Transfiguration of Our Lord
Sunday, February 11, 2018

Listen to today’s gospel reading and sermon:

²Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, ³and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. ⁴And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. ⁵Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” ⁶He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. ⁷Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” ⁸Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.
  ⁹As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. – Mark 9:2-9

A few weeks ago I watched a squirrel playing outside the church. I mean really, really watched it. Normally I am not one to notice things like that – for better or worse I’ve never been one to “stop and smell the flowers,” so to speak. But my then 15-month-old daughter noticed the squirrel. And as I was bustling about getting ready for church that morning she was uncharacteristically still and quiet, staring out the window. So I paused and stared out the window with her. I watched the squirrel disappear behind a snow bank and then reappear. We watched as another squirrel joined the first and went chasing one another up and around a tree. I hadn’t just stopped to take in something like that in a while. Of course, I began to ponder in my mind what the squirrel was doing, why it was moving this way and not that. As an utterly amateur observer of wildlife I tried to discern what this squirrel was up to in its movements. I was trying to make sense of it, but C—seemed to be simply taking it in. Now, I’m sure she was making her own connections and meaning out of the experience, but with a wide-eyed and silent wonder I lacked. But for at least for a moment I just watched and took it all in with awe and wonder.

I am someone, and maybe many of you are, too, who has lots of questions. Why is this happening? What is going on here? Where are we? Who are we? When will these things happen? How can we learn more? And maybe you can sense that I’m already talking about more than the incident with the squirrel. And I want to say that those are important questions. Just to navigate the world on a daily basis but even more to lead and respond to important issues, we must begin to dig in to those questions. There is a time and place for that. There is a time for creeds and study, for analysis and action planning. But the transfiguration is not one of those times.

I’ve heard and preached sermons about Moses and Elijah representing the law and prophets which Jesus comes to fulfill. I’ve heard analysis of the voice from heaven and the way in which it connects us to Jesus’ baptism and to words spoken by the centurion at Jesus’ death and how all that points us to the revelation of God’s central message. There’s the analysis of just what it is Peter is trying to accomplish by suggesting the building of structures to hold on to this moment on the mountaintop. And there is a tradition that suggests this is actually a story from after Jesus’ resurrection that the authors reframed in terms of trying to best tell the truth of Jesus’ overall work. All well and good. And perhaps even deeply meaningful.

But ultimately I’m not sure that’s what we’re supposed to do with this story. I think the invitation is just to be with it, to be in it. When the voice from the cloud speaks, it says, “This is my son the beloved. Listen to him!” So I began pondering this week what it is we are supposed to listen to. This story is framed by predictions about all that is yet to come for Jesus in terms of suffering and the cross, so perhaps it is about listening to understand the trajectory of Jesus’ saving work. Or it could be listening to his teaching about transforming our relationship to the marginalized or about seeing the continuity of God’s love and grace in the scriptures. Or simply to be obedient to Jesus’ words. All that, again, is well and good.

But I think the cloud and this voice are actually inviting silent awe and wonder. Peter, and we love him for this, speaks into this unfolding mystery with a heart-felt desire to understand, explain, or hold onto what is happening. It’s the first-century equivalent of trying to film an experience on your iPhone instead of actually experiencing it. And with words of belovedness and the intensification of the mystery, God enfolds him – all of them – and invites them to deeper awareness of the transformational glory of God.

And so perhaps this account could invite us, too, into the same deeper awareness. Often it is the case that this assembly holds at the same time among its members the incredible, holy, awe-inspiring transformations that happen at birth and those that happen at death. These moments raise deep questions about meaning and life and God. They invite us to ponder and discover, learn and grow. But they also invite us into moments in which God’s transformation shines beyond our human understanding. How might all of us enter the wonder and mystery of those moments when they happen in our own lives and in the lives of our community members? How might we pause simply to be in those moments?

How might we be present to the ongoing transformations within our own lives: the small daily changes that carry us from who we have been into what we will be and the big moments that propel us into new phases of life? We rightly worry and analyze and second-guess decisions, but in doing so we sometimes miss the profound ways in which God is wrapping us in a cloud of belovedness and calling our attention to Christ lighting our path.

And so, too, the world around us changing with the seasons; cultures that grow and change; communities that are shaped and re-shaped. Our own congregation experiences these moments of transformation as we make room to welcome new voices and make new pathways together as a community and when we gather together as we did yesterday to vision and plan as a church council. When we begin to discern where God is leading us, we have an opportunity to be on the mountaintop with Jesus, to experience God transfiguring us.

So instead of approaching this story and our own profound moments of transformation with our typical questions of who, what, when, where, why, and how, maybe sometimes we might try tasting and touching, watching and listening, even smelling what the glory of God looks like. To really see and hear the other people of God around us for who they are as God’s beloved children before we ask what they have to offer us. To really pause to see and listen to the world moving around us and the communities of which we are a part. Not just to hear but to feel the music of worship and the music of the falling rain moving in our bodies. To really taste and smell the bread and wine of communion as they come to our lips or feel the wet and wonderful waters of baptism which transform us into glory.

And if we’re looking for something to sustain us through the coming wilderness of Lent, through the pain and suffering that lies ahead, something to hold us to Easter, it may very well be the ways in which we take in the fullness of God’s glory in ways that we simply cannot explain, even if we tried, once we have come down out of the cloud and off the mountain. Things we cannot fully comprehend in the ways we usually seek out understanding. At least not until we, too, see the fullness of God’s glory transforming us into new life. But until then we have the opportunity to be with one another, to listen deeply to each other, to take in the glory of God’s transforming us, and to rest if only for a moment from the busyness of our hearts and minds, to be aware of that cloud of God’s belovedness enfolding us forever.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

5th Sunday after Epiphany
February 4, 2018

Listen to today’s gospel reading and sermon:

²⁹As soon as [Jesus and the disciples] left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. ³⁰Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. ³¹He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them.
  ³²That evening, at sunset, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons. ³³And the whole city was gathered around the door. ³⁴And he cured many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons; and he would not permit the demons to speak, because they knew him.
  ³⁵In the morning, while it was still very dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. ³⁶And Simon and his companions hunted for him. ³⁷When they found him, they said to him, “Everyone is searching for you.” ³⁸He answered, “Let us go on to the neighboring towns, so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do.” ³⁹And he went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons. – Mark 1:29-39

Imagine the scene that is taking place when Jesus leaves the synagogue and enters the house of Simon’s mother-in-law. There has just been a very public healing of a man with an unclean spirit in the middle of what everyone in town expected to be an ordinary – maybe even boring – gathering for worship. They are amazed both at Jesus’ teaching and that it is backed up by the power to command the spirits. The crowd comes pouring out all a chatter, while Jesus and his brand new disciples head just across the path in this small village for lunch.

