understand and act....so let’s get goin’…. it's time to knock down some walls and go fishin'.
Amen.

Deacon Pete's Sermon 1.19.14

From John:  "What are you looking for?".  Indeed, what are we looking for?  Why are we here today, why are we here most Sundays, and for many of you, why are you here so often on days that are not Sunday?  I have a guess that it has to do with the mysterious and frequently misunderstood ideas we have about the word "call". Today's gospel continues the story of the baptism of Jesus that we heard last week. Today we hear what is was like for John, and John's perspective of what it was like for Andrew and Peter.  John's gospel fits right in with the reading from Isaiah and First Corinthians with its language about and sense of "call".

John the Baptist points to Jesus and says "Behold the Lamb of God".  Two of John's disciples hear this, go and check out Jesus for themselves and then end up abandoning John and taking off with Jesus. This odd little scene gives us a huge clue about what it is like to be called by God.

It is easy for us to be confused and befuddled about this business of being called. First Corinthians and Isaiah add to that confusion. In those readings God is calling for a major and describable thing to be done.  In Isaiah the servant is being called to be a light to the nations and in Corinthians we are called to be partners with Jesus.  When most of us think of or use the word call, we are usually thinking of ordained clergy.   And, that's pretty clever of us, it lets us off the hook a little.  We can say to ourselves " well, they were called, we're just regular people.  All this call talk, it's not about us".

This whole concept of call was something that terrified me when I was in the process to become a deacon.  I knew that the diocesan Commission on Ministry was likely to ask about my call, and unlike others who I was studying with, I had no mountain top experience of a voice speaking to me from the mists, I had no meditation that included the voice of God clearly telling me what my ministry was to be, I had no parting of the clouds with a bright, shiny arrow pointing to a group of people I was to serve.

My path was complicated and ambiguous,  I only knew  that I had been saying "not now" to God for years and that it had become harder to keep saying "no" than it was to say, "ok, I'll try, I will trust you and see where this leads."    As you can see, I have nothing that compares to a voice from the clouds.

What I learned was that expecting a voice from the clouds that points to a specific job or task misses the point. It's not what happens for many of us and it's not what this gospel is talking about. The two disciples in this story listened to what John said about Jesus and then just followed Jesus.  Jesus said "come and see" and they did.  They answered "yes" to the invitation to enter into relationship with Jesus.  And, that what's really important In this story, not a specific ministry, not words from the clouds, not tasks, but the willingness to enter into relationship with Jesus and with one another.  Our first response is to get to know God through God's son Jesus, to listen and to be present.

And then, after a while, but probably before we think we're ready, we will know what it is we are to do.  Some of what we are to do will be dramatic and maybe even ground breaking, but it  will just as likely  be quiet and somewhat invisible.  It might be to help in the pet or people food pantry, to teach, to help with pastoral care, to learn about healing, to offer office help, to sing in the choir, to sponsor coffee hour, to clean and polish the silver and brass, to become involved in diocesan committees, to stencil walls or to sweep floors, to work with community groups focused on peace and justice; the needs are varied and endless. The willingness to  be in relationship comes first, indeed there is no ministry without relationship with God and one another.

We are called to be disciples upon our baptism. The call to relationship and to ministry follows us all of our lives.  Oh, it may wax and wane, it might even seem to go away, we might believe that we are finished, that we have already responded, but it always comes back.  It always will come back until the whole earth is reconciled to God. As Isaiah says, we are appointed as a light to the nations, not just to Good Shepherd or to Ascension, or to our families or neighborhoods but to all nations. We are called to be like Andrew; to spend time with Jesus and then to go out and invite others to know Jesus, just as he went out and invited his brother.  As John Dominic Crossan says we are called to "Heal those who are hurting and then eat with those who are healed.  And out of the healing and out of the eating will come a new community".  Let us pray to do whatever we are called to do, let us pray to do our part in the creation of God's kingdom come.  Amen.

