On Wednesday, I had to go out, but I had the privilege of deciding when I went.
So when I looked out, and it was raining, I decided to wait for the rain to pass. While I waited, I was thinking about the fact that not everyone has the privilege of making that choice. Those who are without shelter have limited choices. Those who use public transportation and are unprotected from the elements may not have this privilege.
God created all that exists – including the weather and in our intelligence and our arrogance, we have created the means by which to ignore God’s parameters. We created lights so we could stay awake at night, but then we decided that since we could stay awake, people should work during the night hours. And we created cars because they were more convenient than carriages, and they work in all temperatures and all weather. So we have to go to work in the rain and the snow in the frigid cold and brutal heat.
I just wonder if we have not done ourselves a disservice. And I wonder if we do a disservice to others by expecting others to work all sorts of hours to make our lives more…complete? So we can have what we want whenever we may want it? So we have the emergency care we need – yes. But have we bought the lie that we have to work on all days – in all conditions to make money for others?
As an older person, these are the things I’m beginning to think about. Who am I trying to please with my life?
Our scripture from Isaiah 40 is part of a poem of exilic hope written to the people of Judah during the Babylonian exile – People who felt hopeless and forgotten by God.
Here, the writer asserts that God is both creator and ruler of the world, who promised them a joyous return to their homeland & reminded them that they are not alone. God has not abandoned them, even if they were told this happened as a consequence of not following God’s laws. God was still active in the world and was with them – even if they don’t notice or feel God’s presence. Just as God is still active and present with us – even if we don’t notice or feel God’s presence.
In Matthew’s Gospel, John is criticizing those who are exploitative and self-serving. When the institution loses sight of the higher and greater good of all, we are in jeopardy. When we make money by causing another’s suffering, we have lost our way, and Matthew is very clear that there is a type of “hell” waiting for us whether it is described as “an unquenchable fire” or where there will be “weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Matthew uses that line six times in his gospel as he is clearly using fear and intimidation to encourage faithfulness. Personally, I am not fan!
BUT – When do we stop and consider how our living affects others? What have I done through my words? What have I done through my silence?
If I asked you right now to name a few people whom you see as exploitative and self-serving, you could at least give me your top three – if not many more! But as Matthew also says, “Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eyebut do not notice the log in your own eye? – Matthew 7:3
I don’t know about you, but those at the top of my list for exploitation and self-serving actions are hurting many more people than I think I do; however, this is a good reminder that I may not realize who all I affect by buying the cheapest items made in sweatshops by forced child labor. The reality is that we are terrified of not having enough power or enough money.
White Christian nationalism is about these trying to preserve these two things, and it will fail because God is about diversity.
Look at all that we have considered this summer there is diversity in everything God created!
So why do we think that only white men with money have the answers, especially while they try to hide their own sins! We are part of an ecosystem – and it only works when we all play by the rules.
And Jesus laid out the rules very simply: Love God – Love one another. Care about people other than yourself and your group!
When everything is shared, there is less poverty and crime because when everyone has what they need, there is less need to cheat and steal. We honor the natural and social world by caring for others and making sure others have what they need.
Last weekend I graduated from the Foundations Training Course for Gestalt Pastoral Care that I have been taking this past year, and as part of that work we looked at our ancestry.
Many of my ancestors, both Celtic and German, were farmers. So, I shouldn’t be surprised that working the land, getting my fingers in the dirt and watching things grow, is “in my blood.” I know that both sets of my grandparents always had gardens and fresh produce was a normal part of life with them.
Today, I want to focus on the soil and what it means to work with it. Our scriptures for today reminded us that God created the earth.
This means it is sacred! It is holy! And when I work the earth, particularly when my hands are in the soil, I recognize that I am just a small piece in the ongoing story of God, the land, and humanity.
The Bible is rich with agricultural stories as the first peoples relied on the ground for all their food. Even in Jesus’ time, he used so many agricultural metaphors because that was what the people knew –that was what made sense to them.
When I work the land, I am also often barefoot. Yes, it means my feet get dirty – but there is something about being that close – that close to what is real and that close to what touches the inner parts of my being. You see, I am a panentheist, which is a big word that means that I believe God is in or with everything.
The land is not God, and God is not the land,but God is with the land, and the land is with God.
So when we work with the land, when we touch the ground with any part of our body, we are connecting with God through our bodies and the land.
A farmer, Forrest Pritchard, in his book Gaining Ground1, described it this way: The soil…was soft and dark.I slid my fingers into the dirt, cupping a handful of earth to my nose.The aroma of the broken ground was profoundly rich,at once mysterious and inviting.In the depths of winter – with the pastures grazed low,the sycamores stark and leafless,the creek banks rimmed with ice, and the sky a gray blanket spread from mountaintop to mountaintop – here the earth abided.The soft warmth spoke to me saying, “I’m waiting now, but I will be ready.We are mutual participants, you and I, intertwined.” Indeed, the ground was waiting and now it is beginning to share it bounty.
The definition of soil is: the loose, dynamic layer of Earth’s surface consisting of a living, complex mixture of minerals, organic matter, gases, water, and microorganisms.
The living matter is a combination of worms and bacteria decaying plant and animal matter or humus – “of the ground or lowly.” Humus is where we get our spiritual discipline of humility – not thinking more highly of ourselves – recognizing that we are a small part in God’s great creation.
Humility is also a trait exhibited and valued by Jesus, who was known to lift up those considered to be “lowly” – who said, “But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” (Mark 10:31) He also said, “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” (Matthew 5:5)
Humility is not self-deprecation, but rather it is acknowledging what is real and true – as human beings, we are selfish and make many mistakes. In Paul’s words, “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (Romans 7:15) So we acknowledge this and ask for God to remove our failings. Because the reality is: “It’s not about me!”
