December 24, Christmas Eve

Kristin White

Christmas Eve Sermon 2017

St. Augustine’s Church | Wilmette, IL

There’s a video of a pageant gone rather awry making the rounds right now on social media. The video begins at what I imagine is supposed to be the end of the pageant – Mary and Joseph and some angels and animals are all gathered around to adore the baby Jesus as the church’s children’s choir sings “Away in a manger”

(A note worth mentioning here is that the role of the Baby Jesus in that pageant is played, safely, by a doll).

One sheep in that pageant is so consumed in her adoration that she is overcome by it. The baby Jesus is just too irresistible for her probably three-year-old self. So first, she tears off the blanket covering the manger, and throws it aside. But then, there he is – and the singing is still going, and he’s there in the manger, and it seems that there’s nothing to be done but just to pick him up, right? So she does.

Amid the grownups’ laughter that you can hear at this moment on the video, the children’s choir is steadfast. They continue singing. So the little sheep, holding the Baby (doll) Jesus, and now possessing the attention of pretty much every single person in the church, she starts to dance, even, a bit.

Well. Mary the Mother of God does not ponder these things in her heart. In fact, Mary is having none of this. She’s a little bit older than that sheep, and a little bit bigger, and she knows how this thing is supposed to go. Which is not with the Baby (doll) Jesus kidnapped by an affectionate, dancing sheep – however cute she may be.

Mary takes the adoration into her own hands, literally. She reclaims the Baby Jesus by taking the doll right out of the arms of the adoring, adorable sheep and she restores him to his rightful place in the manger.

It turns out, though, that some sheep are tenacious. And this pageant has that sort of a sheep. She waits for her opening, when Mary’s hand has left the manger, grabs the Baby (doll) Jesus and makes a break for it.

Mary comes in hot pursuit, but the sheep blocks her. At the point when “Away in a manger” draws to a close, which helpfully coincides with the moment that suggests Mary might actually tackle the wayward sheep, an adult finally intervenes. And…cut scene. I can only imagine what happened on the other side of that taping – the consolations and reconciliations to be made among members of the holy family...and resident livestock.

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I shared about the writing of this sermon on Friday morning after Eucharist with the group of us who gathered for breakfast after church. One of our members talked about how neat we tend to be in illustrating the story of Jesus’ birth – Mary is always depicted as calmly holding the baby, with everything in place. We find ways of making this story safe, and clean. When I looked back at the children’s Bible that our daughter Grace grew up reading – a version I usually really like, actually – the nativity story has Mary smiling as she finds her way in among the animals for the night: “I’ll be alright here in the hay,” she says to Joseph, “it’s very comfortable.”[1] (Have you sat on hay?!) We domesticate this mystery. We clean it up, make it nice. We discuss it in the abstract. We make it into an intellectual discussion of here, or there, or – God help us – if, at all.

Children’s Christmas pageants bring us back to the audacious particularity of the mystery we proclaim. This person said this. That person did that. This thing happened over there.

And really, sheep gone rogue or not, that is the scandal of this night: the God whom the People Israel had known as transcendent and all-powerful and distant and scary and sometimes smiting was in fact so crazy in love with this creation, with people made in the Divine image who looked like God, that God came into the world She created, looking like us.

The world that God came into had not already gotten its act together in preparation for that night. It was not a safe and clean and peaceful and just and well-fed and logical place, the place where God chose to be born.

In the person of Jesus, God was born: not to Caesar’s wife, or to Herod’s, not to a prophet or the priest of the Temple, but to a young, unmarried woman and her boyfriend, both of them from a small country town that nobody paid attention to. In the person of Jesus, God was attended by the lowliest kind of folks – shepherds were treated like tax collectors and prostitutes, considered dirty because of the kind of work they did; the Magi who came bearing gifts were foreigners, outsiders – they were strange people from a distant land who didn’t belong. In the person of Jesus, God had to escape in the middle of the night, because his life was in danger. In the person of Jesus, God had to get counted as part of a census, to make sure that his family, in their poverty, paid the taxes they owed to the empire.

God was born into all that, and God, in the person of Jesus, blessed every bit of the creation into which he was born. It’s not safe. It’s not clean. It’s not abstract or hypothetical. But it’s real. This night. This place. This holy mystery. Told by these children.