The village, looking out on the beautiful Sea (lake, really) of Galilee, is small, certainly by today’s standards, but the houses are packed on top of each other in the style of the day. Stone and mud rooms built closely packed on top of one another, buildings that speak to the interconnected communal living that was the norm of their place and time. People bustling around, each room housing more people than we would put in anything that size but sharing space as a community as they shared the tasks of daily living – the cooking, the exchange of food, the care of the young and old, the making of household goods. Every person depending on the next.

But in the midst of this bustle of community, this shared experience of daily living, there are those who have been cut off from the community: the sick, the injured, those wrestling with unclean spirits. And one of those cut off is someone close to Simon, his mother-in-law. Jesus, who has suddenly become the talk of the town, the person others were perhaps clamoring to invite to their own homes, has come to her house. But she cannot be a part of the celebration. She is sick. Whether she is deathly ill or down with an illness that others just didn’t want to catch or sick with a bad cold isn’t really clear. But in a lot of ways it doesn’t matter, because all of those to some degree or another remove her from the community.

We still know today the social disconnection of illness: everything from a bad cold that keeps us from sitting too close to others for fear of spreading germs to life-threatening illnesses that prevent us from getting out to be among the friends and communities that give us strength. There is still a social stigma around certain illnesses – everything from HIV/AIDS to schizophrenia. Diseases like dementia and cancer have the capacity to alienate us from our own bodies and minds. Our healthcare systems all too often serve as a means of separating those experiencing illness from their community even when those illnesses aren’t contagious. And we live in a world that is mostly not designed for people who by birth, injury, or illness don’t move about the world in the way that others do, cutting them off even from getting into buildings where people are gathering. One of the most profound things I have learned as a pastor is the depth of disconnection that begins to happen as soon as someone becomes ill.

But the disconnection does not stop there. Read any newspaper, magazine, or follow any news site or podcast and sooner rather than later someone is bound to raise the issue of an increasingly disconnected society. I’m not one to decry this generation as worse than others, and I think that social media, which often gets blamed for disconnection, has at least the potential to aid connection as much as it does to hinder it. But we alienate people who break laws, in many cases permanently removing them from a social network. We label people based on their offenses and shut them out of our communities. We dismiss people experiencing poverty and immigrants to our land as not part of “us.” We hide our own grief when the community implicitly decides it is time for us to move on. Most of us respond to the question of “How are you?” with the expected response of “I’m fine,” since in most instances anything else isn’t really considered socially acceptable. So we learn to suppress in public any feelings that aren’t happy or excited. We may live together in bustling communities, but often we know little about one another’s actual lived experience.

And in walks Jesus. And what I love about this story isn’t just that Jesus heals Simon’s mother-in-law. Though of course that’s great. And that she gets up to attend to the guest in her home isn’t, as many have preached, a suggestion that Jesus healed her just so he could get lunch. Instead it’s a sign that in being healed she is restored to the interconnected community in which every member, young and old, mutually serves the others.

And then people begin to gather outside the door. Remember this is a crowded little village, so they are clogging the pathways and looking down from rooftop workspaces to jostle around the tiny door to what was probably a very small room. And suddenly they find that Jesus has not only healed a woman but created church.

Yes, they have all just been at the synagogue and that was church, too. But having experienced the healing power of Jesus, the witnesses went out and found the broken ones, the sick ones, the disconnected ones, and they gathered them to Jesus. And that’s church – not just worship, but church itself: a community of people who have experienced the healing power of Jesus to reconnect them to one another. And a community like that cannot help but open itself to others who are disconnected and invite them to gather around Jesus. Arguably the second miracle here (or third or fourth – I’m already losing count in Mark’s fast-paced storytelling!) is the reconnection of the whole community, not just the healthy ones, around Jesus. And that’s church.

Today this congregation gathers for its annual meeting, and we will talk about our year together, we will talk about our year ahead, we will talk about the ministries we have that serve each other and which lift up the power of Jesus at work among us, and we will talk about the gift of the larger church community of which we are a part. But at the heart of it is a recognition that we are a community of people who have been drawn and continue to be drawn around the healing, life-giving power of Jesus, and who through that experience of healing are knit into a community of mutual service not only to one another but to the community and perhaps especially to Christ who shows up in our midst as the guest and stranger. A central part of our work together as a community is connecting and reconnecting those on the margins – joining them in witnessing the healing power of Jesus.

And today we also rejoice in formally welcoming 6 more people to do that work with us in this place. Like the crowd gathered around Jesus at the door of Simon’s house, we make room and keep making room for more people to be gathered around the one who brings us healing and life. Then together we work, each in our own ways, to keep building and keeping making room until everyone is gathered around.

This is what Jesus does when he enters the town. He brings healing, yes. But in the weeks and months and years to come there will be other illnesses and other unclean spirits at work. But Jesus re-centers them around the power of God and reconnects them one to another. He reminds them of the ones who are not present in the gathered community that they, too, might be brought in. And that is what Jesus does here in this community. Calling those who are disconnected from self and community to experience again being together around the healing power of Jesus which brings us from disease to wholeness and from death to life.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

Sunday, January 28, 2018
4th Sunday after Epiphany

Listen to today’s gospel reading and sermon:

Every so often, someone asks me whether I have or would if asked perform an exorcism. Now, sometimes it comes from someone who has a morbid curiosity, imagining it like it happens in horror movies and wanting a good story. But most of the time when I get asked something like that, it seems the underlying question is really about the presence of evil in the world. Are there still forces that tear us apart, that possess us and control us, that wreak havoc on individuals and communities? What are they? And, most importantly, can anything be done about the evil we experience in the world?

There is evil in the world. I think that goes without saying. But I’ll never forget a conversation that took place in our adult forum several years ago watching a documentary about people of faith responding to the events of 9/11. It raised the question for us of whether the concept of evil is simply the sum total of all the bad stuff we humans think and do – and pause to consider the tremendous force of that for a moment – or whether evil is that plus forces that operate beyond the human plane of reality. I think there are persuasive arguments and interesting implications either way, but more and more I have the sense that there are indeed forces larger than just the sum total of humans coming together to do terrible things.

Now, are those forces ruled by a fiery devil with horns and a pitchfork? I don’t believe so, and it’s a stretch to support that image from the Bible. Do those forces manifest themselves as shrieking, shadowy figures that possess human beings? Mostly not in my experience. But are we pushed and pulled, torn apart and turned upside down by things that seem to be more powerful than we can overcome even with the best of our collective efforts? Yes. It seems all the time.

I still can’t shake the sense of the forces at work last summer at the rally that took place in Charlottesville, brought again to my attention listening to the year-end wrap up episode of the Code Switch podcast. Without in any way absolving the people who planned that rally or ourselves for our racism, there is something about that event that speaks to me of the power and presence of the demonic at work in our world. And maybe the demonic is simply what manages to spew from our mouths, our hands, and our hearts to perpetuate systematic racism. Or maybe there’s something even more than that at work.

As we try to sort out how to move forward together as a divided country, there’s a lot we do to throw barbs at one another. There’s a lot we refuse to listen to because we have decided we are in the right. But it also seems to me all that is growing ever bigger than even the actions we take day-to-day. Maybe the demonic is that which keeps us from listening to one another, from acting in our own and others’ best interest.

