The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

Stephen Bayne, a wise bishop and saint of this church, wrote many years ago:  God put freedom into his created universe in order that the universe could respond to his love with an answering love of its own – given out of its freedom. That’s Life.

The scripture appointed for this day lays before us a stark and clear presentation of a choice. “… today I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him…”

The choice is to align one’s life according to God’s way and know the blessings that will come in the doing or to follow in some other way and reap what is sown down that path.

As I was driving around the Lehigh Valley the other day, I saw a church sign that read, “God’s message doesn’t change”. I believe that to be true. The core truth is the core truth. But who hears it changes. The era in which it is heard changes. The culture through which it is heard changes. The time in the life of the person who hears it changes.

One time I heard God’s message was as a newly ordained person Then I drove around in a car left over from a more frivolous time of my life. It was a hot, little orange/red Fiat convertible sport car that wore a bumper sticker that declared, “Choose Life!” (Actually it is kind of fun to remember those days when “father” would drive up in it to parishioners’ homes.)

But this was not some adolescent hippie exclamation, nor was it an anti-abortion slogan. It was more basic than that. It was more of a primal shout! What I wanted to say to the world in my youthful enthusiasm was “Choose LIFE”. Choose a way of life that leads to joy and exuberance and love, and provides a pathway through the tough times of life that come to one and all regardless of stature or status. Choose life that ultimately leads to living in God’s blessing and returns to God and the people among whom we live a love that answers God’s love given in our creation.

It is, I believe, the deep desire of God’s heart that we make the choice for Life. It is as we pray in the Eucharistic prayer, Again and again, you called us to return. Through prophets and sages you revealed your righteous Law. And in the fullness of time you sent your only Son, born of a woman, to fulfill your Law, to open for us the way of freedom and peace. Claiming God’s love, receiving God’s love, and living in God’s love is the “way of freedom and peace.”

It is not the way to a problem-free life, it is not a way to escape the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, it is not a way to dodge all the stuff that life throws at us, it is not the way to skip the pains of aging or adolescence or sexuality or any kind of hard time. But it is a way through them.

Those times are part of life, but they don’t define our lives. They are part of us, but they don’t define us. We have been created for freedom, and peace, and love and if we are faithful in our living, steadfast in our doing, then we will know freedom, we will know peace, we will abide in love.

There are forces that would draw us away from these, take us down other paths, seduce us into other ways, try to make us a different person – some of those forces come from outside of us and some come from within ourselves.

But we know, too, that within us and within all of humankind there are stronger powers drawing us toward the love of God and toward the God given right of freedom and peace and life lived in tranquility with family and neighbor alike.

Our nation is based on this belief, is based on these truths. Our Declaration of Independence boldly states what could not be seen and was not known in the lives of the people at that time in this place, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

And to bring those things that are ours by divine right into being, we ordered ourselves as a nation. We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

A people claimed their heritage as God’s creation and wanted the ability for themselves and their children to live in peace, justice, and freedom. That’s what God intended in the beginning and that’s what our forebears brought into being. They chose Life.

And it is amazing to me that in my adult life I have seen the same choice made by the people of Poland and Czechoslovakia, Latvia and Estonia, and East Germany and in each of the countries of the Soviet Union. The choice for Life was made by the people of South Africa, the choice for Life was made by the people of Southern Sudan, the choice for Life was made by the people of Tunisia, and in these last days the choice for Life was made by the people of Egypt.

The people claim the promise that predates even God’s Covenant with Moses. “Choose life so that you and your descendants may live, loving the LORD your God, obeying him, and holding fast to him; for that means life to you and length of days, so that you may live in the land that the LORD swore to give to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”

Our president declared on Friday, “This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied. Egyptians have … (put) the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence -- not terrorism, not mindless killing -- but nonviolence (the) moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.

“And while the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can't help but hear the echoes of history -- echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path of justice.

“The word Tahrir means liberation. It is a word that speaks to that something in our souls that cries out for freedom. And forevermore it will remind us of the Egyptian people -- of what they did, of the things that they stood for, and how they changed their country, and in doing so changed the world.”

We stand in awe and we kneel to give thanks to God that “we have seen the hand of God at work in the world around us” once again when God’s people have chosen LIFE. It is the deep desire at the heart of God that we Choose Life.

The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

In the world of Biblical criticism and scholarship, there is a constant tension between two ways of approaching scripture.

These are Exegesis v. eisegesis.

Exegesis (from the Greek meaning “to lead out”) is a critical explanation or interpretation of a text. The goal of Biblical exegesis is to explore the meaning of the text which then leads to discovering its significance or relevance.

Exegesis includes a wide range of critical disciplines: textual criticism is the investigation into the history and origins of the text, but exegesis may include the study of the historical and cultural backgrounds for the author, the text, and the original audience. Other analysis includes classification of the type of literary genres present in the text, and an analysis of grammatical and syntactical features in the text itself. Most modern, or post-modern, commentaries on the Bible take exactly this approach, and you will find endless footnotes telling you the subtleties of the translation or giving you historical context so that one can better wrap one’s mind around the words on the page.

Eisegesis (from the Greek meaning “into”) is the process of misinterpreting a text in such a way that it introduces one's own ideas, reading into the text. While exegesis draws out the meaning from the text, eisegesis occurs when a reader reads his/her interpretation into the text. As a result, exegesis tends to be objective when employed effectively while eisegesis is regarded as highly subjective.

This sounds pretty black and white- but anyone who has ever translated something from one language to another knows that it is very much a grey area, words in one do not have exact correlatives in the other, choices are made that result in one shade of meaning over another, and the end result is always somewhat subjective, which is exactly why we have the practice of exegesis in the first place.

I mention all of this because the Gospel passage we heard today is probably one of the most exegeted, and most eisegeted, in our canon. We’ve read this passage as a formula for getting into God’s grace, a set of instructions for how to become a child of God, instead of an affirmation of our belovedness from before we were formed in the womb.

The phrase “salt of the earth” has come to mean something quite different than what it would have meant to the Gospel writers- where we hear it as meaning good, simple, and honest, two thousand years ago, when salt was the only spice widely available and was used not only for preserving foods but also for enhancing their flavors, it would have meant something special, something that made common things greater.

In the same way, the strength of light in a world before electricity is perhaps something we can’t wrap our minds around- it is hard now to get away from light, one must go far from populated areas to see the night sky without ambient brightness from streetlights, cars, humanity. So the power and promise of a single lamp doesn’t quite impact us, I think, with the weight it is meant to have.

