Transfiguration of Our Lord
February 7, 2016

28Now about eight days after these sayings Jesus took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. 29And while he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white. 30Suddenly they saw two men, Moses and Elijah, talking to him. 31They appeared in glory and were speaking of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 32Now Peter and his companions were weighed down with sleep; but since they had stayed awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. 33Just as they were leaving him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah”—not knowing what he said. 34While he was saying this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were terrified as they entered the cloud. 35Then from the cloud came a voice that said, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” 36When the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silent and in those days told no one any of the things they had seen. 
  37On the next day, when they had come down from the mountain, a great crowd met him. 38Just then a man from the crowd shouted, “Teacher, I beg you to look at my son; he is my only child. 39Suddenly a spirit seizes him, and all at once he shrieks. It convulses him until he foams at the mouth; it mauls him and will scarcely leave him. 40I begged your disciples to cast it out, but they could not.” 41Jesus answered, “You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you? Bring your son here.” 42While he was coming, the demon dashed him to the ground in convulsions. But Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, healed the boy, and gave him back to his father. 43aAnd all were astounded at the greatness of God. – Luke 9:28-43a

Listen to audio here: sermon 2-7-16.

Where is our attention today? You’ve already heard in our worship this morning about one way that our attention is sometimes misplaced today. Maybe less so this year in New England, but much of the national attention today will be on the Super Bowl. Our youth remind us every year on this day to draw our attention, even as we celebrate and have fun, to those for whom celebrating is difficult because they do not have access to enough food. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to maintain attention on hunger and other problems in our world, because the messages we hear all around us draw our attention to other things.

I wonder if this also happens on Transfiguration Sunday. For the first time this year, thanks to someone wiser than I am, I realized that I have been too much distracted by the dazzling glory of a shining Jesus, clouded in mystery on the mountaintop to notice much about the boy at the bottom of the mountain. I’ve always seen Jesus’ transfiguration as a gift that has implications for them all as they return to ordinary life, but I missed that in all three Transfiguration stories the same demon-possessed boy is waiting for them at the bottom of the mountain. This is a rare agreement of timeline between three very different gospel writers. I wonder if the mountaintop dazzle draws our attention away from what happens with this boy.

They come back down the mountain to a desperate man and his son tormented by a demon. Give it a modern-day medical diagnosis or leave it to the realm of spirit which we don’t fully understand, but this child has suffered for longer than anyone should. And the disciples have tried to expel the demon, but they cannot. Others have surely tried as well, and I wonder if people’s attention is beginning to drift elsewhere because they cannot bear to look at his pain without being able to do something about it.

I’m wondering if we notice – if we notice how incredibly transformed the life of this child is now that he has encountered Jesus – how deeply transformed his family and community are by this exchange.

I’m wondering if we notice the faces of the people who ask for handouts on the street. I’m wondering if we notice the people who can’t afford new clothes. I wonder if we notice the people who from aging or disease can no longer contribute in the same way they used to in our community or congregation. I wonder if we notice the tears on our fellow church member’s cheeks or the person who doesn’t come for coffee hour but still longs for connection. How might we as a church celebrate more deeply, see more clearly not just Jesus’ glory but the glory of the way Jesus transfigures our world?

At the same time are we sometimes also like the crowd of hungry, broken people in the valley too mired in the problems that we lose sight of the glory of transformation, unaware of what has taken place on the mountain? It is absolutely good and right to revel in Jesus’ glory. We need that. The little boy and his father in the story need that. The disciples need that. They need to know God’s power and glory because the needs are many, and God’s transformation of things doesn’t always look exactly like what we think it ought to look like. In our sorrow we still get the opportunity to share in the joys of others around us. Do we notice the one quietly rejoicing at some new sign of hope or possibility or some realized dream? Do we notice the one who is celebrating when we can see nothing but despair in our own journeys?

The challenge of our Christian life is this tension to see more deeply the pain of the world and to see more deeply the glory of the world all mixed up together. This is the tension of being church together. We talk about it when we do budgets, we talk about it when we set ministry goals, we talked about it at our council retreat yesterday in a certain way. How do we hold the ups and downs of our lives, the tension of celebrating God’s glory in our worship and fellowship and care for one another and also go out to be a part of God’s transformative mission in the world?

This transfiguration story in two parts ties them together for me as inseparable parts of the same thing. There’s a way in which our worship in all its glory feeds us for service in the world, and our experience in the world in all its richness drives us back to worship. There’s a way in which our care for others in our congregation gives us practice to go out and care for those out in the world and doing it in the world teaches us to see ourselves and our community with new eyes. But I think this story in two parts is trying to tell us that this transfiguration at the heart of the Christian life is not so much two things that feed each other but two faces of the same event.

Rather than one feeding the other, what if the point the gospel writers want to make in joining these two transformations together is that neither can exist without the other. Jesus’ shining glory does not exist without his transforming the world not just in the abstract but in this very concrete and intimate way. And Jesus’ transformation of the world is not without this glimpse of resurrection. Two faces of the same event, two experiences of the same transformation. Transfiguration is about more than shining clothes, but about Jesus’ transformation of all things.

And what better way to practice this tension than to feast at the communion table where bread and wine are body and blood. Where a morsel becomes the feast we long for and the feast we long for becomes a manageable morsel. Where Jesus is host and bread, where the spirit is in us and the food. This feast is an ancient event shared among the people in the visible church, but a feast at which all people of every time and place join us. It calls us to live every encounter with the awareness of God’s glory and God’s suffering and to see in every moment God’s transfiguration of all things. And it welcomes us into that magnificent transformation that appears in different forms but ties us together with the one who is our transformation, Christ our Lord.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

4th Sunday after Epiphany
January 31, 2016

21Then [Jesus] began to say to [all in the synagogue in Nazareth,] “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 22All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” 23He said to them, “Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, ‘Doctor, cure yourself!’ And you will say, ‘Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.’ ” 24And he said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. 25But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; 26yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. 27There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.” 28When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. 29They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. 30But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way. – Luke 4:21-30

See also today’s first reading from Jeremiah 1:4-10 and second reading from 1 Corinthians 13. 

It did not take long for things to go south for Jesus in his hometown. If you heard me preach here last week, you might recall that I talked about Jesus reading his people a shorthand version of their own story. The story of their people, the story of their own lives, the story of good news for the poor, release from oppression, healing for their bodies, and the year of the Lord’s favor. Well and good. They are pleased with Jesus for reminding them who they are and that they are God’s people and the beneficiaries of God’s mercy. But then Jesus begins to explain something to them.

