1 Lent B 2012
Gen 9:8-17; Ps 25:1-9; 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15
Before Jesus could go forth, he had to go wild.
As we begin our own walk through Lent, we hear how Jesus, at the start of his own journey, is shattered first by love, then by wildness, then by loss.
Jesus walks to the riverbank seeking his kinsman John. John himself is a wild man living on the fringe of society and on the edge of the wilderness. The wild man John plunges the young man Jesus into the flowing, living water of the river.
The Jordan River, which marks the border between God’s land of promise and the wild, unmarked land where Israel once wandered. The water—the same water welling out of the earth which once burst forth in a flood at God’s command—a wild rush of water whose chaos snuffed out one creation to make ready for another creation.
This water was so wild that, long ago, God himself regretted his own wild choice and swore never to destroy the earth with a flood. But the wild water was still near, beneath one’s very feet, cruising above one’s head in the clouds, welling out in springs and streams, an ever-present reminder of God’s presence and God’s otherness, God’s own wildness.
From out of that primal water Jesus rose dripping. Did he feel the weight and power of the water and of the God who was drenching him with a new and mysterious life?
The heavens were torn apart. Up there where the wild waters of the ancient flood were kept, a voice, a dove. Noah’s dove brought news of new land and a second chance. This Spirit-dove brings news of a new reign and a second chance for us all.
Still dripping, Jesus runs—that dove “drives” him out into the wilderness, into exile, into the wild.
Why the wild? Why not a nice school where Jesus could learn his Scriptures in peace? What was there for Jesus to learn that he could not find at the feet of wise old rabbis?
In the wild, one faces life uncontrolled, unmanaged. In the wild, one realizes how small one really is. In the wild, one realizes that it is a big world after all, and it does not spin around us—in fact it can do just fine without us and one day soon it will. In the wild, one either faces oneself with withering honesty, in our earthy humanity, without illusions, or we go mad with delusion.
In the wild, it is not safe. There are angels, and there is God. There are wild animals. There are demons. And there is we ourselves. I am not sure which of these is the most dangerous.
In the wild, God can actually make something of us.
In the wild, we are tempted. Jesus was. Temptations arise from our own hearts. They entice us or frighten us with delusions of all kinds. Temptations either suggest that we are superhuman, with control over the wildness of the world and of God, or that we are insignificant and without meaning and value. Temptations address our greatest strengths or our profoundest weakness. They draw us into patterns that, once embraced, leave little or no room for God.
When we’re tempted, we learn that our greatest weaknesses are actually our deepest strengths.
At home with the wild things, where the wild things are, at home with his own wild self, the part that burns only for God, Jesus is even now not ready. His heart had to be broken.
John and Jesus shared a communion of blood kinship and of vision and purpose. They shared a passion for God and God’s justice that can burn hotly in the souls of fine, idealistic young people. They had even shared the strangeness of that baptism experience.
Perhaps John hoped that he and Jesus would be allies, that Jesus would support John in his ministry. Perhaps Jesus hoped the same of John.
But John’s tale was cut short by his imprisonment and eventual execution by a corrupt and violent king. What could this mean, that a righteous man and a living prophet could be arrested and killed by a tyrant? Where was God? What was the sense?
But after John’s arrest, Jesus began to proclaim the good news of the reign of God.
Wild water, wild animals in the wilderness, and a broken heart and broken hopes: that is the way of our Master. And so that is our way.
The New Testament and the ancient church taught that the path of a believer is the path of Jesus the Master himself. He is the teacher and his life is the pattern. And so we too are plunged into the wild waters of baptism, where we learn that we are beloved but that God is wild and the realm of God is not predictable or safe. We are flung into the wilderness of Lent, away from the predictability of life-as-we see it in order to meet God, the tempter, and ourselves. We are asked “what do we believe?” and “whom do we follow?” And our hearts are broken, again and again, by loss or life itself or betrayal or, worst of all, by our own selves and the disappointment caused by our lack of faithfulness and courage.