And maybe, through it all, that persistent little sheep with her beloved Baby (doll) Jesus has something infinitely important to teach us about God. Because I believe it’s true that God is so crazy in love with creation, even now, that God will disregard how this thing supposed to go, and tear through the veil of all that would separate us…cast it aside without care for the consequences, in order to get to us. In order to dance with us, even. In order to be with us.

Christ is born, my friends. Alleluia.

[1] Watts, Murray. The Bible for Children: “The Birth of Jesus.” Intercourse, PA: Good Books Publishing, 2002. 218.

December 17, Third Sunday of Advent

Kristin White

They will hold your gaze as you look at the page. You may recognize some of their faces: Ashley Judd. Megyn Kelly. Taylor Swift.

When you see Rose McGowan, I wonder if it will look to you, as it does to me, like her eyes are filled with tears.

There are others there, too, people whose names you may not know: Tarana Burke, the activist. Juana Melara, a hotel housekeeper. A state senator named Sarah Geslar. Adama Iwu, a lobbyist.

They are among the silence breakers. Together, they are Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.[1]

The truth of the experiences they witness to stretches from movie set to newsroom to capitol hallway to hotel suite and beyond. Again and again, the stories have their common threads: he had the money, the position, the contacts, the authority. If she talked, he promised to ruin her – to write her out, to make sure she never worked again…even to kill her. He promised to destroy her. And he could. In some manner, for a time, anyway, it seemed that he could.

So, many of them, needing the paycheck or the chance at a shot, took it. They contorted themselves. They avoided the places of opportunity. They told themselves that circumstances were other than they were, in order to be able to live within them. And they kept silent.

They did not want to be defined by their complaint. They did not want to be defined as their complaint.

It is a fearful thing to say the truth out loud, to let those words leave your mouth. Because after they are gone, in the face of risk and threat, your words don’t belong to you anymore.[2] Witnesses open themselves to scrutiny. People find questions about your motives. We’ve all heard the responses in recent weeks, the remarks: “Well, if that’s true…”, or “Why did she decide to come forward now?” We have heard the equivocations and outright denials, the retaliations. Others promised to destroy them, after all. And they could. In some manner, for a time, they could.

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“The Spirit of the LORD God is upon me,” Isaiah says in today’s first reading, “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, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners; to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to provide…a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.”[3]

The season of Advent is a season of waiting and watching for God right here in our midst. It’s a time when God sends us prophets – never meant as the kind of fortune tellers some would make them out to be; no, the prophets are the witnesses. They are the ones willing to say aloud what they know to be real, in the face of doubt and scrutiny. They are the ones who open themselves to questions of motive, where risk and threat are real. Others will promise to destroy them. And they could, for a time at least.

But the truth that the prophet Isaiah tells in today’s first lesson is that there is more than the contortion, the avoidance, the equivocation that too many have known for too long. There is more to God’s promise than the grief of this present moment. There is more for us than a faint spirit.

The People Israel have been driven from their home, made to live in a land that is not their own. After a generation of loss, Isaiah tells them the greater truth of God’s news to this beloved people: that there is more.

And so they go home, only to find that there is no newly-rebuilt temple, to find that those who never left Jerusalem have worked out their own ways of doing things. The ancient ruins are not built up, the ruined city not restored to what it was, what it could be.

The glory the people Israel had imagined upon their homecoming is not what they encounter.

Still, this promise from the prophet, the witness: “For I the LORD love justice, I hate robbery and wrongdoing; I will faithfully give them their recompense, and I will make an everlasting covenant with them.”[4]

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They will hold your gaze, those silence breakers. I look again at them, remembering that in order for God’s anointed to reach those whose hearts have been broken, and those who have been held captive, and those who grieve, then God’s own anointed has to confront the powers and principalities that made them so.[5]

They stare back off the page, those breakers of silence, their backs straight, their chins set, their unwavering gaze locked on yours.

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John the Baptist comes into our gospel narrative last week and this week as one who defies explanation.

The people in positions of power try to figure him out, asking, “Who are you?” All he can say at first is what he is not: not the messiah, not Elijah, and he says he is not a prophet...

“Well, who are you?” they ask again, probably exasperated at this point, “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I am the voice crying in the wilderness, ‘prepare the way of the Lord.’ ”[6] he tells them.

