Sermon for Baptism of Our Lord
Sunday, January 11, 2014

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

See also the other texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; and Acts 19:1-7

Have you ever heard the voice of God?

What do you think it sounds like?

Hollywood, of course, has taken a crack at giving God a voice. Some memorable ones include, of course, Charlton Heston. Morgan Freeman gives voice to a genial God in Bruce Almighty. In Dogma, God is played by Alanis Morisette who doesn’t speak. By the way, I confess to not having seen ALL these movies. Groucho Marx plays a lethargic stoner God in Skidoo, George Burns a crabby God in Oh, God. And my personal favorite casting choice, Whoopi Goldberg in A Little Bit of Heaven.

I’m sure many of those called to mind a certain voice and presence that you could identify. But how would you know if you heard God’s voice speaking to you?

The voice of God is all over our readings today. In Genesis the voice of God creates the world. By speaking “light,” light is. It begins more than half the verses in our psalm this morning: “The voice of God…is upon the waters, is a powerful voice, is a voice of splendor. [It] breaks the cedar trees, bursts forth in lightning flashes, shakes the wilderness, makes the oak trees writhe and strips the forests bare. And all are crying, ‘Glory!’” In the second reading, Paul baptizes 12 disciples in Ephesus and the Holy Spirit comes upon them and they begin speaking in tongues – something I know makes us sometimems-staid Lutherans a little uneasy – the voice of God coming from their own lips. And finally at the baptism of Jesus the heavens are torn apart and God speaks Jesus’ sonship into being: “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

But we have so many voices in our world today, it’s easy for God’s voice to get lost. How do we discern what we listen to amid all the other voices competing for our attention. We live in a digital world where anyone and everyone can have a voice on the internet or an obscure cable channel. It gives a platform for many important voices to be heard that otherwise wouldn’t be, but it also forces us to sort out a good bit of garbage to find the things worth listening to.

At one time we were taught to rely on voices in positions of authority, but in a postmodern world we have come to question authority. In the information age we can fact-check anyone’s comments and almost always find another authority to refute that which we disagree with. Some of this is good. For too long we gave too much power to some voices in positions of authority. The church is no exception. We’ve all heard the stories about clergy abuse of one kind or another. And just this week I heard voices claiming to speak for Christianity denying climate change and a pastor railing against a community food bank for providing a shelf of halal food for their Somali Muslim neighbors. The voice of the church is NOT always the voice of God.

This week we heard the news from France – an attempt to silence certain voices. In the terrible attack the voice of violence attempted to drown out the voice of God.

And nothing in our talk about voices this morning is meant to make light of or minimize the experience of those who hear audible voices, which make it difficult for them to live in the world.

But perhaps more than anything else, the hardest place to discern the voice of God is among all the things we say to ourselves. Too often I hear people confuse the things they say to themselves with the voice of God. Too often I hear people say that they aren’t enough – not a good enough body, not a good enough house, not a good enough career. We tell ourselves we have to get it together. Do more. Be more. We tell ourselves we cannot be forgiven, that we’re worthless, that it’s all your fault, that everything is hopeless, that you can’t and never will. Not the voice of God.

But then how do we know when it is God speaking? How do we recognize the earth-creating, wilderness-shaking, prophecy-inducing, heaven-tearing voice of God amidst all the others?

Lutherans have a way of naming the way God speaks to us through the Word. We call it Law and Gospel, and perhaps that’s the way to begin to discern God’s voice in our lives.

The law is this: the voice that tells us that we are dying. The power of God’s voice makes us aware of our smallness and our dependence on God. It reminds us that we are fragile and broken people. This is not to be confused with things that we tell our ourselves about being worthless, hopeless, or unforgivable. That’s not law, that’s just nonsense. But this voice that reminds us of our humanity is at the heart of baptism. Calling us to drown in the water and die to ourselves over and over again. This voice is also at the heart of who we are as a church. As we discussed in our forum this morning, there are many voices out there claiming that the church is dying. But of course the church is always dying, following the pattern of its Lord, that it might be refreshed, renewed, and more than that, resurrected. But that voice of God speaks with honesty and clarity about who we are.

But we know it’s the voice of God when in the same breath that voice recreates us, fragile and broken as we are, as God’s beloved daughters and sons. You see, in Mark’s gospel there is no Christmas story, no birth narrative, no origin or explanation of Jesus. He simply comes from Nazareth of Galilee to be baptized by John in the Jordan. There the voice from God not only speaks what is so, but creates the reality by speaking it: You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased. That same voice creates us, gives birth to us, as beloved children of God. If the voice is not claiming us as God’s beloved, it’s not God’s voice.

In the midst of the many voices in our world, those are the things today’s texts invite us to listen to. Listen for God’s voice reminding us honestly and openly that we are finite and fallible. Listen for God’s voice reminding us directly and without question that we have been made God’s beloved. That’s the voice of God recreating the world, shaking the wilderness, instilling prophecy, and tearing open the heavens to come down to claim us. To claim you!