When all this happens, when we enter deeply the wilderness of our lives and the devastating things we learn in the wild, when we drink deeply of sorrow and our hearts are broken open, then we can begin. We can begin to understand the heart of the Son of God. We can begin to walk in the ways that his feet have also trod. Our lives and our words can begin to proclaim the wild, astounding vision of the Reign of God.
archived musings and preachments
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Transfiguration Sunday
Guest Homily by Malcolm Heath
2 Kings 2:1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9
Texts available here
Today is Transfiguration Sunday.
This is one of those Sundays in our calendar that I don’t really feel all that comfortable with, one of the Sundays I call, at least to myself, “Yay! God!” Sundays. Sundays that seem to exist to remind us of the glory and power of God; of miracles and strange events. Sundays where, quite often, we get to sing some glorious hymns - and put on special vestments - and celebrate.
There’s nothing wrong with that, mind you. Celebrations are good things. I’m just not super comfortable with it, mostly because I don’t quite understand _why_ we’re doing it.
We’re presented with two stories of Transfiguration - or really, one of Ascension, and one of Transfiguration.
In the first, Elijah and Elisha go for a walk, out into the wilderness, further and further, and Elijah tries very hard to ditch Elisha. Elisha knows what’s coming - he’s going to lose his friend. Elijah knows that too - and I think is trying to spare his friend from having to be there, when he goes.
Various piles of prophets come out of the various towns they pass - they all know what’s going on too - and try to get Elisha to stay with them, or warn him.
I wonder, at the end, if this is not so much a story about something we might celebrate, but about something else entirely - perhaps it is about grief.
About the parting of friends.
I think it’s very interesting that Elijah offers Elisha a wish, offers to grant him a boon. He asks for what is traditionally the portion of a first born son - and heir. The first born always got two shares, with the other children getting one share each, when the father died. Elisha is asking for nothing less than the authority to carry on for Elijah after he’s gone.
Elijah’s response is telling - he says that if he can stay with him until the very end, watching and not turning away, he will get the inheritance. And he does.
And then grieves, ripping his clothes. Because, even though he got the full inheritance, with that “double portion of spirit”, he also has to realize that he will never see his friend again.
We all have perhaps been in a similar situation - a friendship ending, or a loved one approaching death. There is a strong temptation during those times to cut our losses, to want to flee, to turn away. It seems too terrible to face. It seems too mysterious, too powerful, too painful for us to bear. This may be one of the only times we can come face to face with the power of God, and the mystery of God. And yet, if we are to receive the spirit, we must not give into that urge, because to do so denies ourselves our full potential. To do so denies ourselves the full experience of the life that God has granted us.
Peter and James and Paul are a little bit less bright than Elisha. They really don’t know what’s going on, although, perhaps, Peter starts to get it. He alone seems to realize what is at stake here, and even proclaims it good. Good to be at the top of some lonely mountain, seeing visions of ancient prophets.
He also seems to get that there would be bad times ahead. His suggestion that they make tents is reminiscent of the Festival of Sukkot - a time in the Jewish calendar when devout Jews make tents, made of natural things, and pray, eat, and sometimes sleep in them. They do this to remind themselves of the many years that the Israelites spent in the wilderness, a time of great suffering and travail, but ultimately leading to the promised land.
Perhaps Peter realizes that Jesus isn’t going to be around, at least as they have known him, for much longer. Perhaps he, alone, realizes that they are headed into the desert, and that there are rough times ahead.
No wonder “they were terrified”.
Yes, I think these stories aren’t so much about the glory of God, at least in any way that I would feel comfortable about celebrating - these are points of mystery, of grief, of expectation of something happening, but no one really knowing what that might be.
We’re all presented with these moments. Big changes - endings, death - all these are moments when we know, deep in our hearts, that nothing will ever be the same again. But we can never know exactly how it will be different.