The things John the Baptist seems to say most often are “Behold,” and “Repent.” Behold, as in: look – look at what you’re doing. And Repent, which means: turn around. You’re going the wrong way, and you need to find your way back home again.

I wonder what John would say, in this Advent moment. I wonder how he might confront those who contorted power, that they might leverage silence. Where would he say “Behold!”[7] What principalities would he call to turn back?

John’s whole life is about witnessing to Jesus. He is the one always pointing to the Word. Before he is even born, scripture tells us that he leaps in Elizabeth’s womb at realizing that he is in the presence of Christ. He is the one who calls us to prepare for God’s coming. Soon, he will be filled with awe at doing it, but John will be the one who steps into the muddy waters of the Jordan to baptize Jesus. John will see the Spirit descend, will hear a voice from heaven tell him that this is the Son of God.

John proclaims God in our midst, calling people to live as though that is true. And there are those who would destroy him, because of it. With each “Behold” that leaves his mouth, John confronts the powers that would imprison and contort. And if we know nothing else of power, we know that it will seek to protect itself. And so John will find himself in prison. He will find himself constrained. And that will not be the end.

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The writers of the Time Magazine article talk about another common thread those silence breakers share. As they put it, “Almost everybody described wrestling with a palpable sense of shame. Had she somehow asked for it? Could she have deflected it? Was she making a big deal out of nothing?”

He promised to destroy her, after all.

Did she avert her eyes?

I want to respond with the words of today’s second reading, from Paul’s first letter to the church at Thessolonika. In it, Paul writes: “May the God of peace sanctify you entirely.”[8]

This letter is probably one of the earliest of all the Christian writings we have. People among the first of the Christian communities were beginning to grow old and die, and Jesus hadn’t returned to them in the way they anticipated. So they didn’t know what it all meant. They didn’t know that it would take this long. They weren’t sure how they were supposed to live, and they weren’t doing a great job of taking care of each other.

Paul, who it seems to me doesn’t usually restrain himself from harshness, responds instead in the words of this letter with a call to charity, to love: rejoice and pray and give thanks, he writes. Hold fast to what is good, and refrain from doing evil.

Too often, our culture presumes that the word of the church will be a word of judgment. And too often, it has been. So what grace might we find, in this Advent moment, for the church to offer blessing, instead: may the God of peace sanctify you entirely – not the part of you that didn’t get twisted by circumstance, not the you before you encountered whatever it was that you wish you could have avoided. But all of you. May you know yourself as whole and holy and sacred by the God who created you. Because the one who created you is the one who calls you; and the one who calls you is faithful.

What healing might that offer, to those who kept silent, for the reasons that they had, for the time that they did? What gift might that be, for them to know themselves as blessed, entirely, by God?

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The God whose way we prepare in this Advent season is the God of an everlasting covenant, who promises the good news of liberty and comfort and praise.

The God whose way we make straight is the same God who sanctifies you entirely.

Behold: that is the God to whom we cry out in witness; the God who will not let you be destroyed, in the end.

Level your gaze there. Look there, on our good God.

[1] http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-2017-silence-breakers/

[2] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5022

[3] http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv3_RCL.html#ot1

[4] ibid

[5] http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1100

[6] http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv3_RCL.html#gsp1

[7] http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=5022

[8] http://lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv3_RCL.html#nt1

December 3, First Sunday of Advent

Kristin White

Advent 1 – December 3, 2017

Mark 13:24-37

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your son came to us in great humility; that in the last day, when he comes in majesty to judge the living and the dead, we may rise to life immortal. Amen.

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Narnia is a mess.

It is the Last Battle, in CS Lewis’s book of the same name, the rightful last book in the Chronicles of Narnia. (They have re-ordered the books in that series since my childhood. I have feelings about this.)

But as I said, Narnia is a mess at the point of the Last Battle. That great country, begun in the imagination of my childhood, returned to each time I read those seven books – in their proper order – to Grace, during her childhood…well that country is falling apart.

A cunning ape without a conscience has discovered a way for his simple friend, a donkey, to impersonate Aslan, the great lion, king of all the kings in Narnia. And as you can imagine, the cunning creature without a conscience who finds his way into unchecked power manages to wreak certain havoc in Narnia.

Holy trees are cut down, talking beasts enslaved and beaten. Evil seems to prevail. The Narnia that is, is not the Narnia it was created to be.