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Second Sunday of Christmas
January 4, 2015

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  ²He was in the beginning with God.  ³All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being  ⁴in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  ⁵The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
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.  ⁹The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
¹⁰He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  ¹¹He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.  ¹²But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,  ¹³who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
¹⁴And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.  ¹⁵(John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'”)  ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.  ¹⁸No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. – John 1:1-18

What does it mean to go camping?

That depends a great deal on who you ask. For instance, if you ask my father it means finding a clean, designated campground with lots of concrete pads you can drive your car up to and plenty of facilities with indoor plumbing. It means putting up a tent, going to the campground swimming pool, and then getting in the car to drive to McDonalds for dinner. It’s an experience for sure, and more roughing it than actually being indoors, but it isn’t exactly communing with nature.

But then there’s another kind of camping. The kind where someone with skill and experience packs a bag with essential survival items and treks off into uncharted wilderness for days or weeks or months at a time. The person camping does so in such a way as to become one with the natural world around. The shelter is just enough for survival against the harsher elements and not a barrier to being a part of the surroundings. Perhaps someone who really knows what she’s doing can eat from the land itself, taking in the natural world to her body. After days in the wilderness dirt and grime accumulate and this camper takes on the smell of nature. This is about as close as humans can come to being one with nature.

My question is what kind of camping God prefers to do. Because in the Christmas text from John’s gospel that we read every second Sunday of Christmas is the line: “The Word became flesh and lived among us.” The Greek word is most directly translated the Word put up his tent among us. The Word made flesh is God’s camping excursion in the world.

But I wonder if we are sometimes too quick to assume that God’s camping is more like my father’s, staying a separate as possible from the world as it really is. There are, of course, any number of ancient church heresies that lean this direction, those that claimed that God only appeared in human form rather than actually being an embodied human being. Though that’s still a thought I hear from time to time, we have more subtle ways of living out that heresy.

When we assume that God is most clearly revealed in perfectly orchestrated words and music and liturgy, we’ve cleaned up God’s camping in our midst. I’m certainly guilty of it myself – it’s tempting to find words and phrases for worship that sound beautiful and transport us away from our troubles. It feels odd to me sometimes to use language that’s too grounded in our experience, too ordinary. We tried out that kind of language a bit in our midweek Advent services this year and it took me a while to get used to it.            We also clean up God’s camping when we expect church to easily fit into our mold of what it should be, or expect it to be there primarily to serve what we need. Church should enrich our spiritual lives, it should provide community, and it should support one another in joy and hardship. But sometimes we forget that it also serves us by challenging us and inviting us to engage in hard work, even sometimes work we don’t always want to do. We sometimes consciously or unconsciously expect the church to shield us from our reality or allow us to remain unchanged. Camping in sterile environment.

We also clean up God’s camping when we look out at the world and refuse to see God in other people. I know that you know as well as I do that we are expected to see God in the poor, the outcast, and the stranger. And it’s hard enough to engage those people in really genuine, unselfish ways. But if you’re anything like me, it’s even harder to see God in enemies, however you want to define that. It’s easier sometimes to see God in the poor, starving people far away than it is to see God in your next-door neighbor, in the person with whom we have to share an actual lived reality – hard to admit that the person you don’t really like has God in them and something to say to us about God. It’s our own way of keeping God clean and comfortably in a box.

But despite John’s beautifully poetic language and his tendency to highlight Jesus’ divine nature, in all the stories about Jesus it becomes clear that God’s putting up a tent in our midst is the kind of camping where God expects to get dirty. You know the stories, the ones where Jesus is born among the animals, washes in the muddy Jordan, eats with sinners, touches the unclean, calls the lowly and despised as disciples, and ultimately submits to torture and death. From dirty 1^st century diapers to a bloody and gory death, Jesus comes to dwell among us fully. Emerging from the time tenting among us covered in the dirt and grime of our earthly lives. Emerging from camping having taken in the reality of our world. Emerging from the wilderness journey transformed forever by communion with this world, our world, in all its disgusting mess.

Frederick Buechner, whom I quote often, says of this passage, “One of the blunders religious people are particularly fond of making is the attempt to be more spiritual than God.” God didn’t come down with plans for giant cathedrals and nice groups of people, but rather to dwell in our daily existence in such a way as to experience fully what this world is about, to get inside creation, inside us in such a way that not only are we transformed, but also God is forever changed by the encounter.

