Transfiguration: A Sermon on 2 Kings 2:1-12 and Mark 9:2-9

This is kind of a strange text this morning. For one thing, after several weeks of slowly, meticulously working our way through the first chapter of Mark, it feels a little bit jarring to all of a sudden jump forward nine chapters to head up a mountain. Especially since next week it will be back to the first chapter of Mark again. The text also forces the whole tone our worship to stand in stark contrast to next week. Next week we begin our journey through Lent. The music slows, the colors change to purple, our worship takes on a more somber tone. But before we can do that, the Transfiguration calls for everything to be adorned in celebratory white, for the organ to explore its full range, for loud celebratory shouts of “Alleluia.” Especially since Transfiguration is a season that lasts exactly one Sunday, it can make today feel like a strange blip in what has been a very formulaic journey through the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

We might chalk such a blip up to an over excitable lectionary committee, except the Transfiguration of Jesus plays exactly the same role in our church year as it plays in the Gospel of Mark. Mark’s Gospel is sixteen chapters long and is broken up into two distinct sections. The first section, chapters roughly one through eight, covers Jesus life and ministry, the roughly a year where Jesus was preaching, teaching, and healing in the Galilee region of northern Israel. We’ve talked before about Mark’s verbal tick with the word “immediately.” That tick is because Mark has to cover a lot of ground, his is the shortest of all the Gospel accounts. In just eight chapters, Jesus and his disciples are all over the Galilee. He heals a leper, a paralytic, a man with a withered hand, and those are just the ones that get section titles, casts out demons and spirits, they cross the sea of Galilee a couple of times, he feeds five thousand, and then he feeds four thousand, teaches and preaches, and draws crowds everywhere he goes. Every sentence is a miracle, every paragraph a different region of the country. The Gospel reads like an action flick, fast-paced and attention grabbing.

But in the second half of Mark’s Gospel the pace… slows… way… down… Chapter ten, they travel the roughly ninety miles between the Sea of Galilee and Jerusalem. About a three-day journey walking straight through, but they stopped and talked and healed some people, nowhere Jesus went was ever a straight shot, so it probably took them a little bit longer. Once they get to Jerusalem things get slower still. Chapters eleven to fourteen is slower still, covering four-five days. And then, the very end, the last less than twenty-four hours of Jesus life, the Last Supper, his betrayal, crucifixion, death, and burial, stretch out a full three chapters. Mark’s depiction of the passion slams the brakes on the rollicking adventure story, drawing the reader in to the every tightening drama that is unfolding around Jesus and this building conflict with the authorities.

And right in the middle of these two very different styles of writing sits this morning’s text. Acting as the literary hinge point of the Gospel, the break between the ministry of Jesus and the passion of Christ, Jesus left the crowds, left the twelve, and took just Peter, James, and John, his closest disciples, the three who had been with him since the beginning, up the mountain alone.

When they got up the mountain, something extraordinary occurred. Jesus was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white. The text actually translates to like offensively white, painfully white, divinely white. And just in case we somehow missed the connotation between Jesus transfiguration and the divine in-breaking of the moment, who appears on the mountain beside him but Moses and Elijah. Two other prophets of the Lord who also have mountain top experiences. Moses, you might remember, traveled up Mount Sinai to speak face-to-face with God on a regular basis, and he would return to the people of Israel with his face glowing so brightly he would have to veil himself. And we heard in the first reading about Elijah, how he was carried up into heaven in a chariot of fire born on a whirlwind with his desperate and faithful disciple Elisha running along behind shouting and gasping for a last glimpse at his teacher. There are other connections here; ancient Jewish wisdom posited that both Moses and Elijah did not die. Both are also intricately connected to the question of Jesus identity. Jesus is painted as the new Moses, sent to free God’s people from slavery under the Romans. And Elijah was of course to return to usher in the Messiah, claims we saw made about the role of John the Baptist, the “one crying in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.”

Whether all of these interesting theological tidbits were bouncing around in Peter’s head or if he was simply blinded by the dazzling whiteness, his response is not all that different from Elisha’s. Elisha chased, trying to hang on to the moment. Peter stared, open mouthed, before finally stammering out, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here. Let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah.” But here’s where the Transfiguration story and the Elijah story differ. In the Elijah story, Elisha ran, and yelled as Elijah got further and further away. Then, once Elijah had disappeared from view, Elisha picked up his mantle, picked up the role of prophet that Elijah had left for him, and began to do his work. But for Peter, after his attempt to stay in the glory of the moment, a great cloud overshadowed them, a voice declared, “this is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” And then something happened, a crash or a flash or something that drove them to their knees because when the disciples looked around, they saw no one, only Jesus, and they went down the mountain together.

They went down the mountain together, and as they were traveling, Jesus turned to them and he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until, and this is the key part, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead. For Jesus to command not to be spoken of, that’s a common theme in Mark’s Gospel, we’ve heard him say that several times already in just the first chapter. But this is the first time Jesus gave an end date to that secrecy; don’t tell anyone until after the resurrection.

So a couple different things happen in this text. One, Jesus set an end date on the disciples suffering. He’d already told them about his death, though they hadn’t really figured out quite what he was talking about yet, and he’d tell them several more times. And they never did really pick up on it. But here he gave them the promise that as the writing on the wall became clearer that he wasn’t getting out of this one alive, they could look back at this moment on the trail and remember that they could talk about it after he’d risen from the dead. Which meant that the death they were witnessing was only part of the story. There would be a time for telling a story, and that telling would come after Jesus who was dead, was dead no longer.