Fred Craddock, writing in the Christian Century, says this about today’s Gospel: “For the first context, Jesus offers affirmation, warning and instruction. The affirmation is in two vivid images, “You are the salt of the earth” and “You are the light of the world.” Notice “You are” not “You ought to be or should try to be.” Both salt and light are so basic and essential to human life that Jesus felt no need to spell out what this meant. However, having introduced the existence of hostility toward the gospel, Jesus does elaborate on what can happen to God’s people under persecution and sustained opposition. Salt can lose its integrity, its identifying quality as salt. This does not occur suddenly, of course, but so gradually that those to whom it happens do not perceive themselves as changing and cannot identify later a single time or place when their faith ceased. Certainly the loss was not intentional; it was more a matter of drifting away…

“Or, says Jesus, how easy it is to lose initiative in mission and take up a posture of protection and defense after one suffers verbal, physical, social or economic abuse for one’s faith. For example, building a city on a hill is sound strategy for self-defense, but the increased visibility attracts even more hostility. Or again, putting a lamp under a bushel certainly reduces the chance of having it blown out, but the price for such protection is darkness. In other words, the way of Christ is mission: witnessing and benevolent intrusion into the life of the world.

There is no way that Christ’s cause can be converted into an individual or community lifestyle of self-interest, self-protection and defense against vulnerability. To do so is not to interpret Christ differently, but to abandon him. The way of Christ is to take the initiative and rather than hide from the world, let the light shine in the hopeful trust that the praise of God will be increased.

This is perhaps easy to hear but more difficult to live. We are constantly assailed by messages that we could be better, do more, work harder. Instead, Jesus is telling us, we should strive to be faithful above all else.

This is a tough message to hear, particularly for us, right? As Americans, as a country of folks founded on the notion that, like a character out of a Horatio Alger story, anyone being able to pull themselves up by the boot straps and become wildly successful with enough hard work, and for us as Protestant, Reformation Christians, who have heard these passages used for generations to reinforce the notion of righteousness by works, that if we just work hard enough, pray correctly, God will admit us to his love.

The message today is radical- our place in the kingdom is assured, has been since our creation, and our responsibility is to live out the power of that assurance, the confidence that is only possible through God's wide embrace. This isn’t something we can do. This is something we have to be.

Jesus said he came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it, to complete it- and by living into the spirit of the covenant God made with us In our births, into the gifts that God has given us, we spread the light of God’s love in the dark places we encounter, we spread our saltiness in all that we undertake, and finally we rest in the knowledge that if all that we do is grounded in Christ, it will have been well done.

The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Matthew 5:1-12

There is chaos and violence in the streets of Egypt. The ancient city of Carthage, known to us today as Tunisia, has seen similar oppressive violence as a response to voices protesting for democracy, equality, and economic opportunity. In Uganda, political tensions are rising, and recent attacks on activists for the rights of gays and on humanitarian workers seem to be an outgrowth of highly-charged political diatribe. In Sudan, the people of the south remain hopeful that voting for secession from the north will hold peacefully, yet violence has erupted and lives lost near the north/south border. Voices in the south clamor for peace and freedom, and in the north, carefully measured statements about a new Sudan are heard. In our own country, a new year brings again the voices of a path continuing forward in difficult times as we continue to struggle economically, and continue to live in a time where our country is at war.

In all of it, one can wonder and be lost, or even overwhelmed, in the dynamics of an unsettled time and unsettled world. In the midst of it all, we can respond to events as they impact our own lives and we can rightly wonder—what voices might we find clarity and action in following. One might also wonder, it all seems so big and we are just regular folk, what is my place in it?

This is the set-up I ask for us to live into this morning as we consider our Gospel today. In a world just as disrupted and challenged, I might suggest that common folk may have been asking the same questions. I am just a regular folk; what is my place in all this mess? Among the many voices crying out in this world, in which one might I find some clarity and action following?

Today we have the Beatitudes. Familiar to all of us, most scholars agree the beatitudes are the platform speech on which Jesus builds, inspires, challenges, and equips his followers to live into a new ideal for their lives and the world that is the Kingdom he has come to usher in. The symbolism in Matthew’s gospel is worth noting. Just as Moses ascended that holy mount to discover and deliver the law for the people of God, so Jesus sits on the mount to deliver the good news that God’s dream is actualized in Jesus, and to those who listen and believe in what he says, they must actualize his teachings in their behavior. In this way, God’s dream comes alive! “Blessed” is the English word we use to translate from the Greek “marikiori” which, more closely translated, may be “how fortunate” or “how fulfilled,” or in that sense, “happy.” “Blessed” are the ones who hear, believe, and live out this path that is not easy of bringing God’s dream to life in their lives and in the world.

This is a large and demanding voice with a call to big things. Who, then, is worthy of such a commendation? Who is there on that hillside? What about you? Can you imagine yourself on that hillside today? What is it that is being asked of them, of us? Surely those sitting there that day must have been spiritual heroes to actualize such behavior; surely this message today must be for the heroes among us.

Hear the words of Fred Beuchner as he responds to the questions, “What voices do I pay attention to, and how is it that a common folk like me fits into this? I paraphrase from his work on the Beatitudes found in his book, Wishful Thinking.

“We might be tempted to guess one sort or another of spiritual hero, (might be picked out to hear this special commendation that is beatitudes), men and women of impeccable credentials morally, spiritually, humanly, BUT we would be wrong.

“Jesus did not pick out the spiritual giants (to follow, listen, and to actualize) but the “poor in spirit,” the ones who spiritually speaking have nothing to give but everything to receive.”

“Not the champions of faith who can rejoice even in the midst of their own suffering, but the ones who mourn over suffering, and have the ability to mourn over the suffering of others.”

(Jesus did not choose) the strong ones but the meek ones, in the sense of the gentle ones, i.e., not like Caspar Milquetoast but like Charlie Chaplain, the little tramp who was stamped on by the world, yet is dapper and undaunted to the end, and somehow makes the world more human in the process.

(Jesus did not choose) the ones who are righteous but the ones who hope they will be some day and in the meantime, are well aware that the distance they have to go is still greater than the distance they have come.

(Jesus did not choose) the winners of great victories over evil in the world, but the ones who, seeing it in themselves every time they comb hair in the mirror, are merciful when they find it in others, and in being merciful maybe win the greater victory.

(Jesus did not choose) the totally pure, but the “pure in heart,” the ones who are as shop-worn and clay-footed as the next, but who somehow have kept some inner freshness and innocence intact.