He begins to explain why he has not come home to be a gentle teacher in their midst, why he will not perform all the same signs and wonders among them which he has for others. “The truth is,” he tells them, using a line that rarely brings welcome news, that actually sometimes God’s grace and mercy falls on the outsiders. In fact in quoting some well-known stories from their own history, he reminds them that Naaman the Syrian was cleansed of leprosy when plenty of God’s insiders were suffering from it at the same time. And when the whole people of Israel were starving in a drought, it was someone well outside the bounds of Israel who received food to sustain her.

This is not welcome news for the insiders. In fact, it’s downright unfair on God’s part to share blessing with people who couldn’t care less about Israel’s God, isn’t it? It was like giving your filet mignon to the dogs while you and your family went hungry. It was like ripping away the promised protection that they relied on to give them a sense of safety and security. In a world that was still, frankly, not going so much in their favor, the knowledge of being God’s inside crowd kindled a fire of comfort to keep them warm in the face of oppression. And Jesus just rips it away leaving them cold with the threats all around them. The threat of political oppression, the threat of economic instability, the threat of all-too-present sickness and death. How dare Jesus say such a thing! I don’t know if I’d have tried to run him off a cliff, but I can imagine quite a few people storming out at his words.

To borrow an image from Barbara Lundblad*, it’s like Jesus started off his preaching by wrapping them in a warm blanket of safety and protection. And the first thing they did was to pull it close around them shutting out the outside world and anyone else in need of warmth. Not maliciously, not selfishly, but out of human nature, self-preservation, and their good and natural desire for comfort and protection. And what Jesus does is rip the blanket open, not to take it away from them but to show them that it’s larger than thought, that it’s even better with a few more people staying warm under the blanket.

It’s like being Jeremiah in our first reading, when God calls a young boy who thinks he can’t do anything to serve God, and God reminds him that it doesn’t have anything to do with him but much more to do with who is calling and equipping him. But then he realizes that what God is asking of him is not to go to some cushy assignment in an established place of worship but instead to go out and tear down some pretty powerful people to make a little more room under that blanket.

It’s like hearing our second reading and daydreaming about abstract love and how great it is, then remembering that patient, kind, unenvious, non-boasting love, the kind of love God has for us, is a whole lot of hard work, compromise, and even pain**, but it’s worth it when we see just how big God’s blanket of love is.

It’s like the response so many of us around the world have had to the latest refugee crisis to put up our walls and keep out people who are different, forgetting that most of the insiders – if not now then at some point in theri history – have been the ones being kept out. It’s like forgetting that, as many have shared of late, that if you have too much food it’s time to build a bigger table and not a bigger wall. And what a joy it is when we realize what a feast it is when the table gets bigger.

It’s like when gay and lesbian people rejoice at the growing inclusion in this country and in the church and then we struggle to hear it when we’re reminded that most of the time we’ve left out transgender and non-gender-conforming individuals in that struggle. Or when the fight for racial equality or gender equality or all the other kinds of equality that are long-past due in our society celebrate a victory and then bristle when those still on the outside want to be let in.

It’s like going to Cathedral in the Night with a well-intentioned but misguided notion that we go to help some nameless others from our place of comfort or privilege because we come from a church with four walls and a roof, and realizing instead that we are the uncertain and sometimes awkward outsiders being welcomed into their community, and we remember what it feels like to go from the outside in.

It’s like being a congregation wrestling with how to live out its mission in its tiny corner of God’s world as we will do today at our annual meeting, and realizing no matter how much we love who we are and where we’ve been that where we’re going means opening the doors ever wider and reaching out to invite more people into God’s banquet. Something that requires us to be vulnerable to new people and new ideas.

All of this is uncomfortable. I know I sometimes make easy claims with words and then realize I fail to live out the kind of welcome to others I espouse. Every one of the things I just named is something I’ve struggled with myself, places where I have failed to live up fully to God’s unsettling and uncomfortable call. And, you know what, I don’t like it when people point this out to me. I especially don’t like it when Jesus points it out to me, which he does more often than I’d like to admit. Most of the time I’d like to stay comfortable in my own little warm blanket from Jesus.

But what I always wonder is how many of the angry mob at Nazareth pay attention to where Jesus goes after he disappears, whether they realize that after he makes them feel like the outsiders, after he rips away their uncomplicated sense of safety and security that then Jesus spends the rest of his ministry in those very places where people have been ripped away from comfort and security, that Jesus spends some crazy percentage of his time with outsider nobodies, that Jesus goes to the depths of the dead because they are the outsiders of outsiders. The surprise that I hope the people of Nazareth realize sooner or later is that when we feel the blanket ripped away and our comfort and security lost, we find that we are, with all the broken world, in the place where Jesus dwells. And Jesus’ promise to us is not that we will always feel safely held but that Jesus will dwell with us in our discomfort and that God will not give up on anyone until everyone is safely held in the arms of God.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

*Religion can be like a hometown: familiar, traditional, unchanging, a constant in a chaotic, fast-loving world. We want religion to stay the same, to look as it looked when we were children. We want to sing hymns with tunes we know: this is the faith of our childhood. We can wrap religion around us like a homemade quilt, assured that God is in heaven and all’s right with the world. . . But Jesus had stripped away their quilt. The boundaries around the chosen people would be broken down. And now Jesus comes into our streets, into our sanctuary, saying that the prophet’s words are now fulfilled. All sorts of people we’d never invite to dinner are being welcomed to the table, to break bread and drink wine. But, if we stay, on odd thing happens: we feel the quilt grow larger. Still around us, it is also around the one we named outcast. It’s not quite the same hometown, but it’s a lot more like the dominion of God. —Barbara Lundblad, in Homilies for the Christian People, pp. 403-406.

**Though I try to be very careful in my use of language in preaching, it occurred to me today as I was preaching this manuscript that this could be misconstrued: The pain I reference here as a part of this kind of love is the pain that comes from grief at the loss of the beloved and in the context of a relationship the pain that comes from confronting the ways in which we ourselves fall short of love’s ideal. Mental, emotional, or physical pain inflicted by another person in a relationship is not part of love, but rather abuse, and it has no place in our relationships.

