January 24, Third Sunday after Epiphany

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

Bryan Cones

Has anyone ever asked you why you go to church? If they did, how did you answer them, or would you if they did? What reasons would you give?

I’ll say right off the bat that I don’t think that’s a very easy question to answer—like trying to explain why you’ve been married to the same person for 30 years, or what it’s like to be in a war. There are some questions that don’t lend themselves to one sentence answers. I frankly don’t have my 10-second “elevator speech” ready which would allow me to explain to a stranger all church means to me.

Lucky for me and for us today, all three readings answer that question in pretty powerful ways. The first reading comes just after the Israelites have returned from Babylon and rebuilt Jerusalem and the Temple. They are gathering now to try to remember how to be Jews, specifically how to worship as Jews: After a full generation in Babylon as captives and prisoners, they’ve forgotten how to be God’s free and Chosen People, and they’re probably wondering if God has forgotten them.

And so they tell Ezra to get out the Torah, the books of the law, and read it to them and interpret it for them, maybe even translate it for them, in case they’ve forgotten the ancient Hebrew. It is a restored worship service, and it was so important to them that by the end of it they were weeping, either out of grief for having forgotten who they are, or joy for having recovered that knowledge. But the governor, Nehemiah, tells them not to cry: They are God’s Chosen People, and remembering that is cause for rejoicing. Recovering their worship helped remind them who they really were, and that God hadn’t forgotten them after all.

So why go to church? Because here God reminds us who we are, numbered with Israel among God’s Chosen and Beloved. God always remembers that and gathering here helps us to remember that, especially when life causes us to forget.

There’s some forgetting going on, too, in the second reading, and it also has to do with what believers do when they gather to give praise and thanks to God: The Christians in Corinth have forgotten that the Eucharist really is for everybody, everybody, everybody at church, and have started to have big fancy “Eucharistic” dinners for the rich members, leaving only scraps for the poorer ones.

On top of that, they’ve gotten a little full of themselves, with some of them bragging because they can speak in tongues, or receive special insights and prophecies from the Holy Spirit, which in their mind is more important than organizing the meal or cleaning up after it.

Paul is at pains to remind them: You are one body, and you need each other, all of you. Out there in the world they may value rich more than poor, or some gifts over others, but here we remember that God values most what the world considers weakest. We all need each other as much as our hands need our noses and our feet need our ears.

So why go to church? Because here we remember not only who we are but whose we are: We belong to each other, as one body in Christ, and here we value all our many gifts and differences equally as expressions of the Holy Spirit working among us and within us.

That’s the same Holy Spirit after all, who rested on Jesus, when he went back to his hometown, to his home congregation, and at his usual Sabbath service announced to all his friends and family (and maybe discovered for himself) the mission God had sent him on: to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to captives and recovery of sight to those who had lost it, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.

That’s quite a mouthful—imagine the looks on all those faces when he sat down and said the scripture was fulfilled in their hearing, in him!—but it’s a pretty good summary of what Jesus was all about, and of what he will go on to do in the ministry that starts in this passage in the gospel of Luke. We might even call it his mission statement.

So why go to church? Because it’s here that we remember not only who we are, and whose we are, but what we are here for: We’re the ones who carry on Jesus’ mission in our words and actions: bringing good news to those who are deprived of it, announcing freedom from anything that oppresses people, and practicing welcome and giving witness with those whose dignity has been denied, and proclaiming God’s favor: the unlimited mercy and compassion God offers to all people.

Why go to church? These readings offer some answers, and we may others of our own, but there’s something noticeable still lacking: Just what does all that mean practically. Which brings me to my own final answer to that question.

Why go to church? Because it’s only here, in the community of believers, that we can discover just how we live out what it means to be numbered among God’s chosen, beloved people, who value everybody, everybody, everybody equally in all our gifts and differences, and who seek to live out in real words and actions the justice, freedom, and welcome that God is calling us to bring to all we meet in our everyday lives. This is the place, and we are the people, in which we get to work all that out.

Why go to church? Well, that ain’t a bad way to spend a Sunday morning. 

January 17, Second Sunday after the Epiphany

Kristin White

John 2:1-11

What does grace look like?