In that Last Battle, the rightful king fights those who have done the work of evil in the land this king loves. The numbers are what you might imagine – those they oppose outnumber the king and his friends, and the mark that they’re losing this Last Battle is the fact that they are being maneuvered, edged closer and closer to a doorway they are loathe to cross. It’s the door to a stable, where the imposter seeks to dispose of his enemies one by one. That stable is a place built of lies, based on fear.

The king of Narnia fights bravely alongside two mysteriously-appearing English youth (that happens, in Lewis’s books), and together with a faithful remnant of Narnian creatures. They’re fighting with everything they have for the Narnia they know. And they are doing all they can, in that Last Battle, to stay away from the stable door.

But they can’t. Of course they can’t. The thing they fear will be the thing they face. And so, one by one, they go through the doorway of that stable. And it is the end. The Last Battle, after all, has to mean the end of something.

But it is also more than they had imagined: brighter, and more spacious. And others they know and love are there, too. As one beloved friend reminds them, “A stable once held something inside that was bigger than our whole world.”[1]

And then it is time. Time for an end to the world they have known. Time for the stars to be called down from the sky. Time for the forests to disappear, and the seas to rise, and for the sun’s light to be squeezed from the sky. And finally, finally, it is time to make an end: to close that stable door.

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Peter and James and John and Andrew are the only four disciples to hear Jesus say what he tells them in the passage of Mark’s gospel that we heard read today. It makes sense that it would be them, the first to drop their nets – immediately – to follow him.[2]

Together with Jesus, they had gone to the Mount of Olives, looked with him across the Kidron Valley (it’s not far) to Jerusalem, to the walls that still surround what is now known as the Old City, the Temple that adorned it, the place they believe to be God’s dwelling.

“It will all come down,” he told them. “Not one stone will be left on another.”

The four respond, as you’d imagine:

“When with this happen, and how will we know?”

So Jesus tells them what he tells us in today’s gospel lesson: the same story of the Last Battle, really, the stars called down from the sky, the light of the sun grown dark.

But, as Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

“He does not say it to scare them. He says it to comfort them. They need to know that even something as frightening as the end of the world is in God’s good hands. When the cosmos collapses and every light in the sky is put out, they are to remember that God is sovereign over darkness as well as light, and they are to watch – watch even in the darkness – for God coming to them in the clouds.”[3]

It would all seem very real, I imagine, about 30 years later, when Mark wrote down the words of today’s gospel lesson.

Jerusalem was a mess. The Temple had fallen, stone from stone. Cunning men unburdened by conscience stood ready to tell the people what God meant, actually, by all this. Christians were being destroyed as a people from without, by the same emperor who had destroyed Jerusalem, at the same time that those Christians were doing a fine job of destroying one another from within.

Did they think it was all a big mistake? Did they shake their fists at the darkness and the chaos of it all? Did they cry out to the God they longed to believe in, that the world around them could never have been the world God created us all to be?

Is that the moment when Mark told the story again? Is that when he reminded them that Jesus had told them this all must come to pass? There can be no new world, you see, if we can’t find a way to loose our grasp on the old one. And that letting go can be a painful, even a brutal thing: sometimes what we have held onto will crash. Sometimes it burns, and our job is to bless and scatter the ashes that remain.

Here is the good news, like the painful touch of an unprotected nerve that needs tending to, but which we’d rather just leave alone: the excruciating good news is that the end will come. And it will come, not because God has abandoned us, but because God is so very much with us. In God’s presence is great glory, the kind of power that can make something out of nothing, can breathe life and beauty into those very same ashes.

So stay awake, my friends. And pray with me for grace to cast away the works of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Because “there is not just one end to the world, any more than there is just one coming of Christ to look forward to.”[4]

The world ended under cover of darkness with a vote and the bang of a gavel late Friday night for people who already find themselves on the margins. The stars fell from the sky for more than 300 families in Egypt, just over a week ago, when gunmen entered a mosque on a mission of death. The moon loses its light every other hour of the day when still another person is shot in Chicago. The sun ceases shining every time a teenage girl finds herself in the hands of a predator.

The world can end for any one of us at any moment: in the words of a diagnosis; at the death of our beloved; in a single act of stunning betrayal; a breaking; a moment of profound injustice.

The door of the stable is there for each of us, and we fight our battles to the last, trying to keep our feet from crossing its threshold. Like the disciples, of course we want to know the particulars: “Tell us,” we demand, “Tell us when will this be, and what will be the signs when these things are to be accomplished?”