But it is that very unknowing, that darkness, that ignorance, where, I think, the power of God can break into our lives. It is terrifying to be present at those times. Everything in us says “turn away”.
And yet, we must not. We have to be there. To see. And for those in our lives who aren’t there when it happens, what we see will remain a mystery.
Paul has it right. God will give us light out of the darkness. But we have to be in the darkness first.
As we approach Lent - a desert time, a time of grief, I think we need to think about how much we want to turn away from it - and what God might give us if we don’t. If we instead turn towards it, and remain present, and allow that darkness to surround us, open to the promise that God gives us, that light will indeed shine out, but not in any way that we can predict.
2 Kings 2:1-12
Psalm 50:1-6
2 Corinthians 4:3-6
Mark 9:2-9
Texts available here
Today is Transfiguration Sunday.
This is one of those Sundays in our calendar that I don’t really feel all that comfortable with, one of the Sundays I call, at least to myself, “Yay! God!” Sundays. Sundays that seem to exist to remind us of the glory and power of God; of miracles and strange events. Sundays where, quite often, we get to sing some glorious hymns - and put on special vestments - and celebrate.
There’s nothing wrong with that, mind you. Celebrations are good things. I’m just not super comfortable with it, mostly because I don’t quite understand _why_ we’re doing it.
We’re presented with two stories of Transfiguration - or really, one of Ascension, and one of Transfiguration.
In the first, Elijah and Elisha go for a walk, out into the wilderness, further and further, and Elijah tries very hard to ditch Elisha. Elisha knows what’s coming - he’s going to lose his friend. Elijah knows that too - and I think is trying to spare his friend from having to be there, when he goes.
Various piles of prophets come out of the various towns they pass - they all know what’s going on too - and try to get Elisha to stay with them, or warn him.
I wonder, at the end, if this is not so much a story about something we might celebrate, but about something else entirely - perhaps it is about grief.
About the parting of friends.
I think it’s very interesting that Elijah offers Elisha a wish, offers to grant him a boon. He asks for what is traditionally the portion of a first born son - and heir. The first born always got two shares, with the other children getting one share each, when the father died. Elisha is asking for nothing less than the authority to carry on for Elijah after he’s gone.
Elijah’s response is telling - he says that if he can stay with him until the very end, watching and not turning away, he will get the inheritance. And he does.
And then grieves, ripping his clothes. Because, even though he got the full inheritance, with that “double portion of spirit”, he also has to realize that he will never see his friend again.
We all have perhaps been in a similar situation - a friendship ending, or a loved one approaching death. There is a strong temptation during those times to cut our losses, to want to flee, to turn away. It seems too terrible to face. It seems too mysterious, too powerful, too painful for us to bear. This may be one of the only times we can come face to face with the power of God, and the mystery of God. And yet, if we are to receive the spirit, we must not give into that urge, because to do so denies ourselves our full potential. To do so denies ourselves the full experience of the life that God has granted us.
Peter and James and Paul are a little bit less bright than Elisha. They really don’t know what’s going on, although, perhaps, Peter starts to get it. He alone seems to realize what is at stake here, and even proclaims it good. Good to be at the top of some lonely mountain, seeing visions of ancient prophets.
He also seems to get that there would be bad times ahead. His suggestion that they make tents is reminiscent of the Festival of Sukkot - a time in the Jewish calendar when devout Jews make tents, made of natural things, and pray, eat, and sometimes sleep in them. They do this to remind themselves of the many years that the Israelites spent in the wilderness, a time of great suffering and travail, but ultimately leading to the promised land.
Perhaps Peter realizes that Jesus isn’t going to be around, at least as they have known him, for much longer. Perhaps he, alone, realizes that they are headed into the desert, and that there are rough times ahead.
No wonder “they were terrified”.
Yes, I think these stories aren’t so much about the glory of God, at least in any way that I would feel comfortable about celebrating - these are points of mystery, of grief, of expectation of something happening, but no one really knowing what that might be.