 January 24, 2016
Third Sunday after Epiphany

14Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee, and a report about him spread through all the surrounding country. 15He began to teach in their synagogues and was praised by everyone.
  16When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
 18“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
  because he has anointed me
   to bring good news to the poor.
 He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
  and recovery of sight to the blind,
   to let the oppressed go free,
 19to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” – Luke 4:14-21

See also Nehemiah 8 (selected verses) and 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a 

Curled up in a cozy bed, ready for sleep, and a parent comes to the last page of the bedtime story, ready to tuck the covers up around the child and turn down the light. But the child has a better idea: “Read it again!” A ploy perhaps to stay up just a few more minutes, but also perhaps an unconscious desire to master what the story is about. As children grow and learn, the stories adults read or tell help them understand language and learn to process the world. They learn what words are and what they can do. They learn how to predict what might be coming and learn about unseen things far away. Stories help fuel natural imagination and creativity.

Often when we grow up, people don’t read to us much anymore. Except, perhaps, in church, which I think is fundamentally a place of story-telling. Many of us have heard them before. Some of us probably know at least a few so well that we could tell them almost word-for-word from memory. And yet we come back to hear them again and again. Maybe longing to see their fulfillment, but also perhaps because as many times as we have heard them we have yet to master them, we are still learning how to process the world in light of their words.

In today’s story from early in his ministry Jesus is the story-reader for the gathered assembly in his hometown of Nazareth. He unrolls the scroll as many have done before him and they listen. He reads verses from Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

This may not sound like much of a story per se, but in a way it’s shorthand for the history of their people. It’s shorthand for the covenant promise made to Abraham and Sarah to take them from barrenness to parents of God’s people. It’s shorthand for God’s turning Joseph’s misfortune and years of captivity into salvation for more than one nation. It’s shorthand for God’s deliverance of the Israelites from Egypt and leading to the promised land. Jesus reads it to them so that they can once again have an opportunity to master this story and make it their own. And he tells them that it is fulfilled in their hearing, as if to remind them – this is not an ancient story but your story happening now.

Jesus is doing the same thing that Ezra does in the first reading. This gathering of people had returned to a mostly destroyed Jerusalem after having been in exile. A remnant had returned to their holy city to rebuild and start fresh. Another story of God’s deliverance. And so Ezra gathered them for a reading of the law. But this not just a set of rules and regulations, some sort of stern warning for their life together, for the law of God’s people cannot be untangled from the story of God’s salvation. Ezra was reading it to them again to remind them that their return, their salvation, their release from captivity, their year of the Lord’s favor was not just their story but the story of God’s people in every time and place.

We gather to tell one another God’s story over and over again because we are still learning what it means for us. We live poor, captive, and oppressed. We are poor in money some, in generosity others, in imagination still others. We are oppressed by cultural expectations, by privilege and lack of privilege. We are captive to voices within that drive us to do the things we know are not life-giving and the forces that keep us from doing the things we know we are called to do. We are blind to the injustices that are perpetuated around us all the time. We long for healing for our bodies, hearts, and minds.

And when in blessed moments when we do not feel the captivity for ourselves, Paul reminds us that we are one body with all of God’s people and that when any member of the body suffers we suffer with it. Martin Buber tells of a compassionate rabbi: “Whenever the rabbi of Sasov saw anyone’s suffering, either of spirit or of body, he shared it so earnestly that the other’s suffering became his own. Once someone expressed his astonishment at this capacity to share in another’s troubles. ‘What do you mean “share”?’ said the rabbi. ‘It is my own sorrow; how can I help but suffer it?’” The story of others was his own story.

We read the stories of God’s people and their being set free again and again because we are bound together with them in their suffering. As they suffer we suffer. As they are set free, we are set free. We tell each other the stories as Jesus did for his hometown people because in the repetition we begin to master the language of freedom and we begin learning how to understand our world in light of the stories we tell. In telling the stories we understand the pain we feel on behalf of the world in light of the coming freedom.

We begin to see that our lives are bound up with God’s people before us, who have already seen God’s transformation, who have already lived God’s liberation, who have already experienced resurrection before us. Just as we are one body with all God’s children in suffering, we are also one body with all God’s people in new life, freedom, and joy. We are bound to this story we tell. We are one with Abraham and Sarah rejoicing at their children; we are one with the Israelites rejoicing at the Red Sea and tasting the sweetness of the promised land; we are one with Ezra and his people brought safely home again; and through the promise of baptism we are one with Jesus in resurrection to new life. When we tell any piece of the story we tell a story that ends with God’s new life released on the cosmos.

And this story we tell in faithful opposition to the tales of despair and war and fear that permeate our lives, it allows us to sing. It allows us to break forth in God’s song. And so now, having hear the story we join our voices, to sing the song of God, to sing this story of new life, to sing in the face of all we know is happening for us and for the world. And having read together the story, having sung of God’s salvation, we go forth resting in the words of God’s good news holding us and all people from birth to death to life again.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Thanks to At the Edge of the Enclosure for the Martin Buber quote. Most weeks Suzanne Guthrie’s lectionary blog influences my personal prayer with the texts if not also the words of my sermon.

 

 2nd Sunday after Epiphany
January 17, 2016

1Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters, I do not want you to be uninformed. 2You know that when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak. 3Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says “Let Jesus be cursed!” and no one can say “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.

  4Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; 5and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; 6and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. 7To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. 8To one is given through the Spirit the utterance of wisdom, and to another the utterance of knowledge according to the same Spirit, 9to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by the one Spirit, 10to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another the discernment of spirits, to another various kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses. – 1 Corinthians 12:1-11

1On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. – John 2:1-11

The wedding reception at Cana of Galilee has been going for some time now, the point at which many things have begun to wear out their welcome. Conservative Uncle Fred and liberal Aunt Martha have long since stopped going at it and have retreated to opposite corners of the celebration. The people at the singles table who wanted to have paired off. The introverts have gone off to find a quiet place to read their books, returning now and again to take part in the festivities. The older married couples have been reminiscing about their years together. Some are feeling the loss of those who are no longer a part of the celebration. The younger attendees have stopped counting how many times a well-meaning adult has asked about their future. The bride’s uncle is beginning to run out of corny jokes to tell. The newly married couple, the celebrities of this celebration, are still starry-eyed and dreaming of what is to come.

It’s not an elite crowd. This is not a fancy Jerusalem wedding in the shadows of religious and political power. It’s in out-of-the-way Cana, where even today the holy sites commemorating this story are tucked away on side streets behind auto-body shops, discount stores, and strip mall fast food joints. But this is a gathering of beloved community. It’s all the people the couple loves and maybe even some they don’t love all that much but whom they appreciate as part of the community that holds them all together. This is a gathering of the many members of one body. A group of people who each bring their own gifts and quirks to the party, who each in their own way supports the couple.