January 12, 2014 The Baptism of Christ

+It’s weird, right? 2 ½ weeks after Jesus’ birth and then…BAM… He’s an adult, beginning his ministry.
2 ½  weeks after hanging the stockings by the chimney with care, Jesus is getting baptized and then (although we won’t read this part of the story until Lent) is thrust into the wilderness for 40 days and nights of temptation and heart-wrenching loneliness. Wow Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
I could spend a lot of time on the vagaries of the liturgical calendar, why the powers that be choose what we read from Holy Scripture when, but that would be boring and ultimately pretty unproductive.
Bottom line, what in the world does Jesus’ baptism have to do with the Christmas message of incarnation or the Epiphany theme of shining the light of Christ, of being the light of Christ in this world?
Well if we remember what baptism is all about the answer becomes pretty obvious.
Depending on what religious tradition you were raised in, your answer might differ: more mainline protestant faiths like Lutheran, Baptist, Methodist and Presbyterians would say that baptism is the bath which cleanses us and redeems us from the sin we will enter in life, the mistakes and missteps we’ll take. If we have been washed with the waters of baptism we have an assurance of forgiveness. Forever.
If you were raised in the Roman Catholic and in some more traditional Episcopal churches the act of baptism was viewed as an admittance ticket of a sort. Once baptized you were on the road to being able to do things like receive communion and you were on the inside track to eternal life. Once baptized you were---yes even if you were baptized as an infant---returned to a place of purity, the stain of Original Sin washed away. You had your get out of purgatory for free card stamped.
For those of us who grew up in the more middle of the road Episcopal tradition, baptism, up until 1979 was really just an occasion to name the child and have a tasteful party afterwards. Baptisms were often done privately and frankly, the congregation as a whole didn’t pay much attention to it. Somehow it was the priest’s job to keep track of our souls, and the first task of a family…within the first 6 weeks of a newborn’s life, was to make sure they had the child baptized.
But if you challenged most of those families as to why this baptism was important, the most common answer would have been, “well because that is what is done.”
I’m not saying all these reasons for baptism are necessarily wrong, but they all miss the main point of baptism. The purpose of baptism, the end result is laid out clearly on page 298 of the Book of Common Prayer: “Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body the church. The bond which God establishes in Baptism is indissoluble.”
There isn’t any grey area here folks. The bond we make with God and the bond God makes with us at baptism is forever. Nothing NOTHING can diminish, dissolve or destroy it. Nothing we think, nothing we do, nothing we fail to do. It’s indissoluble. It’s impenetrable. It’s forever.
Once we make our promises to God (promises we will renew in a few moments), God reiterates the promise, the covenant God made with us through Jesus Christ some 2,000 yrs ago on the banks of the River Jordan: you are my child, my beloved and with you I am well pleased.  {Ascension translation}
A baptism is another seal placed upon the ancient covenant God made with us, God’s people.
I guess there is a certain logical order to celebrating Christ’s baptism a few weeks after his birth—after all that’s how baptism occurs for most of us. We’re born and then a few weeks or months later, we are baptized.
But that’s not why we have the Baptism of Christ on our calendar today.

We commemorate Jesus’ baptism 2 ½ weeks after his birth because it is the next step in comprehending just what happened with his birth and life among us (the incarnation) it is the next step in understanding how we are to be a manifestation of Christ in the world (the Epiphany).
Jesus wasn’t baptized because he needed to be admitted to some religious organization. He wasn’t baptized to be washed of sin, He wasn’t baptized so Mary could have a tasteful luncheon afterwards. Jesus was baptized because he was fulfilling all righteousness. He was fulfilling the act of the incarnation…he was being submerged in the muddy waters of the Jordan to emerge reborn, renewed and ready for his ministry. He was dying to his life as a regular young man and being born into his life as our Savior, our Teacher, our Lord. Jesus’ baptism strengthened him, readied him, oriented him to his life of Faith.
Baptism—Jesus’ and our own-- provides the blueprint for a life of Faith. It equips us to see Christ at work in the world and to be Christ in this world.
Why do we commemorate Jesus’ baptism so soon after the celebration of his birth? Because Jesus’ birth, served as the inaugural act of forming the Body of Christ on earth. God came to live among us, as one of us in an effort to bring God’s Kingdom to reign in our world. God took on a human body in order to establish an impenetrable indissoluble Body of Love and Light, of Hope and Joy right here, right now. And that Body grows, its reach lengthens, its impact increases each and every-time a person is baptized.
The goal of our faith is to spread the Body of Christ, by being the Body of Christ. We are equipped to do that by virtue of our baptism, we are empowered to do that by the community of faith in which we live and worship and we are drawn to do that through the Love of God as given to us in that baby laid in a manger, that man baptized in the River Jordan and that Lord whose light shines on us in all that we do.
So yes, the baptism of the adult Jesus seems a bit disruptive so soon after Christmas but disruption is really the name of the Christian game. And it is what we’ve all been baptized into. Now and forever. Thanks be to God.
Amen.

