Happy valentine’s day; no matter your circumstance today, you are beloved, more than words can say. In the meantime, my valentine said I could share this with you:
The undertow sucks sand from underfoot,
but I stand firm.
Wild horses swim across the strand;
I will not follow.
Turtles play; I tear myself away
even from them:
The rising tide of my love for you
runs ever full.
A sermon for the fifth Sunday after the Epiphany in an election year …
You are the salt of the earth.
You are the light of the world.
You are God’s gift to creation.
This month during our coffee hour formation we will be talking about spiritual gifts, how to discern them and how to use them; but let’s start here: you are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world. You are God’s gift to creation.
Many of us, perhaps especially those of us raised female, have been taught too long to be oh so humble and self-effacing; too much salt spoils the soup, and too much light is glaring. But no one lights a lamp to hide it under a bushel, and the prophet Isaiah rails against a people that practices false humility, pretending to bow down before God, piling on sackcloth and ashes while in their hearts they hide greed and anger, violence and vengeance, the fruits of selfishness and pride.
Instead, Isaiah advises, turn yourselves inside out. Instead of feeding your own piety, feed your neighbour. Instead of building up your capitol, build shelter for your homeless neighbour. Instead of clothing yourself in self-righteousness, cover the cold and the shivering. Instead of locking in your own security, open the prisons, release the captives, and loose the bonds of injustice.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly.
You are God’s gift to creation, after all.
I notice, by the way, that the list that Isaiah puts before the people bears a striking resemblance to the list that Jesus sets out in the parable of the sheep and the goats, when the king separates those who clothed the naked and fed the hungry and visited the imprisoned from those who did not even notice their needs. And both of them, Isaiah and Jesus, are preaching a political message, about the end of oppression and the elevation of equality, about the mercy and justice of God, and that new world order, the kingdom of God.
You are the salt of the earth; you are the light of the world.
You are God’s gift, God’s political campaign contribution. You are God’s PAC.
The last time we looked at this passage together, I noted that
In the older church rites, salt was added to the rituals surrounding baptism. It was placed in the mouths of those being presented for the baptismal rite. That combination of salt and water – that is to say, the combination of you and your baptism – is powerfully good.
Even salt that is thrown out and trampled underfoot is useful, we know from our experience, for helping us to get a grip when the roads are icy and it’s hard to stay upright.
We know that the next several months in this country will be difficult and fraught. The twin temptations to pride and to silence, to excuse our pride with piety and our silence with false humility, will be strong.
But you are the salt of the earth, baptized with water and seasoned by Word and Sacrament. You are the light of the world, lit on fire by the Holy Spirit. What a gift God has given through you to the nations!
By keeping our salt, ready to speak God’s truth in a world of spin, we can help keep our grip on reality, the truth that matters, the justice of God. Don’t hold back, Isaiah advises: announce to my people their rebellion. Point out their sin.
But not with quarrelling and violence. Not with finger pointing and evil words. Advocate for equality, but in doing so, do not lose your own humanity, however funny the meme, however cheap and tempting the shot. Do not spoil your speech with insult and injury against anyone. Respect the dignity of every human being, even those with whom we disagree; do not insult the image of God within them. Love your enemies, as Jesus might have said elsewhere. Take care of their tender dignity. But salt your speech with truth. Be unafraid in countering sin with the mercy and justice of God, oppression with the glory of Christ crucified and risen.
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, your healing shall spring up quickly. Sunlight, too, is a powerful disinfectant, a cleansing element, as well as a guide and a comfort.
You are the light of the world, sent to shine with the knowledge of Christ, to lift the gloom and make it like the noonday sun. It is not a glaring, harsh light. It does not hurt or blind the eyes of those whom it seeks to illuminate. But it is clear, and unwavering. That means that we must be careful of where we find our illumination, our information.
If we are to have a reputation for clarity and truth, for keeping a grip on reality and salting a pathway, not a slippery slope, but the road to righteousness, then we had better make sure that the story we are sharing on our social media feeds or in the barber shop comes not from a Russian troll bot, but is a true word worthy of the Word of God, the Christ for whom we are named Christians. Sources matter.