Two, in the glory of the Transfiguration Jesus gave them a taste of the power of God. As they entered into Jerusalem things would get dark, really dark, and fast. The dazzling whiteness would burn on their retinas and hopefully give them a reflection to hold onto when everything seemed hopeless. The appearance of Moses and Elijah would give them comfort that the same God who led the people from slavery into freedom and from exile into prosperity would certainly be with them as well. They could look back on their history and know that what seemed like the end was always just another beginning with God.

And finally, and what is I think the most important thing to take out of this story is that Jesus went with them. That is the crucial difference between the pre-crucifixion Jesus and Moses and Elijah, the difference that prefigures all other differences, Jesus went with them off the mountain. Moses stayed on Mount Sinai as the Israelites traveled into the Promised Land, Elijah went up into heaven and Elisha took up his master’s mantle and his work. But Jesus went with the disciples into Jerusalem, to his crucifixion, died, and then rose from the dead so that we too, even though we die, have life.

And so this morning I pray that the glory of Christ transfigured among us becomes burned in your vision, shifting your focus so that no matter where you go, the glory of Christ goes before you. But more than that, I pray that you feel Christ’s presence beside you, walking with you. That when you feel alone, and you see no one, you know, even if you cannot see, that with you is only Jesus, down the mountain with you. Never to leave you, always to guide you. Because that is God’s promise. Amen.

Home For Lunch: A Sermon on Mark 1:29-39

My thoughts on our text this morning borrow heavily from the sermon our Bishop preached this week at the synod Eucharist. So if you want to hear the original, probably more eloquent version of this sermon from the bishop, you can reach it from his website, I’m happy to give you the web address.*

I was listening to the bishop’s words this week because I was stuck on what to say about this text myself. Healing stories are hard, because it’s easy for me to get caught up in the pageantry of it all. In my mind, Jesus flies into the scene like some kind of Oprah of healing, passing out magical medicine to his studio audience like a door prize, “you get a healing, you get a healing.” And in a world where we so rarely experience magic Oprah Jesus, I get stuck up in these healing stories.

But what the bishop pointed out in his sermon was there is something outstandingly ordinary about how this story begins. Remember, the text just before this one, Jesus and the disciples were in the synagogue for prayers, when Jesus was accosted by a man with an unclean spirit. And with a word, Jesus silenced the spirit and cast the spirit out of the man. And everyone who saw it was amazed and kept asking each other about this new teaching.

But then, after the worship in the synagogue had ended, Simon and Andrew and James and John did what so many of us will do after worship is over today, they went home for lunch. And they took Jesus with them. As any of you might do with a traveling preacher who came to visit Trinity for a Sunday and had nowhere to go, they brought the preacher to lunch at their house. You have to wonder how much the incredible event of the casting out of an unclean spirit had really affected the disciples. They just witnessed Jesus perform a miracle and instead of running out into the world to tell everyone about it, they went home for lunch.

Not surprising that the disciples missed it, they’d been pretty busy. The past few verses had been a whirlwind for Simon, he’d gone from tending his nets to becoming a disciple to witnessing an exorcism. But now, bringing Jesus through the front door of his home, he was faced once again with simple, painful domestic concerns. His mother-in-law was sick with a fever. We can assume Simon probably cared for and worried about his mother-in-law. Maybe this illness hadn’t yet taken hold when Simon agreed to follow Jesus on the lakeshore; maybe it had been gnawing away at him the whole time. Either way, bringing Jesus into his home, Simon was once again forced to reckon with the painful, tender normalcy of an illness of someone he loved.

I say it’s normal not to downplay illness, but to recognize the universality of Simon’s concerns. For Simon, for any of us facing a loved one in pain, be the pain illness, addiction, grief, what-have-you, the experience is anything but normal, it is gut wrenching. I say it’s normal, because the helplessness is an all too common experience.

Into this domestic scene steps Jesus. And he came and took Simon’s mother-in-law by the hand and lifted her up. And the fever left her, and she began to serve them. The healing in this quiet little tableau is no the flashy, commanding “be silent” of the synagogue. It is, instead, a hand outstretched, a gentle touch, a “lifting up” back into a position of honor.

Now wait a minute, you might be thinking. This woman just got up from the sickbed, and now she has to rush into service? Can’t someone else do the serving for an afternoon and let her rest? But here’s that thing, her instant move to service signified a return to her right place of honor. As would be true in so many of our homes, who got to show hospitality to a guest was a sign of respect to the host as well as the guest. Yes, Simon’s wife could have served Jesus, but as the head of the household, Simon’s mother-in-law was the rightful holder of that honor, an honor that the fever had stolen from her. So when Jesus lifted her up, when Jesus pulled her from the fever, he did more than just heal her illness, Jesus restored her to a place of honor in the family and in the community.

All Simon did was bring Jesus home with him, bring Jesus home to the person he loved who needed Jesus, and Jesus did the rest. And then, the story goes on, it didn’t stop there. From healing Simon’s mother-in-law, the whole city ended up gathered around the door, and Jesus cured many who were sick, healed various diseases, and cast out many demons. But it started with tired disciples bringing Jesus home.