(Jesus did not choose) necessarily the ones who have found peace in its fullness but the ones who, just for that reason, try to bring it about wherever and however they can, be it peace with their neighbors and God, peace and themselves.

Jesus saved for last the ones who side with heaven (on his account) even when any fool can see it seems to be a losing side in worldly terms. Looking into their faces he says, “Blessed are you.” “How fortunate you will be.” “Happy are you.”

Imagine them looking back at him. Now imagine yourself looking back at him. They are not a high-class crowd, peasants and fisher folk, on the shabby side, some of them, not that bright. It doesn’t look like there is a hero among them, Buechner reminds us. How about among us?

They are blessed—and they must know it as they go forward. It is not his hard times ahead he is concerned with but theirs. It is his own meekness, his own mercy, his own peaceful heart from which he speaks. It is their meekness, their mercy, their own peaceful hearts (and ours) that he seeks.

A final word on this day: If the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus delivering the platform of God’s dream and the opportunity is to hear the beatitudes as a commendation to actualize principles of mercy, meekness, peacefulness, and sacrifice, then we give thanks for Joel Atkinson’s ministry and person, for he is indeed “blessed.”

Amen.

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to go on pilgrimage to Israel, and I found that if you go on pilgrimage to Israel with a certain kind of company, you will have all sorts of Biblical experiences. You can step into the Jordan River and re-experience baptism, not exactly where Jesus did it because that’s in the middle of the desert and doesn’t make for a good photo, but in a more picturesque area where there are thousand year old olive trees. You can cruise in a boat on the Sea of Galilee. You can see something called the Jesus boat which is a 2,000-year-old fishing boat, dredged up from the lake floor, that could possibly have been the sort used by Jesus and his disciples. You can even stop in at one of the numerous restaurants on the shore and eat Peter’s fish, a particular sort of fish that the owners assure you was the kind that Simon Peter was catching that day when Jesus called out to follow him. It’s all very authentic, assuming Jesus and the disciples had their own deep fryer.

A biblical experience that has authentically survived the millennia is the one we hear described in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians today. The newborn Christian church at Corinth is divided. Factions are forming around different individuals, and power struggles are emerging. Paul begins his letter by summoning the Corinthians to live up to their identity in Christ. In particular, Paul calls them to unity. He appeals to them in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and, as New Testament scholar, J. R. Kirk, points out, we must not skip over this too quickly. The name of Jesus is not only the authority by which Paul calls this church to account, it is the name that makes the Corinthians one church. When Paul later asks, “Were you baptized into the name of Paul?” the obvious answer is no. We were baptized into the name of Jesus. Accordingly, the very basis of his admonition, the name of the Lord Jesus carries with it the diagnosis of their problem and its solution.

The problem is that they are claiming other peoples’ names as their identity markers. The solution is to be united in their common identity in Christ. To put it in another term, the Corinthians are plagued by party spirit. We get a hint at the divisions, even in the fact that one group is reporting to Paul about everyone else. Chloe’s people, who are, perhaps, Chloe’s household, or maybe those who meet for worship in Chloe’s house, bring word to Paul that the church is fracturing. Each group has rallied through a particular leader, and the debate in Corinth revolves around the knowledge and power that each of these teachers embodies. One group in Corinth has rallied to Apollos, an early leader under Paul and the Corinthian church. Elsewhere in the scriptures, Apollos is described as an eloquent man who is powerful in public debate, and such rhetorical force might have formed the rallying point for the Apollos party. It seems to lie behind Paul’s insistence that true proclamation of the Gospel does not require eloquence.

Then we have the place of Cephas, who is traditionally understood to be the apostle Peter, and his position is a bit murkier. It may be that Cephas or his followers introduced theological tensions in Corinth by bringing a sort of law-focused Christianity closer to its Jewish roots. The Corinthians, then, were flocking to smooth rhetoric that lived up to the days’ worldly display of wisdom and Apollos to a Jewish theology proclaimed by Cephas that seemed to have a stronger biblical pedigree, and to their own history, roots, and founder in Paul.

In response to this partisan bickering, Paul brings them back to the story that defines us all as the people of God, the crucifixion of Christ. Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized into the name of Paul? The answer is no, of course not. We are the people of Christ. Kirk reminds us that the cross transforms the value of our actions and our status. Because of the cross, we must learn to view the world differently. And so, as we start reading about the problems confronting the church in ancient Corinth, we will find ourselves invited to a conversion of the imagination, what Paul himself speaks of as being transformed by the renewing of our minds. Paul invites his readers to participate in the story of the cross, a narrative in which all that we think we know about the world, its values, its knowledge, its wisdom, its virtue, is reconfigured by God’s great act of salvation in Christ. The message of the cross, he is saying, is not something that only applies to becoming the people of God, something that can be compartmentalized and referred to only on questions of faith, or on Sunday mornings. It gives shape to the entirety of our lives and the entirety of our life together.

Now it was hard for me to read about the goings on at Corinth without immediately thinking of the state of affairs in our country and of the horrible events that occurred just over a week ago now in Arizona. Of course, no single public figure can be held responsible for the actions of an obviously troubled individual, but I think that there is something to the immediate blame that was placed on the tenor of our national debates. Every day, we are pulled in different directions by voices clamoring for our attention, claiming to represent the right beliefs, the correct way, the only truth. As divisions emerge in our political landscape, the rhetoric grows more passionate, more bombastic, and sometimes violent. Those who don’t agree with us are painted as lesser than us. Their humanity is stripped from them and they become a faceless enemy. It is any wonder, then, that this dis-incarnation can be taken to dangerous extremes, can provide a sense of justification for those who would inflict violence on those they despise.

As we are pulled in increasingly polarized directions by the voices of our politicians and commentators and critics and people in power, let our touchstone be the voice of Jesus in the Gospel today, calling out to us to follow him. Jesus did not eloquently call his disciples, nor did he promise them power or membership in an elite group. He simply invited these young fishermen to follow him, to pattern their lives on his commandments, to love God, and love neighbor, to have a conversion of the imagination, to be renewed. I think that invitation is before us again today. So let us follow him.

Amen.

Second Sunday after the Epiphany

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Surely you have heard that the entire world is off balance. You’ve heard that? As a matter of fact, folks are making lots of money right now writing books speaking to the reality that, at least on the level of the cosmos, we are in an unprecedented paradigm shift. Folks in church circles are also making lots of money writing books talking about what that means for the church. The truth of the matter is it is connected to the hole we have seen in the world in which we live to be living through a time of shift. This has never come so more evident than reading the front page of The Morning Call.