Christmas 2 Epiphany Yr A 2014

+Last week the planet Mars was clearly visible low in the northeastern sky. Mars always catches me off guard because it really does give off a red glow. Although cold, we found ourselves reveling in its visibility several evenings last week--- we're blessed, because although we live most of the time in the city, where the night sky is washed out by the lights, we do have a country house where the night sky beckons us with it's ever changing palate of light and wonder.

The night sky is really something to behold. It certainly was 2000 years ago as the cosmos put on quite a show to herald the arrival of our new -born king. Quite a show...

But no one really noticed, except a few shepherds in the Bethlehem countryside and a band of

Zoroastrian astrologers from the Far East. The Magi were always star-gazing and when they saw that wild star dancing in the night, they knew something big was afoot.

And once they arrived in Jerusalem, so did Herod.

Herod is what you call a guy with a complex. You see he didn't have any real authority. Yes, he was the King of Judea --the so called King of the Jews--but he was under the thumb of the Roman Emperor. It's a real recipe for disaster: a man who has a title that suggests authority but who, in reality wields very little,  yet still has a vicious thirst for power. Initially, Herod had no idea about Jesus....a peasant baby born to an unmarried and thoroughly unremarkable couple wasn't even a blip on his radar. That is until he heard about the approaching parade.

As Episcopal priest and author Rick Morley puts it, the Magi's trek west was a mystical parade of sorts[1]! With the star in the front and the camels bringing up the rear, these Wise Folk from the East guided by that star, intrigued by the exultation of the universe exploding in front of their very eyes, passed through in a crowd of two, three, tens, hundreds? We don’t how many there were, but they certainly garnered some attention--- and Herod was all over it. And he didn't like it one bit.

The birth of the Messiah, the Prince of Peace? Another King of the Jews? Herod would have nothing of this, There's no one more sensitive to a threat--- real/or imagined-- than a puppet king with an inferiority complex. So, reacting out of his fear he ordered the killing of all male children under the age of three---the edict that drove the Holy Family into Egypt;  Mary, Joseph and Jesus running for their lives just days after that Holy and Silent night in Bethlehem.

So, as Joseph and Mary run, as Herod seeks to destroy any threat to his reign, as the Magi continue to follow that wild star, it is becoming apparent that this baby is something special, something really special.

But just who is he? A King, a God, A man, a Son, a prophet, a preacher, a revolutionary?

Yes. And then some.

Who is he? What is he? Why is he? It's the question of this season isn't it?

Or are you already past all of this? Has the tree come down, have the lights lost their charm, have the presents been tossed aside?

Are we still awash in the wonder of Christmas Eve?

Or have we moved on, back to the same ol’ same ol’?

But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. We hear this line throughout Mary's journey. She treasured these words and pondered them in her heart.

Our Epiphany challenge, our Epiphany task is to do as Mary, to ponder all that has occurred, to open our eyes to what and how and where God among us is taking shape.

Epiphany is a time to ponder, a time to adjust, a time to understand, a time to comprehend. A time to notice just how this whole miracle that just happened manifests itself in our lives.

It’s a really tall order, I know. The stores have replaced the Christmas and New Year’s displays with Valentine’s Day, all those mundane things that demand so much of our attention are nagging at us. Are we pondering these things in our hearts, or have we already returned to business as usual?

Folks, something astounding has happened.

God in the flesh has come to live among us, as one of us.

Did you notice? Do you notice, still?

At the moment of his birth, the cosmos, as Rick Morley puts it, cried out in exultation by flashing that dazzling star.

The heavenly hosts burst into song across the Bethlehem hills.

The shepherds noticed.

The star gazers in the east noticed.

Eventually Herod noticed.

But do we?

Epiphany is all about the reality of God among us showing and shining in the world.

Does this reality excite you and fill you with joy? Or does it terrify you and fill you with fear? Who are you in this story? The parading Magi, the cowering plotting Herod or the terrified and thrilled, scared and amazed shepherds? Maybe you’re Mary and Joseph, quietly pondering, silently trusting…

Are you filled with expectation about just who this Jesus will be and what he will do with us and through us?