As we reluctantly leave behind this Christmas season, turning our minds to the season after Epiphany and the quick leap to the start of Jesus’ adult ministry, we take an opportunity to wonder at the mystery of Christmas, that God would come so fully into our midst as to be transformed by the experience. And that God, experiencing the worst creation has to offer, would be so moved with love for us that we are transformed, that we are invited to be heirs of all that God has to offer. And even more than that, we are invited to participate in the work. That we are invited to live into our messy, embodied lives. That we might find God waiting for us in our mess and the times we cannot get ourselves together. That we might find God in the things that are hard and challenging for us. That we might find God is deep service to one another. That we might find God in one another not when we become the same or when we meet each others’ expectations, but in the reality of who we are now in the present moment, failures and all.

Because the Word became flesh, and put up a tent among us. By dwelling in us and among us, God lifts us up if not out of our mess, lifts us up with all our mess together. Because if God can be covered with the grime of our world, then maybe we can come to terms with who we are as people of God now covered in our dirt, in this moment now, no matter who we are or where we’ve come from or where we think we’re going. Because God is always dwelling among us, setting up camp in the middle of wherever we are and ready to pick up and move along with us wherever we are going next.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

1st Sunday of Christmas
December 28, 2014

²²When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him 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

At first, today’s gospel appears to be a sweet post-Christmas-Day story of a gentle older man and a sweet old widow at the temple greeting the infant Jesus. It’s easy to think of the whole scene as a gentle and pleasant encounter with people who swoon over Mary and Joseph’s newborn. What new parents don’t love a little praise for their newborn? And this is high praise indeed to be called the savior of the world. But that’s not all that’s going on in this scene.

In this presentation at the temple, there is something darker lurking. For starters, Simeon’s response to seeing the Christ child is to pray, perhaps in song, that God can now let him depart in peace. That is, he is content now to die, having seen God’s promise enfleshed before him. This date today also marks the commemoration in our church year of the Holy Innocents, who according to Matthew’s gospel, were killed by Herod in a futile attempt to wipe out what he perceived to be a challenge to his power. Death and life are caught up together in the story of Christmas.  The reality of our finite lives is both made frighteningly clear and surprisingly peaceful by the presence of Christ. In the exchange with Simeon it is not only praise and joy, but also surrender. Surrender to larger purposes. Trust that God will complete promises that are yet in their infancy in our short lifespans. This is at once perhaps terrifying and freeing. It’s not exactly as it appears.

It’s that same tension that is at the heart of our baptism, the same tension that is at the heart of Eli’s baptism this morning. By this I don’t mean that baptism gives us peace of mind as some sort of eternal fire insurance, but rather that in the moment of baptism itself and in the life of the baptized that follows it, death and life are present together all the time. In baptism we say that we drown – we die to ourselves and die with Jesus – and are raised up from the water alive again with Christ. In the water we are confronted by our own mortality and by the power of the evil we have just renounced. We are confronted by our powerlessness to save ourselves in the end. And in the same instant we are promised salvation beyond our imagining. It looks like simple water and sounds like simple words but it is more than it first appears.

But what else is going on in this seemingly cheerful story? Simeon not only has words of praise for God but also a blessing for the child and for his parents. Perhaps suddenly he realizes it or maybe he’s known it all along and but seeing the actual people who will have to face it makes him pause. His blessing is for the ones who will face the cross. A sword to pierce the body of the one who is now an infant and a sword to pierce the soul for the mother who will stand witness. This is no ordinary blessing. It’s a blessing for facing the reaction of a world that will not stand for God’s radical love. It’s a blessing for ones who will stand up to the powers that are. It’s a blessing for the ones who will stand up to empires and traditions. This blessing is more than it appears.

And so, too, do we bless the newly baptized. We pray a prayer, which in its essence is not unlike Simeon’s blessing. A prayer that only gets richer and deeper for me with each time it’s prayed: “Sustain this child of God with the gift of your Holy Spirit: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord, the spirit of joy in your presence, both now and forevermore.” What gets me every time is that we have no idea what a person being baptized will face. For those who are infants they have a whole life ahead of walking the way of the cross and living out the promises of baptism to engage the community of faith, proclaim Christ in word and deed, and work for justice and peace. Not just Eli, but you and me and all the baptized are called to these joys and challenges that will require us to draw on this spirit promised in baptism for counsel and might, knowledge, fear and joy. The call that is issued and the promises that are made in Baptism are certainly more than they appear.

And we cannot forget Anna, a woman who knows loss. A woman who has been fasting and praying in the temple. For what she has been praying all these years, we do not know. Laying whatever those hopes and dreams for herself and her world at the foot of God present in the temple, she has been shaped in her praying to recognize that presence of God in this little child. She rejoices. She has been fasting, likely unaware that the feast she was preparing for would come to her in the form of a child. This child is so much more than he appears to be at first.

And so we come, too, bringing our deepest longings to this place of worship. We hunger and thirst for the things that will relieve the burdens of our hearts. So we come to this table, not sure what God has in store for us. And in bread and wine, in the celebratory feast of our baptism, we receive God’s very self in answer to all we hope and yearn for. The morsel of bread and sip of wine becoming so much more than they appear to be.