And why does it matter that what we say and share is trustworthy and true, and kind and dignified? We live in a weary and cynical world, where trust is hard to come by and even harder to restore once lost or damaged. Checking that the stories we share, the stories we tell are trustworthy and true matters first because Jesus is the Truth, so untruth is antithetical to him. But also, if your neighbour knows that you have been taken in by the latest conspiracy theory or doctored meme, their trust in your discernment of Christ and his true doctrine may also be damaged. At worst, they may suspect that the very gospel we proclaim is just one more conspiracy theory.
When “Paul” wrote to Timothy, “The saying is trustworthy and true, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” he was believed because Paul was known to be a trustworthy and true source. (1 Tim 1:15)
We are the salt of the earth, Jesus says, so we must develop a discerning palate for what is good and in accord with the justice of God which is always merciful, which is never in error but which errs on the side of grace. We are not to lose our salt over anything less.
We are the light of the world, Jesus says. We must be unafraid to uncover dark corners and disinfect our internal newsfeeds with the Sonlight, the Christlight. Eschew false humility, dispense with hypocrisy. Take pride only in Christ crucified, and trust in his resurrection.
You are the gift of God to the world. We are called, as Christians, as salt and light to represent Christ to a cynical and weary world. We have seen a vision of the kingdom of God, the release of the captives, the relief of the oppressed, the justification of the maligned and misunderstood, the mercy of God. That is our gift from God in Christ.
So guard the flame. Salt the soup. Shine as a light to the world, and always to the glory of Christ crucified, our risen and ascended Saviour.
You are salt: be bold. You are light: be illuminating. You are God’s gift: live with love. Amen.
Yesterday was our parish Annual Meeting, but of course, the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple takes precedence …
Simeon said, “Now I can die happy.” Anna had been waiting eighty-four years – now she was running around like a spring lamb telling everyone that she had seen the redemption of Jerusalem; she should know, since she was a prophet.
What they had witnessed, these two faithful devotees, was one small family among many, coming to the Temple as so many did, to circumcise their firstborn son, to sacrifice turtle doves of thanksgiving for his safe delivery and survival, which then as now was not to be taken for granted.
The baby who squalled and screamed as they “[did] for him what was customary under the law” would soon return to Galilee and its backwaters. It would be twelve years before he was heard from again in the Temple. Anna would most likely be dead; Simeon maybe too.
It would be more than thirty years before Jesus returned as a man on a mission, cleansing the Temple of corrupt dealers and dirt, paving the way for his own destruction, his criminal crucifixion, setting himself up for the fall.
Certainly Anna, and probably Simeon, would not live to see the day of Resurrection, nor gather with the disciples of this babe in the Temple as, weary and confused, they heard the rumours of an empty tomb, a garden encounter, the promise of their Messiah fulfilled.
Within another generation, the Temple itself would be razed by the Romans, its rubble to this day the matter of archaeologists more than priests and prophets, the subject of conflict and the object of desire, but rarely associated with peace.
And yet on this morning, thousands of years ago, the prophet proclaimed the redemption of Jerusalem, and the prayerful man, drawn to the Temple and the child by the Spirit, prayed, “Now I can die happy.”
The genius of Simeon and of Anna, I think, was that they were able to see hope without seeing the whole story, the whole blueprint. They saw Jesus, and he was enough to inspire them with the firm and secure knowledge that in the midst of occupation and strife, God was still with them. They saw Jesus and knew that eighty-four years of widowhood, or however long it had been for Anna, were not empty, but that love had never left her. They saw Jesus and knew that whatever the other cares and caveats of life, in this moment of sacrifice, of flesh, blood, and Spirit, life made sense, as it was offered back to God in thanksgiving, and returned to the child and his parents as a promise.
They saw Jesus, and they knew God.
Waiting is hard. I am the last person to pretend that it isn’t. I do not have the patience of the saints. Waiting, for good news or for bad, takes its toll on a person’s spirit, even on their faith, if we are not careful.
Some of you may be waiting for health news, or for healing, for test results, or for treatment plans.
Some of you may be learning the new, slow life of widowhood, or the empty nest, or waiting for a new home or relationship to feel normal, or hoping that it never does.
Some of us may be waiting for the world to stop fighting itself, for the country to stop dividing itself, for the realm of God to replace the imperfect, fallen systems of governance that we try to prop up as best we can.
Some of us may be waiting for the restoration of the Temple, the rebuilding of the church, the rebirth of bustling Sunday School classes and bursting pews.