Or are you Herod, threatened by anything that challenges the status quo, leery of anything new, anything different?

When people encounter us, what do they notice? Do they know that you that we, that they have received the greatest gift the world has ever known?

The birth of our Savior caused the stars, the planets, the galaxies, to erupt in shiny exultation, intriguing the Magi, terrifying the  shepherds, baffling the Holy Family, infuriating Herod.

But what about You and what about me?

Are we bursting with this Good News?

The season of Epiphany, the season of acknowledging God Among us in the World is a time for shining the light of Christ on everyone we encounter, in everything we do and everywhere we go. In this season of God Among Us, may the cosmos of our lives erupt in the exultation of God Among Us: Emmanuel.

---

[1] www.rickmorley.com

Christmas 1 2013

+The Gospel for today is John’s Christmas story. I know, there’s not a donkey or a manger or a shepherd or a star in sight. There’s no Joseph, no Mary. No baby Jesus. No silent night, No Angels harking. None of that.
But just what is a Christmas story anyway? A Christmas story is a way for us to make sense of our faith. It’s a way to understand that Jesus is God and that God is Jesus.
See…right there it gets really confusing. Doesn’t it? God is Jesus Jesus is God….what?
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.
It’s easier to understand than you may think. You see, in the beginning, when creation was, well, creating….Jesus was there. But not the Jesus we’ve come to know through the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, not the Jesus of Paul’s many letters…no the Jesus who was there was not the man who is God, it was instead the God who will become Jesus.
Jesus the Divine was there, not Jesus the Man.
Jesus the man came later, because Jesus the man is an instrument used by God to reach us.
 This is where that whole idea of “The Word” comes from. “The Word” is a translation of the Greek concept of Logos. Logos has been defined many ways but in our usage Logos is the discourse---the conversation-- between God and God’s creation. We can’t experience God because God isn’t an old white man sitting on a throne. God is Love, God is Light, God is Peace. God is energy. God is not a person. God is not physical, God is not material. So the Logos, the Word, is how God reaches out to God’s creation. Jesus is this Logos, Jesus is this Word.
Jesus is how God touches us and how we touch God. And isn’t that what Christmas is all about—God reaching out to us?
But, because it’s John’s Gospel, there’s still more to this story. You see not only is this Prelude of John a Christmas story, it’s also a Creation story. John writes:
All things came into being through The Word, and without The Word 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.
The basic premise of creation stories is that in the beginning God created the light. The very first thing created out of the muck and the mess, the first thing created out of the deep was light.
And with this notion that light was created out of darkness comes one of the cornerstones of John’s theology—that God is the light and that not-God is darkness. It’s as basic as the good guys wearing white hats and the bad guys wearing black hats in those old tv westerns: Light is good. Dark is bad. Light is safe, dark is dangerous. Light is warm, dark is cold.
God is all that is good, “not God” is all that is not good. Jesus is God in the world….God is light, Jesus is in the world, so Jesus is the light of the world.
God is always battling the forces of darkness, because the primordial muck from which creation emanated is always trying to overtake the Good ness that is God.
It's good guys vs bad guys, it's the Empire vs the rebel alliance. It's the Red Sox vs the Yankees.
The light is good the dark is bad and to make sure we're ready to receive the light and reject the dark, the evangelist john introduces us to another John, a herald of the light, a witness to the coming of the messiah--John the Baptist.
We read:
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.
And so, here we have a Christmas story all wrapped up in a Creation story, with a touch of Advent thrown in for good measure. This Gospel is trying, in 18 verses, to give us the whole ball of wax in one fell swoop:
God in all of God’s “godness” is intangible, unknowable to us basic humans, so God uses an instrument to reach us, an instrument to engage us in a relationship we can grasp. God does this by taking on flesh in the person of Jesus. Jesus comes to us seemingly as a man just a man, but soon we learn, along with him, that while he is a man he’s also much more. We learn that he is God who has taken on the human form in hopes that we, the regular old humans, will embrace the man and through that embrace, learn to love the God.
So John’s Christmas story doesn’t have a donkey or a manger or a shepherd or a star. His story doesn’t have a Joseph, or a Mary. There’s no baby born in a barn. No silent night, no Angels harking and heralding. Nope, John’s Christmas story has none of that. What it does have is, very simply, a God who wants nothing more than for us to Love one another just as that same God Loves us.

Amen.