And as individuals I see us trying over and over again to overcome the things that rob us of life – the drive for perfection, the quest for something more than our daily bread, the substances and addictions that control our minds and bodies, the illnesses that steal us away from ourselves and our communities. These things, these demons separate us from abundant life.

I don’t know which demons that plagued the man who entered the synagogue where Jesus was teaching. I don’t know what held him prisoner and kept him from abundant life. And I only know in an academic sort of way the kinds of social forces big and small that robbed people in Jesus’ own community of their life and livelihoods. But what Mark records is that when the man encountered Jesus, the forces that gripped him shouted out with a deep recognition both that Jesus brought the full power of God to challenge them and that Jesus wasn’t going to tolerate their presence.

Jesus orders the demons be gone. Not quieted down for a while, not kept at bay with careful attention and focus, not set aside until later. Gone. Get out. When Jesus walks in, the things that rob us of life are ordered out. We are witnesses to the tremendous power of evil in our world. We are witnesses to the forces at work around us and within us. I think few of us doubt their power. But it is harder sometimes to trust Jesus’ power to be even stronger than that. Because most of the time we don’t see this kind of once and done action. Instead we, like the original readers of Mark’s gospel, tend to feel defeated by the things that rob us of life, and for reasons we cannot fully explain they continue to dwell in our world and in us. But Mark tells this story as the first of Jesus’ public acts to remind all of us that through the Jesus’ death and resurrection the power unleashed on this one man’s demons is unleashed on all the world. The power to stand once and for all against evil and hatred, bigotry and falsehood, fear and grief, illness and anxiety.

So we are left with the question we started with – what are we to do with this evil we continue to experience around us and in us, even with the knowledge that Christ is the end more powerful. I’d like to suggest that one of the things we do is perform exorcisms. And before you get too weirded out, let me tell you that the answer to the question of whether I have done an exorcism is, “Yes, and so have you.”

If you’ve ever been at Immanuel for a baptism (or at another church that uses a similar rite in the tradition of the ancient church), before the baptism itself, before the prayer over the water, we confess our faith. And before we confess our faith, we renounce evil. I say, “Do you renounce the devil and all the forces that defy God?” and you say: “I renounce them.” “Do you renounce the powers of this world that rebel against God?” and you say… “I renounce them.” “Do you renounce the ways of sin that draw you from God?” and you say… “I renounce them.” Three times to parallel our confession of faith, we renounce the forces of evil and all that stands in opposition to God. We call out the forces that seem to rule our lives and rob us of life itself. We silence them and send them – Be Gone! – with Jesus’ power. And every time for me the collective power of that renunciation does something. It doesn’t save us from everything forever, but something clears the room in that moment. And then in the baptism itself we find the assurance that God works that power once and for all in our lives forever.

Though I think the language in our baptismal rite is particularly powerful, we renounce evil every Sunday. We begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, or with other Trinitarian language. And you say, “Amen.” And we have reclaimed this space. Then we name out loud in the confession that those forces exist in our lives, and in naming them and hearing forgiveness in Jesus’ name they, too, are sent fleeing. With songs and prayers and gathering as one body at the table, we proclaim Jesus’ power over it all, sending the demons fleeing if only for a moment, until one day God does it for good. It’s this that sets us free to share good news and engage the hard work of transforming the world as it is now.

Evil, our own collective action and the forces beyond our control, exists in the world. But we gather in community as the people of God with others all around the globe week after week to speak against it, to use the power of Jesus, if only for a moment to bid the demons be gone and in doing so taste for ourselves the kingdom of God.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

 

 

3rd Sunday after Epiphany
January 21, 2018

Listen to today’s gospel reading and sermon:

¹⁴Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

  ¹⁶As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. ¹⁷And Jesus said to them, “Follow me and I will make you fish for people.” ¹⁸And immediately they left their nets and followed him. ¹⁹As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. ²⁰Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him. – Mark 1:14-20

Why do you follow Jesus?

Sometimes I’ve asked you in a sermon or in personal conversation why you come to church or to Immanuel specifically. Sometimes I’ve asked questions about what your faith means to you or how you live out your faith through church or through your work or your family life. But this question is a little bit different. So take a moment, and think about your answer to the question: Why do you follow Jesus?

It’s hard for me to put my answer into words, but since I’ve asked you I’m going to try. I think my answer would be something like: Because Jesus speaks grace to me in a way that no other person or thing can. Because Jesus’ unwavering commitment to radical love and God’s commitment through Jesus to conquer everything including death itself that tries to stop that love is a story that gives me hope. I would probably say that in ways I cannot understand it has to do with some water poured and words spoken by a pastor at my baptism, a moment to which I can point to in order to identify God’s promises that well up in me. I might say something about the way in which the offer of Christ’s body in the Eucharist breaks me open and puts me back together again in ways that heal me week after week. And, somewhat less unique to Jesus, though also important is that I really like Jesus’ nonviolent resistance to empire, power, and wealth, even when I’m the one Jesus is resisting.

But honestly my best answer is in this gospel story about Jesus and some fishermen. Jesus begins his ministry and after he begins to proclaim his message about the kingdom of God come near, the first thing he does is to stop by the sea of Galilee. He says to Simon and Andrew and then to James and John: “Follow me.” And they did, in the way characteristic of Mark’s telling of Jesus’ story, they did so “immediately.”

Let me be clear. The parallel that I am drawing between this story and my own response to Jesus’ call is not my immediate willingness to follow. I am at best a reluctant follower most of the time. On a regular basis I discover that I am instead trying to lead God into my own projects and my own ideas about how life and ministry are going to go. Sometimes with the help of trusted companions I am able to let go and follow Jesus, but other times even realizing my error, I keep tugging on Jesus to follow me instead. Sometimes I know what I need to do and I don’t or I think I can’t. So in that regard, I envy the immediacy of these disciples in the moment.

But the parallel I see to my own response to Jesus’ call is that I have no real words to explain why I follow Jesus. Did you notice that they say nothing in this story? While everything I said a moment ago is true about my reasons for following Jesus, those words are an attempt to explain something that is deeper than explanation. It’s an attempt to explain what is, frankly, a miracle. Without a word these four fishermen and shortly a whole host of others begin to follow this Jesus they barely know. We often attribute this immediate and, let’s be honest, irrational response to Jesus either to some great act of faith on their part or to some utter lack of impulse control. But what we don’t usually call it is a miracle.

We think of the miracles as the stories of Jesus healing, calming the storm, turning water into wine or a boy’s lunch into a banquet for thousands. But this is no less a miracle story for me. Jesus takes ordinary people doing ordinary things and turns them into disciples as fast as he turns water into wine or multiplies the bread for thousands. Which is to say, also, that the decision and the power in this story to create disciples rests not in the hands of four ordinary fishermen, but in Jesus.