We’re all presented with these moments. Big changes - endings, death - all these are moments when we know, deep in our hearts, that nothing will ever be the same again. But we can never know exactly how it will be different.
But it is that very unknowing, that darkness, that ignorance, where, I think, the power of God can break into our lives. It is terrifying to be present at those times. Everything in us says “turn away”.
And yet, we must not. We have to be there. To see. And for those in our lives who aren’t there when it happens, what we see will remain a mystery.
For it is the God who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Paul has it right. God will give us light out of the darkness. But we have to be in the darkness first.
As we approach Lent - a desert time, a time of grief, I think we need to think about how much we want to turn away from it - and what God might give us if we don’t. If we instead turn towards it, and remain present, and allow that darkness to surround us, open to the promise that God gives us, that light will indeed shine out, but not in any way that we can predict.
Sunday, February 12, 2012
the wild, healing God
6TH SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY, Year B 12 February 2012 Ss. Peter & Paul, 10:00 a.m.
God our healer, Teach us to proclaim your goodness; give us grace to bring your balm where life is shattered. Give us courage to speak hope in forbidding places, to sing your praise in alien lands, to touch the sick and grieve with those who sorrow. Embrace us with your favor our whole life long that we may see your joy rising with the morning sun and give thanks to you for ever, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The leper in today’s Gospel had been infected with a disease that could have lasted for decades, and only ended – mercifully – at death. It was marked by unsightly ulcers and corrosive white scales that eventuated in the rotting away of flesh, beginning with the nose, toes, and fingers. Leprosy rendered the afflicted person ceremonially unclean – not to mention contagious – and so the disease caused the sufferer ostracism and quarantine as well, a kind of social disfigurement. Maybe that is why the word “healed” is never used in the New Testament in regard to the disease, but rather the expression being “made clean.” And the cleansing must be certified and authenticated by the priests as outlined in Jewish Law - see Leviticus.
Celsus, the pagan philosopher of the 2nd century who attacked Christianity for its doctrines of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion, remarked in his Discourses: “Christianity attracts the sick, the fools, and the sinners.” No decent, upstanding “god” would have anything to do with lepers, he maintained – except Jesus.
Jesus held an unwavering conviction that disease was not necessary to God’s good creation. It was not an established part of the Divine Plan. And it had nothing to do with Divine retribution. God was a Lover – not a monster or a fiend who would inflict a child with leukemia or a mother with a brain tumor.
As the very agent of Creation himself, Jesus invokes and directs the power of connecting life itself to heal human existence. Expressing the will of the Father everywhere he went, Jesus never met a disease he did not cure. Disease, according to Jesus, was an “enemy” of God to be defeated, a sign of the fissure - the crack - in creation that God desired to be redeemed. When he looks on the leper, Jesus was “moved with compassion,” more accurately translated from the Greek, “his guts (bowels) were churning.”
There was once a farmer with a sick wife, who asked a monk from a local monastery to say a series of prayers to alleviate her condition. The monk began to pray aloud fervently in the man’s presence, but he asked God to cure all those who were ill.
“Just a moment,” said the farmer. “I asked you to pray for my wife, and there you are praying for everyone who’s ill.”
“I’m praying for her too,” the monk answered.
“Yes, but you’re praying for everyone,” her husband protested. “It might end up helping my neighbor, who’s also ill, and I don’t like him.”
“You understand nothing about healing,” said the monk sadly. “By praying for everyone, I am adding my prayers to those of the millions of people who are also praying for their sick. Added together, those voices rise up to reach God and benefit everyone. With selfish restrictions [like yours] they lose their strength and go nowhere.”
Here the leper received this heavenly power of life made new – concentrated in the touch of Jesus. Once “cleansed,” he defied the stern order of Jesus to keep quiet about the healing. Again, the Greek: Jesus made “snorts of indignation” at this point in the story.