In April, the Board invited the Rev. Dr. Matt Lenahan to speak with us from The Wittel Farm Project in Elizabethtown which is part of The Lutheran Camping Corporation.
In his presentation, he encouraged us to create a land management program for Rader Park and the area around the main building. He also asked us a profound question: What does the land need? Which changes the conversation.
We have been looking at the ground, the land, and what could happen here as if it were ours. And yes, from a political position, we own the deed to it. But this is bigger than that conversation. This is about remembering that the land is God’s – it always has been and always will be – it is just ours to care for during this time. Before us the Brubaker family tended it. Before them, Native Americans tended it. And someone will tend it after us as those of us in the room will not be here forever.
So what does the “long view” look like? Remembering what it has been over the last centuries and what it could be over the next century. What does the land need so that it not only meets our needs but will meet the needs of generations to come?
The last time I preached here, the topic was Jesus’ baptism. If you were here and you remember that far back, you’ll remember how I proposed that the point of this story was to show us that Jesus was more like us than perhaps we thought he was.
At Jesus’ baptism, the descending dove from heaven was there to affirm to Jesus who he was, God’s Beloved Son. In that story, we can also hear God saying those same things to us, that we are God’s beloved children and we are loved.
Today, we find ourselves back in that continued story. Right after his baptism, Jesus immediately went into the desert and spent 40 days fasting and praying. Have you ever fasted for 40 days? I tried it one time. I attended a charismatic, spirit-filled church more than 10 years ago, and they were big on fasting at least once a year. The pastor there would call the entire congregation to a fast, usually a really specific type of fast, referred to as the Daniel Fast, though it was considered to be a partial fast. Meaning that the person fasting focused on cutting certain food groups out, and they were allowed to eat others because it was called the Daniel Fast. It was considered to be the right kind of fast. It was for the super spiritual people to use this fast as more of a bragging right, or a way to make themselves look and feel more holy than others around them. They would make a big thing of preaching to others about it. They would overemphasize the stomach growls and the digestive issues that result from separating your diet into different groups.
This past week, on Ash Wednesday, we spent time in Isaiah 51, where God was angry at people who would fast for show and at the same time engage in dishonest business practices, abuse their servants, disregard the least among them, and fight with their neighbors. That was very much the culture of the church that I attended. Needless to say, fasting left a bad taste in my mouth. If only for that reason, I’m not gonna call you guys to fast, at least not in that way in our gospel reading.
In our Scripture reading today, Matthew 4:1-11, it said that Jesus fasted for 40 days, and at the end of that, the devil appeared to him, the audacity.
Can you imagine how hungry Jesus was? Remember, Jesus was fully human, so it’s not a stretch to say that he was probably hangry. I know that nobody here can relate to that, but just try to stay with me.
According to the passage, the fast was over, Jesus should have been able to leave the desert, walk into town, and grab himself a burger. But no, this guy shows up and starts his shenanigans. Hey, Jesus, are you hungry? I bet you are. Why not turn those stones into bread? But Jesus doesn’t bite. It isn’t pumpernickel that keeps me going. “Man does not live by bread alone. Rather, he lives on every word that comes from the mouth of the Eternal One” – Matthew 4:4.
Jesus isn’t saying that bread or pizza or ice cream or french fries are bad, or that we should all starve ourselves. What he is saying is that he’s not going to use his privilege as the son of God to satisfy his desire for food. He could have turned the stones into bread or anything he wanted, but why? What would that prove? Maybe the question is, what does not doing it prove?
Perhaps it proves that his relationship with God is what gives him life and the ability to keep going, even when his stomach growls louder than he can speak. The devil didn’t care that he was hungry. He wanted to make him question his identity, to doubt that God really loved him, to lean on his own abilities to satisfy himself, but Jesus didn’t take the bait. If the second and third temptations are more of the same, the devil takes him to the top of the building and tells him to jump. God will send angels to catch you. But Jesus replies by quoting Deuteronomy, don’t you dare test the Lord your God. Why would I cry wolf when there’s no wolf?
Jesus knew that God was protecting him. He didn’t need to run a full experiment to verify that promise. In a last-ditch effort to get Jesus to fold, the devil takes him to the top of a very high mountain and shows him all of the kingdoms of the world, and he says to him, “If You bow down and worship me, I will give You all these kingdoms” – Matthew 4:9. Jesus had had enough at this point. The devil had badly miscalculated, and now Jesus had beaten him. I know who my God is, and you definitely aren’t it. I will only ever worship the one true God, the devil left tail between his legs, defeated. He should have known better if Jesus didn’t fall for the first one.
When I was younger, I used to go to open mic nights and karaoke. If you hadn’t picked up on this yet. I love to sing, I love to play guitar, and I love doing those things for other people’s enjoyment.
Every time I would go out, somebody would inevitably ask me, “Why are you here? Why aren’t you on American Idol?” And I would often reply to them that I didn’t want to be famous. Fame can change people, and I didn’t want to be changed. I remember watching American Idol and noticing how, from the audition to the final performance, the contestants were completely changed. Their look, their sound, and their presence were all shaped and molded by the judges and coaches. A lot of the time, at least from my perspective, it was not for the better.
I felt that if I went on a show like that, I would be selling out. What I had not yet grasped at that point in my life was that I was actually doing that very thing every day. I was presenting to the world in a way that it had molded me and in the way that I thought was most acceptable. Meanwhile, I was hiding and denying who I really felt that I was inside. It was God’s love that broke through and changed me when I finally recognized and allowed myself to come out to myself and the world; no amount of stone sandwiches or rooftop flight experiments or crowns or kingdoms could make me give up my identity, the real me, my soul.