It can feel sometimes as though Jesus has withdrawn to the backwaters of Galilee, , and we do not know when we will see him again, nor whether he will come with whips and cords to clean out the temples of power, or even our own house; or whether he will come in chains, bowed down by the burdens of the principalities that still oppose the reign of God, its justice, its mercy, its peace; or whether he will come in glory, a light to shine the world toward salvation.
But Simeon, and perhaps especially Anna, the prophet, show us that we do not need to see the end of the story to know, in its beginnings, in our first encounters with Jesus, however incomplete and inarticulate and inchoate they may be; Simeon and Anna show us that if we allow our hearts to be melted by the love of God borne into the world, we will know the peace that passes understanding, and endures beyond the moment of pause, and silences the rabbling, quarrelling chaos of the world with its cry of flesh and blood and Spirit, the covenant of God with God’s children, the promise of God’s enduring and surviving grace.
Anna and Simeon found the love of God, after all, in the simple, everyday act of parents, and step-parents, doing what was required and customary for their child, and giving thanks for his survival. Anna, long-widowed and childless, was generous of spirit to take solace in the joy of others, even though it might have pierced her, too.
Simeon and Anna found the love of God even under the knife, something I find hard to understand or accept; but that might, after all, without too much of a stretch, remind me of the love of God guiding the hand of a surgeon, and the comfort and healing touch of the theatre nurse in the recovery room; for the presence of God even in pain.
Anna and Simeon found the love of God while witnessing another’s act of faith, of sacrifice, of prayer, and it sustained them.
Most immediately, they found the love of God in Jesus. They knew, when they encountered him, that the promises of God, Emmanuel, God with us were true, and that even if they saw nothing else, never knew how the story of this child would grow and how many peoples would know it, if they saw no more of the story, they knew that they had seen the salvation of God, the mercy of the Creator manifest in creation, the coming of the reign of God, slow but unstoppable.
We meet today for our Annual Meeting, of course, and we wonder what God has in store for us as we continue the mission and meetings of our founders in this place, in a setting and situation they could not have imagined even ninety-some years ago. So much has changed; and yet we meet as Christians always have, to witness the coming of Christ among us, as Word and Sacrament, to give thanks for the enduring life of the child born to give light to the nations, and to guide our feet into the way of peace.
We come with our burdens of grief, of suspense, of disappointment. We come with our gifts of faith, hope, and love. We come not knowing how this story will end, but here at the altar, Jesus is present, and in his presence, may we find, if not what we are looking for, then instead what we most need, and what God most longs for us, to see.
Amen.
Image: The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Sarum Missal c. 1310-1320, National Library of Wales [CC0], via wikimedia commons
There is a lot going on in the world, in the country, in our communities and families.
Sometimes, the best antidote to overwhelm is to give in to kittens the overwhelming, particular, peculiar love of God.
Sometimes, this can be expressed in kittens.
This is a prayer I shared on the Episcopal Cafe for the celebration of the arrival of new feline family members:
For eyes that pierce the dark,
when we least expect it,
let us give thanks;
For the duty of care,
feeding, scooping,
cleaning, and scouring,
let us give thanks;
For fragility and agility,
the dance on the stairs,
dangerous vulnerability,
give thanks;
For the purring murmur in the night,
reminder of love awakened,
give thanks;
For the strange song,
not altogether holy,
give thanks to all that is Holy;
For the incantation of
all creation contained in the call
to the stewardship of a cat,
I give thanks;
For the foreshadowing in claws
of judgement,
and for their retraction,
I give thanks;
For curiosity that God has seeded;
for negligent affection,
hiding the impossible:
comprehension, connection
with the ineffable mind of One
who would create camels and scorpions
out of the same clay;
I give thanks for this feline revelation,
mediation, distracting reification:
Thanks be to God for the cat.
(Yes, there are cats in the book:
The humble housecat has domesticated the earth so entirely that there is no escape from her influence, nor from her evangelism on behalf of the omnipresent Lion-tamer.
From A Family Like Mine: Biblical Stories of Love, Loss, and Longing, out from Upper Room Books on April 1!)
A sermon for the second Sunday after the Epiphany, and Martin Luther King, Jr, weekend, at the Church of the Epiphany in Euclid, Ohio
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” (Isaiah 49:6)
I love that God is not above playing with words. Since the beginning, when the Word went forth and created light, the pun has been in development: It is too light a thing/I will give you as a light to the nations.