My element is the earth. My ruling planet is Saturn. The symbol of my life for 46 years has been the goat. My stone is garnet. As a good, old-fashioned Capricorn, my life pursuit has been to be proud of my achievements. My vibrant energy coming from the cosmos is powerful and resilient. My secret Capricorn desire is to be admired by family and friends, but who needed astrology to know that?

It seems that everything is off balance now. It seems my whole understanding of who I am, the signs that I look for in the sky, seem now to be pointing to a new truth. I am a Sagittarius, for God’s sake. I am not so sure about my element, the fire. I am so fond of Saturn as my guiding planet that I don’t know if I can give my allegiance to Jupiter. I have to tell you, there are some advantages to the archer as opposed to a goat, but my stone – I’ll never go turquoise. My life pursuit is to live the good life. I am not sure what that means, but it sounds good. The vibration for my new Sagittarian existence coming from the cosmos is overly expressive, leading to frequent burnouts. I have no interest in that. Ah, but my secret Sagittarian desire is to make a difference in the world. Maybe I’ll take that one.

OK, I’m making fun. For one thing, isn’t it amazing what one person in one small part of the world might decide on our behalf? That is that the cosmos has shifted and the paper publishes it all over, whatever. This is really a cheap way of taking astrology, that for which many look to the sky—you know what astrology is about. Astrology is about trying to find the signs that point to some piece of meaning in life. That is astrology. For some of us, it is frivolous and fun. For others, it is a bit more serious. For me, it’s frivolous and fun. My point, however, is that in all of humanity, we do share one thing. That is that we are all trying to make sense, find purpose, and find things with which we can align ourselves. We are often looking in places for the signs that will reveal these truths to us. This, I think, we all can agree on.

That is a long way of getting into John’s Gospel which, if you have ever studied John’s Gospel to understand what John is trying to tell us, revealed to us the truth that John is trying to convey to us. You have to understand that John is about signs. John’s entire Gospel is filled with signs. Signs, you know, are those things that point to something we cannot necessarily see or put our hands our hands on, but signs that point us to a truth about something. In today’s Gospel, we engage John’s first sign. That, of course, comes after his setting the stage, the theological and poetic stage. In those first 18 verses of the first chapter where John, in that beautiful poetry, tells us about God acting not only in the lives of individuals, but even more so, acting to come to redeem the entire creation, the entire cosmos. In John’s Gospel, God is hitting the “justify” button on the computer, resetting the stage. In today’s portion of that Gospel, John now translates that setting and begins to tell the real life historical story of how, indeed, God is pushing the justify button.

The sign that John gives us is, of course, in the person of John the Baptist. John makes the move to begin to tell the story of how the Word became flesh, it being rooted in the historical event in the person of one named Jesus, who one day walked across the wilderness and walked toward this figure, John. It is John the Baptist who John, the gospeler, chooses to tell us and point to the truth of what is happening. For John the Baptist, he will be the first signpost. You remember his words, not all that long ago in Advent and, of course, in Christmastide, when John says “I am not the light, but I have come to point to the light.” Well, today is the day. The light has walked into John the Baptizer’s presence, and he becomes the first witness in John’s Gospel because he sees the Holy Spirit descending and resting on Jesus like a dove. John points to the truth, he witnesses to it, and he announces to all who will hear it. What is this truth? This person is the Son of God. This person is the Lamb of God. John the Baptizer will be a witness and an announcer to a truth that is to be revealed, that God has come in time and in history, not only to redeem the cosmos, but also to deliver those who would hear him and receive him, and become children of God like him.

John’s Gospel announces to us today the code of discipleship that is to follow and bear witness to this Son of God, to this Lamb of God. To John’s audience, Son of God would have been a familiar term that they were expecting to hear and to see. It is one that they would hear, and know that God was acting in a particular way to bring a message of hope and freedom to a particular people. The Lamb of God, to an audience filled with Jews, certainly would have conjured up their knowledge and expectations that in that person, the way to freedom would be through sacrifice. This is the Son of God. This is the Lamb of God, and the entire rest of John’s Gospel would be about Jesus performing those signs, pointing to redemption. All those who would hear it would need to do is follow, and then witness to what they saw. So today in John’s Gospel, the sign points to that code of discipleship, to follow in witness the Son of God, the Lamb of God.

Here are the three things that I really want you to leave here with today. What does it mean to encounter this Lamb of God, this Son of God? These are the three things that I think it means that we are called to follow and then witness. Number one: All of us are in need of redeeming. All of us are in need of redeeming. Number two: We can’t do the redeeming. We just can’t pull off the redeeming. Have you noticed? Somehow, as hard as we might try, whatever program or campaign or statement or ideology we seem to come up with, we human beings, not just now in our time but forever historically, we can’t seem to get it all right. We can’t do the redeeming. Number one is admitting that we are in need of redeeming. Number two is that we can’t do the redeeming ourselves. The third thing is that once we encounter the one who redeems us, we must be a witness to that redemption.

Case in point: I was fortunate enough some years ago to spend a couple of days in study with Rabbi Ed Friedman, who was the incarnation of Family Systems Theory. (Actually he was the second generation of Family Systems Theory, but he is the one whom we knelt before to learn about Family Systems Theory.) In the class I attended, someone innocently asked Ed Friedman, “Rabbi Friedman, why do you think people come to church or to temple?” He said people come to church and to temple to show their home movies. Do you get that? What he is saying is that all of us take our humanity, we take our brokenness, we take our dysfunction, we take our sin, we take our failure, we take our hope, we take our joys, and we bring them to a safe place, and we show those movies on one another and on God. Sometimes that’s not so pretty. Sometimes it’s absolutely beautiful. You get it?

It’s been interesting to me to reflect again and to watch, which is what I do, reflect and watch our common response to the shootings in Arizona. If you pay attention to our national tragedies, if you pay attention to the home movies that are shown, isn’t the dialog that rises up around such events interesting? This isn’t the first time we have had a tragedy – it’s an awful tragedy, but it’s not the first time. If you pay attention at any tragedy, our response to it is to bring our home movies. That’s why, pastorally, when there are difficult things going on in our own personal lives, it is such emotional labor because all of our home movies come to be shown. Are you getting this yet? Isn’t it interesting that the dialog that occurs in the midst of a national tragedy raises things to which, perhaps, we need to pay attention? It’s not about what points people are making. It’s about what movies they are showing.