A few years ago, while I was at the beach with my adopted parents, I asked my dad, who is a retired United Methodist minister, if he would baptize me. I had been baptized as a teen, but I wanted to hear the name that I had chosen spoken as I was laid beneath the water. There was no dove, but I heard the same message that Jesus heard from God as I emerged from the salty Atlantic waters. Deklan J. Lewis knows that he is a beloved son of God, and he knows that the love of God is the only thing that truly sustains him.
This month is Black History Month, and we’ve been highlighting a piece of that history each week.
This week, I was looking over the notes that Pastor Kathryn had put together, and I came across this article on the White House Historical Association’s website. I was really surprised to actually find this article. It was amongst the slavery in the President’s neighborhood Initiative materials. This piece was about a woman named Ona Judge.
She was a slave owned by George Washington’s wife, Martha. The article details what is assumed about Ona’s life as Martha’s preferred lady’s maid, stating that she had some kind of status because she had nicer clothes and she got more than one pair of shoes per year. The article seems to assume that she might have been happy as Martha’s personal servant, but it also goes on to tell of Ona’s escape to freedom.
After learning that she was about to be given to another member of the family as a wedding gift, Ona ran away. Later in her life, she shared in an interview, “I was determined never to be her slave.”
I can imagine that, as an enslaved person, personal identity is a complicated struggle. In Ona’s story, we can see her declaring what her identity would not be. Ona lived the rest of her life in freedom. Married, had children, and actually shared her experience in slavery with several newspapers.
Ona could not have done what she did without a strong conviction in her heart. In the same way, Jesus could not have resisted the temptations of the devil or any of the other incredibly difficult things that he did in his life without knowing who he was and who God said he was.
So who are you? Who are you not?
What would you do for a Klondike? Would you turn an iceberg into ice cream? Seriously, what are your non-negotiables? What are the things that you’re not willing to compromise on, and how will you stand up for those things in this season?
I wanted to share a song with you guys, because that’s what I do, that speaks to this idea of knowing who you are and standing firm in your identity. It’s become somewhat of an anthem in the LGBTQ+ community, but I think it really applies to just about everybody.
I am not a stranger to the dark “Hide away, ” they say “‘Cause we don’t want your broken parts” I’ve learned to be ashamed of all my scars “Run away, ” they say “No one’ll love you as you are”
But I won’t let them break me down to dust I know that there’s a place for us For we are glorious
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown ’em out I am brave, I am bruised I am who I’m meant to be, this is me Look out ’cause here I come And I’m marching on to the beat I drum I’m not scared to be seen I make no apologies, this is me
Another round of bullets hits my skin Well, fire away ’cause today, I won’t let the shame sink in We are bursting through the barricades and Reaching for the sun (we are warriors) Yeah, that’s what we’ve become (yeah, that’s what we’ve become)
I won’t let them break me down to dust I know that there’s a place for us For we are glorious
When the sharpest words wanna cut me down I’m gonna send a flood, gonna drown ’em out I am brave, I am bruised I am who I’m meant to be, this is me Look out ’cause here I come And I’m marching on to the beat I drum I’m not scared to be seen I make no apologies; this is me
In a time where many people want to make who I am and who a lot of my friends are illegal, we have choices to make.
Do I change my name back to the name that was originally on my birth certificate? Do I change the gender marker on my ID? Do I change the way I dress? Do I grow my hair out so that I’m less of a target to gain access to safer spaces in the current climate? Or do I save my soul and stay true to who I am? Would life be easier and less scary? Probably in a lot of ways, the answer is yes.
Maybe it would be easier for you to go to a different church that doesn’t ask you to stick your neck out for the oppressed. Maybe it would be easier if you kept your thoughts and feelings about ICE raids from your neighbors, your coworkers, and your family, but what would you stand to lose? What would you gain if you didn’t compromise?
I encourage you to hold these questions and the questions that are inevitably going to be prompted by these questions in your hearts this week, meditate on them, and press in. See where you’re really standing at the moment. As we move forward, press pause, listen, and know who you are.
With it being Transfiguration Sunday, I wanted to give you sort of an overview of where we are and where we’re headed.
The liturgical calendar is really a beautiful piece, and I love this graphic of it because it makes it a circle, which is what our calendar really is. Every February 14th comes around, and it’s always Valentine’s Day. Christmas comes around, and it’s always December 25th. Other holidays do move, but we don’t think of time as circular. We make a timeline. We don’t make time a circle or spiral.
Between the end of November and December, Advent begins. Starting with the first Sunday in Advent, we begin looking for the light. There’s this promise that the light is coming, that hope is coming, and so we start looking for the light.
On Christmas Eve, the light arrives and we share it. That’s why we have a candlelight service on Christmas Eve, that’s where that comes from. That beautiful ritual that we have every Christmas Eve that we love so much, it comes out of this idea of the light having now arrived in the world, and so we share it, and this light continues to grow.
At Epiphany, outsiders, the Magi, show up and attest to the light and bring gifts. In Luke’s gospel, it says the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him. Next is his baptism. Jesus hears us often, we make it out as if everybody, as if the crowds hear it, but the crowds don’t react. I just read a thing about how it really says that it spoke to him, that Jesus hears “this is my beloved, my son in whom I am well pleased“– Matthew 3:17. Jesus hears that he has his own affirmation and begins his ministry, and through it, he is inviting people to the light. Last week, Jesus said, “You are the light of the world” – Matthew 5:14.
Until this point, this is the biggest light point, and it’s not a coincidence. That the light arrives as our seasonal calendar has its darkest night. That’s not a coincidence. Now that there is more light in our season, the light begins to expose our shadows & our darkness, and this next season that we begin on Wednesday, Lent, is when we start to see the darkness in the people in scripture, but we also are invited to see the darkness and our ability for evil.