This is not to make light of God’s charge to the people. It is not enough, God says, to restore your own people, to take care of your own, to protect your own interests and your own inheritance. That is too easy and too ordinary a thing for those called by God’s name, chosen as God’s covenanted people, inheritors of the promises to Abraham forever; and we have claimed the inheritance of that mantle alongside our brothers, sisters, and siblings who first heard the call to light.
No, God says, whatever you do you do on behalf of the world. Because when God created light, it did not shine only in the east, or only in the west, nor did it turn away from anyone except to return with the morning and the dawning and the seasons. God created light for the benefit of the whole of creation, that we might see and understand even toward the heavens, exploring the darkness of the skies with their faraway, fading, and guiding stars.
When we claim to have seen the light, it is not because it shines more brightly on us than on our neighbour, but because we have only just opened our eyes.
It is too light a thing, says the LORD, that you should only take care of your own. Other translations say it is too easy, it is too slight, it is too small a thing, too narrow a focus when there is a wideness in God’s mercy that spans creation, all who are created in God’s image.
If only God didn’t think so highly of us! God’s mercy is wide, we might say, but our reach is limited, and our influence waning in the world. We can’t save everyone.
We can’t save every black child from the stress that comes from growing up in a country riddled with racism. We may mourn, amongst other things, the vast discrepancies in health outcomes from the moment of their birth, and the mortality of black mothers, to the crippling indignities that accompany disparities in pain relief and pain belief. It’s unconscionable. But what can we do?
We can’t save every white child from the insidious lies of white supremacy that continue to drive those disparities and underwrite all kinds of inequality and evil. You cannot rescue a fish from water. You have to clean up the stream.
We can’t save every migrant child, every refugee, every asylum seeker, apparently, nor their families, from things done on our behalf.
We can’t save every country from war, from tyranny, from oppression.
God’s mercy is wide, we might say, but our reach is limited and our influence is waning. We can’t save everyone, can we?
“I formed you in the womb,” says the LORD, “to be my servant.” (Isaiah 49:5)
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
And by the way, says the LORD, I am relying on you to help relieve the burden of anti-Semitism and hatred from tribes of Jacob and from the survivors of Israel, too.
We cannot save everyone, but God’s salvation will reach to the ends of the earth. We are called to be its light, its harbinger.
We are to light torches and build beacons and in every wave and particle of our lives to be a light in the darkness, to be the lightness that relieves our neighbour’s burden, to be the hope that keeps feet climbing until we reach the mountaintop, to do all the good that we can for all the people we can, to defeat all the evil that we can in all the ways that we can along the way; and not to return evil for evil, but to replace curses with a blessing, “for to this you have been called, that you may obtain a blessing.” (1 Peter 3:9)
“Come to me,” Jesus said, “all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28-30)
How hard is it, after all, to love God, to love our neighbours, to love our enemies, to love even those for whom we have no passion one way or the other, those who are almost invisible to us? For it is too light a thing, says God, to love only those whom we see.
We see our fellow godchildren as like us, or not like us, or invisible to us. But it is God’s salvation that we proclaim, and that we claim for ourselves, and God created light to shine from one end of the universe to the other.
The light of God’s salvation is for everyone. It is the light which enlightens every body, which lifts every burden, which anoints every wound with healing.
The Revd Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, preached a sermon titled, “Our God is Able:”
God is able to conquer the evils of history. His control is never usurped. If at times we despair because of the relatively slow progress being made in ending racial discrimination and if we become disappointed because of the undue cautiousness of the federal government, let us gain new heart in the fact that God is able. In our sometimes difficult and lonesome walk up freedom’s road, we do not walk alone. God walks with us. He has placed within the very structure of this universe certain absolute moral laws. We can neither defy nor break them. If we disobey them, they will break us. The forces of evil may temporarily conquer truth, but truth will ultimately conquer its conqueror. Our God is able. (MLK, 114)
And Dr King told of the night when, in the midst of work and trouble, a threatening phone disturbed him so that he wondered if he could continue. The work seemed all at once too heavy. He prayed,
“I am here taking a stand for what I believe is right. But now I am afraid. The people are looking to me for leadership, and if I stand before them without strength and courage, they too will falter. (MLK, 117)
We are called to be beacons of courage. King continued,
I am at the end of my powers. I have nothing left. I’ve come to the point where I can’t face it alone.”