As I was reflecting on this sermon I couldn’t help but notice the similarity between Jesus taking Simon’s mother-in-law by the hand and lifting her up, and the language the Women’s Co-op uses about offering a hand up not a hand out. And the bishop wondered, and I wondered too, if maybe ministry is just that simple. If maybe bringing healing, bringing life, bringing restoration of relationship is just as simple as bringing Jesus into our homes, our neighborhoods, our everyday concerns, and trusting Jesus to do the rest. Trusting that Jesus cares just as much about the ordinary as he does about the extraordinary. That Jesus is present in the simple, every day acts of breaking bread and sharing the cup, of gathering community and extending a hand.

And that bringing Jesus into these simple, ordinary relationships, trust that Jesus power comes even here has amazing and transformative results. After worship, we’ll gather for our annual meeting. We will have a potluck, we will break bread and eat soup, there will be coffee and water with frozen fruit in it and brownies. We will sit at folding tables and eat off disposable plates, it will all look overwhelmingly ordinary. Some will have the position of honor in service; others who held the position of honor in service for years will have the position of honor of being served. At the meeting we will pour over a packet of reports, we’ll discuss the budget, the roof, the parking lot. We’ll wonder about the past and worry about the future, it will all be exceptionally ordinary.

But here’s what this Gospel reading promises us, it promises us that Jesus will be there. That when we walk out the doors of the sanctuary and head down the hall for lunch, that Jesus comes with us. That Jesus is just as interested in the goings on of our day-to-day existence as he is in our worship. And that Jesus presence in our ordinary is transcendent. I know, because I get the privilege of seeing that every day. In the energy generated by a few coats of paint. In the constant hustle of women in the hallway, turning bags and bags of cast-off clothing into pure treasure. In strips of PVC pipe that turned into a bike rack for children at INASMUCH house, and varying degrees of skilled and unskilled labor is turning into a home for a family on Eagle Street, Jesus is transforming our church, our community, our world, even as we speak, even as we wonder, even as we, like the disciples go searching after him, begging him to return, Jesus is already here.

Simon brought Jesus home with him, and Jesus did the rest. That is the good news in our reading today, that is the promise we can cling to. That Jesus comes home with us, that Jesus wants to come home with us, wants to be in our churches, our houses, our lives, and that Jesus will do the rest. So as we head next door to eat potluck and discuss the budget, as we worry about ill loved ones, an ill community, an ill world, as we look for ways to use our hands in service, we can first know this. That Jesus is there with us, that Jesus comes into our places of fear and need and brokenness, and that he will do the rest. Amen.


* Bishop Satterlee's sermon on this text can be found on his website: http://craigasatterlee.com/logjam/february-8.html

Be Silent: A Sermon on Mark 1:21-28

He didn’t really just appear in the synagogue, the man with the unclean spirit. He’d been there all along, hovering in the doorway, torn between in or out, coming or going. It was just that had no one noticed him. No one ever noticed him, it was one of the benefits of being an unclean spirit, you could come and go as you pleased, no one paid any attention. He wasn’t sure why he’d come to the synagogue that day, curiosity, maybe.

The unclean spirit didn’t bother him, he’d gotten used to it with time. Somedays it was loud, a steady pounding voice, judging him, condemning him, demanding him. You don’t belong, you don’t matter, you are unwelcome, you are unclean. Those days were hard. Most days it was not, most days it just ran like a steady hum in the back of his attention. But always, every day, it was noise.

He’d heard all about this teacher Jesus. Everyone in town had heard about Jesus. Simon and Andrew, James and John were not exactly quiet about it. How this Jesus had just appeared one day in the wilderness to be baptized by John, and when he was coming out of the water, how the heavens were torn apart and a voice from heaven declared, “This is my Son.” How Jesus had been going all around Galilee, proclaiming the Good News of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe the good news.” And of course, the favorite story, how Simon and Andrew, James and John had come to follow him, how they’d been just standing on the seashore, minding their own business, when suddenly, out of nowhere, Jesus appeared and commanded, “Follow me,” and how seemingly despite themselves, they’d followed.

The stories were so amazing, the words so powerful, that when the Sabbath came around, and the word spread that Jesus would be teaching in the synagogue, everyone came, even the man with an unclean spirit. Came to see what Jesus would have to say.

Standing in the doorway, the man with the unclean spirit could see the astonishment on the face of the crowd. He could hear their murmuring, about how Jesus taught with authority and not as the scribes. He was not amazed.

Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. And he pushed through the crowd to where Jesus was teaching, shouting, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” His voice dripped with distain, thickening with false bravado as he tried to keep steady. Truth was, he was afraid. Afraid to have come flying out of the safety of anonymity. Afraid of the attention suddenly focused on him. Afraid of how Jesus might respond to this outburst. Could Jesus see through him, through his uncertainty, through his pride, to the desperate broken humanity within him yearning for a taste of hope, yearning for the promise that Jesus just might have the authority he claimed. Begging for relief from the disillusionment of false prophets and failed beliefs, impatient for a break from the cynicism. This question was both a challenge and a prayer, a challenge that Jesus prove this authority, a desperate, hopeful prayer that he would. Caged in fear, unwilling to be disappointed again, he pushed on, daring to voice the only possibility he could imagine. “Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.”

The crowd around Jesus let out an audible gasp. How had this man with an unclean spirit gotten INTO THE SYNAGOGUE. This was a house of worship, a holy place of God. This man had no presence being here, no right to invade their holy space. In the midst of the crowd’s whispering, Jesus stood still. He faced the man with the unclean spirit, focused on him, with his full attention. Then the man with the unclean spirit began to stir uncomfortably. It felt like this teacher could see right through him.