Why do I follow Jesus? Because Jesus called me to follow and then Jesus made me a follower. I am a firm believer along with Martin Luther that faith is a gift given and the power to live in that gift is from God, just as the gift itself. This is at once immensely freeing and immensely frustrating. It reminds us when we fail to follow to turn not to our own resources but again to God as the source of our faith. I think it also sets us free from the worry about loved ones who don’t profess faith or come to church. We can witness in word and deed in the ways that seem most effective to us, better yet in the ways in which God is calling us to do so. We can raise our children, or teach our parents, or invite our friends in the faith, but faith itself is from God – for Andrew and Simon, James and John, you and me. Why God makes disciples out of some and not others, why some follow and some don’t is a bit of a mystery to me, but I trust a God who can raise the dead, so I have to trust that what we see as faithfulness and following Jesus isn’t all there is to it in the end.

And at the same time this call from Jesus is immensely disruptive. It is rarely easy. And though I don’t find it coercive, it is sometimes disturving the way in which God calls us to challenging work for the sake of this kingdom of God come near. Poet Thom Shuman puts it this way in a poem called “Intruder.” ** Spoiler alert: the intruder is Jesus:

every evening
it’s the same:
put the key in the deadbolt,
turn and lock;
check the windows;
put out the dog;
leave a light on…

all those routines
to feel safe and fall asleep in peace.

but some night
in the midst of my security,
you will tip-toe into the house:
rearranging the furniture
so I will stub my soul
when I burst out of my cocooned rest.

cracking the combination
of my heart
you ransack all my fears
and stuff them
into your pocket.

then
softly whistling
“come, thou long-expected Jesus”
you slip out
leaving the door
standing wide open

that I might
follow you
into the kingdom.

Come, Lord Jesus!
Come, Lord Jesus!

That’s the story of these disciples, of Jesus coming in when they were busy in their daily routines to rearrange their lives and open the door for them to follow. It resonates with my own story of faith, as well. But we take heart in this difficult call because we are not called alone. Even here brothers are called in pairs. And the promise is not to make them powerful or successful or brilliant or even the best disciples. The promise is that Jesus will share with them, in them, through them this power to invite others to follow. He will through them and with them create the miracle of a community of followers to support and guide each other. The invitation is not so much to go snare people into the faith, but to invite people, then to watch God’s miracle of faith draw us together into a living, breathing community we call the body of Christ.

It’s not always easy, but I hope that Jesus keeps showing up to invite me to follow, that Jesus keeps working the miracle of faith in me to jostle me out of my carefully arranged plans and into the life-giving adventure of following Jesus, and that he might do the very same for all of you.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

**Thanks to my friend Pastor Tim Brown for posting Shuman’s poem in relationship to this week’s text. The full text is copied here from this second-hand link: http://www.zipcon.net/~ehcc/surprise.htm

 

 

 

Baptism of Our Lord (transferred)
Sunday, January 14, 2018

Listen to today’s gospel reading and sermon here:

¹In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, ²the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. ³Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. ⁴And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. – Genesis 1:1-5

⁴John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”
  ⁹In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” – Mark 1:4-11

At yesterday’s 34^th annual Martin Luther King, Jr., Weekend Breakfast at the Amherst Middle School, I was asked to give the invocation. Though I’m reasonably sure no one who heard it made the connection, the way I prayed was shaped by this week’s gospel text about the baptism of Jesus. Before I started the prayer proper, I began with these words that I invite you into now:

“I invite you to take a few deep breaths with me:

“Breathe in peace to calm your weary soul, and breathe peace out again to heal a wounded world.

“Breathe in to remember that you are loved, and breathe out again to remind all the world of its belovedness.

Breathe in hope to renew tired spirits, and breathe out hope to inspire the world to what is yet possible.”

You see, you can’t breathe out until you’ve breathed in. And this brief, almost tersely worded account of Jesus’ baptism is Jesus’ inhale. The spirit that comes down from heaven is described as “like a dove” but we might just as rightly imagine God’s spirit as wind or breath. And it descends on Jesus. At the risk of getting into Trinitarian gymnastics, God from heaven breaths out that God in human form on earth might breathe in. And then it is time for him to breathe out – to breathe out a long slow exhale of healing and teaching and agitating for justice, a long slow exhale of welcome and feasting with the marginalized and holding fast to what is right.

I worry that this might overly simplistic as if the Baptism of Jesus was as important as everything else he did. And in Mark’s account, without a birth narrative to rival Matthew or Luke’s gospels, his baptism is the story of God’s incarnation, of claiming Jesus as God’s beloved son. But let’s remember, too, that the Spirit that descends like a dove is no small and gentle bird. This is the spirit that, as we read this morning, hovered over the deep before the creation of the world. This is the Spirit that bumped and jostled along the tohu vavohu, the great chaos of the cosmos before it took form. Before the universe exploded into being, the Spirit grappled with the substance of all creation, pushing and pulling and moving and dancing. It is no small thing to receive that Spirit in us, to be filled with the breath that has the power to dance with all that is. That Jesus begins here is to fill not just his life but his death and resurrection with the full power of God.

At the same time there is this other element going on in Jesus’ baptism. The muddy water of the Jordan River. In contrast to the invisible but immensely powerful Spirit, the Jordan, even in Jesus’ time, was not exactly a world landmark. Though more robust before much of it was diverted in modern times for human consumption, it has never been known as a great and powerful river. There are Biblical stories which play on the Jordan’s inferior reputation as not much more than a muddy stream. That is to say, without using vulgar language, that the country in which we find the Jordan River and its peoples were not exactly considered by the powerful of the world to be worth much to the world stage. They were looked down and disregarded, dismissed, and derided. They were not welcomed into other parts of the empire that made itself rich on their backs.

But just as Jesus takes in the breath of creation, he also takes on the water of this oft-forgotten, oft-maligned river. The coming together of God’s incarnation in Jesus, the Spirit that danced in uncreated creation, and this out-of-the-way muddy stream, reminds us again that God’s redemption begins at the margins. It begins in places the world has shunned, the places ravaged by others’ accumulation of wealth and resources. And just as the combination of water and Spirit send Jesus into ministry and God’s work of redemption, that it happens in the muddy Jordan in Palestine is God’s transforms our ideas about who and what is actually on the margins. That Jesus comes here, that Jesus lives and breathes and bathes here invites us to consider all things, all places, all people holy and beloved.

But this is not just about Jesus. We come back to this story every year because it is also a story about us and our baptisms. It is easy to think that there is something special about this baptism because it’s Jesus. But we believe and proclaim that this is what baptism is and does for us, too. We are people for whom God tears open the heavens to send the spirit of all creation. We are people who have breathed in the fullness of the Spirit who has the power to go up against great chaos, to rival the great depths of the cosmos. We are people whose lives are a grand out-breath of that same Spirit for the sake of the world.

And we are people who, washed by local water, can never again disregard another as less than whole, less than a child of God. Because we have experienced God’s calling us beloved, a call both deeply personal and deeply communal. For our belovedness to God is a claiming of our whole person in every particularity and also a claiming of all humanity with the same particular belovedness.