At that moment I experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never before experienced him. It seemed as though I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice, saying, “Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth. God will be at your side forever.” (MLK, 117)
The salvation of God will reach to the end of the earth.
Three nights later, King said, his home was bombed, but he already knew by then that he could take it, that God have given him all that he needed to do the work God had given him to do. He ended his sermon,
“Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, let us remember that there is a great benign Power in the universe whose name is God, and he is able to make a way out of no way, and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows. This is our hope for becoming better men. This is our mandate for seeking to make a better world. (MLK, 117)
It is surely not too light a thing. But it is not too great a burden, either, is it? – the burden, the yoke of God’s love for all of God’s children.
Amen.
All sermon quotes from Martin Luther King Jr, “Our God is Able,” in Strength to Love (Fortress Press, 2010)
Preparing for Sunday, amongst other things I’m struck by God’s pun on light in Isaiah (It is too light a thing that you should be my servant…/I will give you as a light to the nations [Isaiah 49:6]), and I remembered this that came to me last October, watching the light bouncing off the lake, impossible to capture and tame into a frame, the first wild creature of God (Let there be light. [Genesis 1:3])
Light speaks
Light speaks, flashing warnings
off of white-capped waves,
slamming into STOP signs,
seeping, insidious, around closed doors.
Deer by night absorb bites
of car headlights, secreting them
beneath their hides, creating
cloaks of invisibility, but
“’Tis only the splendour
of light hideth thee!”*
A change of light
may indicate an exit.
Even in the dark room, light is not silent;
light whispers, flushed and fevered,
smouldering out of sight to
the point of conflagration.
*From the familiar hymn, “Immortal, invisible, God only wise,” words by Walter C. Smith (1867)
A sermon for the commemoration of the Baptism of Our Lord, with the baptism of a new and infant member of our parish family, and our rehearsal of the Baptismal Covenant*
In the service for marriage in the Book of Common Prayer, the prayer is included that “all … who have witnessed these vows may find their lives strengthened and their loyalties confirmed.” In the same way at ordinations, and most universally at baptisms, the assembled congregation is challenged and affirmed by the vows that they witness to remember their own promises, their own misgivings, to turn once more to God in trust, in penitence, in faith that we are adopted by the Holy Spirit as children of the living God, and confirmed by grace as heirs to the kingdom of heaven.
Kennedy’s parents and godparents make promises on her behalf today, since she is too young to make them for herself; and as we witness them we promise to do all in our power to support not only Kennedy, but those who stand with her as they attempt to live into those bold oaths. And we renew our own Baptismal Covenant, affirming our faith in the One who Created, Redeemed, and continues to Inspire us.
We promise, with God’s help, to remain faithful to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to continue to come together in the Communion of Word and Sacrament, to avail ourselves of the food for the journey with which Christ has provided us, our daily bread; to come together often, to become the Church that Christ called into being to bring good news to the world.
We promise, with God’s help, to resist evil. We know that temptations surround us on every side: temptations to carelessness and contempt, cynicism and snark, deals with the devil, and despair. All that would divide us from God and from one another, from the call to love God and our neighbour as ourselves – all that falls under the banner of sin. When it is deliberate, when it is destructive, when it is cruel, when it is demeaning to the image of God borne by each member of humanity; when it is done by someone else, we call it evil; but we are not immune to evil. We are not immune to the temptations to smear the image of God in the mirror of the person before us. Whenever we fall into sin, we promise with God’s help to seek God’s help to return to righteousness, to restore the vision of God within us, that we may love as Christ loved us.
And that is the good news of God in Christ: that God so loves the world that God gave us Jesus Christ, God Incarnate, to live among us, to die before us, to defeat the powers of evil and death and raise us to a new life, dripping with grace and with blessing. We promise, by word and example, with God’s help to shout it from the rooftops: God loves you, no exceptions. God will meet you where you are. God will raise you from the river, and set you on dry ground.
We promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbours as ourselves, with God’s help becoming selfless, becoming Christlike. There is a virtuous cycle in which the more we find Christ in one another, the more we reflect his love in our own lives. Coming before John, Jesus did not lord it over him. Even when John would demur, Jesus insisted on submitting to John’s ministrations, to joining in his mission of grace. The more we humble ourselves before our neighbours’ needs, the greater our Christlight becomes.