That brings us to the end of the Easter season, it’s almost June, and we’re almost going into our longest day. It’s all lined out, and today is about having a bigger vision. That’s what Jesus was giving the disciples, and I wanted you to have a bigger vision of how the liturgical calendar is lined out.
Here we are, Peter, James, and John go up to the mountain. They have this moment. They wanna build shelters.
The Festival of Sukkot is a Jewish festival where they build. Jesus says It’s not about that. That’s not what we’re doing here, but they hear this time, God speaks to them and not just Jesus, and says, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him” – Luke 9:35. That’s the piece that is specifically for us, listen to him.
If we haven’t gotten it by this time, when we see him gleaming, we have a cloud, and we have a voice and everything, if we haven’t figured out that this is somebody special, not only are we supposed to recognize that he is the son of God, but we are to listen to him, And what is Jesus’ command to the disciples? “But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid” – Matthew 17:7. That’s the commandment, to get up. Jesus says to the disciples, get up, we have work to do. We aren’t staying here on the mountain. It’s not about staying in that mountain moment, but we have to come down from the mountain because there’s work to do. Do not be afraid. It might be scary, but it’ll be okay. Do not be afraid because God’s in this. God’s got this. Do not be afraid. Trust God. Over and over again, we get reminded to trust in God.
This February, we are also looking at African American history I’m trying to pull out specific people who live out Jesus’ commandment.
I wonder if Dr. Alvin Poissant, in his work, had to remind himself many times to get up and do not be afraid. Dr. Alvin Poissant was born in East Harlem as the seventh of eight children. As a child, he had rheumatic fever that put him in the hospital for a long time. When he was in high school, his mother died of cervical cancer.
He had the advantage of going to a primarily white high school, and from there, he was able to get into Brown. He had a bachelor’s degree from Brown. He went to Cornell Medical College and got his MD in 1960, when he was the only black student in his class. Then he went to UCLA, where he did a residency in psychiatry and got a master’s degree in psychopharmacology.
Then he went to Jackson, Mississippi, and there he helped to provide medical care for civil rights workers and helped desegregate hospitals and healthcare facilities. In ’67, he moved to Boston and was directing a psychiatry program in a low-income housing development for Tufts University Medical School.
Eventually he was recruited by Harvard Medical College, and he started as an associate dean of a student affairs and he became a professor of Psych. Psych psychiatry. If I get the all the right syllables, I’ll do it right. In his time at Harvard, he sponsored, which, which was, he was a prof.
He was at Harvard Medical School for 50 years, and he was the voice of diversity. His voice and his work were about improving the public understanding of black children and families, mental health and suicide, school violence, and substance abuse. He wrote and spoke about the importance of nonviolent parenting and advocated for positive imagery of minorities in the media. He also worked to increase diversity in medicine and reduce health disparities by bringing more members of underserved populations into the medical field.
Unfortunately, Dr. Poissant died last February, but I pulled this information from the Harvard Medical School website. Has a huge write-up on his life and work. He was certainly revered and loved. I found this quote by Shirley Chisholm, and I think it fits what he did.
“You don’t make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas”
Unfortunately, we are living in a time when Dr. Poissant’s life’s work is being erased. I mean, he represented diversity, equity, and inclusion. That’s what he worked for within the medical field and specifically at Harvard. We’re living in a time where all of the ways that we understand who we are as a country are called into question, and we have to decide who we are. The future that we want to leave for the children and our grandchildren. Like Peter, James, and John, we are invited into the vision of what could be and permitted to be active in accomplishing God’s vision of justice.
Like the disciples, we are being asked to have the courage, not to be afraid in the face of intimidation, cruelty, and hatred. Like them, we are being asked to be willing to follow, get up, and not be afraid.
We are the children of light. That doesn’t mean that we’re always good. We have the same amount of potential to be good as to be evil. It is within us all. We have to be focused on being good, we have to be focused on doing the loving thing, on loving our God, loving our neighbor, whomever they may be, and loving ourselves as we are, as the people God created us to be. With all of our gifts, foibles, goodness, and weaknesses. We’ve got all those things,
We have to figure out how we can use our voices now to stand for love. What we cannot be is silent. We will not be silent because that means being complicit. If we don’t challenge voices that are hurting others, they think we agree. We can’t let them think that because they want to control us, too.
We cannot be silent when they want to send ICE agents to our voting places this November. We cannot be silent about it. That is intimidation, and it is illegal, and we need to say that loud and clear. We have to say it is not okay to disappear people. We won’t have that. That’s not the way our country operates. You don’t get grabbed off the street and sent to a camp. I heard them called concentration camps because the definition of a concentration camp is a place where there is a concentration of people being held before they’re sent somewhere else. We have them in this country. We’ve done it before. It wasn’t right before, and it’s not right now.
We cannot be silent about the need for checks and balances within our government. They don’t get to choose what’s moral. That’s our job. Jesus tells us what is right. What does the Lord require of you to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God? That is moral.
So get up and do not be afraid. Let us stand for love.
A Talk with Rev. Kuhn (Black Text) and Rev. Edward Bailey (Blue Text)
Last week, I talked about how in this season of Epiphany, the scriptures are all trying to tell us about who Jesus is.
Although obviously, Isaiah 58:8-12 is trying to tell us about God’s expectations and what God’s vision for us is, we believe that Jesus is God incarnate. Jesus’s words, although they’re very much directed to us again, still point out what is important to Jesus. They’re talking about what Jesus’s priorities are, and what I hear in both of these scriptures is the need for justice.
Isaiah, who is a major Jewish prophet whom we listen to, reminds us about feeding the hungry and caring for those who are sick. It’s all the justice pieces that we hear Jesus repeat later in the gospels. This particular piece reminded us that if we stop arguing among ourselves, we will stop the infighting and pay attention to the needs of those around us. Then we’ll see the needs. We’ll see the hungry person, and we’ll see the person who is mourning, and we’ll see the person who needs clothing or a ride or maybe just a person to listen to them. We can do that because when we do justice, God helps the light of Christ within us to shine.