Then like a clap of thunder, like the slamming of a gavel, Jesus spoke. His voice cut through the noise in the man’s head, and rebuked him. But it wasn’t a rebuke like the man had experienced before, it wasn’t harsh or painful or judgmental. It didn’t even seem to be directed at him. Rebuke wasn’t even really the right word, it was more like a command. But not even a command really. There was honor in Jesus’ voice, like he saw the man he was speaking to and respected him. The words were firm, there was no question of obedience, but gentle? It was like nothing the man with the unclean spirit had ever quite experienced.

Jesus spoke, and said, “Be silent, and come out of him!” And man with the unclean spirit’s mind was filled with a silence so loud it was deafening. And even the turmoil within him, the doubts, the fears, the questions, the uncertainty, that had always been a part of him, that had always run like a low din in the back of his mind, could not be heard over the sheer, overwhelming sound of silence. The silence echoed in his mind, pounded through his eardrums, he’d never heard anything so silent. Pressed against the silence, the noise inside his mind convulsed and like a rush the unclean spirit came out of him.

The crowd was amazed and kept asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” But the man who had had the unclean spirit was not amazed. The pressure released, the noise dissipated, and he was silent. For the first time in a long time, he took a deep breath and inhaled nothing but sheer, sweet, silence. It was a healing silence, gentle and soft. It washed over him like peace, filling every nook and cranny that had once held the noise of fear. As the crowd pushed and marveled he once again found himself pushed to the outside, overlooked by the crowd. But this time he was alone, blissfully alone and not afraid. “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth,” the man had asked. He had his answer now, in the silence. Amen.

Smart Rats, Dumb Rats, and Disciples: A Sermon on Mark 1:14-20

There’s a new show on NPR that I’ve recently gotten into called Invisibilia. The program looks at the intangible things that shape human behavior, things like our ideas, beliefs, assumptions, and emotions. The show is on Sunday nights at 8 pm, but I prefer to listen to it as podcasts while cooking, providing a nice, non-visual distraction to the boring task of chopping vegetables. Which is how I found myself one evening, with this week’s texts floating around in my mind, listening to an episode titled, “How to Become Batman.”

The focus the episode was expectations, how our expectations affect the actions, and even the abilities, of people around us. The program began with the hosts sneaking a lab rat into NPR studios and asking their colleagues this question, do you believe your thoughts could affect the behavior of this lab rat. The answer, universally, was no. No, it’s a rat, obviously it’s going to do whatever it’s going to do, and my opinion of it has nothing to do with those behaviors. But a research psychologist named Bob Rosenthal discovered something surprisingly different.

So here’s what Rosenthal did. One night he snuck into his lab and hung signs on a whole bunch of the rat cages, labeling some rats as incredibly smart rats, and others as incredibly dumb. This was completely random, the rats weren’t smarter or dumber than each other, they were all just rats, just the same lab rats you would get from a place that supplies rats for any sort of scientific testing. Then Rosenthal brought a bunch of other research scientists into this lab filled with randomly labeled rats and said, for the next week, your job is to take these smart and dumb rats and run them through mazes, and record how they do.

The results were not even close. The smart rats did almost twice as well as the dumb rats. Except, remember, the smart rats were not smarter and the dumb rats were not dumber, they were all just rats. What Rosenthal eventually discovered is that the expectations the scientists had for the rats affected the way the scientists handled the rats, and this in turn affected the rats behavior. Thinking they were handling incredibly brilliant rats caused the scientists to behave more warmly toward the rats, to handle them more gently. And the rats, in their own rat way, responded to that better treatment and in fact lived up to the expectations the scientists had for them. While the dumb rats, which, remember, weren’t dumb, dumbed down to the low expectations the scientists had for them.

This has been seen in human subjects as well. A teacher’s expectations can affect a student’s IQ scores; a military trainer’s expectations can literally make a soldier run faster or slower. But there’s a limit to this, of course, the host of the show challenged the psychologist. My belief that if a person jumps off a building they will be able to fly is not going to end well, no matter how firmly I believe it. So what is the line, what is the tipping point where my expectation stops being able to influence behavior. It is a continuum, the psychologist agreed, but there isn’t a line. Or, at least, that line is moving, as we continue to understand how our beliefs affect an outcome or how one person affects another person, that line can move.

It’s a brilliant episode, and I’d definitely recommend catching the end of it. Or stay tuned, because the second half of the show featured a story about a man without eyes who uses echolocation to see that is begging to be a sermon illustration at some point itself. But as I thought about our Gospel reading for today, I kept thinking about the rats.

Our Gospel text for this morning is the call of the first disciples. Things happen very fast in Mark’s Gospel, if you read through the Gospel, you’ll notice Mark uses the word immediately the way most of us would use the word “um.” Jesus saw Simon and Andrew, he said, “Follow me, and I’ll make you fish for people,” and immediately they left their nets and followed. Then Jesus saw James and John and called to them, and immediately they left their boat and followed. It was a crazy, gutsy move on the part of Simon and Andrew, James and John. John the Baptist has just been arrested, within a few chapters he will be beheaded, but even so when Jesus came calling, calling them away from everything they’d ever known, they dropped their nets and followed. And so we hold the disciples up as models of faith, models of commitment, models of devotion. And we ask ourselves, if God called me away from everything I’d ever known, would I follow?