David Brooks, writing in his op ed piece in The New York Times in response to the shooting, showing his own home movies, perhaps offers us what I am really trying to get at. Making a statement about our common place that perhaps as a common group in our nation today, he is suggesting that perhaps what we need is to come to terms with our human limitations. Perhaps we are trying so hard to figure things out for ourselves that we are getting lost in our rhetoric and in our ideologies. Failing to name the reality, which is my point, a theological reality, we need redemption. All of us need redemption. We need to admit that we need redemption. We need to admit that we can’t do that redeeming on our own. We have tried, historically, and we have failed. When we come, you and I, into the realization that we hand our failure and our weakness and our sin over to a greater power than ours, then and only then, can we meet redemption. When we meet redemption, we need to witness to it.

David Brooks writes this about coming to that place of understanding our need for redemption: “Redemption is a tree with deep roots and without the roots, it can’t last.” So what are those roots? They are failure and sin and weakness and ignorance. I know it’s not Lent yet, but it seemed like today would be a good day to have it. We need redemption.

Tomorrow we will celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in our country. Tomorrow, in Sayre Hall, there will be a group from the Lehigh Valley who will gather in celebration, and I have been asked to say a few words at that celebration. The words that I have been asked to reflect on are about the progress of race relations in our country. I am not sure why I agreed to that, and I don’t know what I’m going to say yet, to be honest, other than we need redemption. All of us need a little redemption. We can’t do that redeeming by ourselves. For those of us who are people of faith, we must come to that place where we recognize the waters of baptism in which we have been baptized and know there is one who promises us redemption, and that admitting our weaknesses and our sin can only lead us to that place of redemption.

I tell this anecdote. As a young priest in Virginia in charge of my first congregation, somewhere in the mid to late ‘90s, you will remember that there was a rash of church burnings in the south, African-American congregations’ buildings being burned. I received a telephone call from an 80-some-year-old woman who was a member of the Presbyterian congregation down the road. I didn’t know her from Adam, but she invited me to a meeting at her house. Someone in my congregation advised me that this would be a good invitation to accept. So I went to the meeting and there I found myself sitting with three other clergy, me and this 80-year-old woman and three other clergy—myself, the Presbyterian pastor, the Methodist pastor, and the pastors and the deacons of the black Baptist church down the road. She looked at us and she said, “I have lived here all my life and I’ve lived in the south, and I’ve lived through much, and I’ve seen this movie before. They’re burning churches again. What are you all going to do about it?”

You see, we are in need of redeeming. We can’t do that redeeming by ourselves. When we come together, which is what we did, to name again before one another and God that we are in need of redeeming, that we can’t do that redeeming ourselves, and we invite the Lamb of God, the Son of God, to come with us and be with us, and to hand over our weakness and vulnerability, our prejudices and our sins, and ask for them to be redeemed. We are met there, by that Lamb of God, and then we are called to witness to it. In this scripture today, Jesus says to those who would listen, “Come and see,” just come and see. So I leave you with these words from Reinhold Niebuhr, “Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime. Therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone. Therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe, as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness.”

Amen.

1 Christmas

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

John 1:1-18

Love Came Down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, love divine;

Love was born at Christmas,

Star and angels gave the sign.

Worship we the Godhead,

Love incarnate, love divine;

Worship we our Jesus:

But wherewith for sacred sign?

Love shall be our token,

Love be yours and love be mine,

Love to God and all men,

Love for plea and gift and sign.

The hymnal 1982 is in possession of two beautiful Christmas hymns that are music put to the poetry of Christina Rossetti. Christina Rossetti’s poem “A Christmas Carol” put to music is known to us as hymn 112 or “in the bleak midwinter.” Her poem, which I just read, entitled “Christmastide” put to music is our hymn 84, of course, or best known to us as “Love came down at Christmas.”

Christina Rossetti’s life was not an easy or simple one. She was born in London in 1830, the daughter of an Italian poet, her brother Dante Gabriel a renowned pre-Raphaelite painter and poet. Christina grew herself in the shadow of her famous family but was no slouch when it came to poetry. What makes Christina Rossetti an inspiration to us today, is her spiritual faith. She, a devout Anglo-Catholic who embraced deeply the spirituality and practice of the Oxford movement in the mid 1800’s, was known to have been committed in prayer and practice. Her faith and devotion were most impressive because of the challenges of her life. Most of her life she struggled not only against the alleged abuses of her father, but also from disfiguring effects of Graves disease and eventually a number of years struggle with cancer.

It is true that her life was not easy or simple, and at the same time remarkable and renewing to receive the simply the beauty of her faith in this lovely hymn where she expresses an experience Jesus as the gift of love capable of transcending the challenges of her life. It is this very transcendence we celebrate in the mystery of the Incarnation, that is, God is with us.

St. John’s poetry rises up this day and meets Christina Rossetti’s. St. John tell us,

“And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'") From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.”

We have received grace upon grace John tells us, in this “Word that has become flesh”. A grace perhaps that can transcend even the most challenging things of the human experience, illness and abuse in Christina Rossetti’s circumstance, seem to be transcended and beauty emerges from the core of that being, and she calls that grace…“LOVE.” Love came down at Christmas.

If we say we allow Christina Rossetti’s words then to bring song to our lips and we join her in saying that we believe that love came down at Christmas, then what are we really saying?

I suggest that we are saying that each day we choose to believe in that which the world would sometimes have us not. Believing is about giving our heart to something. That something may not ever be discovered in an evidentiary proceeding but in a much more powerful realm. The word belief is derived from the word Credo or Creed. The meaning of which is more powerfully discovered in the notion of “giving our hearts” to something, rather than fully understanding something. I give my heart to the mystery that are the loves of my life. When I say I give my heart to my spouse, my children, my family, my friends, my fellow congregants, my fellow citizens; I do so never fully agreeing with or sometimes even coming close to understanding them. Yet I do say I believe in them, that is, I give my heart to them. When I say I believe that love came down at Christmas, I do so never fully comprehending or understanding how it this world sometimes fails to embrace justice, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and peace. My “belief” however, is that God’s very heart longs for these things for his creation. God leans heavily on the side of these things hoping to pull us along.