I saw it written as a sacred quid pro quo. If we do justice, God will bless us. But we have to do our part first, and that means we can’t just be sitting around here thinking we’re great. That’s what the scribes and Pharisees were doing. They had the list of the law. The laws still apply, but they had the list of the law and they thought, as long as we do this, we’re good. But then they had their own ways of applying it and deciding who was in and who was out. That’s not justice.
I think even worse was that the Sadducees and the Pharisees had actually co-opted themselves. They no longer worked for the people of God.
They were working for their own position. When Jesus came on the scene, he was for the people, and I think too often people don’t realize the Jewish people, as well as the other folk in that area, were oppressed by the Romans. They didn’t have their own rights. They didn’t have their own justice system, and they actually were conquered. When Jesus was talking to the people, he was talking on behalf of an oppressed people, not on people who are well off, well-connected, who are rich and famous, but he was speaking for those who had no voice for themselves.
As a matter of fact, I said to somebody upset with me, they said, “Reverend Bailey, you always speak in politics.” I asked him the question, what happened to John the Baptist? Why was he beheaded? Because he took on a justice issue, and too often the church doesn’t take on justice issues. We talk sweetly and nicely. That’s why nobody burns our churches down. So if you really believe the world is against you, the world will be against you.
But we have been so co-opted. That they don’t have any fear of the church or the word of God, because we are just like them. We forget that Jesus started a movement, not a church, a movement. That’s why people were hanged, people were crucified, people were killed, because he had a movement. We can barely move today. That’s not because of our age. We just don’t move.
So when you read these scriptures, they’re counterculture. They’re not for what we normally think that we ought to be. But God didn’t start an organization because he needed another organization for people to sit around and feel good about themselves. He created us to be a light in this world, so we’re supposed to make a difference.
I just recognized this morning that he said that light is supposed to be in the house. “People do not light a lamp and put it under the bushel basket; rather, they put it on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.” – Matthew 5:15. You know, we don’t even show the light in the house. So if you can’t show it in the church, how do you show it outside? How do people see it? The light is supposed to be in the house.
And not only have they co-opted, but the rest of the church is silent. Yes. So, uh, you know, they called a silent majority. That’s the good folk. The people who got the gospel wrong, speaking loudly, and you don’t hear the folk who actually believe that Jesus came to save sinners. Some think that the way they look makes them righteous. Even if you have been convicted of 34 felonies, it doesn’t matter, you know, it doesn’t matter. Politics is more important than morality. When people co-opt themselves and become the church of the state. You don’t teach the gospel. You teach hate, division, and those kinds of things. Jesus came to bring people together and to help us provide for this life so we can go into the next life. I don’t think most of those folk care or are concerned about the next life.
I have one judge that I have to live for. So it doesn’t matter what other people say about me; what does the Lord say? And that’s what this gospel is all about. What is he gonna say to me on that last day? I don’t know about you, but I’m 76, so I’m concerned about that. What is God going to say to me about the life that I’ve lived? Doesn’t matter what other people have done, what’s He gonna say to me? I want to know what God is going to have to say about me, and he’s not gonna ask me about you.
I hear people claiming that they know the will of God and, and that God is blessing them because they have power and influence and money.
But as you said, Rev, that’s not who Jesus came to talk to. That’s not who Jesus brought together. That’s not who Jesus was focused on. Jesus was focused on the people who didn’t have and who were being left out by their state or by the empire that ruled their lives.
So when we are in this time and see that people are being marginalized, their voices. I mean, oh my goodness, people are being kidnapped and disappearing. I just heard of a 10-year-old boy who went to school and did not come home. I can’t make sense of that. That’s not what this gospel says. That’s not what the gospel of Jesus is about.
But the sad thing is, one thing about being retired is that I have a chance to catch up on things that I just had no understanding of. Watching Fox News or MSNBC, they don’t tell everything. I got a chance to listen to some of these podcasts. There’s this thing about policemen and what they’ve been doing. This is not new, where people with a badge have been snatching folk off the street, and doing all kinds of illegal things to folk. It’s not new, and it’s been going on for a while, and you know, people don’t even talk about it. How many women have disappeared in Lancaster County that we don’t talk about? It’s not in the news. Women who are being beaten and abused at home are not in the news. Yet they want to show us some person somewhere else that we can vilify. We wanna show them, but we don’t talk about what’s happening in our own neighborhoods. You need to check the statistics and find out how many young women are being disappeared. We are seeing how the Today Show’s host, Savannah Guthrie’s mother, has been taken; it’s not new, and, amazingly, nobody has talked about it.
We think that crime only happens in certain places. But it’s right where we are. Every time I hear somebody say, “Well, that doesn’t happen here.” Well, it just happened. So it must happen here. We as a people are being stubborn by thinking there’s a difference because of where you live. There is no safe place where there are sinners. Where there are people who will hurt you. Especially us older folk, some of us raised some criminals in our own houses who did not become criminals until we got old, and they wanted what we had. Getting old is scary because you don’t have the strength you had, and now you find out there are people out there who would take what you have. How many of you get calls from people who act like they’re your family, and they’re in trouble, and they want money?
What are we gonna leave behind? That’s what I worry about for my grandchild. Is this the America that I want my grandchild to be raised in? The answer is NO!
I don’t want him to have to worry about walking down the street and being charged with a crime just because of the color of his skin or the clothes that he’s wearing or the way he’s walking. I don’t want that. I don’t want people running with masks, coming into my neighborhood, and terrorizing us.