The healed leper went on to broadcast the good news – if not verbally, then through the display of his glistening new skin. You can’t blame him. Conventional wisdom of the day regarded the healing of a leper to be as likely as the dead being raised. He was a walking miracle, and he knew it.
But at some point he would go on, like the rest of us, to die from something else – if not a disease, then old age. After all, almost everybody dies. You would hope that the healing that Jesus performed on the leper that day penetrated down deeper than the skin – that it went all the way into his soul, for healing from within.
Fred Craddock has said that healing or forgiveness or grace or love are not strategies of God to force changes in us, either by being withheld or by being given on condition. When we hear the story of the high-ranking soldier, Naaman, in today’s Old Testament reading, who had to “jump through hoops” – jump in the pool seven times – before he could be healed, we might think that this was a sort of “strategy” conjured up by Elisha the prophet. (It is not!) Jesus creates no “hoops” for the leprous man, but cures him straightaway. If anyone is in doubt about how God works in situations like this,
just ask any father who has made the dreadful error of saying to a child, “If you make good grades, Daddy will love you,” or, no less damaging, “Since Daddy loves you, you must make good grades.” Grades may improve a bit, but who cares? Something of far greater value has been severely wounded, even killed.
Michael King wrote of “Naaman and the Wild God of Israel” [in Spirituality Today, Spring, 1986]:
“We like a tame God, a God we can easily and comfortably believe in, worship and explain. We like a God we can hold warmly to our bosoms when we feel the need, a teddy bear of a God who can be cuddled when the night at bedtime seems too dark (and there are times, certainly, when God tenderly fills just that longing), but who can be, most of the rest of the time, properly ignored. We like a predictable God, a God who will act like we think he should act.
“But is he like that, or is he a God who, just when we think we have squeezed him, like a genie, into a bottle from which he will emerge only upon our command, lets out a great roar and shatters the bottle into sharp shreds? ...
“Our God is not a tame God. We can grasp at him through our theologies of peace, hope, liberation, grace, or personal salvation through Christ. But we always know him only in part, always he rises fiercely and wildly above us just when we think we have him pinned down.
“He is not a butterfly to be chased and stuck to a board and admired. He is, finally, as we see in Jesus, a God of joy and love, but he is a God also whose ways remain partly mysterious and unknowable, and before whom we do well to bow with fear and trembling as he touches and moves our lives in ways our bottles of theology and doctrine are too small and fragile to contain.”
Through these stories of healing the Gospel according to Mark, we are invited to enter into the “impossible,” to view our “wild” God in action in the person of Jesus himself.
What do we see, when Christians gather, when we pray for each other’s healing, when we see “miracles” in the lives of everyday people whom we call by their first names?
Geddes MacGregor in The Rhythm of God tells of a priest who, when asked, “How many people were at the celebration of the Eucharist last Wednesday morning?” replied,
“There were three old ladies, the janitor, several thousand archangels, a large number of seraphim, and several million of the saints of God.”
[H. King Oehmig: Synthesis, 2/12/2012; Ched Meyers: “Say to this Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship; Fred Craddock: Proclamation 2: Series B, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1981, p. 44]
Preached by Phil Ayers+, Feb 12, 2012
God our healer, Teach us to proclaim your goodness; give us grace to bring your balm where life is shattered. Give us courage to speak hope in forbidding places, to sing your praise in alien lands, to touch the sick and grieve with those who sorrow. Embrace us with your favor our whole life long that we may see your joy rising with the morning sun and give thanks to you for ever, in Jesus’ name. Amen.
The leper in today’s Gospel had been infected with a disease that could have lasted for decades, and only ended – mercifully – at death. It was marked by unsightly ulcers and corrosive white scales that eventuated in the rotting away of flesh, beginning with the nose, toes, and fingers. Leprosy rendered the afflicted person ceremonially unclean – not to mention contagious – and so the disease caused the sufferer ostracism and quarantine as well, a kind of social disfigurement. Maybe that is why the word “healed” is never used in the New Testament in regard to the disease, but rather the expression being “made clean.” And the cleansing must be certified and authenticated by the priests as outlined in Jewish Law - see Leviticus.