Finally, we promise, with God’s help, to strive for justice, to strive for peace, to respect the dignity of every human being. Peter told the new Christians, “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.” God shows no partiality between peoples and nations, between denominations and demographics, between one child and the next, but we do. We tend always to favour our own family, our own country, our own party, our own religion over another; it’s human nature. And it is right to be judicious in choosing which policies to support, which doctrines to promote, which actions to pursue, good or evil, so long as we do not, in doing so, find ourselves choosing between one person’s humanity and another.
We are more than a baseline of human nature. We are created in the image of God. We have died with Christ in baptism, and we have been raised to a new life. We have levelled up. We are called to go beyond the basics, to love even our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us.
So we promise, with God’s help, to do all that is good, and peaceable, and righteous, loving God with our whole being, and our neighbours as ourselves.
All this we promise for ourselves, and on Kennedy’s behalf. It is a lot to ask of a small child. But what does God promise in return?
God promises mercy:
a bruised reed he will not break,
and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
he will faithfully bring forth justice. (Isaiah 42:3)
God promises consistency and indefatigability:
he will not grow faint or be crushed
until he has established justice in the earth;
and the coastlands wait for his teaching. (Isaiah 42:4)
God promises impartiality, “healing all who [are] oppressed by the devil.” (Acts 10:38)
God promises liberty,
to bring out the prisoners from the dungeon,
from the prison those who sit in darkness. (Isaiah 42:7)
God promises life:
Thus says God, the Lord,
who created the heavens and stretched them out,
who spread out the earth and what comes from it,
who gives breath to the people upon it
and spirit to those who walk in it: (Isaiah 42:5)
God promises steadfast love, sending love into the world in dramatic and bodily form:
“This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:17)
All of these promises Kennedy inherits as she is baptized today. All of the promises we keep, all of the promises we break, all of the promises we mend are held in trust for us by the same grace that flows over her this morning.
With God’s help, we baptize her. With God’s help, we rise refreshed with her, remembering that God is with us, Emmanuel, come hell or high water, and that God has anointed us to bring that good news to the world.
Amen.
*The Baptismal Covenant
Celebrant Do you believe in God the Father?
People I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.
Celebrant Do you believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God?
People I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead.
Celebrant Do you believe in God the Holy Spirit?
People I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.
Celebrant Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?
People I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?
People I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?
People I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?
People I will, with God’s help.
Celebrant Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?
People I will, with God’s help.
(Book of Common Prayer, 305-6)
Featured image: the house of Simon the Tanner, where Peter discovered the impartiality of God through a vision of various animals
It is January 2020 at the Church of the Epiphany in Euclid, Ohio. We are worried by portents of war in the Middle East. At home, our faith communities wrestle with the demands of security measured against the commandments of our faith – not to kill, to love our neighbours, even our enemies. The Gospel reading is from Matthew. The Magi seek the infant Christ. Herod seeks him, too. The Holy Family is warned to flee to Egypt, and the Magi return home by another road.
I am struck by the order of events in Matthew’s story of exile and exodus, the salvation history running through Jesus’ backstory like a pulled thread.
If Joseph was already warned to run before Herod’s soldiers arrived, then why did the wise men need to return by a different road?
Think about it: Even if they had returned to Herod, and told him where the baby lay, Herod would have searched and come up empty. The child was already gone.
It is almost as though the angel of the Lord, appearing to them in a dream, was warning them not so much as to trick Herod, but in order to protect the innocence, the idealism of the Magi from the East.
It is as though the wise ones, having once discovered and worshipped Jesus, found themselves unable, unwilling to betray him, even if it would make no difference, even if the way home would be shorter, even if it might have been safer, more politic; even if stopping by Herod’s palace might have replenished their treasure chests of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, which they had emptied in an act of spontaneous worship and sacrifice at the feet of the little, holy family.
Either way, Jesus would have been safely away, bundled across the desert by night, by his frightened and faithful parents.
(Did they travel alone? Were others forewarned, by dream or by rumour, by well-connected neighbour, to flee the coming wrath? Was there a caravan of families lined up across the Sinai, seeking shelter across the river? History does not tell us much; we are left to our faithful imaginations.)
If the Magi had reported back to Herod, might it have deterred his murderous rage? It seems not. He still would not know where the child and his parents had gone. He would still scorch the earth beneath Bethlehem rather than risk allowing God’s Son to grow and challenge his comfortable status quo.