Everyday we have a choice of “belief,” a choice as to where we will “give our hearts.” Where will we lean? For me, I’ll “give my heart” to the side of justice, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and peace. Can you imagine a world where there was no “belief” that love came down at Christmas? this world sometimes fails to embrace justice, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, and peace. My “belief,” however, is that God’s very heart longs for these things for his creation. God leans heavily on the side of these things, hoping to pull us along. Every day we have a choice of “belief,” a choice as to where we will “give our hearts.” Where will we lean? For me, I’ll “give my heart” to the side of justice, mercy, compassion

Christmas Day 2010

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

One of the things I love about this Cathedral’s Sanctuary is the splendid mix of light and colors that shine through the stained glass at various times of the year and the day. This is most noticeable if you can sit with lights down or off. You may not notice if you are not looking at how the hewed colors shine through that magnificent Rose window of ours, slowly making their way throughout the day toward the altar as the day progresses. Hues of green, blue, yellow, paint the pews and aisles with gentle strokes of color. From the original entrance, this side of the Baptistry, the light in the late afternoon sneaks in and shines off of the pulpit, making the brass “face” of the pulpit literally become translucent. If you look at it with a fixed gaze, it really does come to life.

It’s hard to say this was done by design, but nonetheless it happens that as the day wears on, the light from rear and side do meet near the steps that lead to the chancel. It is the intersection of this light that in the right frame invites us to consider a deeper sense beyond our intellect of a mysterious and holy intersection.

This Christmas morning you and I are invited into a mysterious and holy intersection. The feast of the Incarnation is what we call this celebration and it is the bringing to “light,” if you will, the intersection of the human and the divine! We make a theological and a life statement in our prayers and in our songs this day that God brings to us in the person of Jesus, one who will become our Christ. God is acting in an intentional intertwining of the human and the divine. This mystery we celebrate invites us to consider that God’s love, hope, and presence intersect with our human limitation: our fears, our despairs, our sin. This intersection gives birth, not to a passive response, but to an action, that is to place our hearts in trust that the babe in the manger grows into full stature, and through his life, teaching, and sacrifice, reveals to us a righteous life-giving path to follow!

In his Gospel, John brings speech to this mysterious intersection in poetry. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God.

Children of God we are indeed. We stand this day in an intersection of light and hope. How shall we follow?

Perhaps we follow the words of a then young preacher who, during the very years that this wonderful structure was being built to house a vibrant congregation in South Bethlehem, was coming into his own as Rector of Trinity Church Philadelphia. The young Philips Brooks, best known as Rector of Trinity Church Copley Square Boston, and then Bishop of Massachusetts, is the author of the text of one of our most beloved hymns, O Little Town of Bethlehem. First his words invite us to sing out an invitation to this holy child to be made manifest in us.

O holy Child of Bethlehem!

Descend to us, we pray;

Cast out our sin and enter in,

Be born in us to-day.

We hear the Christmas angels

The great glad tidings tell;

O come to us, abide with us,

Our Lord Emmanuel!

Second, in a short exhortation from a sermon, to have our lives reflect the divine in our human existence: "Do not pray for easy lives, but pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, but pray for power equal to your tasks. Then the accomplishing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle. Every day you shall wonder at yourself and the richness of life which has come to you by the grace of God."

Merry Christmas. Amen.

IV Sunday of Advent

The Very Rev. Anthony R. Pompa

Matthew 1:18-25

Come thou long expected Jesus, born to set they people free,

from our fears and sins release us,

let us find our rest in thee.

These are the words of the hymn we sing in the season of Advent, the bringing of our hopes to the lips of our song. Come thou long EXPECTED Jesus. Set us free from fear and sin so that we might find our rest in thee.

Have you been pondering Archdeacon Cluett’s words of last week? If you missed his sermon from last week, his words challenged us to think about what exactly it is we EXPECT of this Jesus our voices raised in song and longing for. He reminded us that when it comes to God’s story, we best be careful about our expectations.

It is the unexpected things of Jesus I want to explore with you today.  I’d like to open them with you like gifts that have been left for us under a tree. As we open these gifts of the unexpected Jesus, I would like to invite you to join me in examining the mantra of small children all over the world and see if the same spirit rises up in you when you open these unexpected gifts.

You know the mantra I speak of. It goes like this; “Oh, oh, oh, oh, look, look, look. I got it, I got it, I got it. I got just what I wanted! Thank you, thank you, thank you. How could he have known?”

We turn to the story in the gospel according to Matthew to discover these unexpected gifts. I don’t believe it takes great scholarly surveillance of this scripture to understand that Joseph’s initial response to the news that a child is about to be gifted leads to the “Oh, look, look, look, look; goody, goody, goody, goody; I got it, I got it, I got it. It’s just what I wanted. How could he have known?”

Instead, what we glean from the story today are the unexpected gifts that are all wrapped up in this story of this God event. It is no stretch, whatsoever, to say that this is not the way Joseph had imagined things going. It is safe to say the same is true for Mary.

I believe the unexpected gifts that are present for them and for us in this story are a loss of control and a loss of power. Let us further unwrap this idea to explore just how I might suggest a loss of control and a loss of power could, indeed, be spiritual gifts.

Whatever plans Joseph may have made in his engagement with Mary, whatever expectations they may have shared about their life together, certainly had been dashed. We can say for certain this is not the way he had planned it. If this story is going to be more than just a story of humble beginnings for a young Jewish family and become instead a profound act of God in a specific time in history, then Joseph would need to yield whatever control he had left in this situation. This yielding of control would be most important. Joseph has a choice to make in this story. Joseph easily could have been within his rights to exercise the control given him under the law and separated himself from Mary without any obligation. His instinct, of course, was to exercise that control and walk away from Mary. This, it seems again, was his plan until, with a little visit from a friendly angel in a dream, he yields his control and instead chooses to follow an uncertain, but Godly path. This yielding would lead him to be there as a helpmate on this journey of God’s salvation. This important yielding would have Joseph then present, leading Mary to safe harbor where God’s promise would take on flesh, born humbly on a cold night in a stable, or perhaps even a cave. This important yielding would keep Joseph by Mary’s side and following his prompter, the angel, he would usher his new family to Egypt, to safe harbor from the evil intentions of Herod. Though the scriptures do not give us great detail from this point forward, we believe, of course, that Joseph would continue to be present, raising this child, nurturing him with his mother, and teaching him the family trade.

I contend the gift delivered to Joseph by an angel of the Lord is permission to “lose control.” Might there also be a gift for you and me here? The human instinct, of course, is to be in control, to plan life, execute life, and be masters of our destiny. It seems this God thing unexpectedly asks us to let go at times. I might suggest that it is in those particular times, when our instinct is begging us to swim harder against the current, that we might be missing the gift to “lose control,” that is to let go and let the current take us. Certainly Joseph’s intuition strongly encouraged him to exercise control, divorce Mary, and move on with his life. Instead, he yielded, and teaches us how to follow.