Thanks be to God that things are not always what they appear at first. That the infant is a savior, that the cross can become an instrument of life, that the grave can become a womb for a new birth. Thanks be to God for people like Simeon and Anna, and all the saints since right down to the newly baptized Eli, who see through what seems to be to reveal to us God’s love and mercy. Thanks be to God that we have the gift of baptism to remind us of who we are as children of God even when we cannot see it ourselves and that we have this feast of bread and wine to take into ourselves that same reminder given to us at baptism. May you find this Christmas season, even as the Christmas lights begin to come down and the regular rhythms of our lives resume, that things are, thankfully, blessedly, not always as they appear.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Christmas Eve 2014

In 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

For all the ways it’s changed the world since, the first Christmas wasn’t really much to speak of as far as most of the world was concerned. Luke sets the Christmas story for us in the context of a great empire, but the people involved are only part of a backwater province whose importance to Rome seems to lie primarily in their ability to be taxed. It’s a story about some peasants from a small, insignificant village, even by the standards of the backwater province. Probably with nothing much to live on, one wonders if the innkeeper couldn’t find room because they couldn’t really pay the nightly rate.

For all the times we sing the angels’ song tonight and through the whole year, the story has their great multitude appearing only to a few shepherds, and on the third shift at that. The rest of Bethlehem goes on about its merry way. And the star that appears, while perhaps some wondered, we only hear of a few mystics from a distant kingdom who take notice of what has transpired. The birth in the stable surely changes the lives of Mary and Joseph, but infants were born every day then as they are now. Miracles to be sure, but not unusual. God’s coming down at Christmas wasn’t really much of an event at all as far as most people were concerned.

And it seems, too, that God coming into our lives happens all too often on the fringes. For we live, too, in a world of empires. Governments, even the best of them, prone to waging war and using violence. A world where economics drive even our Christmas celebrations, leaving everyone, rich and poor alike feeling inadequate. A world where violent acts are unpredictable happening in our backyards as often as they do in far away places.  A world where even those who are aware of the privilege they carry feel powerless to change systems of inequality and discrimination. A world where disease can come and make us realize how little control we have over even our own bodies.

We are, despite all we may have, like Mary and Joseph and the clueless shepherds, and the obscure group of mystics who follow the star. We are people who in one way or another all wait at the edge, wait for transformation, wait for hope.

And while what happened that first Christmas by any account you want to follow changed very little at the moment it happened, by every account it also changed everything for the ones waiting and watching on the edges. A poem titled B.C:A.D by English poet U. A. Fanthorpe says it this way:

This was the moment when Before

Turned into After, and the future’s

Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

 

This was the moment when nothing

Happened. Only dull peace

Sprawled boringly over the earth.

 

This was the moment when even energetic Romans

Could find nothing better to do

Than counting heads in remote provinces.

 

And this was the moment

When a few farm workers and three

Members of an obscure Persian sect

Walked haphazard by starlight straight

Into the kingdom of heaven.

 

This is good news for us who so often find God working in our lives at the edges. Because even though God comes quietly, and strangely. Christmas is about God welcoming every last bit of us into the kingdom of heaven. About God infusing every cell of a human being formed in a human womb. About God claiming not just the weakness of the infant but the weakness of all human experience. About God encompassing the people who stand on the edges. Christmas is about God claiming not just the good parts of ourselves, God claiming not just young and healthy infants, God claiming not just the perfectly cooked Christmas dinner and the beautifully wrapped presents, not just the good things we did for others in the Christmas spirit, not just the warm fuzzy feelings of home for the holidays.

No, Christmas is also about God claiming every tear that’s shed in silent corner, about God claiming the men, women, and children who shiver in the cold unnoticed, about God claiming bodies young and old that are weighed down by anxiety or disease, about God claiming the feeling inside us that we haven’t got it all together. That’s what God’s coming to be human is really all about. God claiming every last bit of us, even the parts we’d rather hide away.

So maybe it’s not so much that God comes only along the edges, but that it’s on our boundaries that we notice what’s happening. It’s in the cracks of our armor and our sleepless nights that we see the light shining and hear the angels singing. It’s when we are most helpless and find ourselves walking on the edges that we find we are being led into the kingdom of God. It’s in the brokenness we find God showing up in unexpected and mysterious ways. It’s there, in the messy manger, in the company of a ragtag group of shepherds that we discover the one who has claimed us from the beginning joining us in our helplessness and leading us now – this night – into the kingdom of heaven.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

“So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” – Luke 11:9

Ask. Seek. Knock. Usually when I hear this passage I jump to all my questions about the times I’ve asked and not received, sought and not found, knocked and found the door not opened. Prayers unanswered.

And the usual responses come flying from within and without saying something about God knowing what’s best and God’s will not always being our will. That may very well be true about a number of things I’ve prayed for over the years. But it does not explain the continuation of hunger and violence. It does not explain the horror that unfolded two days ago in Pakistan, despite our prayers to end gun violence. It does not explain the people who remain homeless despite our pleading week after week. It does not explain the continuation of wars and disease.