As a black man, I had the Ku Klux Klan doing that, coming into this community with hoods on, so you couldn’t recognize them. Why? If you are a part of the government, I ought to be able to see who you are. I wanna know who you are. My taxes pay for you. Can you imagine having an employee who comes to work with a mask on? Why are we allowing that? And if we seniors don’t say something, if we are quiet, nothing’s gonna happen unless you and I say something, and that’s letting your light so shine.
We are well into the season of Epiphany, and the season of Epiphany is about revealing who Jesus is.
Since his conception, we’ve been getting signals. This is Matthew’s year, so the angel came, and we heard the story of the angel coming to Joseph and telling Joseph that this baby would be Emmanuel, God with us. Then at his birth, the angels declared, this is our savior, the Messiah, the Lord, and then the magi showed up. They came bearing gifts for this newborn king, this new ruler, this person who would become a shepherd of his people. At his baptism the Holy Spirit came down and declared, this is my beloved, my son.
Since then, we heard John declare who he was and point to him. “He is the one who comes after me, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.” – John 1:27. Then we saw how he chose the people to follow him. All he said was, follow me.
Now, we come to the Beatitudes, and I think that we like to approach these as what they tell us about who we are to be, because we have an insatiable desire to be self-absorbed. We love ourselves, so it has to be about us, right? But what does it tell us about who Jesus was? And this may be a different road to get to the same place. But that’s the road I wanna take you on today. Because it’s supposed to reveal something about Jesus.
So who is Jesus? What does this tell us about Jesus?
Well, if we look really carefully. I tried to do a deep dive. I’ve had five weeks to prepare this sermon, not one, five. I don’t usually have that much time, but I did, so I did a deep dive on this, and this sermon contains all of these words that do not appear anywhere else. The words that are translated meek, hungering, merciful, pure peacemakers, having been persecuted, they shall be insulted. Those words aren’t anywhere else. It’s the only time they show up. Well, a couple of them show up in Luke’s Beatitudes, too. Other than that, they’re not in the Bible. So what does that say?
What that says to me is that these words and Jesus are unique, and it means that those first people, remember I told you that you are like those first people hearing it. Those people, I can imagine, said, What did he just say? Did he say what I think he just said? Because these weren’t words that were used all the time. They would have been shocked to hear these words because other people who stood up and professed to know things wanted to talk about power and control. That’s the empire, they’re about telling you what you can do, what you can’t do, and how you’re gonna do it. But that’s not what this says.
The second thing I noticed was this offered hope, both in the short term and the long term. Our scripture says “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.“– Matthew 5:5, and they shall inherit the earth today and in the future. It’s both.
If we had read the verses right before this, they talk about how all the people were bringing their sick and infirm friends and relatives and themselves to Jesus because he was healing them. He was providing hope in the moment. Life was changing with him, and he was giving them this. Here’s your big word for the day: eschatological future hope that in the end they will be with God. They’ll be the ones in the kingdom of heaven.
The third thing it tells us is who Jesus cared about. He didn’t talk about the empire. That was the big thing about Jesus. That’s why Judas is scared. I’m frustrated with him when we get to Holy Week because he didn’t challenge Rome the way they wanted him to. Instead, he came to the people. He was there for the people who needed the help and the healing. This tells us that it wasn’t about the influencers of his time, but those who had been forgotten, ignored, and left behind. That’s who Jesus cared about. So, like I said, maybe a different road to the same destination.
That’s who we are to care about. Not necessarily who we are to be, but it’s who we are to care about. Who are the people in our community who are struggling right now, who are afraid? Terrified, even? He cared about those who wanted a different life, even if they didn’t know how to get there. There was hope in what he said, that this life that they had wasn’t the life that God had intended for them. That was good news. That is the good news, my friends, that this life that we live is not the way God intended for us to live. Even today, 2000 years later, we haven’t gotten it right yet. We still have much to learn.
This month is also the month that the inclusive church team wants us to focus on black history. So, I’m gonna try to do that.
Today, I wanna talk to you about someone who I think lived the way Jesus wants us to live, and who cared about others, who cared about her people as a black American. Who cared about the suffering of others. Fannie Lou Hamer was a sharecropper in the early sixties, and she decided that she had every right to vote as everybody else, and so she went to register. She was beaten and imprisoned in terrificly horrible ways. She paid with her body for that. She was not killed, but she paid with her body
Then she continued the struggle. She co-founded in 1964, the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and she went to the Democratic National Convention in 1964. I don’t know how many of you remember that. I was too young to remember that, but I read all about it. I’m gonna read more of this because I wanna make sure I get my facts straight.
She went there demanding integrated nominating committees and delegate committees. Her plea was so compelling, and frightened President Lyndon Johnson so much that he did a press conference. So that she wasn’t on the live tv, but her speech for those who heard it could not be quenched, and it was televised later. In 1968, her vision of racial equality in the delegation became real. Took some time, but became real. She also created the Freedom Farm Cooperative that helped other black farmers have a piece of property. As part of the cooperative, they got a piece of property, and they got a place to live. They got pigs to learn how to breed, raise, butcher, and sell, and become independent.
She was a force to be reckoned with, and you know what she’s most known for? She’s most known for her quote, I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired. That’s how we remember her. I’m glad to learn the rest. I’m glad I went looking for the rest of her story.
I put the picture of communion there because I knew it was communion Sunday. For me, it was the idea of the breaking of the bread, and the cup poured out for us that this is where we get to live our lives to do the hard work, because hard work is here. It’s not coming, it’s here.
We admit that we are all marred, scarred, and imperfect because we’re human. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I don’t know. I need help. Those are four statements that we need to use and own because we are living in a time when we cannot be silent, while those who are poor in spirit, mourning, and meek or those who are hungering and thirsting for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart and the peacemakers are becoming victims of hatred and violence, and we can’t just go along anymore.