And so we stand, water-washed and spirit-filled, living out God’s call to each of us in baptism. Breathing out into the world the breath of God, the breath that dances with the whole of creation, bringing new life into being and drawing us together to be the body of Christ.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Epiphany of Our Lord (transferred)
Sunday, January 7, 2018

¹In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, ²asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage.” ³When King Herod heard this, he was frightened, and all Jerusalem with him; ⁴and calling together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born. ⁵They told him, “In Bethlehem of Judea; for so it has been written by the prophet:
 ⁶‘And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
  are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
 for from you shall come a ruler
  who is to shepherd my people Israel.’ ”
  ⁷Then Herod secretly called for the wise men and learned from them the exact time when the star had appeared. ⁸Then he sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage.” ⁹When they had heard the king, they set out; and there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. ¹⁰When they saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. ¹¹On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. ¹²And having been warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they left for their own country by another road. – Matthew 2:1-12

Listen to today’s sermon here:

Who here is familiar with the poem Footprints in the Sand? For those who aren’t…essentially it describes the dream of a person walking along a sandy beach with Jesus as scenes from their life flash by. At the end, looking back the person sees two sets of footprints most of the way, but only one set of footprints at the most difficult points of life. A little miffed, the person asks Jesus why he left just when things were getting hard. Jesus’ tender response is that it was those moments that he carried the person through. Whether the poem itself speaks to you or not, the idea that Jesus walks with us is central to our faith. God makes a promise to never leave us or forsake us. God in some manner holds us even when we are breaking apart, even when we cannot see or feel it because of the depth of our pain and trouble. I believe this. And it’s one way to view our faith journey.

            In a more recent response to the poem, which I also find deeply true to my own experience of faith, Jesus is talking with the person and says, “Where you see one set of footprints is where I carried you. And that long groove over there? That’s where I dragged you kicking and screaming for a while.” I don’t think God is coercive, but God does know better than we do, and sometimes a call from God to do something hard or to dig in to deep personal work of transformation meets with our resistance and God does nudge and prod and drag us through it into new life. For these times I am, at least in retrospect, grateful. This is another way to view our faith journey.

But today I wonder about a somewhat less talked about journey that makes footprints through the sand, a story that presents a different image of faith we don’t talk about quite as much at least in the church. It’s the long, slow journey of the magi, and I think it speaks something of our own faith journeys, as well.

First it is a journey of seeking. Unlike the first two images, it is not a journey in which Jesus walks beside us. Jesus is real, Jesus is leading us in some obscure way, Jesus is transforming the world by his presence, but he is not our known companion on the road, rather he is the mysterious thing we seek without fully knowing what it is. Even for those of us who have degrees in theology, who spend our days and nights thinking about the work of the church, Jesus is sometimes an elusive companion. Like following a star across desert and mountains, just as you think you’re getting close it almost seems to stretch a little farther out of reach. I think of the times that I have been absolutely certain of who God is and how God acts and what God has in mind for me and I have turned a corner to have all that taken apart and reassembled. While I still believe the conviction that God is with us through all that, the experience we have is often of a lonely journey of seeking and wondering.

Yet, the journey of the magi is also one done in community. Many traditions have numbered them at three, some Eastern traditions number them at twelve – strong biblical numbers certainly – but Matthew’s gospel only indicates that there was more than one. Though we often refer to them as kings and wise men there is a possibility of all genders being part of the crowd. We often imagine them coming as one group. Matthew’s gospel only indicates they come from the direction of the rising sun – could they have come from modern day India or Pakistan, Iran or Iraq, Saudi Arabia or Yemen? Is it possible that there were multiple groups who set out from different places meeting somewhere along the road, sharing a journey even if they did not share a culture or language? The journey of faith is one that happens in community with others – with others who may be very different, who may not think the way we do, whose country of origin makes them automatically suspect in our xenophobic culture, but who are together drawn by the mystery of God made flesh, whose questioning and wondering with one another along the way shapes what the journey is like and helps us discover more about ourselves and about God. For you, my fellow travelers, and for your footprints in my journey of faith I am grateful.

The journey of the magi is a journey in which even our best intentions create disastrous consequences. Embedded in this story is the beginning of Herod’s terrible response. The magi – honestly, genuinely seeking faith – get nearly to the object of their adoration and they find themselves still lost and needing direction and they ask King Herod. They mistakenly seek God in the halls of political power – another parallel with our own faith journeys – and in doing so they set off Herod’s violence against innocent children in his attempt to eliminate a perceived threat to his own power. How often, with the best of intentions, seeking to help and to honor God, we have said and done things that resulted in violence. It is a mark of our human realities that we produce unintended consequences even with the best of intentions.

The journey of the magi is one in which they bring the gifts they have to offer. They bring gifts that in their own time and place honor kingship and majesty. They are gifts that symbolically predict, intentionally or not, the way in which Jesus will exercise that kingship through death and resurrection. But we bring our gifts, too. Some of them seemingly impractical, perhaps, but in the end just what is needed. I wonder whether they ever saw reason to share a bit of those gifts along the way, but whether they did or not they carried with them a spirit of generosity that was ready to share what was precious to them. This is part of our journey – to share the wealth we have for the sake of the world and in honor of the one who is the source of our wealth.

But more than anything, the journey of the magi is a journey of wonder and mystery. Every trip near or far can be so if we open ourselves to that possibility. But the journey they take is particularly so. It began with deep attention to the world around them. To see this unique alignment of the heavens requires a lifetime of deep and careful observation. They look with open hearts and minds to their books of wisdom and the natural world. They ask questions and take risks. What they must have seen and experienced in doing so! That all of us could be so open and mindful of our present moment! Perhaps we can even now, for just a moment in this time gathered together, find some moment in the rest of this liturgy to pause in music or prayer or silence or communion to wonder like the magi

This incredible journey required much of the magi, not an easy road to travel then or now. But they are drawn by a conviction that God is doing something worth seeing. Unable to recite a creed of belief about the God of all creation, perhaps unaware of the fullness of Jesus’ story of resurrection that unfolds much later, people who likely return home to search out yet other stars in the sky, people whose journey involved getting lost and confused, people who question and wonder, people who bump and jostle along with their fellow travelers, the magi make their footprints in the sand and in doing so are folded into God’s great story of incarnation and find themselves one day at the foot of God made flesh. Fellow travelers, let us rejoice that we too, in each of our steps are drawn by font and table to the wonder of God made flesh for us and that in our winding and wondering before we even know Jesus walking beside us, we, too, are folded into God’s story of salvation for the world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

First Sunday of Christmas
December 31, 2017

Listen to the gospel reading and sermon here:

 

²²When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, [Joseph and Mary] brought [Jesus] up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord ²³(as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord”), ²⁴and they offered a sacrifice according to what is stated in the law of the Lord, “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons.”
  ²⁵Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon; this man was righteous and devout, looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him. ²⁶It had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. ²⁷Guided by the Spirit, Simeon came into the temple; and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him what was customary under the law, ²⁸Simeon took him in his arms and praised God, saying,
 ²⁹“Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
  according to your word;
 ³⁰for my eyes have seen your salvation,
  ³¹which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
 ³²a light for revelation to the Gentiles
  and for glory to your people Israel.”
  ³³And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. ³⁴Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed ³⁵so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”
  ³⁶There was also a prophet, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, having lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, ³⁷then as a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped there with fasting and prayer night and day. ³⁸At that moment she came, and began to praise God and to speak about the child to all who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem.
  ³⁹When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. ⁴⁰The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him. – Luke 2:22-40

How much is enough?