Or our responses posit that God is somehow using these things for greater good. I don’t deny that God can and does transform our evil into opportunities for good, but I get very uncomfortable with the idea that God created the trouble in order to have a venue to do something good. The God who created the world out of nothing can surely do something good without the evil first.

None of those responses really give any real answer or any real comfort to the problem. I’m not sure there is an answer that will really ever satisfy me this side of death. But I wonder if sometimes we get too caught up in those questions when we hear these words of Jesus.

It’s safer to put the focus on what God hasn’t done than to put it on our failure to ask, seek, and knock. I’m not suggesting that greater fervor in our asking will achieve our ends. I’m just wondering if we’re often reluctant to claim the boldness that Jesus is inviting us to in this passage. An invitation to bother the God of all creation with our every need. An invitation to knock on the door for a visit anytime.

Sometimes instead we couch our prayers in churchy language, maybe because we think we’re supposed to or maybe deep down because we’re afraid to speak boldly about what we really mean. The difference between the prayer “Comfort me in my sickness” and what we really want to pray, “Make me not sick any more.”

Perhaps we’re afraid that really asking sounds childish or simple. Perhaps we’re convinced that miracles won’t happen. Or maybe we’re afraid they will. Or maybe we’re just worn out from the asking. But the invitation this Advent evening is to be bold in asking. To be bold in hoping. To be bold in yearning for the coming of Christ to us and to our world. To claim that prayer for our own and pray it with courage and power. To demand Christ’s coming. To insist that God fulfill God’s promises for us today.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent
December 14, 2014

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, selected verses

“Who are you?!” the messengers from the Pharisees demand. John answers them in the negative, explaining that he is not the messiah.  So they demand again, “What then? Who are you? Are you Elijah?” He is not. “Who are you? Are you the prophet?” He is not. “Who are you? Let us have an answer!”

Of course they want to know who this man is drawing attention to himself in the wilderness. They want to know, “Can we trust this man to be what he says? Is his message true?” The cynical ones want to know if he’s going to end up causing trouble for them. The hopeful ones wonder if this one of many wilderness preachers might be the one.

We ask the same questions of one another and of ourselves. In trying to navigate the world around us we question and test until we think we have sure enough footing to take another step forward. “Who are you?” we ask one another. And I don’t mean that question the way that most people do. We’re not really asking for people’s name, occupation, marital status, where they’re from. What we really want to know deep down is, “Can we trust this person?” Is this person someone I can be comfortable next to whether it’s for a short train ride or a lifetime commitment: “Who are you, really?”

We could answer like John the Baptist. I am not the messiah. Well, that’s a relief. If anyone said they were, we’d probably lock them up. But then, we spend an awful lot of time trying to be the one to swoop in and fix things. We put the weight of things on our shoulders, things that don’t belong there. Things we try to carry alone that only crush us under their weight. We’re called to participate in the messianic kingdom for sure, but it’s not our kingdom and it never will be. At least John is upfront about it.

Who are you? We could answer in the way that John the Baptist eventually does answer their questions with an affirmative answer. We are ones called to testify to the light. We are the ones called to point the way. We are the ones called to stand alone shouting a gospel message that some people would call ridiculous. There are some who would see what we as people of faith do on Sundays as just as crazy as John’s standing in the wilderness wearing camel’s hair and eating locusts. Perhaps we are the ones called to be witnesses, pointing others to a truth we see, pointing out to others who God is. Pointing out to others as John does that God is, in fact, standing in their midst whether they know it or not.

Who are you? We could answer in the way that Isaiah answers: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed and to bind up the broken-hearted.” Because we are the ones called to proclaim God’s coming reign to the kingdoms of injustice. Perhaps we are the ones who must speak out today in solidarity with others that all lives matter in the face of racism and classism and sexism and other isms.

Who are you? We could answer in the way that Mary, whose song we sang today for our psalm, answers: “I am the servant of my God; I live to do God’s will.” Perhaps we are Mary, bearing God out into the world, singing out our song of praise about the lowly lifted up and rich sent away empty-handed. We are called to be a prophet just like Mary: to proclaim the power of God to transform the world, not just pointing the way but becoming ourselves a vessel for the power of God.

Or maybe it would be simplest to answer with a fundamental truth, the one proclaimed to us in baptism. I am a child of God. Unlike our usual answers to the question, “Who are you?” whether that’s occupation, or net worth, or even our family identification, the answer about being a child of God is the only one that follows us into death. But it comes with problems of its own. Because anyone who is really trying to ask you who you are is going to follow up, “Then, who is the God?”