So I also created cards for you that are on the high top with each of our congressmen’s names and telephone numbers. They need to hear from you. You need to tell them what you’re thinking and what you’re feeling about what you see in this country.
We need to figure out as a collective what we have to offer. One of the lessons that we got from the clergy in Minnesota was that we need to prepare before they arrive. We need to talk about what assets we have. What assets can our congregation give?
Is it that we can hold a large gathering and bring a lot of people together? We have space for a lot of people to gather. That may be our piece. There’s a prayer vigil that’s gonna start at Lancaster Friends, and maybe we wanna host one of those. Maybe we wanna send additional funds to the churches downtown. I’m thinking about St. John’s Episcopal because I know they do so much with the immigrant community in Lancaster. What is our peace to do? That’s something for us to, to really sit with and discern, but this is a time when we cannot be silent anymore. The white church cannot be silent now.
Next week I have invited Reverend Edward Bailey, who is retired, and he’s coming to have a conversation with us next week, because we’re gonna talk about. What do white people need to know about the black community in Lancaster? Because we don’t have the answers. We need to be listening, but this table makes all the difference. When we receive the bread and the cup, it gives us the strength, the comfort, the determination, the chutzpah, even to do what we didn’t think we could do.
We know that we couldn’t hang on that cross. We couldn’t pour out our blood, and we probably have a hard time or should drink the cup of forgiveness because we have not forgiven ourselves, let alone anyone else, but that is our challenge.
We come here and we gather because we need Jesus Christ. We need each other. And right now we need to be the beloved community.
One of the things that I love about our two scriptures is that they fit so well together, Psalm 27:1,4-8 and Matthew 4:12-23.
Matthew specifically reminds us that Jesus doesn’t wait for a perfect moment to call people. He doesn’t wait till our schedules are clear. Everything’s settled. He calls people while they’re working. Their hands are wet, they’re full. The nets are wet, and the boats are still tied to the shore. It seems to happen right in the middle of life. This is something I learned in a very personal, embodied way many times, but specifically many years ago when my wife and I moved to Maine, COVID restrictions had lightened.
At that time, I had just graduated from seminary, seeing what it truly means to be a leader in a moment of trauma and confusion. I had done all the work, the reading, the listening. I learned the language, the scriptures, the theology, and what I uncovered for myself was not the tidy belief system that I had suspected my education would end in. I expected clarity.
What I discovered instead was that by following Jesus’s word and following the light, my faith spread everywhere. It breached across categories and labels and crossed traditions. It refused to stay contained, and while that faith felt honest and alive for me, it was not always affirmed. It was often questioned by others, feared by others, and eventually, I questioned myself. That left me with the question I didn’t expect to be asking at graduation. When I stepped on that path to seminary, I guaranteed God that I would follow what was put in front of me. I did. I followed all the paths, probably too many, but I was feeling confused. Am I worthy to speak of the divine’s love if my path and my belief doesn’t fit cleanly in a box or a set way? Am I worthy to lead a community?
That question of worthiness, that quiet sense of lack, became one of my greatest hurdles. It held me back from speaking what was in my heart, from trusting what I felt to be true about God, about faith, about Jesus. I knew the move to Maine was gonna be a good thing. It was the right thing, right? The act of love and support from my wife and her calling, as she had just supported me through seminary. I understood that as a willingness to follow and to trust. Trusting can sometimes be stepping into something unknown, but knowing that doesn’t always mean that you know it in your heart. It doesn’t mean that it’s gonna be easy.
I remember driving into Bangalore for the first time. It was beautiful. The skies were blue, the trees were huge. I have never seen nature like that. I thought I did, being in Pennsylvania for all my life, but nope. And yet my stomach dropped. I felt it. It was a moment like when a rollercoaster is just about to go down. It’s not like panic or fear, but more that deep, unmistakable feeling that something inside is saying, this might not go quite the way you expect.
We often talk about following the light, following our call, and we talk about it like it’s going to be comforting, and sometimes it is, but light exposes in Psalm 27.
The question is, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?” That’s not a declaration of uncertainty, but more of a prayer spoken in the presence of fear. The light of God doesn’t just reassure us. It reveals what we’ve learned to live around.
This is true in the scripture too. We celebrate the wise men for finding Jesus, but we rarely speak about their journey. They follow the light, the long nights, the uncertainty, the thresholds they crossed, the wise men followed the light the whole time before they even knew where it was leading them. Their journey wasn’t simple, and I’m sure it wasn’t glamorous; it was real, it was human, and it reminds us that following God’s light or following God’s call rarely begins with clarity. It begins with our trust in our faith.
In Maine, that same light revealed something in me. Although I called myself Christian, my experience of God had always felt wider than that Christian label. Interfaith theology wasn’t new to my heart, but naming it felt risky. Confining God to one definition felt too small. And alongside that knowing, I discovered a quiet, inherited distrust of others. Ironic because I’m another who distrust didn’t stop there. It turned inward, and I started to distrust myself. And that’s not a place you wanna be, especially when you’re trying to walk a path in faith. I questioned whether my way of believing, loving, and listening was even worthy of being offered.
That’s what light does. It doesn’t shame us. It just shows us.
But here’s the other thing that I learned about following. Not every threshold feels like Bangor. Some feel like relief, some like an exhale, some like recognition. I feel that when I walk through the doors of Church of the Apostles, even five years later, a place where I am met, not asked to prove or perform, where faith can be curious and honest, where difference is a gift and not a threat, that too is holy ground.
Following Jesus does not always lead us into discomfort. Sometimes it leads us into places that help us breathe again, and sometimes both. When Jesus says, follow me, he doesn’t promise ease or certainty. He promises God’s presence.