I’m asking that question as we close out another calendar year. How are you feeling about how this year has gone? Have you done everything you set out to do this year? Did you accomplish all you hoped you would have? Did you have the impact in your family, your community, the nation that you hoped to? Did you create change in the ways you wanted? Have you done enough for 2017? If not, you have just over 13 hours left if you want to cram something in.

I am more and more aware that we live in a world that demands more than enough. There is always more to do, more to accomplish. There are always more people to help, more ideas to pursue, more places to explore, more relationships to build. Always another next thing to pursue, a next trip to take, a next stage of life to enter. Perhaps you have already been thinking about what it is you will pursue in the coming year – resolutions for more rest, more exercise, more books, saving more money, spending more time with family. But have you decided when you will know it’s enough? When will we have done enough to call it a success? Not to mention when does any of it become too much of a healthy thing such that it becomes an unhealthy obsession? In this mindset do we ever really have enough? Do we know “enough” when we see it?

In today’s gospel reading, Simeon greets the month-old baby Jesus in the temple and he says, “Now this has been enough: My eyes have seen your salvation, O God, which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples.” Simeon is a man who has spent his days in the temple, a man who has known within him the promise of the Spirit that he would see the Messiah before his death. This of course is a great honor.

But if I were him, I would have wanted to stick around long enough for the Messiah to do more than squirm and cry and nurse and fill up dirty diapers. I would have wanted to stick around at least long enough for the Messiah to talk, at least long enough for him to begin his ministry, at least long enough to see the resurrection. Maybe long enough to see the church that began to emerge, and long enough to see the ways that church spread to the ends of the earth. And then, well, one would be very, very old.

But for Simeon, this is enough to see the beginning of what is to come. To see the embodiment of God’s promise to save all peoples, to see God’s love wearing human flesh, to see God in this month-old baby boy. If a little melodramatically, he sings that he is free now to depart from this life in peace having seen this. It seems to me to be at the same time both the loftiest and the most ordinary life goal I can imagine. To see the one, to see Jesus, to see the center of God’s salvation small enough and concrete enough you can hold it in your hands surely would be a life highlight. And at the same time, what he has waited his whole life for comes to him as a newborn infant, one of many that he must have seen carried into the temple over his years, God comes in something altogether ordinary.

Now, obviously all of us in the 21^st-century have missed out on seeing Jesus in the way that Simeon did. And yet, we celebrate this Christmas season not just the infant Jesus on whom hangs God’s salvation, but also we celebrate that God comes to us. We, too, have the opportunity to see God’s salvation made flesh before us.

It helps if like Simeon we find a way to focus our attention on the present moment. I imagine him, if perhaps with some historical inaccuracy, taking time with every family that comes by the temple with a child, delighting in every new life before him. I imagine him wholly present to the moment, aware on some level that he is waiting for something and yet alive to what God is doing in every moment. I think to bring forth the kind of song he does requires the kind of life that sees God revealed in many ways all the time.

And yet, God continues to come to us whether we slow down and notice or not. Sometimes we are too busy on the treadmill, or the grindstone, or whatever metaphor you want to use, too busy to notice God’s salvation coming to us. But that hasn’t yet stopped God from visiting.

Which is perhaps why for centuries since Simeon first sang his song, the church has sung it in two very prominent places. The first is after the Eucharist. It is one of the songs that might be sung as communion concludes and we move toward the sending part of our liturgy. Having received the bread and wine, Christ’s body and blood, we sing: “Now, Lord, you let your servant depart in peace. Your word has been fulfilled. My own eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the sight of every people. A light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people Israel.” Now, Lord, we too have seen and held the incarnation of Christ in our hands, we have taken it into our bodies. We have received what we are and become what we have received, the body of Christ. And it is enough. To see and hold salvation, salvation still growing, not yet fulfilled. Now we can go in peace, knowing we are enough.

And the other place the church sings Simeon’s song, is in the last prayer office before bed at night. For communities that pray the hours, they have sung of the promises of God in the morning with the song of Zechariah. In the evening, they have sung of the transformation of the world through Jesus in the song of Mary. And in the dark evening, just before lying down for the night, they sing, “Now Lord you let your servant depart in peace. Your word has been fulfilled.” At the end of every day we sing that we have seen in that day the presence of God. What has happened that day has been enough for now, because God was there in ways we could touch and hold. We have been enough for the day because God has been there with salvation. We rest every night, knowing God’s having come to us.

It is hard some days, because we don’t always see it. It is hard some days because the salvation we need is sometimes seen only in a form that has not yet grown to fullness. But Simeon leads us in singing, not just on big occasions, not just at Christmas, but every week, every day of God’s coming to us with salvation and hope that grows among us. And that is enough. Enough for us today, for tomorrow, for the coming new year. Enough for our lives now and forever.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Christmas Eve 2017

¹In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. ²This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. ³All went to their own towns to be registered. ⁴Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. ⁵He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. ⁶While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. ⁷And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
  ⁸In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. ⁹Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. ¹⁰But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: ¹¹to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. ¹²This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,
 ¹⁴“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
  and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”
  ¹⁵When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” ¹⁶So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger. ¹⁷When they saw this, they made known what had been told them about this child; ¹⁸and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. ¹⁹But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart. ²⁰The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them. – Luke 2:1-20

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring – not even a mouse…The children were nestled all snug in their beds, while visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.” Of course you know the rest of the poem describes the interruption of that quiet by Santa and his eight reindeer, but it strikes me that those lines from the first two stanzas could be about the residents of Bethlehem those many centuries ago asleep and mostly oblivious to the world-changing event nearby. Perhaps the night of Jesus’ birth was one of those nights that happens from time to time where it seems that everything is at peace, sleep seems a little deeper, and the world inside and out a little quieter.

But whatever that night was like, it is God interrupts with “such a clatter”: the shouts of a woman in labor, the startled cry of a newborn, the trumpeting song of the angels, the footsteps of the shepherds. God’s coming creates quite a disruption at least among the small group of characters in the biblical story. God comes to us in the midst of our human messiness, to be sure, but God also creates a disruptive mess in coming. And I don’t know about you, but I tend not to like disruptions, especially ones that happen in the middle of the night, even when they are from God. I am not likely to delight in things that interrupt my plans and disrupt my schedule, things that make life more complicated. And yet God comes in just that way all the time.