It reminds me a bit of church: a bunch of people drawn together by a celebration, bound together by intersecting ties. Drawn perhaps for different reasons, almost certainly bearing different gifts, each bringing his or her own past along to the celebration. There are inevitable awkward moments, arguments that have nothing to do with the celebration at hand, and joyful connections that are made and renewed again and again.

What Paul says to the Corinthian community in our second reading is one of my favorite passages for describing what church community is all about: “to each is given a manifestation of the spirit for the common good.” No one person has everything we need. No person lacks something that helps to make this community what it is. Our new members joining the congregation this morning bring gifts that we need in our community. Some of those are things they know they have already or needs we know we have as a congregation. Some of those things are gifts they have yet to identify and that we have yet to look for, but which God will bring forth in our being community together. And yet, as a church, and here I speak not just of Immanuel but of every congregation I’ve ever known, we look more like the random group assembled at a wedding. People who might not otherwise come together, people who might not otherwise have something in common, people who wouldn’t necessary make an elite guest list, but people who nonetheless create a community of support.

But alas, the joyful celebration in diverse and gifted community is only the beginning of the story. For there is a problem. The wine has run out. Though our modern ears might wonder what more wine they needed if they’d been partying for three days already, this was a very bad sign of hospitality in first century Galilee. Not just an end to the party but a bad omen for the couple being celebrated. This did not bode well for their future. And the person who we all know can do something about it does not seem ready to take action to fix it.

And our gathering is no different. We worry that we don’t have enough – enough time, enough money, enough people. We gather with the knowledge of our human brokenness, our failure to live up to God’s call, and our inability to transform the pain and suffering of the world. To those who are affirming their faith and formally joining our congregation today, you have all expressed ways this community has welcomed you and fed you already, but I’m sorry to tell you that you are joining an imperfect congregation that will not always be everything the body of Christ is meant to be. You will encounter here sooner or later experience moments where, metaphorically speaking, the wine runs out. You’ll realize we are not perfect. But, that is still not the end of the story.

Mary, knowing something special about her son prods him to fix it. What she has in mind is unclear, whether she’s looking for the miraculous or whether she simply wants Jesus to use practical problem-solving skills. Jesus is not ready, he says. It is not his time. In John’s carefully constructed gospel narrative with lots of symbolic language, it’s not out of the question to consider this a reference to what is to come. Jesus’ “time” in John, the moment of God’s victory in this gospel, the completing seventh of seven signs is the moment of his being lifted up on the cross. This first of his signs, done at a wedding in Cana of Galilee, would mark the beginning of a journey toward death. Perhaps Jesus does not want to mar this already ill-omened moment in the celebration with an action that will become his first step toward so gruesome a moment. Perhaps he himself is not ready to begin the journey. And yet the community needs him. The community is desperate for what he can offer them.

John doesn’t record any rebuttal from Mary, but perhaps she reminded him that in the wedding vows death had already been mentioned. The Galilean equivalent of “til death do us part” was already ringing in the ears of the couple and the guests. At this, the beginning of their life together, there was already the reminder of the end floating in the air – a bond made with an unknown but nonetheless fixed end-date. In fact any time beloved community gathers, an awareness of what has been lost or could be lost is usually hanging somewhere in the room. We gather in our Sunday celebration with the acknowledgement of our own brokenness, our own humanness, our own union with the death of Christ through baptism.

But whether from his mother’s prompting or some other recognition of what is going on Jesus does take action. And when he does it is more than anyone asked for or imagined. Not just more wine but more wine that was needed perhaps for the whole multi-day feast. Not just cheap boxed wine poured into fancy vessels, but something of such a high quality that people sat up and took notice. Unbeknownst even to the servants who draw the water, by completing this sign he sets in motion the path to the cross where God’s very best is poured out again for the gathered community in proclamation of God’s uncompromising love.

In the midst of our gathered community, in our patchwork of giftedness through the Spirit, in our acknowledgement that all is not as it should be and that loss and pain and suffering are all too near, Jesus steps in to transform our ordinary celebrations with bread and wine into a feast made for the heavens. It is as it always has been and always will be Jesus’ “time.” Jesus transforms here a community of imperfect people into the body of Christ for one another, each with gifts to offer in service to the church and the world. And then Christ feeds us with his own self, transforming our bread and wine into more than we could ask or imagine, into a holy feast that gathers us as community and feeds us for what is to come. Taste and see that the Lord is good!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Baptism of Our Lord
Sunday, January 10, 2016

15As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
[18So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. 19But Herod the ruler, who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, 20added to them all by shutting up John in prison.]
21Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, 22and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” – Luke 3:15-22

“His winnowing fork is in his hand…and the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”

If you happen to be one of the people following along with the reading printed on the bulletin insert, you’ll notice that I added in a few lines that had been excised from the text by our lectionary. Perhaps they took the preceding verse too literally and winnowed out the verses that seemed to complicate the reading, burning them up (metaphorically speaking) so that we wouldn’t have to read them.

But this year I’m finding those verses helpful for figuring out what this reading is all about. For they describe the context in which this event is taking place. They describe a certain way of life that the world teaches. Most bluntly it teaches that what the powerful do when something or someone challenges them is arrest them, lock them away, and eventually kill them. Liturgical scholar Samuel Torvend calls this the catechesis of the culture.*

Catachesis is a fancy church word that literally means “oral teaching”or more literally “sounding down into the ears.” The word has come to refer to the rich traditions of mentoring people into the faith. But these few verses about Herod remind us of how powerful and pervasive the teaching of the world can be.

The catachesis of culture is what most of us spend our days learning whether we want to or not, the things that travel through our ear canals into our thought patterns and decision making about how we are supposed to operate in the world. We are trained by the media to value certain people more than others. Most often that means certain physical attributes and, sadly, often lighter skinned people. We are trained to consume without counting the costs, whether that’s burning fossil fuels without considering the impact on the earth or buying cheaper goods at the expense of slave labor or slave-like conditions in the factories they come from. The culture teaches us sometimes to hide who we are either to get ahead or simply as a coping mechanism to protect us from those who will not value us if they know the truth. The catechesis of culture teaches us to put up a false self, to tell ourselves the narrative that we are not enough. Even if we react against these things, even if we actively teach our children something different, we are learning what culture is and does.

This is not to bash the many wonderful things that emerge from culture, from human community, but to say that at least in our culture the primary messages resonate more with Herod’s example than with John’s or Jesus’s.