Celsus, the pagan philosopher of the 2nd century who attacked Christianity for its doctrines of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion, remarked in his Discourses: “Christianity attracts the sick, the fools, and the sinners.” No decent, upstanding “god” would have anything to do with lepers, he maintained – except Jesus.
Jesus held an unwavering conviction that disease was not necessary to God’s good creation. It was not an established part of the Divine Plan. And it had nothing to do with Divine retribution. God was a Lover – not a monster or a fiend who would inflict a child with leukemia or a mother with a brain tumor.
As the very agent of Creation himself, Jesus invokes and directs the power of connecting life itself to heal human existence. Expressing the will of the Father everywhere he went, Jesus never met a disease he did not cure. Disease, according to Jesus, was an “enemy” of God to be defeated, a sign of the fissure - the crack - in creation that God desired to be redeemed. When he looks on the leper, Jesus was “moved with compassion,” more accurately translated from the Greek, “his guts (bowels) were churning.”
There was once a farmer with a sick wife, who asked a monk from a local monastery to say a series of prayers to alleviate her condition. The monk began to pray aloud fervently in the man’s presence, but he asked God to cure all those who were ill.
“Just a moment,” said the farmer. “I asked you to pray for my wife, and there you are praying for everyone who’s ill.”
“I’m praying for her too,” the monk answered.
“Yes, but you’re praying for everyone,” her husband protested. “It might end up helping my neighbor, who’s also ill, and I don’t like him.”
“You understand nothing about healing,” said the monk sadly. “By praying for everyone, I am adding my prayers to those of the millions of people who are also praying for their sick. Added together, those voices rise up to reach God and benefit everyone. With selfish restrictions [like yours] they lose their strength and go nowhere.”
Here the leper received this heavenly power of life made new – concentrated in the touch of Jesus. Once “cleansed,” he defied the stern order of Jesus to keep quiet about the healing. Again, the Greek: Jesus made “snorts of indignation” at this point in the story.
The healed leper went on to broadcast the good news – if not verbally, then through the display of his glistening new skin. You can’t blame him. Conventional wisdom of the day regarded the healing of a leper to be as likely as the dead being raised. He was a walking miracle, and he knew it.
But at some point he would go on, like the rest of us, to die from something else – if not a disease, then old age. After all, almost everybody dies. You would hope that the healing that Jesus performed on the leper that day penetrated down deeper than the skin – that it went all the way into his soul, for healing from within.
Fred Craddock has said that healing or forgiveness or grace or love are not strategies of God to force changes in us, either by being withheld or by being given on condition. When we hear the story of the high-ranking soldier, Naaman, in today’s Old Testament reading, who had to “jump through hoops” – jump in the pool seven times – before he could be healed, we might think that this was a sort of “strategy” conjured up by Elisha the prophet. (It is not!) Jesus creates no “hoops” for the leprous man, but cures him straightaway. If anyone is in doubt about how God works in situations like this,
just ask any father who has made the dreadful error of saying to a child, “If you make good grades, Daddy will love you,” or, no less damaging, “Since Daddy loves you, you must make good grades.” Grades may improve a bit, but who cares? Something of far greater value has been severely wounded, even killed.
Michael King wrote of “Naaman and the Wild God of Israel” [in Spirituality Today, Spring, 1986]:
“We like a tame God, a God we can easily and comfortably believe in, worship and explain. We like a God we can hold warmly to our bosoms when we feel the need, a teddy bear of a God who can be cuddled when the night at bedtime seems too dark (and there are times, certainly, when God tenderly fills just that longing), but who can be, most of the rest of the time, properly ignored. We like a predictable God, a God who will act like we think he should act.