And suddenly not just to answer for another but to get an answer for ourselves, we turn the question on God, “Who are you?” Are you one we can trust? How do we know? The problem is that God answers in funny ways. Funny strange and funny laughable, both. God responds by sending a message through a man on the fringes wearing camel’s hair and eating locusts. God responds through a reluctant prophet speaking to a hopeless and scattered people. God responds through an unwed teenage mother. God responds in an infant born with no earthly fanfare save a choir of angels appearing to some shepherds and a star that appears in the sky. God responds by dying and rising again.

What kind of God is that? Who are you? And with those questions we enter a mystery we cannot understand and a God we cannot fully know. A God whose answer to that question is always changing, but whose presence is always with us. A God who shows up in so many surprising ways it’s a wonder we still manage to be surprised. A God who already stands among you, yet remains hidden.

Is that enough of an answer? Is that enough to trust? Is that enough to get us over the hurdles of pain, grief, illness, war, violence, and torture?

I can’t answer that, except to say that it’s all we’ve got. And here’s a crazy man in the desert who testifies to it. And here’s a scared young girl who bravely faces a society that does not understand. And here’s some water and a bit of oil to mark the sign of this God on you, on your forehead. And here is a piece of bread and a sip of wine.

And that’s about as much answer as we get. That God comes to you. In a season of waiting, in a season of hope, in a season of darkness and yearning and longing, God comes to you. In this place, in this time, at this table, this mysterious God offers a piece of God’s self for you. For you John the Baptist, for you skeptical Pharisees, for you confused bystander, for you Mary, mother of our Lord, for you Isaiah, the trembling prophet, and for you, children of God, gathered here. Whoever you are, God is here. For you.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

 

 

For our Advent midweek service on Wednesday, December 10, our text was not a typical Advent text:

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. ²⁹Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. ³⁰For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” – Matthew 11:28-30

But it’s a perfect Advent text. In a time when our culture is pushing us to busier schedules, more consumption, and convincing us that we should have a perfect family, perfect decorations, a perfect feast, a perfect life, we are tired and carrying heavy burdens. The season of Advent calls us both to let go of that, but also to engage in a different way: in prayerful action, in acts of justice, in confronting the ways our attempts to exercise control just mess things up.

For our midweek reflection I shared an abbreviated version of this reflection from Jan Richardson’s The Painted Prayerbook. I highly recommend her work in general and this reflection in particular: http://paintedprayerbook.com/2008/07/02/if-the-yoke-fits/

-Pastor Steven Wilco

Second Sunday of Advent
December 7, 2014

The 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 

I stood on Monday afternoon with a group of students, faculty, and staff at the university in front of the student union to be in solidarity with Michael Brown and others who had been killed at the hands of the police. One after another student leaders got up to the megaphone and cried out their anger, sadness, frustration, and fear. There were calls to action, but no one quite sure what that action should be. A voice crying out in the wilderness.

Then the grand jury’s verdict in the Eric Gardner case came out and suddenly there was a whole new outcry. Two verdicts, twice forgoing a trial within a week of each other. Whether you want to debate the circumstances of either case or not, there is clearly a much deeper problem of racism in our country. That much is clear. Jon Stewart on the Daily Show said, “We are definitely not living in a post-racial society and I can imagine there are a lot of people out there wondering how much of a society we’re living in at all.” A voice crying out in the wilderness.

And as disturbing and important as this conversation about racism is, it’s not the only wilderness we find ourselves in. We continue to hear about economic inequality. And as much as we find ourselves rightly disturbed by the super-rich, many of us continue to find ourselves in the wilderness that accompanies life near the top of the world’s economy. We hear the problem and yet cannot find the solution. A voice crying out in the wilderness.

Yesterday we commended another of our saints back to the hands of God, for what seems like too many times in the course of this year. Though Wanda Bridges’ death was not unexpected and she lived a long life, we are once again confronted with the wilderness that death leads us into. So with cries of anguish and whimpers of defeat we come face-to-face with death in our midst. A voice crying out in the wilderness.

The wilderness is a frightening place to be. A dry and dusty desert with little water and blazing sun and scavengers who come out at night or a jungle whose intertwining plant life hides dangerous creatures, it’s a disorienting place. It’s a dangerous place because it does not follow the rules we have established. We are not in control. Perhaps more than anything the wilderness is by definition a place without a way out. Not that you can’t get out, but that there simply isn’t a road or path to lead you. True wilderness doesn’t give you so much as an overgrown trail.

That’s how this advent season feels with all that is happening in the world around us. That we’re lost, disoriented, living in problems with no solution, trying our best to clear a path but ending up deeper in the wilderness. Thinking we’re finding our way out only to find ourselves deeper within. And in our wandering we get this crazy character of John the Baptist shouting. It seems likely that he chose the wilderness he’s in, perhaps to join an ascetic community like the Essenes. Perhaps because he saw that civilization was just as wild if only in a different way. He stands out for his insistence and his boldness. And for his pointing to something more that is happening. Others lost and wandering, others trying to find their way out of their own wilderness, others who are alone, afraid, oppressed, and dying are drawn to his shouting, at least to find someone alongside them in the wilderness.