Which is why this baptism is so important. Jesus comes to this water boundary of the Jordan river, which again in the words of Samuel Torvend are waters “filled with the memory of slavery and liberation, suffering and surprising release, food and drink in the desert, an eternal covenant, and the promise of a land flowing with God’s own milk and honey.”** Jesus comes to this place where God’s people have crossed both literally and figuratively from death to life in order to be immersed in its water.

And with his baptism Jesus crosses through those waters as so many have before him. In doing so he marks his transition from one way of being to another. Almost as if in direct opposition to the actions Herod has just taken, he comes to the waters to wash away Herod and the cultural model he follows. Jesus’ crossing through the waters marks his public journey from the world as we know it to the world as God knows it. A new person emerges from this water aware of a new way of being in the world, and a new catechesis begins with God’s words from heaven ‘You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well-pleased.”

This is the catechesis of baptism. Whether it happens before baptism or after, whether it happens in the home or at church or out in the world somewhere, there is a fundamental difference between what the world teaches and what baptism teaches. Parents promise on behalf of their children to live with them among God’s faithful people, bring them to the word of God and the holy supper, teach them the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments, place in their hands the holy scriptures, and nurture them in faith and prayer, so that they may learn to trust God, proclaim Christ through word and deed, care for others and the world God made, and work for justice and peace. All of these lead back to the fundamental baptismal catechesis sounding down into our ears: this voice of God saying “You are my child, the beloved…”

The other voices we hear are so strong, the violence and hatred so pervasive, the masks we wear so carefully applied, the stories we tell ourselves so well constructed, that we need over and over again to hear the teaching of baptism and to experience the newness of life that emerges from the water so that we might hear again God’s voice of love and welcome to us. And here John’s fiery words come back to us – now as welcome words of cleandsing and renewal, reminding us that these waters, this fiery spirit, they wash and burn away the things that keep us from hearing that voice. They burn away the noisy voices that tell us we are not enough, that some people are more valuable than others, that who we are is not who we should be. They burn away, as our lectionary does, the voice of the ones who use their power for violence and suppression.

Today Todd had the opportunity to pass through these life-changing waters. We witnessed today the voice of God sounding down into his ears words of love and mercy and grace. He’s heard that voice and that love before and he will hear it again, but this journey through the waters marks for us in a visible, tangible experience the way in which God carries us from one way of being in the world to another. It is a milestone for him and for us affirming again that even though we will always live in the tension between what the world teaches us and what baptism teaches us, that God has already marked us with the sign of the cross, claiming us now and always for the kingdom full of beloved children with whom God is well-pleased.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

*See Flowing Water Uncommon Birth: Christian Baptism in a Post-Christian Culture by Samuel Torvend (Augsburg Fortress 2011), chapter 2.
**Ibid., p. 15.

Epiphany
Sunday, January 3, 2016

 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

Why do the magi make this journey? It is, even by today’s standards, a significant journey. Some scholars think it might have taken them a year or two to reach the child in Bethlehem. For what? For a star in the sky? For some correlation to prophecies written hundreds of years ago by people from a religion they didn’t follow and a tribe they probably knew little about? The equivalent would be something akin to our trekking by foot or maybe by camel across the better part of our relatively vast country because something we saw in the sky reminded us of an obscure passage in some medieval manuscript written on another continent.

And they bring precious gifts. Gold, Frankincense, and myrrh. Impractical, perhaps, but valuable nonetheless and perhaps carried for long distances. I have a hard enough time choosing a few Christmas gifts and getting them packed safely in a carry-on bag for a one hour flight to my parents’ house on Christmas day. Carrying them hundreds or thousands of miles by camel seems much harder.

It was really a ridiculous adventure that these magi took. I tend to call them magi, by the way – we don’t know that there were three or that they were all men or that they were in any way royalty.  But why do they go? And what keeps them going? And what do they think of what they find?

The prophecy they were following perhaps, our lectionary selections suggest, is the one from Isaiah in which all people are drawn by the rising of new light over Jerusalem. For all its fame today, it was not a significant city except to the Hebrew people who had called it and its surrounding lands home and the place of worship for their God. That the magi paid any attention to such a claim is a miracle in and of itself.

And when they arrive, they are directed not even to center of power in Jerusalem but an even more out-of-the-way place called Bethlehem. And they find there not kings and palaces, but an infant or perhaps a young toddler in at best humble circumstances. Yet, they seem to go away having been satisfied that their long journey was somehow worth it, though I cannot imagine what made them think so.

So what of us and of our journeys? Surely you have, like I have, undertaken some long and difficult task, something that might take weeks or years only to discover at the end that it wasn’t what you expected? And some of those turn out to be good surprises – things you never thought to hope for. And some turn out to be disappointments – difficult things you never dared anticipate.

In a sense I think our baptismal journey, our life of faith is something akin to the journey of the magi. We are people who study the ancient texts. We look to our world for signs of God among us. And we travel forward, step-by-step, bearing the gifts we have to offer the world. But we spend much of the time dwelling in mystery. We have been told to look for Christ in our neighbor and in the world around us, but we have not yet seen Christ in the way that magi hope to and eventually do see Christ. Perhaps as the new year begins you are imagining what it will bring. What journeys will you take in your own life? What new things will emerge? What things will be lost?

We come at our journeys, perhaps, with all sorts of expectations about how our lives ought to be. Perhaps we are disappointed that following the star doesn’t lead us to riches or even always to inner peace. Perhaps we are disappointed when things don’t turn out quite as we expect them to. Perhaps we never learn the significance of the gifts that we offer along the way. It would be easy to wonder if the whole of our journey or at least parts of our journey are worth it. To wonder just what it is we are doing following Christ through dry wilderness to an unknown destination.

But perhaps we also put too much weight on what comes at the end of the journey. What the magi discover is a God made flesh in an unexpected, out-of-the-way place. They discover that the whole point of their journey isn’t at all what they had anticipated. But that they still bow down to worship indicates that they, in the moment, recognized in some way a God made flesh before them. They recognized in the Christ child that God can take flesh in the most ordinary of things and the most ordinary of people. And suddenly, perhaps, they realized that they had been experiencing the God-made-flesh at every point along their journey. God made flesh in the all the stars that helped them find their way, in the dry and barren wilderness, in the rough and rugged mountains, in the caravans of traders along the highways, in their traveling companions. Perhaps in the moment of bowing down to offer their gifts they realized that the incarnation had been with them all along the way.

It’s not that they didn’t need to make the journey. Something in the experience readied them to see what they could not see before. Something in the long, slow trek prepared them to recognize what they could not have understood from seeing the star rise in the distance. They needed the journey in order to recognize the God made flesh in their own lives right where they were.