“But is he like that, or is he a God who, just when we think we have squeezed him, like a genie, into a bottle from which he will emerge only upon our command, lets out a great roar and shatters the bottle into sharp shreds? ...
“Our God is not a tame God. We can grasp at him through our theologies of peace, hope, liberation, grace, or personal salvation through Christ. But we always know him only in part, always he rises fiercely and wildly above us just when we think we have him pinned down.
“He is not a butterfly to be chased and stuck to a board and admired. He is, finally, as we see in Jesus, a God of joy and love, but he is a God also whose ways remain partly mysterious and unknowable, and before whom we do well to bow with fear and trembling as he touches and moves our lives in ways our bottles of theology and doctrine are too small and fragile to contain.”
Through these stories of healing the Gospel according to Mark, we are invited to enter into the “impossible,” to view our “wild” God in action in the person of Jesus himself.
What do we see, when Christians gather, when we pray for each other’s healing, when we see “miracles” in the lives of everyday people whom we call by their first names?
Geddes MacGregor in The Rhythm of God tells of a priest who, when asked, “How many people were at the celebration of the Eucharist last Wednesday morning?” replied,
“There were three old ladies, the janitor, several thousand archangels, a large number of seraphim, and several million of the saints of God.”
[H. King Oehmig: Synthesis, 2/12/2012; Ched Meyers: “Say to this Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship; Fred Craddock: Proclamation 2: Series B, Philadelphia, Fortress Press, 1981, p. 44]
Preached by Phil Ayers+, Feb 12, 2012
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
Fresh and new
Candlemas 2012
Malachi 3: 1-4; Ps 84; Hebrews 2: 14-18; Luke 2: 22-40
(Note: Jack Eberlein, young son of Lydia and Steve, was Baptized at the 10 AM Candlemas liturgy. Jack was a very attentive listener, only occasionally offering a coo or gurgle in response)
Today, Jack, everything is made fresh and new.
You’re being baptized today. Earlier today your mom and dad brought you to this place complete with an altar and with the sound of sacred songs and of prayers, the smell of incense.
Your mom and dad and sister Zoe waited a long time for you and knew that, when you came, all their lives would have a new beginning. They expected that. They also knew that there were surprises coming, that no one really knows how your story will turn out.
We heard another story about babies and surprises just a few minutes ago, Jack.
We heard about a mom and a dad who brought their baby son to a place where there was an altar, where sacred songs were sung and prayers were said and the smell of incense filled the air. They were happy. They knew their lives had changed forever. They knew that their baby’s life would be full of surprises, and that no one really knew how the story would end.
That other fresh young baby boy was also the Son of God sent into the world. God was doing something surprising and new by coming into a world where moms and dads bring babies into the world and do not know the surprises that await them. Was God feeling the same joy, the same sense of anticipation, the same sense of fresh newness?
Because there would be nothing but surprises from then on. Because nothing would be the same.
Jack, we’re making a much bigger fuss over you today than most people made over that other baby. That other place with the altar and the songs and the incense was a big and busy place, and lots of people came and went every day. We’re all paying lots of attention to you. That other baby only had two people, Simeon and Anna, old enough to be his grandpa and grandma, paying him attention and calling to other people to come take a look. “Come see the baby who will change everything!” they said. Some people paid attention, others were too busy.
Because God was doing a new, fresh thing, so fresh and new that almost no one expected it and no one knew how the story would end. The old man told the baby’s Mom that her baby would shake things up for everyone, that everyone would begin to notice poor people and that rich and powerful people would not be able to pretend that only their lives mattered. He told the baby’s mom that sad things would happen too.
But Jack, today we are happy because God tells us that new things are happening even now and that all of us, no matter how old and how tired and how discouraged we may feel, all of us can be fresh and new and that God brings each of us in to meet him just like you were brought in today, Jack, and just like that other baby was brought in by his mom and dad. Your mom and dad gave you a name already. That other baby was named Jesus after his mom and dad talked it over and they remembered a name that came to them in a dream. “Jesus” means “God puts me in an open place.”