It is worthy, then, for us to consider the unexpected things in life that might offer us a gift of “losing control” and an opportunity to explore how it is we follow God. How is that mantra feeling to you right now? If the gift of losing control is about our learning how to follow God, then the gift of “loss of power” is about learning how God follows us. This is the next unexpected gift I would like to explore with you.

What do we expect of power? We are powerful, educated, self-sufficient, and competent. We are citizens of the most powerful country in the world, economically, politically, militarily. I offer this with no judgment, no good, no bad, just as a statement of fact. Certainly our living with this reality informs the way we expect to experience power! Certainly what we do not expect of power is to lose it.

Joseph and Mary, in their time, certainly had a different expectation of power. Being of a challenged economic class, they understood who had the power – Rome and the religious establishment of the day. They, themselves, may not have been powerful citizens economically, politically, and certainly not militarily. However, Joseph understood the power of the law and the promises of the prophets. Their expectation of power from the God they followed could also have been consistent with the hope of a powerful messiah who would set them free militarily, economically, and politically.

What we learn from the story, however, is that what God is up to in this drama is something they never could have expected in a million years. God would reveal power in a new way, humbly wrapped in swaddling clothes, the hope of the world enfleshed in a babe would begin from that day forward to reveal a power of God’s advocacy that would give birth to the most transformative movement in history. The name of this advocate is Emmanuel, God is with us!

So, let us open our gifts: loss of control and loss of power, and see how it is these things can be for us a gift of opportunity to follow and be followed so near with God.

Many among us know an experience of being completely at the mercy of circumstances that seemingly render us without control or power. Some of us may not have had an experience like this yet. In fact, some of us may fear it greatly because we are conditioned by the culture that helplessness may come because of our lack of effort. The truth of the matter is that there comes a time for all of us when we are without control and power. There is no employment coming quickly, no matter how hard we try. There is no cure for a disease from which we may suffer. There is no crop that can come from a dry or barren land. There is no control over the minds and actions of dictators or leaders of countries where a lasting peace seems to be their last desire. There is no control over an addiction that has gripped us. There will always be a time when our organs will stop working and death will be ours. There is no bringing back to life one whom we loved and have lost in death. There are times when we are truly without control or power.

It is then, in that very moment or circumstance, that perhaps we can unexpectedly begin to understand Emmanuel as an advocate. That is when someone or something bigger than us stands with us profoundly in our brokenness. That is when someone or something bigger than us cries out on our behalf when life has muted our hope, and will pick us up and carry us when our legs and feet succumb. That is when someone or something bigger than us will hold onto our faith until we can hold it again for ourselves. Powerless and without control, when we know we cannot go it alone, we may find new ways to follow and be followed.

Come thou long expected Jesus,

from our fears and sins release us,

let us find our rest in thee.

Amen.

The Third Sunday of Advent

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

Those of you who are of a certain age may remember one of my all-time favorite authors, Loren Eisley. For those who have not read him, he was an anthropologist, a naturalist, scholar, poet, teacher, and a wonderful storyteller. He is most remembered for his books The Immense Journey and The Unexpected Universe.

A fundamental learning from nature for him was: What happens is not always what we expect. Pretty simple, right? But hard for humans to remember. He writes that we thought we had wrapped up the universe in a neat package of law and order. Scientists understood most things, and they were rational and dependable. The universe was governed by Law, not by chance, and the Law was unchangeable, immutable.

He wrote, in the 1960’s, that we were beginning to discover surprises in the universe, things we had not expected, things we could not possibly have foreseen. (What would Eisley be saying, do you think, if  he knew about today’s New Physics and such things as Quantum Theory, and Chaos theory, and the ultimate Theory of Everything).

There is something about our universe, our life, he says, “that slips through the fingers of the mind.” There is something beyond the rational, the thinkable, that points toward the unexpected, to an unforeseeable future. He was saying to scientists, and to all of us, “don't be to sure; keep looking, but don’t be too sure; we don't know exactly what is going to happen.” Eisley quotes Heraclitus, "If you do not expect it, you will not find the unexpected, for it is hard to find and difficult."

Was there ever a better theme for Advent than that? "Come thou long expected Jesus..." Was anyone more expected than the Messiah? A whole nation, a whole people were expecting him. They had been waiting for hundreds of years for his coming.

They were looking everywhere for him. And every time that they saw someone like John the Baptist they wondered whether he might be the One, the Messiah. The hope of his coming kept them going through the humiliation and the indignity of their exile and then living as a conquered people under the Babylonians and then the Romans. They certainly did expect a Messiah.

And yet when he did come, they didn't know it because he wasn't the Messiah they were expecting. Not even John the Baptist recognized him. They expected him to come with a fanfare, to cause a big stir. But he didn't. He came quietly. Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, “probably no child born into the world that day seemed to have poorer prospects than did Christ.”

Some few did recognize him - but a precious few. Most people expected a Messiah who would liberate them from Rome. He didn't. He liberated them from sin and guilt. They expected a Messiah who would dazzle them with special feats. He didn't. He healed the sick, fed the hungry and ministered to people according to their need.

They expected a Messiah who would reaffirm the Law; instead he talked about love.

They expected a Messiah who would make life easier: reduce the taxes, increase employment, bring down prices. He didn't. He talked about crosses, not crowns. He talked about changing oneself, as a first step in changing the situation in which one lives.

They expected a Messiah who would be theirs alone. He wasn't. He came for all. But most of all they expected a Messiah who would be a smashing success. He wasn't.

People just weren't ready for this unexpected Christ. The Scholars of the Jesus Seminar give this warning in their introduction to The Five Gospels: "Beware of finding a Jesus entirely congenial to you"

Now we approach another Christmas, the middle of another season of Advent... a season of preparing and expecting. We know that Christmas will come. The calendar always, eventually, gets around to December 25th, and if we are patient we will enjoy another Christmas celebration. We know that.

And we also know that Christ will come -- and instinctively, we look for him to come in certain ways, and we feel certain he will come in just that way. He will break through, here and there, the crust of our fierce and competitive world. He will soften a hard heart here and there. He will heal an open wound. Miracle of miracles, he will be the occasion for the exchange of love and affectionate greetings and gifts.

But there is also the sense that he is always the unexpected Christ. We expect him to come in the usual place, like in Church. But for many of us, he will come in the street or an office or a factory or a laboratory or the unemployment office or the playing field or in the market or classroom. We expect him to come in the music of the carols we sing and have loved all our lives. He will, but for many others he will come through the driving beat of a rock band or in the rhyming of a rap song.