So it is perhaps with our journeys. This time of year we cannot help but get swept up in the contemplation that accompanies the turning of the year. What will this year bring to us? Where is it that we will be called to go in the coming year? What dry and dusty deserts will we need cross to better recognize the gift of Immanuel, God-with-us? We can guess, but we can’t always know quite where the light will lead us. We can’t know what it is we will have to face to get there. But thanks to the journey of the magi who have gone before us, we make the journey, whatever it is, with the knowledge that Christ is among us from the beginning. We face the challenges knowing that God is not waiting on the other side but with us in struggle. We arrive at the long-awaited journey’s end to see more clearly how God has been among us all along.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Christmas Eve 2015

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

Why is it that every year we come back to gaze on this scene of the baby in a manger, surrounded by Mary and Joseph, the shepherds, and a few animals? What are we trying to accomplish as we carefully lay out our nativity sets, arranging and perhaps rearranging the scene trying to imagine where the shepherds stood and how Mary and Joseph hovered over their infant and just how far off the magi might be as they begin their journey to visit the child? What are we watching for as our young ones dress up in costume and act out the coming of this child on the fourth Sunday of Advent? What are we looking for as we bow in reverence before the crèche or stand in wonder, awe, and mystery at the reading of the Christmas story from Luke’s account?

I do not expect that we come to hear the story and gaze on this scene because we think it will be different than any other year. And perhaps the unchangingness itself is part of the draw. But I think we come looking not because we expect the story to be any different, but because we ourselves are different. We come to this story with another year’s worth of experience behind us. So much has happened since we last gathered to hear this story. We have seen tens of thousands of refugees streaming from Syria and Iraq. We have witnessed terror attacks in Lebanon, France, Kenya, and Nigeria. We have stared, slack-jawed at scenes of violence against people on the basis of race and religion or sometimes with no basis at all. We have watched as loved ones have gotten sick and as some among us have died. We have watched things in our own lives fall apart and other things come together.

As the shepherds came to gaze on the child they have just heard about in a magnificent choir of heavenly voices, so do we come – surrounded by songs that echo that angel choir – to observe, to wonder at the promise of salvation. In all our longing we look to this scene, and perhaps we are a bit shocked after all to see only a helpless infant in a lowly setting. Of course, every newborn bears the miracle of new life, every one holds promise and hope. But it is a big leap from the infant of a young, unprepared mother lying in an animal trough to Isaiah’s Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. What can this newborn offer to us after this year full of change and loss, fear and violence?

Surely many will come and look and walk away. Some will simply smile at a sentimental scene and wish for happier days that may never have been. Others will shake their heads at the utter nonsense of God taking on the flesh of a human body. But perhaps if we are willing to dwell there long enough, whether it be in the songs, the scripture, or the visual scenes of the nativity in all their many forms, perhaps we might see something more in the mystery of this celebration.

Perhaps we will look at the holy family and see God claiming as God’s own flesh the lives of people on the margins of society. People whose skin color, religion, and economic status make them unwelcome in so many places and people who are forced to flee from their homeland at the hands of violent authorities. Perhaps we will see in the wonderful messiness of childbirth and human life God claiming frail and vulnerable bodies that break and fail and are susceptible to the violence of others. Perhaps if we lean in close enough, if we dwell in the mystery with a bit of patience we will see reflected in the newly opening eyes of the Christ child our own reflection. Perhaps as we lean in carrying all our hopes and dreams, our pain and sadness, our joy and love, our fear and loss, we will see God claiming us as God’s own flesh, God come to be with us here and now.

God’s incarnation is not limited to first century Bethlehem. The incarnation began as God’s word took shape in the formation of the earth. The incarnation welled up in prophets and poets, servants and kings through thousands of years of history. The incarnation took flesh in Jesus, to draw all the world into God’s death and resurrection. And the incarnation carried forward through ages of people who shared this story again and again. The incarnation takes flesh in bread and wine offered at this table. The incarnation takes flesh in you.

So come, all ye faithful, come and ponder this scene anew. Come and ponder the word made flesh. Come and ponder God’s ability to dwell in every corner of the earth and every human heart. Come, let us adore him. For in doing so we might see in the manger God’s salvation given in abundance for us and for all the world.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

P.S. Consider viewing this amazing blog post that tells the nativity story using images from the Syrian refugee crisis. God takes flesh in each of us, but some

Third Sunday of Advent
Commemoration of St. Lucia
December 13, 2015

14Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
  shout, O Israel!
 Rejoice and exult with all your heart,
  O daughter Jerusalem!
 15The Lord has taken away the judgments against you,
  he has turned away your enemies.
 The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst;
  you shall fear disaster no more. -Zephaniah 3:14-15

4Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. -Phillippians 4:4

7John said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? 8Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. 9Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
  10And the crowds asked him, “What then should we do?” 11In reply he said to them, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” 12Even tax collectors came to be baptized, and they asked him, “Teacher, what should we do?” 13He said to them, “Collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” 14Soldiers also asked him, “And we, what should we do?” He said to them, “Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.”
  15As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, 16John answered all of them by saying, “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 17His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
  18So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people. – Luke 3:7-18

The Charlie Brown Christmas Special first aired 50 years ago in 1965, and in honor of that milestone, I begin today’s sermon with the opening words spoken by Charlie Brown in the now 50-year-old Christmas Special: “I think there must be something wrong with me, Linus. Christmas is coming but I’m not happy. I don’t feel the way I’m supposed to feel. I just don’t understand Christmas, I guess. I like getting presents and sending Christmas cards and decorating trees and all that, but I’m still not happy. I always end up feeling depressed.”

But it’s the third Sunday in Advent, Charlie Brown! We’re supposed to be rejoicing! Zephaniah says so, Paul says so, our advent wreath says so. And maybe you have reason for rejoicing today. Maybe something wonderful has happened for you or someone you love this week. Maybe you found a place of peace and calm, or a place of excitement and hope, a moment of pure joy. And those moments I hope are part of your lives as they are mine. But I know that even if it’s not this week, we’ve all had weeks that made it hard to rejoice.

And I find few things more frustrating than a command to rejoice when I just don’t feel like it. And we get plenty of that message this time of year. The commercial Christmas season, which largely ignores the church’s season of Advent, is primarily aimed at reminding us that we should have perfect families and perfect gifts and perfect homes and perfect lives, mostly because that’s the narrative that makes us want to buy more things.