In the gospel writers’ accounts, they’re reading a different translation of the Isaiah reading than the one we read today. In their version the punctuation in a different place, one that suits the application of the prophecy to John the Baptist – a voice crying in the wilderness and that voice crying out “Prepare the way.” We hear the call as one to repent, to transform ourselves. And we do need to hear that. We need to hear about our own brokenness, our own racial or economic privilege, our own turning toward death. And in our wilderness we must join John the Baptist in crying out against injustice, against privilege, against death.

But in the translation we read today from Isaiah, which follows the Hebrew text, it is not the voice that is in the wilderness, but the road. The voice cries out to prepare for the transformation of the wilderness itself into something else, something navigable. Maybe John’s call today is really a call to get out of the way. Because a royal highway is emerging in our wilderness. The king is coming. Those two lit candles out of four remind us. The king is coming soon. And the wilderness will be transformed by his path.

At least according to Mark’s gospel, for all John the Baptist knows, the one coming after him might take years or decades. Certainly they had been waiting long enough. People claiming to be the messiah came and went with some frequency at the time. The collective memory of the people was more wilderness than anything else. They’d traveled down roads before that led them only to a different wilderness, a different trial, a different oppressor. And ask many of them even after Jesus comes and dies and rises again and you’d probably hear them say they were in a whole new kind of wilderness in the early days of the church, but one which had now been transformed by the one who walked with them for a while, by the one who died with them, by the one who was leading them maybe through more wilderness but who has the assurance of one who had already been to hell and back on their behalf. One who went into the worst wilderness there was and found a way out.

So we continue to live in our wilderness. We continue to cry our advent cry year in and year out. Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus! And a voice calls back to us in scripture, in bread and wine, in song and breath, in the people beside us, calling us forward through our wilderness on the road being made as we walk, twisting and turning until all the mountains are brought low and the valleys raised up and we can at last see what has been for us all along – God’s love bursting forth in every step along the way from the wilderness to the kingdom of God, from death to life.

-Pastor Steven Wilco

 

A reflection for our midweek Advent prayer service (12/3/14):

Reading: Psalm 51:10-12: Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.

Reading: Isaiah 43:19: I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

Once a physical heart reaches a certain point of failure, the only option becomes a heart transplant: removing the diseased heart and putting in a new one. The chest cracked open, the heart systematically removed, and a new one attached. A risky operation, for sure, but one that people for most of history would have never dreamed possible.

When the psalmist writes “Create in me a clean heart, O God and put a new spirit in me,” he probably wasn’t imaging such a procedure. But he was talking about a radically new thing. To the ancient Israelites the heart was the center of begin. In their understanding, it moved the limbs – a stopped heart meant paralysis, not death. It was the center of emotions: joy, grief, love, courage, and fear. It was the source of thought – providing wisdom for living. It was the source of volition and conscience – the place where human beings meet God’s word.

So to call for a clean heart and new spirit was to replace the whole center of one’s being. Like the heart transplant patient, to be ripped open to the point of balancing on the edge of life and death, only to be restarted with a new life.

Too often we think of Jesus’ saving work, the call to repentance, and the point of Christianity to be about tidying things up and getting ourselves in shape, as if we can somehow make it good enough. If we only stopped sinning that one sin that we can’t let go of. If we could only piece together the right system to care for people in need. If we could only take care of our hearts just enough to keep them limping along.

But part of the Advent journey is coming to terms with the ways in which our efforts to tidy up our hearts is not enough. We are at the point where there is nothing else to do. Our desperate Advent cry, “Come, Lord Jesus,” is not a cry for a little help or a request for a little medicine, but a plea for our very life. A recognition that without Christ’s coming our hearts – our selves – will not survive.

The flip side of a heart transplant, though, is that someone else must stop living for it to be possible. Another otherwise healthy person must die that another may live.

Maybe there is something of that in the crucifixion – God’s ultimate statement of self-giving, God’s willingness to be broken open along side us, God’s willingness to share the divine life with us. The sharing of God’s own heart. The response to our cry, “Come, Lord Jesus,” is that God does come. God comes to gives up self that we might continue to live.

In baptism we are connected to that gift, brought to the edge of life and death, we are cracked open and something quite new begins within us. We begin to truly live in the only way that abundant life is possible – with the heart of God beating within.