But remember: we know of a stable that once held something inside that was bigger than our whole world. And Christ’s entry into this world of ours, in power and great glory, offers the very brightness we need, when the sun and the moon and the stars have been torn from our skies.

Our work of faith in this season is not to pull calculators and make predictions about time and place, so we can avoid it. It is not to offer blame about who is at fault in this end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it moment. It is not to hunker down out of the terror of darkness, or to keep so busy that we can pretend none of this is actually happening.

No. Ours is to stay awake, and watch for the One who comes as friend, in power and great glory. Ours is to light candles in this season; because the night is long, but the day will come. Ours is to pray for the grace to cast away the works of darkness, to put on the armor of light; trusting in the promise of the far side of that door, in the pure love of the One who promises to be with us always…even and especially as we step across its threshold.

[1] C. S. Lewis. The Last Battle. 141.

[2] I’m grateful for the Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor’s sermon, “With Power and Great Glory” found in her book Gospel Medicine, which inspired much of this sermon of mine.

[3] Barbara Brown Taylor. Gospel Medicine. 135.

[4] ibid

November 26, Feast of Christ the King

Text: Matthew 25:31-46

Pastor Frank C. Senn, STS

We’ve come to the end of the church year. We spent this church year with the Gospel of Matthew. The late Swedish dean of Harvard Divinity School and Bishop of Stockholm, Krister Stendahl, proposed that the final form of this Gospel is from the school of St. Matthew, a kind of Christian Yeshiva dedicated to studying the Torah taught by rabbi and Son of God Jesus the Christ. So we’ve been attending the school of St. Matthew this year and we want to be passed on...into the kingdom of heaven.  But as with completing any school, there’s a final exam and a last evaluation by Christ our headmaster.

Students always want to know what’s going to be on the test.  What do we have to know to get into the kingdom of heaven?

Well, actually it’s not a matter of what you know. Nor do you have to cram for a final, because you’re actually doing the final exam right now…in every day life.

What are we doing every day that we will be evaluated on?

 Oh… things like feeding the hungry, giving the thirsty something to drink, welcoming strangers, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting the imprisoned.

How will the examiner know we have done those things? Do we have a card that gets checked off every time we do something that shows care for someone?

No. Christ knows how we are responding to the needs of his lowly ones because…we’re doing those things for him. When have we seen him hungry or thirst, naked or a wandering stranger, sick or in jail and taken care of his needs?

Christ tells us: inasmuch as you have done to it to the least of my brothers and sisters, you have done it to me.  Christ the king will welcome into his kingdom those who have cared for and welcomed him in his lowly ones.  Those who have not done these things for him will be excluded.

“Excluded?”  It’s not a word we like to use.  It’s not politically correct.  So I suppose we could say, well, there’s another place prepared for those who failed the exam where they will be included.  But however you want to imagine that place, you won’t be happy to be there, because you won’t be basking in the approval of the king, or eating and drinking at the heavenly feast, or singing in the heavenly choir---or however you want to imagine the kingdom of heaven.

Perhaps before we go any further I should remind us that this is a parable---the third of three parables of the kingdom of heaven in Matthew 25. It is not a literal script of the last judgment when the dead are raised and stand before Christ the king.  Like all parables it is a story that draws on something familiar but has a surprising twist. The familiar is the custom of dividing the sheep and the goats into separate pens when they are brought in from mingling together in the pasture of the world. Jesus uses this as an analogy of the separation of the nations at the last judgment.

So we had better bring that part of the story to our attention also. In Jesus’s parable it is the nations who are gathered for judgment, not individuals. But the text invites us to think not of nation-states, but of “all the peoples” (panta ta ethnoi). When we ask how a nation as a whole people cares for its sick and hungry and takes care of its prisoners and welcomes the strangers who cross its borders, we are asking questions which need to be asked and which can be answered. Nations have the means of responding to human need in ways that individuals do not. But especially in “democratic” countries like ours, the government is to a large extent a reflection of the people and their values and opinions. So it would be a mistake to conclude that because it is a judgment of the nations that it’s not about us individually.  The nation won’t change unless its people change, and if we want the people to change, then we’d better be prepared for the change to begin with us.  We’re not off the hook.  We still have to ask how we personally should respond to this teaching.