But I don’t know any perfect people or perfect families. Most of the people I talk to are feeling the weight of the world’s news more heavily than usual these last few weeks. Most of the people I talk to are feeling overwhelmed right now with the tasks of the season or with the weight of things happening in their own lives. Most of the people I talk to are having at least a little trouble rejoicing. I know in my head, in an intellectual kind of way, that there is still much to be joyful about, even in a world of death and destruction, of violence and pain. And I know that joy is a deeper feeling than just being happy. Yet the exhortation to rejoice seems as jarring to me some days as John the Baptist’s harsh rhetoric about hypocritical vipers and the winnowing fork and refining fire of the coming of God.

Though Advent isn’t penitential in the way that Lent so often is, it has its own darkness and heaviness, brought on in part in the northern hemisphere by the long, dark nights. So people over time developed felt a need for a Sunday of lightness as Christmas approached and chose this third Sunday to be a Sunday of rejoicing, much the way the people of Sweden used the saint day that fell on the darkest night of the year according to the calendar they were using at the time to have a joyful procession of light as a statement against the darkness. And wonderful as these celebrations are, they do not eliminate the darkness.

But rejoicing or not, advent is heavy because it provides us with a reminder of why we need the incarnation, why we need God enfleshed in human skin and bone. With voices like John the Baptist, Advent calls us to look more deeply at the world we live in to realize the depth of our need. Advent calls us to see the faces of Muslim neighbors and Syrian refugees. It forces us to see the power that money has in our lives. It forces us to see our love of violence and our misuse of human relationships.  John points out to those honestly eager people where they can make a difference in their own lives. If you have two coats give one away. If you’re a tax collector do it with honesty, if a soldier show mercy. And well we should in whatever context we’re in. But that is just the beginning John reminds us. That will not erase death, violence, fear. Advent reminds us that the darkness is stronger than that. We need more. We need a savior, and one with power to consume, with fire as necessary, the things that make this world a challenging place to live.

The joy of this Sunday, which borrows its joy from Christmas itself, is not in making a nice family holiday or even in sharing with those in need but more deeply in a God who takes on human life from beginning to end, from womb to tomb. Whatever we make of Jesus’ mix of humanity and divinity, however it is that we define those terms and apply them to Jesus, what is clear is that he has the opportunity to experience the range of human emotions. He has the opportunity to see the joy and delight, perhaps marveling at the inclusion of animals in the story his parents tell him about his birth. He has the opportunity to experience adolescence where in the one growing-up story we get in the Bible about Jesus, he wanders off to do his own thing and mouths off to his parents when they find him after days of searching. He experiences the joy of meeting new friends and co-workers, discovering what they have to offer in all their gifts and flaws and then also the pain of loss for friends and strangers who die from illness or violence. He experiences the frustration of people who seem incapable of understanding a seemingly simple message of peace and justice. He experiences pain, suffering, and death.

Which is to say that if you are rejoicing today, God in flesh knows that joy. God rejoices with you, in you. And that if today’s call to rejoice is too much for you, that God in flesh knows that, too. God weeps or pleads or cries out with you, in you. In the dancing flames that push away darkness, and in the darkness itself, God dwells enfleshed in us. In the darkest of days, God is holding us and the joy that we have experienced and will experience again. In our days of rejoicing, God is holding the pain we have experienced and will experience again. Our whole lives held at once in God’s eternal present.

And we eat at this table we are reminded of God’s flesh shared with us, becoming a part of us. Into our lives full of joy and sorrow, often right next to one another or even mingled together: bread and wine, flesh and blood, God incarnate for us. The God for whom we wait is here among us. The God who promises transformation is here, ready to consume what keeps us from the promised kingdom, ready to show us that the promised rejoicing is already a reality in God even as we wait to know it ourselves.

So with Charlie Brown we dive deeper into Advent, experiencing the whole range of human emotions, trusting in the incarnation of God to hold it all together as one.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

Advent Midweek Service Reflection
December 9, 2015

 46And Mary said, 
 “My soul magnifies the Lord,
  47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
 48for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
  Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
 49for the Mighty One has done great things for me,
  and holy is his name.
 50His mercy is for those who fear him
  from generation to generation.
 51He has shown strength with his arm;
  he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
 52He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
  and lifted up the lowly;
 53he has filled the hungry with good things,
  and sent the rich away empty.
 54He has helped his servant Israel,
  in remembrance of his mercy,
 55according to the promise he made to our ancestors,
  to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” – Luke 1:46-55 

This is Mary’s song.

That it is sung is by no means insignificant. Perhaps the joy is so great that the melody bubbles up within her and she cannot help but start to sing it quietly, then louder as perhaps her cousin Elizabeth joins in. For this song is a remix, the words borrowed from their ancestor Hannah, the mother of Samuel, who likewise was filled with joy by a child within her, and her words borrowed from the prophet Miriam before that. And her words perhaps echoing the sound of the spirit over the untamed waters at the start of creation. But that these words are meant to be sung matters.

Because singing is different from ordinary speech. When we sing, we breathe differently; we embody it differently; it is heard differently.

To sing this song is as if Mary had breathed in the pain and fear of the world, breathed it deeply into her bones, breathed it into the child growing within her. And then she breathed it out again, transformed by song, transformed by the presence of God growing within her. And in the exchange between inhale and exhale the pain and fear become this song of triumph and justice, mercy and compassion, reversal of power and food for hungry. For us to sing it is likewise to breathe in the pain and fear of our community and breathe it out again, transformed by the presence of God growing within us.

And to sing this song the melodic vibrations must have resonated in her body in the way that only song can do. The vocalization of the mighty ones and the poor ones, her ancestors and her descendants, the Spirit of God and the child within literally moving the cells of her body, vibrating with the frequency of each note, from her vocal chords to her sinus cavity to the child in her womb – tiny vibrations resonating with God’s power. The Christ-bearer sings of transformation and is herself transformed to her very core. For us to sing Mary’s song is to create that same movement within ourselves and in the world, being transformed ourselves by the transformation of which we sing.

And to sing this song meant that her words carried farther than if they had been spoken. They carried perhaps to Zechariah’s ears off in another room and to the yet unformed ears of Jesus within her. The words, carried by the melody, echoed through time to the song of Hannah, another mother gifted with a child by God centuries before, and to Miriam centuries before that singing at the Israelites’ escape from Egypt. And the words carried by her melody have drifted to us, to our 21^st century world of injustice, fear, hatred, and violence, to our own hopes and fears of all the years. And so we join her song, perhaps sometimes chanted, sometimes set to old hymn tunes and new ones or to jazz or gospel, that as the presence of God grows within us, we, too, might become part of the song itself that God sings anew in every generation.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Sunday, December 6, 2015
2nd Sunday of Advent 

In addition to the texts of the day we also used the theme “Prepare” as part of our worship for the 2nd Sunday of Advent. Apologies that there is no audio recording this week due to a technical error on the part of the pastor (i.e. I didn’t press record at the right time).