The gospel of John begins with a stunning prologue:

“In the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it…”

It continues:

“…the word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth…and from God’s fullness have we all received, and grace upon grace.”

It’s beautiful, isn’t it? Esoteric and poetic and abstract and lovely, it’s one of my favorite passages in scripture. That last verse is the verse I came to when John and I named our daughter.

But what does it mean? What does it look like?

The word “grace” occurs only four times in the whole gospel of John, and all four of those occurrences take place in the prologue, the first seventeen verses in the first chapter. This is the warmup to John’s gospel, with still half a chapter to go before we get to the gospel passage for today. And actually, many scholars have argued that John the Evangelist was not even the author of those verses. Their theory is that they were the words to a hymn written by somebody else around that time and sung by many, which John decided to insert at the beginning of his own story of the good news.

So even if that’s the case, even if John didn’t write the words of that prologue himself, what if we take God’s incarnation in the world as the kind of truth that, “once the Word becomes flesh, the rest of the gospel shows (us) what grace tastes like, looks like, smells like, sounds like, and feels like?”[1] What if the prologue of John’s gospel is the telling about grace, and the rest of the gospel is the showing?

First things matter. We notice and remember those first moments in our lives – seeing someone for the first time, hearing the first notes of a symphony, tasting the first bite of a great meal.

And the one who tells the story and how they reveal those first things says something about what matters most, to the narrator and to the people they tell. In Mark’s gospel, the first act of Jesus’ ministry is to cast out a demon. In Matthew and Luke, Jesus begins by preaching.

And in John’s gospel, the first thing Jesus does in ministering to the people is the story of today’s gospel, the narrative of grace made real:

Jesus and his disciples go to a wedding. Jesus’ mother is there too. The wine runs out in the midst of the party, and Jesus’ mother says to him, “They have no wine.” He responds to her with…reluctance?...at best…”What is that to me? It’s not my time yet,” he says. “Do whatever he says,” Jesus’ mother says to the workers. “Fill the jars with water,” Jesus tells them. And now it’s not water, it’s wine. And the steward’s reaction to tasting it shows us that this is not just regular wine, but better wine than many of those guests would have ever tasted before, the kind people would keep tucked in the back of a cupboard for the most special of all occasions. There are a thousand bottles of that kind of wine – more than all the wedding guests could possibly drink. And the new disciples? Yes. Now they believe in him.

What does grace look like?

It looks like God making it possible for people to continue in the joy of a celebration, blessing people’s lives joined in marriage. It sounds like the delighted surprise of a steward who discovers something greater than he anticipated. It tastes like a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, when what you’re expecting is Two-Buck Chuck.

This first story of Jesus’ ministry in the gospel of John matters in this particular season of Epiphany. Because if “epiphanies…are embodied revelations, then they (become for us) manifestations of God’s presence that we…(can) sense – with all our senses.”[2]

From God’s fullness have we all received, and grace upon grace relates to “You have kept the good wine until now,” because grace upon grace is not a theory about the divine, it is God’s love made tangible right here in our presence. It is not the concept of God’s love, but the experience of it.[3]

Miracles, in John’s gospel, are never actually called miracles. They are referred to as signs. I’m reminded frequently of my seminary professor, Dr. AKM Adam, who said on regular occasion: “everything signifies.” I think about that often, and my own slightly less sophisticated translation of it, that the thing is never the thing. The thing points to the thing, which is usually behind or inside of it.

And yes, this miracle-called-sign story is about Jesus and his followers and his mom going to a party celebrating the lives of two people joined in marriage, a party that likely would have broken up early and with a little embarrassment and as people went home disappointed and grumbly about an abbreviated feast. It’s about Jesus stepping in with the (ahem) encouragement of his mother on that day at that time among those people to continue the abundant blessing of God’s joy and gladness and hospitality.[4] It’s about a mother-turned-insistent-disciple, and a reluctant son, and six stone jars, and a happily surprised steward, and a pack of now-believing disciples.

And it’s about more than that, too.

If this epiphany is what grace looks like, if this is the embodied revelation of a savior determined not to curtail God’s abundant blessing, then there is a sign here and now for us as well.