Nevertheless, the wise ones went home by another road, poorer, wiser, and more purposeful than when a star led their way.
Blessed, Jesus said later, are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of God. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
It should be no surprise that the Magi were advised by the angel to act on principle, if that is what they were doing by washing their hands of Herod. We follow a Christ who is the ultimate principled actor, who refused to bend his ethics of love and self-sacrifice to save his own life; who healed the ear of his enemy; who would not dirty his tongue by debating with Pilate what, after all, is truth; who would not give false witness to acquit himself of uncommitted crimes.
Some years ago, I read (in Lest Innocent Blood be Shed, by Philip Hallie) about a village commune in southern France dedicated to nonviolence, diverted by their Christian faith toward the active and/but peaceful resistance of evil. During the Second World War, as you might expect of such people, they sheltered Jewish refugees and hid them from harm, refusing to betray them to the authorities. To choose such a good seems on the face of it simple, although we might quietly ask our hearts whether we would have the courage to risk our own lives and liberty, to open our own homes to a stranger.
One passage that stuck with me always describes the conscience of the pastor’s wife, Magda Trocmé. Often enough, it was easy to put off the questions of the authorities without prevarication: not asking a refugee’s real name meant that one could not repeat it. But duplicity was unavoidable, the creation of fake id cards and ration books, for example: Magda
“[found] her integrity diminished when she [thought] of those cards. … She still [felt] anguish for the children of Le Chambon who had to unlearn lying after the war, and who could, perhaps, never again be able to understand the importance of simply telling the truth.” (Hallie, 126)
It is not as though Magda would ever have put her purity above the lives of the refugees that were saved by a few white lies. Instead, she has stayed with me because her scruples remind me of our hope for a kingdom in which one may do good without injury to the commandments of God’s covenant, in which it is not necessary to manage the wrath of Herod either by evasion or complicity or conquest; because she was not able to avoid Herod. There was no other road open to her.
The pastors of Le Chambon, André Trocmé and Edouard Theis, were not impractical nor impotent. They saved lives by their faithfulness, and their adherence to the way of peace. They were not passive pacifists. They knew that neutrality capitulates to evil. But, they preached,
“In attacking evil, we must cherish the preciousness of all human life. Our obligation to diminish the evil in the world must begin at home; we must not do evil, must not ourselves do harm. To be against evil is to be against the destruction of human life and against the passions that motivate that destruction.” (Hallie, 85)
The wise ones, having once found Jesus, the Saviour in a stable, the Messiah in a manger, God in his infancy, could not return to Herod’s court. They may not do harm to themselves, by betraying the love that they had found at his bedside. They may not do harm by consorting, even for a moment more, with the king of destruction, the murderer of innocents. They had to find another way home.
If we are people of the Epiphany, then we, too, are stargazers. We have been told, commissioned by angels and dreams, to find another road. We worship the Prince of Peace in a world at war. We would rather offer gifts of gold to helpless babies than bribes to politicians or kings. We find truth in the gospel of love rather than the mantra of success. We worship the God of the manger and the Christ of the Cross. We follow Christ through the empty tomb, knowing that the star can take us only so far.
We wonder, sometimes, what difference it makes. We struggle to find the straight path. We pray for God’s reign to come.
In the meantime, the holy family is once again on the road, seeking safety, and we have room at the inn. Let us seek and serve Christ, not in the starlit heavens alone, but in the street, and on the corner, in peace and in love, and as a stranger, taking the long road home.
Philip P. Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed: The Story of the Village of Le Chambon and How Goodness Happened There (Harper Collins, 1994)
I scour the skies to find
The light shines in the darkness
a false star rising
and the darkness did not overcome it
haloed with fire power
When they saw that the star had stopped
(not everything that wears
(he sent and killed
a halo is holy)
all the children)
the new star of Bethlehem pauses
they were overwhelmed
satellite silence falling
A voice was heard in Ramah
I scour the skies for a sign
weeping and loud lamentation
that will set the world
An angel of the Lord suddenly
or at least my heart
appeared in a dream
on fire
and the darkness did not overcome it
John 1:5, Matthew 2:10 (Matthew 2:16), Matthew 2:18, Matthew 2:19, John 1:5b
Sermon for the Sunday after Christmas, 2019. In our prayers, we remembered the victims of antiSemitic attacks in New York and elsewhere this Hanukkah.