But remember the rats? The rats weren’t smart or dumb, they just responded to the commands they received, and as a result, some did better than others. Similarly, to hold the disciples up as models of faith or commitment I think is to give them too much credit. The disciples didn’t weigh pros or cons or make any giant, bold leaps of faith. It just happened too fast. Jesus said, follow me, so, they followed. Jesus treated them as disciples and so they became disciples. They weren’t always awesome at being disciples, read the rest of the Gospel of Mark, they were really rather bad at it, but that’s to be expected too. The smart rats didn’t start quoting Shakespeare; they were still just rats. The disciples went from being fishermen to followers because Jesus believed in them, because Jesus knew that they would.

And like the moving line psychologists found of how expectations affected abilities, that belief that Jesus had in the disciples was a continuum. The more they followed, the more they experienced this belief that Jesus had in them, the more they were capable of and the more they believed in it too. Taking a lot of time thinking about why the disciples followed Jesus or what we would do in their place is to over think the epiphany. Jesus called, the disciples followed, and things were never the same after that.

There are few things I can say for absolute certainty, but I can say this, you will never find yourself in the first century standing on the shore of the Sea of Galilee holding a fishing net. You may travel to the Sea of Galilee, you may even get to hold a fishing net, but the time travel bit, the family history of growing up in a career of subsistence fishermen, a thousand large and small details render wondering how we would respond in the disciples place irrelevant. What matters is that like the disciples, God has expectations for us, expectations that are better, more than we think we are capable of, and those expectations change who we are, change how we interact with the world. God says to us, you are my child, the Beloved, and we are, because God says it is true. God says, follow me, and I will make you fish for people, and we do, because God says we can. Some of these actions are life-shattering, like the disciples dropping their nets and following. Others are smaller, simpler, but no less important or profound, forgiving someone we did not think we could forgive, inviting someone to church we were afraid to ask, praying for someone who needs our prayers, working at the food pantry, writing a letter to a Congressman, or simply getting up and beginning another day knowing that we are beloved in God’s eyes are all profoundly important actions that we do everyday because God believes in us, expects it from us. And as we journey along this continuum of faith, these beliefs that God has in us changes us more and more, so we begin to know more and more the depth of God’s love, and the power of that love to work in our lives and in the world.

“Follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fish for people.” That sentence is not a command, it is not a request; it is simply a statement. An expression of fact by the one who is Truth. And so we follow, and we fish, because God knows we can. Amen.


The episode of Inivisibilia can be found here: http://www.npr.org/programs/invisibilia/378577902/how-to-become-batman. The whole episode is excellent, but the rat story specifically is in the first six or so minutes.

Stand Up: A Sermon on 1 Samuel 3:1-10 and John 1:43-51

“The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” That’s how our reading from the Old Testament opened this morning, “the word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” Not the intro you might have been expecting to an Old Testament story, a period of history we tend to associate with the word of the Lord and the presence of visions being a regular and active part of society. After all, the Old Testament is jam-packed with stories of God appearing to people in real and vibrant ways. Sounds more like a description of life today, when while maybe you have experienced a time when God spoke directly to you, it often comes more as a feeling or a sense than, say, an audible voice from within a burning bush demanding that you take your shoes off. But our story from Samuel opens by reminding us that Old Testament stories were the exception, not the rule. For the most part, for thousands of people across the thousands of years that the scriptures span, life in Old Testament times was not unlike life today, when “the word of the Lord was rare” and “visions were not widespread.”

And even for Samuel, the word of the Lord came not as a roaring earthquake or as a burning bush, but as a voice, a voice that sounded strikingly similar to the voice of his teacher, the prophet Eli. So similar that when the voice called to Samuel, he three times went to Eli, thinking he was being summoned, before he and Eli realized that the voice who was calling was God.

Not a surprising mistake, why would Samuel assume that the strange, disembodied voice waking him from sleep was anyone other than Eli. After all, not only was the word of the Lord rare in those days, but Samuel would not be anyone’s first choice of a prophet of the Lord. He was, as the scriptures tell us, only a boy. Maybe later in life, when he’d had more training, more experience, more wisdom to draw from, he might be a prophet, might be one to speak God’s voice to the people. But now he was just a kid, no more than an errand boy sleeping in the temple to make sure all the lights stayed lit.

Before we go any further, it may be worth breaking in here and talking a little bit about what we mean by the word “prophet.” Just in the last couple hundred years, the word prophet has gotten combined with the word “prophesy.” So when we think of a prophet, we tend to think of someone who can predict the future. But a prophet is not a fortune-teller; a prophet is a truth-teller. The role of a prophet was and is to say things as they are, even when those things are hard to say. To be honest about how people have sinned and what the consequence of those sins are. If we read on past this morning’s Old Testament reading, Samuel’s very first “prophesy” if you will, was to tell the truth of the corruption of Eli’s sons, and how that corruption was destroying Eli’s house and would if left unchecked cause its ruin. It was a hard message, and Samuel was afraid to tell his teacher the truth about the evil Eli knew his sons were up to, but Eli was a wise teacher and knew Samuel had been called by God to speak truth, and so encouraged Samuel to speak.

This weekend our nation celebrates the life of one of our great modern-day prophets. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a prophet in every sense of the word, in that he was called to proclaim truth about the evil of racial discrimination and hatred in society, and how that evil was destroying our nation and our world. He, like Samuel, was called to speak hard words to people who did not want to hear them, to shine a light on the evil in our midst and how that evil was drawing us away from the heart of God. Being a prophet, speaking truth, is scary and dangerous, and like Samuel, King was afraid at times of the message God called him to tell.