So what might that be?

If the thing is never the thing, but points to the thing…if everything signifies…if revelation for its own sake is never the point, then what is it we’re meant to find here?

Could it be that we’re all meant to experience God’s grace, to see it and touch it and taste it and feel it, to immerse ourselves in God’s grace upon grace as fully as we’re able to?

Could it be that God’s abundance is impossible to limit, or quantify, or arbitrate, however hard we might try?

Could it be that God’s grace can only be grace insofar as it is shared with everybody?

And if that’s true, how are we noticing and remembering and sharing the examples of how we have seen and heard and touched and tasted our own experiences of God’s grace in our own lives?

We live in a time when so much of what we see and hear would tell us otherwise, a time when too many would say that we should all be afraid – very afraid – because there’s not enough…whatever…so you’d better hustle in and clutch and claw after your own, before “those people” show up and try to claim what rightfully belongs to you.

We gather on the day before our country celebrates the life of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an insistent disciple like Jesus’ mother, telling the workers, “Do what Jesus tells you to do.” Among the things we celebrate tomorrow, I hope we remember Dr. King’s refusal to accept that what he saw around him was all there was and all that was possible. I trust we will also celebrate Dr. King’s persistent vision, his demand that God’s abundance cannot be quantified or limited or arbitrated, no matter how hard we might try; that God invites everybody to experience grace upon grace – to touch it and taste it and see it and hear it – to dwell in that grace and know that it is more than we can ask or imagine.

What does grace look like?

My sense is that you have your own answers to that epiphany question. My sense is we’re all called to share our experiences of God’s embodied revelations.

For from God’s fullness have we all received. And grace upon grace.

[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1556 Thanks to Karoline Lewis for many of the ideas threaded through this sermon.

[2] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4247

[3] ibid

[4] http://www.davidlose.net/2016/01/epiphany-2-b-what-grace-looks-like/

January 10, Baptism of Christ

Isaiah 43:1-7, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Bryan Cones

Whether we realize it or not, we have probably just heard one of the more embarrassing or awkward stories about Jesus recorded in the gospels: his baptism in the Jordan by John, a baptism of “repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” The fact that it’s a story covered by every gospel of the four is a signal that, well, it really happened, though each gospel writer handles it a bit differently.

Mark tells it quickly, as if ripping off a Band-Aid. Matthew has John protesting that he shouldn’t baptize Jesus at all—with Jesus reassuring him that everything will be OK. John just barely mentions it, as if in passing—moving on… For his part Luke doesn’t even call special attention to Jesus’ participation—Jesus was evidently just lined up with everyone else.

Why was this so embarrassing that every gospel has to cover it, to make sense of it? Was it because it made John look like the teacher of Jesus, or because it made it look like Jesus had sins that needed forgiving? Or both?

Truly, it’s pretty likely that Jesus was indeed a disciple of John at the beginning of his ministry, and some of the gospel stories hint at a conflict between them—specifically that some disciples of John left him to go and follow Jesus (with John’s blessing, so the story goes). And we also know that among early believers there was a conflict between those who believed Jesus to be the Messiah and a group of hold-outs who thought it was John. Looks like there may have been a bit of embarrassment even then, a little awkwardness that kept going for a 100 years or so.

Not that Jesus’ awkward and sometimes embarrassing behavior ended when the Holy Spirit descended on him at his baptism. This is the Savior who was literally born in a barn after all, and Jesus keeps it up all the way to that embarrassing death in Jerusalem: He eats and drinks with tax collectors and sinners, including the infamous Zachaeus; he not only talks to women, he even lets them be disciples (!!), such as Mary of Bethany, and some of them even funded the operation, including the woman we know as Mary Magdalene; he heals the slave boy of a Roman centurion, one of Israel’s imperial occupiers. I wonder how that went over...

And that doesn’t even cover what he teaches, notably an offensive parable about a so-called “good Samaritan,” one considered a heretic and traitor by those who heard it, but who turns out to be a better neighbor than the best of Israelite Jews in the story. Then there’s the one about prodigal father with no self-respect whatsoever, who forgives his ingrate son, the one who told his dad that he wished he was dead so he could have his inheritance early, and go and blow it all in the ancient equivalent of Las Vegas.