Isaac Asimov is not an author I usually turn to for biblical commentary. Like many of you, I know him more as a writer of science fiction, but I recently stumbled across a secondhand copy of Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, and he has some interesting ponderings to share about the star of Bethlehem, for example, and the Word of God, the opening character of John’s Gospel.
Asimov describes the term Logos, which we translate Word, as defining the creative principle and order of the universe. We use it today, he notes, to talk about the creative order of animals, in zoology or of the earth, in geology (or of God, in theology; although that is where we find the boundary to our own wisdom, since God is the Logos, the Word that we are seeking to define).
Asimov traces this interpretation to one Thales of Miletus, living before the biblical time of the Babylonian Exile. He describes how the term was developed and refined around the Greek-speaking world, and found its way into Jewish thought as Wisdom, the character of God portrayed in Proverbs and some of the Apocryphal writings.
In John, then, we find this creative order, this first principle of God’s relationship with the world made flesh, this Word of God, this God incorporated into the world that it has made and shaped, enfleshed and enmeshed with creation.
Matthew and Luke flesh out this story, if you’ll forgive the pun, with their narratives of angels and birth, heaven and earth met in Bethlehem, in a manger, in a baby. John skips the pageant; he is more interested in what it all means now, after the angels have left and the skies have fallen silent, except for their storms.
In his Christmas message this year, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry noted that it is no accident that Jesus is born when all seems at its darkest. He wrote,
I don’t think it’s an accident that long ago, followers of Jesus began to commemorate his coming into the world when the world seemed to be at its darkest. …
Undoubtedly, these ancient Christians who began to celebrate the coming of God into the world, they knew very well that this Jesus, his teachings, his message, his spirit, his example, his life points us to the way of life itself, a way of life, where we take care of each other. A way of life, where we care for God’s world. A way of life, where we are in a loving relationship with our God, and with each other as children of the one God, who has created us all.
They also knew John’s Gospel and John’s Christmas story. Now there are no angels in John’s Christmas story. There are no wise men coming from afar. There’s no baby lying in a manger. There’s no angel choir singing Gloria in excelsis Deo in the highest of the heavens. There are no shepherds tending their flocks by night. Matthew and Luke tell those stories. In John, it is the poetry of new possibility, born of the reality of God when God breaks into the world.
It’s not an accident that long ago, followers of Jesus began to commemorate his birth, his coming into the world. When the world seemed darkest. When hope seemed to be dashed on the altar of reality. It is not an accident that we too, commemorate his coming, when things do not always look right in this world.
But there is a God. And there is Jesus. And even in the darkest night. That light once shined and will shine still. His way of love is the way of life. It is the light of the world. And the light of that love shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not, cannot, and will not overcome it.
But for Matthew and Luke, too, it is when the sky is dark and the inns are full and the doors are locked and where walls are built and the bullets are waiting and Herod is king and Rome pretends to peace through oppression and repression that the life that is the light of the world is born, and the darkness cannot stop it.
And good news is announced to the poor out on the hillside, and the rich and the wise are humbled into worship and generosity, and only Herod, jealous for the little piece of proxy power that the empire allows him, fails to see the majesty of the moment.
And John bears witness. He has Word and witness ready at the beginning. And his whole gospel is written so that we might bear witness to the life and the light that has been borne into the world, so that we might become midwives of the kingdom of God, advocates for making room at the inn, defenders of the innocent children at risk of Herod’s jealous wrath.
This is what John sets before us: that it is only the creative order of the Word, of God, that makes sense of the world, that sheds light on the life of the world. It is in Jesus, in the humility of birth and Incarnation, even in the confusion of the Cross, in the victory of Resurrection, the transcendence of Ascension that we find light in the darkness. It is in the light of the Word that life makes sense, with all of its joy and all of its promise, even its pain; with forgiveness and with justice, in the Word it becomes a story we can live with.
On Christmas Day I shared this R.S. Thomas poem as we gathered in the Chapel:
Nativity
The moon is born
and a child is born,
lying among white clothes
as the moon among clouds.
They both shine, but
the light from the one
is abroad in the universe
as among broken glass.
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. (John 1:1-5)
Isaac Asimov, Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: Volume 2, The New Testament (Avon Books, 1969), 298-303
R.S. Thomas, “Nativity,” in R.S. Thomas Collected Poems 1945-1990 (J.M. Dent/Phoenix, 1993/2000), 508
over the water 