We expect him to come in our liturgy. He will. But he will also come to those who don't worship at all, ever. We expect him to come in the structure of our comfortable lives. He will. But he will also come to some little shed far removed from our lives which has no comfort at all.

Just as he comes from the mud of a stable, he comes to muddy the  waters of our expectations, almost as if he were saying, “When I come, I come as I am. If you don't expect me, you will not find me. If you do expect me, don't be surprised if I am not the one you expected.”

So who is it you expect this Advent? Do you expect this one or another? “Is he the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” We join with the crowd around Jesus to hear his answer. And we hear words of promise, words that hold the past and the future together in a present hope: “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

So are you waiting for this Messiah, the One who will be the sign of God's mercy and steadfastness and loving-kindness and salvation; or for some other one? Where would we find such a One? Perhaps sitting next to you, or across the living room or in the next office or across the sales counter or just around the next corner. What do you expect?

The kingdom is present, Jesus is present whenever there is witness and proclamation, healing and reconciliation, feeding and housing, holding and caring offered by those who live in his hope. We are witnesses to this kingdom and to this Christ. We need to bring the Good News of this Christ; we need to make this Messiah known.

Please pray with me. Sharpen our minds, 0 Lord, humble our spirits, and open our hearts to take in the love that once became flesh, that comes among us again and again. Help us, not only, to take him in, but to let others see him in us. We ask in his name, by his power, and for his sake; for he is the one who comes to set us free. Amen.

Second Sunday of Advent 2010

The Rev. Canon Mariclair Partee

Today in our readings we have dueling images, and at first it might seem that they are meant to contradict each other. I think instead they are meant to be parallels, across the millennia between the writing of the Old Testament and the New, and between the times of Jesus and the times we live in, today, now, in this Advent. In the midst of this time and space travel from prophet to prophet we find hope, and we find encouragement.

Isaiah gives us the literal family tree of the Messiah- an almost cinematic picture of a slender green shoot emerging from a dried brown tree stump, a sign of life and strength from a thing thought long dead and gone. We know that this bit of green hope is King David, and the branch that springs from the roots will grow broad to support a series of limbs linking him to Solomon to Jehosaphat to Uzziah to Amon to Zerubbabel and all the patriarchs and matriarchs in between and eventually to Jesus, with some variation depending on which of the numerous genealogies one finds in the scriptures is used.

So there we have an earthly sign of the groundwork being laid for the coming of the Lord, but then we get into the more supernatural, though still of the earth. Isaiah lays out for us a scene of the world righting itself back to Eden, the enmity of nature that started at the fall disappearing, and a scene worthy of a Christmas card taking its place- fierce beasts and gentle lambs existing peacefully, side by side, the vulnerable interacting with the predator with impunity, the small child subverting the normal way of things and ruling from a place of gentleness. This small child has come to represent Jesus for us Christians as we read this Old Testament prophet, and the picture created is a comforting one, a warming one- all the instinctual feelings a baby brings about in us, plus the knowledge that this child will grow into the one we follow to this day.

It is a soul-warming image and one that gives sustenance during the bitter cold of winter, but it can be almost too sweet, too simple, and to counteract any chance of us sentimentalizing the life that Jesus lived by reducing him to just that babe in a manger so many years ago, we have the gospel, and we have John.

We have John, scary John, with his camel hair and locusts and honey, John who really doesn’t fit in anywhere, who is an outsider and antisocial and has claimed the wasteland of the desert as his own, is in our readings today, I believe, to remind us of that other side of Jesus,  the one who drove out the moneychangers from the temple with a lash made of ropes, the one who spoke truth to power, the one who is coming again with a winnowing fork to separate the wheat from the chaff, who will tear down the trees that bear no fruit, who can purify all of us with the waters of baptism and with the unquenchable fire of the Holy Spirit.

This is not the Jesus of the Christmas card, unless you send very bizarre Christmas cards.

In talking to other sermon-writing friends this week, I found that we all struggled with talking about this triumphant, apocalyptic Jesus, and instead were all hedging our bets with the little child who led from Isaiah. It felt almost rude, one fellow priest said, to spoil the party and the fun of Advent and the celebration of Christmas with the dread of judgment, that was what Lent was for, and though he was only half joking, the temptation is very strong to worship the baby and neglect the reality of the man. These images are dueling and difficult sometimes, but complementary.

Isn’t that the great miracle we await in Advent, that we celebrate on Christmas day, the birth of a homeless child to a family of immigrants, a child both fully human and fully divine?

We see in the biblical life stories of Jesus, before he becomes the Christ at Easter, a very human person, struggling against injustice, trying to teach his followers, trying to get this thing he was born to do right before the death he knows is coming. This is a struggle we can all identify with, I think. And then we also have Jesus, the fully divine, who can see history spreading out behind him and the future before, and holds us, lovingly, in the tension of the present- we can identify with this as well, having turned to this Jesus once and again for comfort, for strength.

And so this, I think, is why we have John the Baptist in our readings today. He is sent in all his locusty fearsomeness to make straight the path, to prepare, truly, the way for the Lord, who will come to us in a few short weeks, but also to remind us, along with Isaiah, that our Lord is not one dimensional. Just as Jesus shares our humanity, he shares our human condition.

We all have in ourselves bits of power and powerlessness, and at one point or another we have all taken advantage of our positions of power in a way that we knew we should not have. In a way this is the most basic definition of sin- we’ve acted in a way that has separated us from God, and from each other. Luckily, as Christians, we are able to confess our sins, to beg forgiveness of our community and our Lord, and return to God, again and again.

This, I think, is why John was castigating the Pharisees and Sadducees, the ones who went out from the city and the temple into the desert to be washed in the waters of baptism by him. He thought they were there as a precautionary measure, covering all their bases without really believing, just in case this John guy was right about the coming Lord. The Greek used in the gospel doesn’t shed much light on why the Pharisees and Sadducees were out in the desert in the first place. It could be read that they came to be baptized, or to protest against the baptizing going on. Either constructs a narrative that is believable, preachable, but I think it was the former, that they came to be baptized by John. I’ll even go a step beyond John himself, I think they truly wanted the life that he offered, truly wanted to be free of the burdens and postures of their lives, and saw that chance in the purification that he offered them. They understood that in every one of us there is good and bad, and even through the hyperbole of John’s preaching in the wilderness, they saw a chance for unification of those sides, for salvation and wholeness in God.