First Sunday of Advent
November 30, 2014

²⁴But in those days, after that suffering,
the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light,
²⁵and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.
²⁶Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory.  ²⁷Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.
²⁸From the fig tree learn its lesson: as soon as its branch becomes tender and puts forth its leaves, you know that summer is near.  ²⁹So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates.  ³⁰Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. ³¹Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
³²But about that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.  ³³Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come.  ³⁴It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch.  ³⁵Therefore, keep awake — for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, ³⁶or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.  ³⁷And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” – Mark 13:24-37

I think there’s a misconception about Advent that it’s primarily about waiting for Christmas. It’s understandable. Somewhere in most of us is at least a little bit of child-like excitement for the holiday. For church services that glow with candlelight, for family dinners, Christmas trees, and presents from Santa. For some perhaps there is anxiety – about a holiday without a loved one or about facing the tension of family stories past and present. If nothing else, the commercials, the stores, and even online shopping sites will give us a countdown til Christmas. And I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with waiting for Christmas. But I wonder if that has much to do with advent.

We get a little closer to the heart of advent waiting for Jesus to come again. I personally love the tension that exists as we slowly build toward the Christmas story many of us already know and love while at the same time longing for the transformation of the world that none of us can yet fully imagine. Waiting for what we know well and what we cannot ever know become one and the same. But I’m still not sure that’s exactly what advent is about.

The problem with those things is that we’re waiting for something, and I wonder if advent is simply about waiting. In Mark’s little apocalypse in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus tells the disciples to keep awake for the day of the Lord. But if you read the description of what they’re waiting for – the stars falling from the heavens, the sun darkening – it doesn’t actually sound that pleasant, not something I’m interested in being awake for.

And I’m not that good at staying awake in that way even for something I really want to see happen. Sure I can find anxious thoughts to keep me up for a few hours, but ask me to stay up all night keeping watch and I’m sure you’d find me asleep by midnight. There’s a certain energy that it requires to wait for something that isn’t here yet.

We spend our time imagining what it will be like. If we’re waiting for something good perhaps we imagine it already happening around us getting lost in the dream only to look up at the clock and realize that only another minute has ticked by in a wait that seems to take too long.  Like waiting for each next stage of life – worried about getting there soon enough and in the right way and with enough money and skills and relationship.

And if we’re waiting for something not so good, maybe we get that worried feeling in the pit of our stomach that seems to make the clock drag on as our mind imagines the thing we’re waiting for to be worse and worse all the time.

Some kinds of waiting are especially challenging. One of the hardest things for people I visit in times of illness is waiting – waiting for scary test results, waiting for the all clear to go home, waiting to find out if a rehab bed is available. In that kind of waiting our minds tend to go into overdrive. We begin to imagine the worst possibilities, stressing ourselves out about what might be.

But all of that is focused on what will be on what comes next. It’s about our determination of what is needed and waiting until it happens. If advent is that kind of waiting, that it isn’t really much of a season at all. It becomes solely defined by the thing we’re waiting for. The problem is that like the first coming of Jesus, we may not know it when it comes, at least not if we haven’t really learned what the waiting itself is all about.

When Jesus calls us to keep awake like a master who leaves the doorkeeper on the lookout for his return, if it’s merely to sit and watch for the return, it’s a fairly lame invitation indeed. A waste of time, really. And even if it’s an invitation to active waiting – to active preparation for the master’s return, it’s at least not idle, but it doesn’t seem terribly fulfilling.

But what if the invitation to keep awake is an invitation to be more alert to the present. What if keeping awake isn’t so much about imagining what is to come, but learning to wait with what is, learning to be fully present to each moment as it happens.

I’m not suggesting complacency with what is – there is certainly much work to be done in the waiting. But more that our Advent cry “Come, Lord Jesus!” is our recognition that perfect fullness is always yet to come. More about coming to terms with our incompleteness.[1]

We have a tendency to think that God is waiting for us somewhere – maybe when we finally have everything together, or maybe when we’ve learned enough or forgiven enough or served others enough. Or that God’s will is something we have to try to figure out, as if God is in some choices and not others.

Maybe Advent is an opportunity to name for ourselves the things that we are waiting for, an opportunity to name the things that leave us dissatisfied, an opportunity to name the mess we find ourselves swimming in. Maybe advent is a chance to be honest that we don’t have everything perfectly polished, or exactly right. And then to come to terms with God here with us in the waiting.

Because maybe we will find our way out. Maybe the news we wait for will be good. Maybe some part of our life will come together. Maybe we will achieve our goals and dreams. But to be honest, maybe we won’t. Maybe things won’t go our way. Maybe things will unravel further.

You see, maybe it will be more like that first coming of Jesus, maybe Christ will come among us more like a helpless infant than as a warrior king. Maybe we will discover that waiting is much more about finding an awareness of God at work among us in the mess than it is about whatever we think is coming at the end of the wait. Maybe we’ll discover that the plan we have in mind isn’t always how it will work out, but that we can become more fully awake to the power of God in what is happening now. So join me this Advent season in naming before God the things that are broken, the messes we’re in, and the imperfect people we are. And join me also in letting that brokenness fall into God’s hands, trusting that whether it gets fixed or whether it remains in pieces, that God is holding it in such a way as to never let us go.