In just a few minutes you will be baptized, Jack, and Jesus will put you in that fresh, open space forever. Jesus is that open space, and all of us will remember our own Baptisms and will thank God that we have also been put in an open space. Our hearts are made pure and clean, not by trying real hard to be good on our own but because Jesus makes them clean. We come into God’s temple not on our own, but carried in God’s loving arms. We stand here amazed and happy that in this old dusty world God is showing us bright and new life.
Thank you, Jack, for being baptized today, today when we are brought into the Temple along with Jesus, that other little boy. Thank you for reminding us that God makes us all fresh and clean and young, by water and the Holy Spirit, on the day when we remember the fresh and pure and surprising new life that God shares.
Malachi 3: 1-4; Ps 84; Hebrews 2: 14-18; Luke 2: 22-40
(Note: Jack Eberlein, young son of Lydia and Steve, was Baptized at the 10 AM Candlemas liturgy. Jack was a very attentive listener, only occasionally offering a coo or gurgle in response)
Today, Jack, everything is made fresh and new.
You’re being baptized today. Earlier today your mom and dad brought you to this place complete with an altar and with the sound of sacred songs and of prayers, the smell of incense.
Your mom and dad and sister Zoe waited a long time for you and knew that, when you came, all their lives would have a new beginning. They expected that. They also knew that there were surprises coming, that no one really knows how your story will turn out.
We heard another story about babies and surprises just a few minutes ago, Jack.
We heard about a mom and a dad who brought their baby son to a place where there was an altar, where sacred songs were sung and prayers were said and the smell of incense filled the air. They were happy. They knew their lives had changed forever. They knew that their baby’s life would be full of surprises, and that no one really knew how the story would end.
That other fresh young baby boy was also the Son of God sent into the world. God was doing something surprising and new by coming into a world where moms and dads bring babies into the world and do not know the surprises that await them. Was God feeling the same joy, the same sense of anticipation, the same sense of fresh newness?
Because there would be nothing but surprises from then on. Because nothing would be the same.
Jack, we’re making a much bigger fuss over you today than most people made over that other baby. That other place with the altar and the songs and the incense was a big and busy place, and lots of people came and went every day. We’re all paying lots of attention to you. That other baby only had two people, Simeon and Anna, old enough to be his grandpa and grandma, paying him attention and calling to other people to come take a look. “Come see the baby who will change everything!” they said. Some people paid attention, others were too busy.
Because God was doing a new, fresh thing, so fresh and new that almost no one expected it and no one knew how the story would end. The old man told the baby’s Mom that her baby would shake things up for everyone, that everyone would begin to notice poor people and that rich and powerful people would not be able to pretend that only their lives mattered. He told the baby’s mom that sad things would happen too.
But Jack, today we are happy because God tells us that new things are happening even now and that all of us, no matter how old and how tired and how discouraged we may feel, all of us can be fresh and new and that God brings each of us in to meet him just like you were brought in today, Jack, and just like that other baby was brought in by his mom and dad. Your mom and dad gave you a name already. That other baby was named Jesus after his mom and dad talked it over and they remembered a name that came to them in a dream. “Jesus” means “God puts me in an open place.”
In just a few minutes you will be baptized, Jack, and Jesus will put you in that fresh, open space forever. Jesus is that open space, and all of us will remember our own Baptisms and will thank God that we have also been put in an open space. Our hearts are made pure and clean, not by trying real hard to be good on our own but because Jesus makes them clean. We come into God’s temple not on our own, but carried in God’s loving arms. We stand here amazed and happy that in this old dusty world God is showing us bright and new life.
Thank you, Jack, for being baptized today, today when we are brought into the Temple along with Jesus, that other little boy. Thank you for reminding us that God makes us all fresh and clean and young, by water and the Holy Spirit, on the day when we remember the fresh and pure and surprising new life that God shares.
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