On a morning when we heard the story of Samuel’s midnight call story, it seems only right to remember that King had a similar midnight conversation. On January 27, 1957, King awoke to the phone ringing and a threatening voice on the other end of the line. Such threats were not uncommon, but for whatever reason, this one shook King. Leaving his wife and baby daughter asleep upstairs, King went down to the kitchen and, as any good Protestant preacher would do, made himself a cup of coffee. He sat at the kitchen table, hands cupped around the steaming mug, and he prayed, “Lord, I’m down here trying to do what’s right… But… I must confess… I’m losing my courage.” King later described what happened next as “an inner voice saying, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for truth. Stand up for justice. Stand up for righteousness.”* The threats against King did not cease; in fact the threat that woke King up that night was fulfilled just a few days later when a bomb exploded on the front steps of the house. But what did cease was fear. King himself described that kitchen table moment as a conversion experience in his life, the turning point where he knew the work he was being called to was God’s work.

The stories of prophets like Samuel and King are great stories, inspiring stories of God at work in amazing people. But both can seem almost too big to be believable in our time and place, when “the word of the Lord [is] rare” and “visions [are] not widespread.” Which is why I love that for our readings this morning John’s Gospel gives us another call story; the call of one of Jesus’ first disciples.

“The next day,” the reading opened, “Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip… and Philip found Nathanael.” Already this reading takes on a cadence of some kind of goofy parade. Nathanael got the message of Jesus’ summons second hand, not in a booming voice from heaven, but from his buddy Philip, who was basically like, “hey, you’ll never believe who I just met!” Nathanael, understandably, was doubtful of this news and asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” The question may seem short-sighted now, but remember what Nathanael’s experience of Nazareth would have been. Ten miles from the Sea of Galilee, it wouldn’t have even been a fishing village, just a rough collection of huts. That anything at all, no less anything good, could possibly come from such a nowhere place is a fair question.

Philip’s response to his friend’s query is possibly the best line of evangelism ever, “Come and see.” Philip didn’t try to press his point, argue with Nathanael’s short-sightedness, judge his opinion. He simply invited Nathanael to see for himself the thing, the person, which had so changed Philip’s own life. Come, and see for yourself. And Nathanael came, and he saw, and he was amazed at the One who stood before him, the One who knew him before he could see, the one who was the Son of God.

Epiphany is the season of revelation, the season of God’s presence made known in our midst. And for all three of these men, Samuel, King, and Nathanael, God’s presence was made known to them in ways that changed the course of their lives. But what is also true for all three of these men is none of them went out seeking epiphany, none of them went out seeking to find God. Nathanael questioned his friend, King questioned his courage, Samuel was actually asleep. But in the midst of all of these things, God found them. God revealed Godself to them. And in this revelation, they discovered they were more than they ever thought they could be.

The revelation of Godself changes us. We cannot look on the face of God and not become different, become greater, become more than we thought we were capable of. In this season of Epiphany we experience the revelation of God and we will be changed by this experience. Like Samuel, we may not be looking for it. Like King, we may think we lack courage. Like Nathanael we may actively doubt that anything good can come from this place, can come from us. But this Epiphany God invites us not just to come and see God, but to come and see ourselves. To come and see the things which God is about in our own lives. To come and see how God’s presence is made real through us. So come and see. See Jesus, see God, come and see also yourself. See the good work which God is about in you. Amen.


* Lisa Singh, “Martin Luther King’s defining moment: A kitchen, in Montgomery, Alabama, past midnight,” American Detours 18 Jan 2010 [accessed: 15 Jan 2015].

Beloved: A Sermon on Mark 1:4-11

There’s an old Brazilian folk tale that tells about two babies in the womb discussing the great question of all time: Is there life after birth? “There is,” the first baby insists, “there’s a whole world after this, just waiting to be explored.” “I don’t think so,” the second baby countered. “How could there be, everything we need is right here. And anyway,” always the voice of reason, “we couldn’t go far with the umbilical cord.” “After birth we won’t need the umbilical cord,” explained the first. “We’ll be free.” “No umbilical cord!” the second shouted, aghast, “but the umbilical cord is life, it is air, it is nutrients, it is everything we need, how could we live without it!” “The mother will take care of us,” replied the first. “The mother,” scoffed the second, “don’t tell me you believe in that old fairy tale of the mother.” “There is a mother,” insisted the first. “The mother is all around us. The mother protects us, provides for us, cares for us. Now we only feel the mother, but after birth we will be able to see the mother face to face. Others have gone from this womb, and the mother took care of them. So too will the mother take care of us.” Seeing an opportunity, the second countered, “but no one’s ever come back from being born to tell us what it is like. How can you believe in something you cannot see?” “I just know,” said the first, “I can feel it. There is life after birth.” [Pause]

So this morning is Baptism of Our Lord Sunday, the morning when we discuss the new life we receive in Christ through the sacrament of baptism. A topic that may seem as esoteric as two infants arguing about the meaning of life. What is baptism, anyway? As Lutherans, we practice infant baptism which means that some of you probably don’t remember your baptism. I don’t remember mine. I was three months old. My father remembers his, we were baptized together, me because that’s what you do to babies in my family, him because the pastor wanted him on council, and the church constitution at my parents church stipulated that council members be “baptized members of the congregation.” Either way, baptism for both of us marked an entrance into membership in the life of the church. And that’s true. Baptism is this promise that we have been marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit. It is a tangible sign of the promise, something we can hold onto, touch, feel, something we can go back to whenever we need assurance of that promise and know beyond a shadow of a doubt, even when we don’t believe it, that we are children of God.