Sometimes we respond like Mary, the young girl, not a troublemaker but not the star student either. An ordinary girl who is just following along the path expected of her, betrothed to a man who is decent but not well-off or well-known. And an angel of the Lord interrupts the quiet of her daily chores to ask her to bear the Son of God. She responds with fear, confusion, and a healthy dose of skepticism. But in the end she says, “Here I am.” And with that God uses her to bear the divine into the world, at great pain and risk to herself she responds to God’s interruption with openness and she and the world are never the same again.

And sometimes we respond like Joseph whose similarly mundane life plans are repeatedly interrupted by dreams which ask him to wrestle through long dark nights with a mystery beyond belief, which ask him to set out to a new home and a new land as a refugee with his family, to take on a responsibility he did not ask for or understand. Sometimes, like Joseph, having wrestled with God’s interruption in our lives are surprised to find ourselves in a cold, dark corner of the world standing in awe of God’s presence right in front of us.

And sometimes we respond like the shepherds or the magi when we are alerted by something extraordinary to the presence of God in something altogether ordinary, coming to see the presence of God that others have labored into the world, coming to worship and adore, just as we do tonight. They bring the gifts they have to offer, but their greatest gift is to witness, to stand in wonder and notice God’s interrupting with love and grace.

And sometimes we even respond to God’s interruption like King Herod, with violent resistance to the ways in which God’s power through vulnerability, poverty, and outsiderness interrupts our own sense of power and control.

But I suspect much of the time we are more like the nameless people asleep in the quiet night as all this takes place. Maybe the song of the angels is just enough of a disruption in the order of things that we stir briefly from sleep unaware of what it is that has awoken us. Maybe we overhear the shepherds whispering in wonder in the marketplace and think little of it. Maybe we don’t even notice God’s coming at all.

And yet, despite our mixed and sometimes not so welcoming response, God keeps interrupting. God interrupts the life of the fleeing refugee with the birth of new children or with small hand-made notes of encouragement from children and adults across the globe. God interrupts progressing dementia with flashes of memory and the return of familiar words and tunes of Christmas carols and prayers. God interrupts our sometimes overscheduled lives with people who make us laugh, with neighbors who need our help, with moments of beauty and rest. God interrupts the halls of power with voices of the poor and marginalized pleading for life. God interrupts our complacency with injustice, prodding us to engage for the sake of our neighbor. God interrupts our carefully laid plans for how our lives will be, how our relationships will play out, how our careers will develop with surprises that derail us into new things we haven’t yet dreamed of. God will interrupt even our holiday celebrations big and small with reminders of Immanuel, God-with-us.

God’s great interruption of the world as we knew it with the Christ Child is for us the promise that God will keep interrupting our lives over and over again. That God will come down to dwell among us here in ordinary things and ordinary people, like the bread and wine we share tonight. That God will keep showing up in unexpected ways whether we respond with welcome or not, whether we even notice or not. We celebrate tonight that God takes on the messiness of our embodied human life and in doing so interrupts the whole cosmos to save us.

My prayer for you is that this Christmas and throughout the new year ahead God will interrupt and disrupt your life with love and grace that surprises you and fills you with wonder and awe at the presence of God made flesh in you and in your neighbors.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

3rd Sunday of Advent
December 17, 2017

Listen to today’s gospel reading and sermon here:

⁶There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. ⁷He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. ⁸He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.

  ¹⁹This is the testimony given by John when the Jews sent priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, “Who are you?” ²⁰He confessed and did not deny it, but confessed, “I am not the Messiah.” ²¹And they asked him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the prophet?” He answered, “No.” ²²Then they said to him, “Who are you? Let us have an answer for those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?” ²³He said,
 “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness,
 ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’ ”
as the prophet Isaiah said.
  ²⁴Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. ²⁵They asked him, “Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?” ²⁶John answered them, “I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, ²⁷the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.” ²⁸This took place in Bethany across the Jordan where John was baptizing. – John 1:6-8, 19-28

Not no one, to be sure, but certainly very few people would want the job of John the Baptist. If the church asked you to go live in the wilderness, whether that be an urban or rural one, shouting to crowds of strangers about some unnamed, yet unseen prophet coming to wash you with fire – you would probably join a different church. If in baptizing infants and children we asked parents to promise to let their children live in an ascetic community, shunned by most, someone who would never quite fit in with society, we’d probably have fewer baptisms. If we asked people interested in joining the church to spend all their time preparing for something we can’t promise is coming anytime soon and which we can’t fully understand, we’d likely have fewer new members.

But in a certain way, especially in Advent, God asks us to the same kind of work as John the Baptist. Not exactly the same. Not necessarily shouting to crowds of people about the coming Messiah. But called to the work that is set out for us in the waiting. And yet, like John, we must be clear about a few things. When asked who he is, he adamantly replies first about who he is not. He is, first and foremost, not the messiah. He is not Elijah or the prophet. That ought to be reassuring to us – our sacred calling does not require saving the world or living as a famous prophet. But for John that doesn’t diminish the calling he has to lead others with passion, purpose, and vision. He is a voice in the wilderness. He has a voice to name God and name the power of God to renew lives broken by the wilderness within us and around us.

What does your voice cry out? What voice has God given you? What voiceless wilderness does your voice break into? Is it a voice that draws feeds others by setting a welcome table with rich food or by making sure that food gets to the people who need it? Is your voice one that gathers little ones to experience God’s good news? Is your voice one that expresses itself in the written word to comfort or challenge or inspire or delight? Is your voice one that leads businesses and entrepreneurs to achieve their dreams in ways that build up the community? Is your voice one that refuses to accept the social stigma of mental health concerns? Is your voice one that speaks comfort to the aging, grieving, sick, and imprisoned? Is your voice one that designs and creates the materials and machines that help us do the tasks of living on a daily basis? Is your voice one that tends the land that all people may eat and land and animals are protected and nourished?

Whatever your work is, this task of crying out in the wilderness can be exhausting. It is never ending. If you are called to something that sees results, God bless you, but there will be something after that, too, another invitation to use your voice to lead. If you are called to voice a need that may not see an ending in our lifetimes, God bless you, because you will need every ounce of blessing you can get. But take heart from John, you are not the Messiah, or even the prophet, but a voice. To speak, to act is to live your calling, even if you do not understand fully what you think might come of your speaking and acting.

And as crazy as John’s message is, people are drawn to it. Not everyone, mind you. Not everyone is found out in the desert to repent and get dragged into the river by John. But a significant crowd. Enough people from enough walks of life that it raises the attention of the authorities. Enough of God’s power found in his voice to unnerve the power seat of the empire. Enough to get people riled up against him. So take heart when it seems not everyone heeds your voice. God is still opening ears and gathering people. And ultimately it’s not whether people find you and your voice but how your voice might help people find God’s voice and God’s presence in the world in ways you may never know.

In some ways that is the heart of Advent, the reason we spend so much time on John every year in this season. Because we are people in the wilderness and people with a voice and a calling from God to point people whatever way we know how to the God who is born, who dies, who rises again to gather all people to himself. And for such a large task God uses every voice that can be stirred up to do it. Your voice and mine.