And, to top it all off, according to this gospel of Luke we read for this whole year, it’s exactly through all these awkward and embarrassing ways that the kingdom of God comes near and the whole world gets saved. And it all starts with that awkward and embarrassing baptism, the one we incidentally share, and which we are going to renew again in just a few minutes. And I think all those awkward parts are worth thinking about, even embracing, as we make our promises once again.

First off, if any of us ever wonder if there is something about us that makes us unworthy to be a part of the body of Christ, anything about ourselves that we find embarrassing or awkward, or even ginormous mistakes or sins in our past (or in our future), we can rest assured: If the story of Jesus and his ministry is any indication, much less the history of the church, there’s nothing that baptism cannot forgive, reconcile, and heal in us, as well as give us strength to make amends and stay faithful to the gospel road Christ lays before us.

Even more, and maybe more importantly, some of the differences or characteristics we bring to that font and this Table, especially those that seem awkward or that others have suggested we should be embarrassed about but are part of who we really are—those may be the exact ones that God is blessing and affirming in us through our baptism into the body of our embarrassing Lord.

Which leads to a consequence, for lack of a better word, of that same baptism, which is simply that it may require us to examine again those attitudes that we may have about our own equivalents of Samaritans and centurions, tax collectors and sinners, women or men or folks in between, anyone who doesn’t fit our own categories of what is “respectable.” It may be that our own attitudes about what is awkward or embarrassing may not quite line up with our awkward and embarrassing Teacher who not only didn’t let any of that get in his way, but deliberately crossed all those boundaries and made his place with the shamed and excluded and mistreated. And to follow him in baptism means to do as he did.

To me, embracing the awkward in both ourselves and others looks like two sides of the same embarrassing coin, and acknowledging both sides steers us toward living more deeply the divine truth at the heart of this story of Jesus’ baptism: “You are my child, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” No matter what. Or, as the prophet Isaiah put it centuries before: “I have called you by name, you are mine. You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”

That is the blessing God speaks upon all of us in our baptism, without reserve, and it’s the down payment on the universal blessing God pronounces on everyone and everything that God has made. So, if you’re still willing, let us gather at the font and make present once again the awkward and embarrassing moment that started it all. 

January 3, Feast of the Epiphany

Kristin White

Isaiah 60:1-6, Matthew 2:1-12

“Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you.” These are the words of the prophet Isaiah, who survived exile in Babylon, who will go on in that prophecy to talk about darkness, about thick darkness covering the people, and nations coming to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn. Isaiah, how ever many centuries before the birth of Christ, proclaims the abundance, the wealth of the nations brought forth, about…a multitude of camels?..., about bringing gold and frankincense.

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you.

Today, this text of prophecy is tied to the story we watched our children tell in our pageant, the story we sang about as we began our worship this morning, the story we celebrate today. It’s a story so familiar in the annual telling of it, that I wonder how much we realize is actually strange and unknown.

They weren’t Christians, after all. We know that, at least, because it wasn’t a thing yet. And they weren’t Jews. Our narrative tells us there were three, but whether they were kings or wise men or tarot-card-reading pagan stargazers, we’re not sure. It tells us they came from the East, which ancient people saw as the place of wisdom, the place from which the sun rises. The truth is, we don’t know. We don’t know that there were three, or even that they were men – though that seems likely, given the time and the travel. Scripture tells us there were three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh, gifts they gave in homage as they knelt before a newborn king; perhaps three gifts made three people offering them an easy equation. The Venerable Bede, that earliest historian, would name them, many hundreds of years later, when he sought to build a scaffold of this story: Caspar, Melchior, Balthazar. Others would add exotic birthplaces for each: Persia, India, Babylon.

Through the millennia, we’ve built story and custom around a journey of many days, some say even a couple years. But again, we don’t know exactly when, or how long it took them, to see the star, check the prophecy, find the others, chart the journey, meet a jealous and frightened king, complete the trip, kneel down before a child and his mother, and, finally, pay attention to a dream which told them to go home another way.