I should also tell you that it is likely that Jesus is referring here to the members of his community of disciples in all their nations---those nations to whom the apostles took Jesus’ teaching in the Great Commission at the end of the gospel of Matthew when he sent them into all the world, making disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them Jesus’ interpretation of the Torah. Our NRSV translation refers to “members of Jesus’ family” whereas older translations had “my brothers.”  “Brothers” is more accurate, and if it were just a matter of inclusivity the translation could have expanded this to “brothers and sisters.”  So obviously the translators were imposing an interpretation on the text.  They were opting for the view that Jesus intends by “the least of these” to mean the lowly members of his own community—that is, the church. 

The Gospel of Matthew is very much a manual for the church in which Jesus himself is present where two or three gather in his name. We are aware that the early church took care of the its widows and orphans, ministered to its sick members, welcomed traveling apostles, prophets, and teachers, and visited the brothers and sisters who were apprehended for the faith.

But even if we accept this interpretation, we cannot rigidly limit those to whose needs we respond just to the members of our own congregation.  Most of the needy who receive the ministries of the church in food kitchens and shelters are probably baptized or have had some church connection at some point in their lives.  Like the sheep and the goats out in the pasture of the world, we can’t keep one group away from the other until we corral them in. So as a practical matter, we don’t have to decide whether “brothers” refers only to church members. They don’t have to produce a membership card to receive our ministries.

Those who have needs that we can meet are the ones who receive our ministries.  Our willingness to meet those needs provide criteria for the judgment of Christ the King.

So is it good works after all?  This has been the year of the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Reformation. A lot of print was spent on arguing about faith versus good works. Was the Reformation’s emphasis on justification by faith wrong?

No, because the works of ministry done by those who are passing the test were done in a non-calculating way.  You see, they didn’t know they were doing things for Jesus. That’s the surprising twist in this parable. In Jesus’ story of the last judgment both the righteous and the unrighteous have to ask the same question: “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you something to eat or thirsty and gave you something to drink or a stranger and welcomed you in or naked and covered you or sick and took care of you or in prison and visited you?”         

Martin Luther and the Protestant reformers were not opposed to doing good works. They were opposed to works righteousness:  that’s performing good works in a way calculated to merit something good for ourselves, like God’s approval or blessing or even salvation. Luther said, Christ has taken care of our salvation so we are free to take care of our neighbor.

St. Matthew doesn’t advocate works righteousness any more than St. Paul does. What Matthew is saying is: If we have been schooled by the Holy Spirit who was given to us in Holy Baptism, we will do what is needed when situations arise.  Faith will be active in deeds of love.  Little Cecilia who is being baptized today doesn’t know what she’s getting into. But the church which sponsors this baptism had better know what we’re getting her into and provide the means of having her schooled in the teaching of Jesus as she grows more deeply into his life, death, and resurrection.    

Since what we are doing for every person in meeting their needs we are doing for Christ, we are growing in our relationship with Christ by performing these deeds of love. Those who receive our ministries are representatives, icons, of Jesus himself.  The traditional icons that we use in prayer and worship are representations of Jesus that, when contemplated over time, begin to reveal to us who Jesus is.  So it is quite a big statement to say that each person is an icon of Christ. Even more so if we emphasize that it is those whom society generally regards as the least who are most especially icons of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps then it is in the very things that cause them to be regarded as the least—their sickness, their poverty, their brokenness—that most reveal Jesus to us. We say, in the words of Isaiah, that Jesus on the cross took upon himself all our infirmities. It is a more difficult, but ultimately an unavoidable step, to see in the brokenness and wretchedness of others the image of the suffering Christ.

So the next time you find yourself haunted by an image of someone in need, whether here in our local community or somewhere else in the world, take that image with you in prayer. Spend some time asking Jesus to show you how he is in that person, how that person reveals more of who Jesus is. Genuine and worthwhile action for humanity and justice does not usually come from knee jerk reactions, but from a deepening understanding of where God is within the situation.  If you and I spend a bit more time contemplating the meaning of the icons of Christ in human need, and less time worrying about what’s on the final exam, we might begin to see how and where the reign of God comes in this world.  And then comes the surprise. When we pray “thy kingdom come,” God’s kingdom is coming to us.  Amen.

– Pastor Frank C. Senn, STS