Both as a pastor and as a person of faith, baptism for me is an important part of my spiritual identity, and as I think is important anytime we talk about baptism in the church, I want to make a quick plug here and say that if you have not been baptized and you would like to be, or you are at all curious about the sacrament, please talk to me after the service. Or, during, really, we have water right here. This is God’s gift, I just get the privilege of being the one who gets to get my hands wet in the process.

But I also want to say something else about baptism. Because over millennia of talking about it, I think we, and here by “we” I mean myself and other theologians and church professionals who’s job it is to talk about such things, have put too much emphasis on baptism as this beginning step and we’ve turned baptism, what Martin Luther called “God’s greatest gift to us” into this hoop or this gateway that people have to jump through in order to be part of the family. Like fire insurance or having your wisdom teeth pulled, baptism somehow became this thing that we did so that our church record keeping could be clear. So we could tell who was in and who was out. But our Gospel reading for this morning is about the baptism of Jesus, and what we know about Jesus is that anytime a line was drawn between who was in and who was out, Jesus always managed to find a way to be on the wrong side of that line. If there were sinners, Jesus ate with them, tax collectors, he taught them, lepers, he touched them, he healed them. Throughout scripture, Jesus again and again thwarts the expectations of what it meant to be a “good religious person.” So if baptism becomes a line we draw as to who is in and who is out, Jesus is never going to be on our side of it.

So back for a moment to our two infant philosophers, arguing about the meaning of life after birth. The story is silly and cute to us, right, because we know how it ends. We know their argument is completely irrelevant. Because regardless of what the infants believe about life after birth, it exists. And, whether they believe in it or not, the twins will be born. Born in a rush of water and blood, born into a bright new world, the depth and the colors and the complexity of which they cannot even imagine. And the Mother, during our story only an abstract idea, the Mother loves them now, even though they do not know Her. Even though they are as yet only abstractions, the Mother loves them with an unbounded love, such that they cannot even understand.

That’s baptism. Baptism is God loving us before, during, after, at every moment, in every aspect of our lives. Like a stone dropping into a pond, sending ripples through time and space, God’s love is not contained or constrained by our ability to say yes to it, but it moves beyond limitations pulling us deeper into God’s cosmic embrace.

Our Gospel reading for this morning is from the very beginning of Mark’s Gospel. We heard part of this reading already, in the second week of Advent. So you may remember, or have noticed, that the bulk of this reading is not about Jesus at all, but is about John. How John the Baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism for the repentance of sins. How he wore a cloak of camel’s hair tied with a leather belt, how he ate locusts and wild honey, how the crowds flocked to him in the Jordan River to confess and be baptized. And then, almost as an afterthought, in verse nine, Jesus came from Nazareth and was baptized. This is Jesus’ first appearance in the Gospel of Mark. There is no birth narrative in Mark’s Gospel, no long genealogy connecting him to David and Abraham and Adam. No angels announcing his conception, no star heralding his arrival, no shepherds, no wise men, just Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee, coming to the Jordan. This is also before everything. Before Jesus called his disciples, before he offered any teachings, before he healed any lepers, loved any broken, forgave any sinners. This Jesus who came on the scene in verse nine to be baptized by John in the Jordan is just another face in the crowd, an unknown and unimportant stranger from the small village of Nazareth in faraway Galilee.

But as Jesus emerged from the waters, the heavens themselves were torn open and a voice from heaven proclaimed, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” That promise of belovedness echoed back and forth through history. We who stand on this side of history can see that Christ’s belovedness did not start or end at the Jordan. But this promise of Christ’s belovedness echoed through the Word made flesh, the one who was with God at the birth of creation, the one who taught and healed and loved and lived, the one who came to die, who was crucified on a cross and was buried, the one who rose again, and who still comes to us today, meeting is in water and word, in bread and wine. All of that, the entire history of creation is bound up in that promise in a moment at the river, when the heavens opened and God declared, “you are my Son, the Beloved.”

This is baptism, it is a promise that we are children of God. It is a promise totally dependent on God who meets us where we are and who we are and says to us, “you are my Child, the Beloved, in you I am well pleased.” Like the Mother’s love for the philosophizing fetuses, it is true wherever we are on our journey of faith whether we believe it or not, whether we know it or not, whether we have been to the water or not. Like ripples in a pond, the love of God flows back and forth through time and space reaching us wherever we find ourselves. So come to the water and know that this promise is for you. You are God’s child, the Beloved. And in you God is well pleased. Amen.

Holy Mess: A Sermon on Luke 2:1-20

It is a very familiar story. All the players are there, Mary, Joseph, shepherds, angels, and of course, most importantly, the baby Jesus, tucked safely in a manger “asleep on the hay.” This evening we began with a procession to the manger to lay the baby Jesus down. And as one would expect from the Savior of the world, the baby Jesus has laid there quietly throughout the beginning of the service, and will continue to stay quiet and calm until we are through. Like the old carol proclaims, “the little Lord Jesus, no crying he makes.” Of course, in this case the little Lord Jesus is a doll, so, you know, that helps with the whole “no crying” thing. Live infants are rarely so accommodating.