What we do know is that they were different. These magi were from someplace else. We know they had access to wealth and power. And we know they had seen something real.

They came from a different place – whether Persia or India or Babylon or all of those places. They spoke different languages, ate different kinds of food, practiced different customs.

And whatever it was, this was not a day trip. The magi had to decide to go, they had to figure out where and how and by which road (if one even existed for them), they had to pack up that multitude of camels. And can you imagine the explanation to curious, and perhaps scornful, family and friends? It reminds me a little bit of what Noah must have had to say to his neighbors as he built a great big boat in his dry back yard. But for these magi, instead: “Well, I’m taking these camels and some gold, because I’ve seen a star…uh…over that way. So I’m going to greet a newborn king. And no. I won’t be home for dinner.”

It cost them something, this journey. It cost the magi something in terms of provision, this more-than-a-day-trip-but-we-don’t-know-actually-how-long trek that it was. It cost them in food and lodging for themselves and their multitude of camels and whatever and whomever else they had to bring along. It cost them money in trade for safe passage along the way, no doubt. And, no doubt, it also cost them something in reputation and credibility. We know for sure that these magi were different than the people they came to see. But the fact of the journey itself made them different as well from those they left, in order to make it. As the poet T.S. Eliot imagines, “with…voices singing in (their) ears, saying that this was all folly.”[1]

People paid attention to the magi, though. However strange, however different they might have been, people noticed them. “We observed his star at its rising,” the magi said as they arrived at Jerusalem. “We have come to pay homage to the child born king of the Jews.” Well. That caught the interest of Herod, who considered himself the one with that title. Scripture tells us he was frightened. Scripture tells us that all Jerusalem was frightened right along with him.

So Herod did what people in authority do, when that authority seems to be threatened. He called together a council of all the important people in town: the chief priests, the scribes, called them to meet together with the magi following their star. And in the midst of all those people, Herod asked: “Where, exactly, are you going?”

“Bethlehem of Judea,” the magi responded, using the words of the prophet, “For you, Bethlehem…are by no means least…”

We know that Herod was actually so frightened by those words, and by the people who spoke them, that once the big meeting was over he called for them again. This time was no fancy council, but a conversation, in secret. “Bring me word, when you find him,” Herod said, “So that I may go also…”

We know the magi brought gifts. The gifts we give say something about who we are, about what we believe is true of those who receive them. These were costly gifts, gifts that said something about who the magi were, about what they believed was true of the One who was the reason for their journey. That the gold they carried had not been spent along the way meant that they had enough to make that offering, and also that they saw this child as king. Myrrh, the oil of anointing, was particularly used to anoint people at the time of death. And frankincense, which is and was a perfume of great value, served also as a symbol of divinity. These three gifts: to a king, who would die, who was God; show these magi, with their different customs and their strange foods and their foreign languages, might in fact be among the very first faithful seekers.

And why?

Because they saw a star?!

When have you seen something so real that the truth of it burned maybe just a little bit too bright? Something that hurt to look at it, but perhaps it would have hurt even worse to turn away from? When have you seen something so true that you couldn’t keep doing things the way you had been, before that moment? When have you seen something you couldn’t not see, or heard something you couldn’t not hear, or touched something you couldn’t not feel, or tasted something you couldn’t not taste? And what has that compelled in you, even though it cost you something, in money, or comfort, or perception, or all of those things?

Is that what made this journey the thing the magi couldn’t not do? In spite of their different faiths and their strange accents and their unusual clothes, is it possible that these magi were among the very first disciples? Is it possible that their purpose in the story of our faith is to remind us all that Jesus was, from the beginning, meant to be good news for everybody, everybody, everybody?

My friends, if this is true – if there’s any possibility that it’s true – how, then, do we return to Isaiah’s prophecy and command? At a time when darkness covers the earth, at a time when thick darkness covers the peoples…then, and again, and now…Isaiah promises that the Lord will arise upon you, and that God’s glory will appear over you.

So arise. Shine. For your light has come.

And the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you.

[1] “Journey of the Magi,” The Ariel Poems. 1927.