68“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
  for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them.
 69He has raised up a mighty savior for us
  in the house of his servant David,
 70as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
  71that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us.
 72Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors,
  and has remembered his holy covenant,
 73the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham,
  to grant us 74that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies,
 might serve him without fear, 75in holiness and righteousness
  before him all our days.
 76And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
  for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
 77to give knowledge of salvation to his people
  by the forgiveness of their sins.
 78By the tender mercy of our God,
  the dawn from on high will break upon us,
 79to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
  to guide our feet into the way of peace.” – Luke 1:68-79

 

1In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, and his brother Philip ruler of the region of Ituraea and Trachonitis, and Lysanias ruler of Abilene, 2during the high priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 3He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, 4as it is written in the book of the words of the prophet Isaiah, 
 “The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
 ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
  make his paths straight.
 5Every valley shall be filled,
  and every mountain and hill shall be made low,
 and the crooked shall be made straight,
  and the rough ways made smooth;
 6and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.’ ” – Luke 3:1-6

Advent is a season when time gets all-mixed up. It’s the waiting for Christ’s second coming while looking back to the advent of Christ’s first coming. The texts weave the end times conversation of the end of the previous church year with the apocalyptic vision of what is still to come of the new church year. And perhaps in one of the most confusing time-blending moments we hear today of John the Baptist as both an infant and an adult in the span of about 5 minutes. In the place of the psalm we joined in the song of John’s father, Zechariah, who thanks to an angelic visit has come to understand his newborn son’s role in preparing the way for God coming into the world. Then in the gospel we heard of John’s grown up self as a prophet in the desert crying out to all who came to gawk at his strange ways, Prepare a way in the wilderness, a highway for our God. Earth will move in every direction to reveal God’s salvation. Two very different pictures of John

After another week of stomach-turning violence in the news – and here I almost hesitate to mention San Bernardino for fear that one horrific incident might overshadow the daily violence that penetrates our culture – part of me would prefer to have just grown-up John’s hard message and not the bit about him as an infant. Many times I struggle with his challenging message of repentance, his words that almost suggest we must make a way for God as if the Creator of All Things can’t make a way in that creator’s own wilderness. But this week, I wonder more if we need someone with the nerve of John the Baptist to scream at whoever is listening about all the things I think they ought to do to prepare a way for God’s peace to reign in our tumultuous world. And while I’m at it I’d like John’s courage to scream and shout at all the life-threatening diseases and progressively debilitating diseases and the racism and Islamophobia and distrust of people who are just different. And if I list any more I might get riled up enough to jump into next week’s John the Baptist reading that calls a bunch of people in the crowd dirty snakes.

And part of me wonders if in the 21^st century church we don’t need a little more of grown-up John shouting in our ears, demanding that we work on what will have to be multiple solutions to these complex and ever-growing problems. But I’m just too Lutheran to be convinced that in doing so we can prepare a place for God’s coming. It’s not that we can’t do something good and worthwhile and maybe even world-changing. It’s just that we’re not God.

Which is why I think it’s essential that we pair John’s shouting in the desert with his father’s singing at his birth. Because in joy at beholding his son, in awe of God’s having chosen him and Elizabeth who are past their child-bearing years, in hope for what God is doing among them, Zechariah sings of John’s preparing the way for God while John is still a helpless infant, in much the same way that we proclaim infants to be capable of joining us in our mission to bear God’s creative and redeeming work into all the world when we wash them in the waters of baptism. Zechariah doesn’t know how God will do this. Zechariah doesn’t know how to prepare the way of the Lord. Instead Zechariah trusts in his call to raise this child, who has been gifted with something unique to prepare for the Lord’s coming.

This tells me two things about preparing the way for Christ to come. First that it is always God’s doing. Now God chooses to do it in strange ways like giving children to couples who no longer expect them, and giving words that undercut power structures to a strangely dressed man in the desert, and so often making use of the people we think least likely to be chosen. God so often seems to choose working with us and using our incomplete and messy way of doing things to make paths in dark and wild places, but this highway making in the desert is always God’s doing.

And second, this tells me that preparing a way for the Lord is something that each of us does with the unique gifts we have been given. It’s easy to look at grown-up John and think he’s the one and only who can call out this message. It’s easy to look at him and with either admiration or disdain write him off as once-and-never-again kind of prophet. But I think Zechariah’s looking at the infant and singing about that child’s call to make a way for God in the world gives us a chance to see that maybe John isn’t so much one-of-a-kind as he is someone lifted up to remind us that each of us is issued a call to prepare the way and that each of us is endowed with a unique set of gifts to prepare that way.

It’s easy to hear the call to prepare and imagine tacking one more thing on a lengthy holiday season to-do list. But I think God is at work all the time preparing a way in our wilderness. And more often than not God is doing it through you and through the ways in which you are already using your gifts in the world. As people of God we have been created with unique gifts and invited to use those gifts to be partners with God in making a way through the darkness around us and the wilderness in our lives.

As I struggled this week to know how to be an agent for change in response to the problems of gun violence, I found myself presented with more than one opportunity already on my calendar to work at repairing the harm done by violence already on my calendar – an opportunity to visit with someone who was sick to extend a connection to community from which illness so often estranges us; a local clergy meeting that became a venue for us to work toward a common voice against violence and in protection of our Muslim sisters and brothers; a meeting of our local restorative justice program which this week was an opportunity to make room for healing for some victims of a physical assault. I share those small examples with you as a way of saying that I think each of you, too, did something this week that prepared a way for God’s coming into our midst even if you didn’t realize it. Maybe you did it through art or music, teaching, parenting, researching, studying, or whatever it is that you do with your days. But if you’re anything like me, you sometimes go about your daily work forgetting that by being the person you were created to be, God is using you to prepare the way of the Lord. God is using the paths you create to enter our world.

In the waters of baptism, you were given a call just as John was to prepare the way of the Lord, but just like John you are given everything you need to do that work in the world. Blessed be the God of Israel, for you, children of God, are called to be prophets of the Most High, going before the Lord to prepare the way, giving God’s people knowledge of salvation by the forgiveness of their sins. And in the tender compassion of our God, the dawn from on high shall break upon us to shine on all those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

-Pastor Steven Wilco