Processing to the manger with the baby Jesus reminds me of another procession involving a different infant, this one not as accommodating as the baby Jesus has been this evening. Some of you were here a few months ago when my best friend and her family came to visit and you met her daughter Emma. Emma is now seriously pushing three, a bundle of boundless energy, blonde ringlets, and a mind of her own. The curls are a recent addition, the independence she has had since before she was born.

When Emma was just a couple months old, I was staying with them while I was scheduled to preach at my home church. Worship was at 10:30, and we made plans to be at church around ten. Emma, however, had other plans. I won’t go into detail, other than to say that I put my alb on in their car while Emma’s dad took a liberal read to traffic rules, bailed out of the car as it slowed to a stop in front of the church, walked in as the presiding minister said the amen following the confession and forgiveness, and sidled into my place in the procession as the organist struck the opening chords of the gathering hymn. As I struggled to catch my breath, my pastor handed me the lapel mic, eyebrows raised. “Emma,” I whispered, to which she, the single mother of her own charmingly rambunctious nine-year-old, smiled, gave a knowing nod, and took her own place in the procession.

Babies, children in general, are unpredictable. As anyone who has ever tried to schedule anything with a child in tow knows, they have their own way of doing things. Our baby plays his role well today, but had we a live infant in the manger; it is safe to say that by this point in the evening, we would probably have an empty manger and a rather annoyed live infant somewhere in the hallway.

In fact, if you think about it, there’s actually something a little bit off about the entire manger scene. Let’s break it down. We’ve got Mary and Joseph standing adoringly over the manger, both looking calm and collected, Joseph holding a lantern or a staff, or some other mark of manly protection over his little family. Surrounding the domestic scene are snow-white sheep, kneeling shepherds, a precious moments angel, and three kings bearing gifts, despite the glaringly obvious problem that the kings show up much later in Matthew’s Gospel, and not at all in Luke’s. And in the center of it all sleeps the baby Jesus, oblivious to the chaos around him, peacefully arranged on a bed of itchy hay as if it was a pillow of clouds, arms outstretched in a cosmic embrace. The whole thing is quiet, serene, and smells ever so faintly of the orange-scented cleaner Co-op used to mop the floors yesterday.

What’s odd about this picturesque little scene is that it bears very little resemblance to any actual experience of delivering a baby in a barnyard. Or delivering a baby anywhere, really. Jesus, for one, would have way less hair. And what hair he had would be mixed with hay and goopily plastered to his red, blotchy, misshapen head. Mary, rather than looking like she just delivered a baby on a made-for-TV special, would be tired, sweaty, and red-faced herself. Blissfully happy maybe—probably—but likely not quite so calm and collected. And Joseph? Well, I cannot imagine many first-time dads whose children were just delivered in a barnyard with the composure to calmly hold a lantern. As for the precious moments angel, remember his first words to every single person he met was basically to try to keep them from running away screaming. The actual manger scene probably had quite a bit more “what do we do with the Son of God now” and “look out, I just stepped in sheep poop” than it had fluffy clean sheep and quiet adoration.

The nativity was messy, and I’m not just talking about sheep poop. It was a time before paternity tests, but already the questions were circling about who was the father of this child, born in a stable because his parents could not provide a home for it, despite their best efforts. Attended on by shepherds, outcasts of society, dirty and forgotten. And if we expand our gospel to let the wise men into this strange little scene we also have to let in King Herod, the crazy, violent dictator so threatened by this child that he calls for the death of all children under two and forces the holy family to become refugees in Egypt. The clean, well-lit, orange-scented manger scene is nice, but the story we read in the Bible is way more messy.

Which is good I think because life, like the nativity, is messy. And like the nativity, we often try to create a story for ourselves that glosses over the darkness in exchange for a cleaned up version of the light. But the scriptures invite us to come as we are, bearing our own fears, our own scars, our own shaky insecurities. To come with our moments of “I can’t take the pain” and “whatever will we do now” and the piles of sheep poop that we avoid or not with varying levels of success. We try to clean up these varying versions of ourselves, with results that feel like white-washed sheep around a manger. Maybe, like Joseph, our hands shake this evening as we try to hold the lantern, for the work of keeping it all together is exhausting.

So while it may feel like an odd exercise to clear away the sentimentality surrounding the manger scene, and it probably wouldn’t sell many Christmas cards, but it will do something else. It will help us see that there is space in the story for us. For our hands, dirty as the shepherds, for our fears, wide as King Herod’s. For our stories of things unexpected and prayers for children who didn’t come.

The nativity scene is not something we stand at the edge of, it is something we are intimately a part of. We belong at the manger. We with our pain, our brokenness, our confusion and aloneness are the story. That is what Christmas is all about. The promise that God reached out to humanity and laid divine hands on us, on our sweaty foreheads and tear-stained faces, on our shaking hands and our fearful hearts. Reached out with an angel that left us quaking in our boots and said to us, “Do not be afraid. For to you is born this day, in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” We come to this night not as observers but as participants in a holy miracle. The miracle that Christ was born to us, in us, and that in his birth, death, and resurrection we are made new.

This is hard, and it’s different, to see the story in this way. But I invite you this night to come. Come as you are, come who you are, because to you the Christ child is born. It may feel unfamiliar at first, like a toddler’s first few steps wobbly feet, to approach God in this way. But come, because the hand of God reaches out to steady those steps. And as you come, maybe offer to hold the baby for a bit, to take the Christ child for a walk so that Mary and Joseph can get some sleep. It’s hard work, this being born anew. But we’re all in it together. Thanks be to God. Amen.