In some ways that’s what this growing nativity scene is all about, too. Each week we’ve been adding more figures. I suspect that many of them come with stories about the ways that the tale of the Christ child has been told in our own families year after year. But in our midst we have named the ways they represent angels and prophets who carry God’s good news in a variety of ways, shepherds and all the other workers who are too often ignored and forgotten, the Josephs, the leaders who make room for others in the kin-dom of God and who lead others to safety. Next week we will add Marys, the ones who step forth into the unknown with courage, who bear God into the world, who risk ridicule and shame for the work of God. All different. All calling out with their own voice in their own work, with their own role to play. All drawn to the center, to the Christ, the one for whom they call out, the one who ultimately calls them home. This scene we are creating together is really a scene of all of us, each one different, each one gathered at the manger, crying out with our voice in our wilderness for the coming of God.

And when our voice tires and falters. When our task and calling seems to be more than we can handle. We are reminded of the words from our second reading: “The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this.” God will “sanctify you entirely.” God will lead you in rejoicing and praying and giving thanks. God will well up an unquenchable Spirit within you and help you hold fast to what is good.

We each have a message to speak in this time of waiting and hoping, we can join John the Baptist in finding our authentic voice to proclaim the coming of the one greater than ourselves, we can do this because God is faithful. God has come to us already. God is coming to us now. The coming of God we wait for is already arriving. In our questioning and doubting, when the waiting seems beyond what we can handle, God’s faithfulness calls out to us like that voice in the wilderness: “Prepare the way. For God’s kingdom is already making its way to you.”

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Second Sunday of Advent
December 10, 2017

Listen to today’s gospel reading and sermon here:

¹The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
  ²As it is written in the prophet Isaiah,
 “See, I am sending my messenger ahead of you,
  who will prepare your way;
 ³the voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
  ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
  make his paths straight,’ ”
⁴John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷He proclaimed, “The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” – Mark 1:1-8

In October, I spent 10 days with my family driving and hiking through southern Utah, much of which is desert wilderness. Some of the territory we explored was among the last land to be mapped in North America. Land left unsettled longer than most. Places so inhospitable to human life that only a smattering of settlements managed to eke out a bare bones existence until well into the modern era, and even now it’s not densely populated with whole stretches where no one lives. We entered from civilization into this wilderness on a paved highway. To be sure it was a bleak one in some places – I got a little nervous at signs saying things like: “Next Services 130 Miles.” But it was still a highway which pretty much always had basic cellphone coverage.

As we sing Prepare the Royal Highway and listen to John the Baptist crying out Isaiah’s words to make a way in the desert, to level hills and valleys, I have always pictured a road like that. A paved road, a straight superhighway, blasted into the landscape with dynamite, cutting into a barren and inhospitable landscape, domesticating the wilderness by creating access to that which was once difficult to enter. That we are called to be some sort of holy road crew making a way for God to come and save us. And if I’m honest, in that picture in my mind the road we create provides not only a way in for God but a also a way out of the wilderness for us to a place that has a little more to offer.

Most of us, given the choice, would high tail it out of the wildernesses we find ourselves in. It seems everyone I talk to these days is felling the disorientation of the wilderness. For some it is the ways in which the violence, misogyny, and racism resonate and reinforce their own experience. For others it is the disorientation of waking up to this as the long-covered-up reality. Either way it confronts us more and more in the daily news that we live in a wilderness of injustice and inequality and no easy answers to level the field. When it seems that work done to further the reign of God on earth falls apart as soon as it seems to make a difference, we realize we live in a wilderness that seems to go on forever. We find ourselves wandering in the deserts of long-term illnesses, grief that never fully leaves us, broken relationships that never mend, cycles of addiction that catch us again and again.

We long for a way out. Perhaps that’s what draws us to this crazy figure in the desert wearing camel’s hair clothes that reek of a life lived outdoors and whose uncombed beard traps bits of honey and locust drawing flies that buzz around his head. We are drawn to him because he cries out our longing for a way through the wilderness. We recognize his truth-telling about who we are and what we need. We are people whose wilderness lives need repentance. We need a place to name that whether we look like crazy uncle John in the desert or not, we are wilderness people longing for renewal and transformation.

But at the center of John’s proclamation, the center of the words he borrows from Isaiah before him, are not about a highway out of the wilderness for us but a path into it for God. And that got me thinking about a very different kind of path we encountered on our trip. Where one of the paved roads ended there was a path, not a human-made trail but a path carved by gushing water. In October when we walked there it was bone-dry, not a drop of water to be seen anywhere and only the hardiest of plants sucking what little moisture they could find from the air and the ground. But for brief moments during the rainy season it becomes a gushing river, pushing boulders along, carving through the rock face, sweeping new canyons into existence. As we walked along the flattest path we travelled the whole trip, there were grooves everywhere in the rock rising high to either side of us, evidence of the swift-moving water and the debris it carries along. Even without a cloud in the sky and not a drop of water to be seen it felt as if we could drown at any moment, so present was the evidence of the water’s motion on the rock walls beside us, the water which had leveled a path in the enormous rock.

Maybe that is the kind of pathway that John is talking about in the desert. He is, after all, a man whose proclamation, and even the very name by which we have come to know him, is rooted in water, in a flowing baptismal river. He is remembered for fiery words, for calling out the truth of our world like the prophets before him. But he also invites people into the water, to feel in their bodies the movement that is already as he speaks carving a pathway in wilderness.

What John proclaims is not something he yet fully understands. In fact there is ample biblical evidence to support his being very skeptical later on about Jesus being the one to bring the kind of transformation he was expecting. He doesn’t get what this kingdom he proclaims is all about any more than the rest of us ever do. John will be arrested and killed before he sees Jesus bring his work to completion. Like Isaiah before him, he is called to proclaim God’s presence in a wilderness he does not understand, to people who feel God’s absence, and to live and die in that wilderness without seeing it transformed.

And yet he stands in the water. And perhaps that is enough for him. Enough to feel the moving water, enough to know its carving a way in the wilderness, a level path. Maybe that is enough for him to feel God’s royal entrance into his own wilderness. And maybe that is enough for us, too, as we wait and hope in our Advent desert. Enough to know the promise of the water that claimed us children of God. Enough to have felt on our bodies the water that carves into our wildernesses a pathway for God’s Spirit to enter. Enough for us even to stand in a dry and dusty wilderness and see the watermarks on the landscape around us, reminding us of the redeeming floodwaters of baptism that sustain us in the wilderness, and to know that the water has come before and it will wash us clean again. It’s not the modern super-highway out of our wilderness into something else, but it’s the path that God takes not just into the wilderness in general but into our individual lives, dry and dusty as they might be, to dwell there with us, to be the spring of water that fills us with life despite all that surrounds us, to continue leveling a path for us to walk until one day that baptismal water sweeps us right into God’s forever feast.

-Pastor Steven Wilco