We’re invited to trust that the ground beneath us is already holy. Whether challenging or comforting, unfamiliar or deeply known, it’s holy. Most of God’s invitations aren’t dynamic. They come quietly and daily through small turns, through embodied knowing. Through moments that you could easily ignore, especially when you’re busy. The question is rarely whether God is calling, but whether we are listening? Listening for the light that reveals truth, listening for the ground, asking to be trusted, listening for invitations that help us grow, and those that help us rest.
The light of Christ doesn’t always comfort, but it always reveals. When we are honest, we often discover that the holy ground has been holding us all along.
Last year I had wrote and preached from the Gospel of Luke on the Baptism of Christ.
Luckily, Luke & Matthew are not too different from each other. I am going to read the passage from Luke, though, just because it provides a slightly different context. This is from Luke 3:15-17 & 3:21-22.
“As the people were filled with expectation and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah, John answered all of them by saying, I baptize you with water, but one who is more powerful than I is coming. I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire…Now, when all the people were baptized and Jesus had also been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove and a voice came from heaven. You are my son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased.”
Last year, when I studied this passage from Luke, I was in a slightly different place on my journey at that point, and I was feeling very skeptical of the scripture. One of my professors suggested to me that I, instead of looking at passages of the Bible for the things that I didn’t agree with, or the things that frustrated me to look for the things that did make sense, and dig into those. Rather than being distracted by what I didn’t believe, I could find the things that I did believe.
I came upon something really interesting in the commentary that I was reading. In discussing Jesus’ baptism, the commentator observed that Jesus approaches his baptism with humility, and one can imagine with faith and trust. He comes to the place where John is preaching a message of repentance and forgiveness of sins, of turning back to the selfless ways of caring for the weak and the marginalized. In response, Jesus submits himself to the cleansing ritual. Jesus’ thoughts and motivations in offering himself for baptism remain a mystery to us for now, but we have his example to follow. Those observations struck a chord, and I found myself stuck on this question.
Why was Jesus baptized? Why did he have to be baptized?
If he was perfect, there wouldn’t have been a reason for him to be baptized. Perhaps he wasn’t perfect in the way that we’ve always been taught. I know that’s maybe an unpopular opinion, but stick with me. Maybe Jesus made mistakes. Maybe he did things he shouldn’t have done. I think that leaving his parents to stay in the synagogue might have been an example of this. But because he’s Jesus, we brush it under the rug and say that he was supposed to be there because he was God and not a normal 12-year-old sneaking off and disobeying his parents, because obviously, the son of God is never late.
Another thing, do we really think that all that time he spent as a carpenter, Jesus never smashed his thumb and let out an expletive? I’ve only been whittling for like a month, and I have done it at least 10 times. The Bible says that he had siblings. Are we supposed to imagine that he never got upset with him, that he never got into a fist fight over who got to sit up front on the camel?
I am probably gonna ruffle a couple of feathers here. To be honest, my own were a bit ruffled when I was going through this, but what if Jesus was just like us? I mean, it does say that he put on flesh so that he could sympathize with us, but how could he sympathize if he was perfect and never sinned?
I am not sure if this will resonate with you or not, but for me, for a long time, if I screwed up, that was the end of the world.
I was terrible, and no one could possibly love me. Then, because I thought that they would be disappointed and not love me, I resented them and would go unintentionally doing the things that I knew they would not approve of to further separate myself from them. Many of us learn these patterns of behavior at a young age, and they are reinforced over and over again by our families of origin, school teachers, and the churches that we grew up in. For me, the pattern began young and before I was conscious of it, I had developed some nasty habits and coping mechanisms that had become quite addictive by the time I reached adulthood.
By the time I realized I had problems, the cycle seemed impossible to break. No amount of trying or praying or repenting and swearing I would never do it again seemed to work. I can relate to those people lining the banks of the Jordan waiting to be baptized by this charismatic, borderline crazy, religious figure named John. I’ve been in that line thinking that if this guy touched me, I’d be free of all of my habits and hang-ups. Maybe if I were baptized at this church and I was fully immersed as opposed to being sprinkled, it would finally actually wash off all the dirt, and when it didn’t work, and I walked away feeling more broken than before, believing God must really be done with me this time, and there was nothing I could do about it. I’d go right back to whatever the destructive habit was at the time.
What was it that made Jesus go down to the river that day?
Was it Holy Spirit intuition? Like the day at the synagogue? Was it on his checklist from God that day? What if it was a deep nagging, the thing that he kept returning to, the feeling of failure, of disappointment to his parents, earthly and heavenly. What if that day, he knew something had to change, so he strapped on his sandals, trekked down to the river to see his cousin, just to get his mom to stop nagging him.
But with secret hope in his heart, he waited in line just like everybody else. He didn’t push to the front or demand special treatment. At least that’s what the account in Luke tells us. In fact, it says that Jesus was last. It said when everyone was baptized and Jesus was baptized,
I wonder if he thought about leaving. Maybe he got out of line and headed toward home only to feel that pull. Turn back around and get in line at the end. Maybe he hoped that some of the crowd would go away so that he could get a few moments alone with his cousin.
I once went to a healing and deliverance service to see what all the hype was about this particular so-called prophet. There were hundreds of people there. I waited in line forever. People were being slain in the spirit, speaking in tongues, breaking their canes, stomping on glasses. I thought, this must be my day. This guy has gotta be the real deal. I stood in line, I looked around, and I saw this woman whom I knew. We had gone to several such services together in the past, but had lost touch when I did what I always did, and she chastised me for wasting God’s time. She had said that it was useless for me to keep getting in prayer lines and taking time away from other people who really needed prayer, that my problem was that I didn’t want to be free because if I did, all I had to do was walk in it, whatever that meant. Seeing her was it for me. I was out. I didn’t need that type of negativity.
I wonder if there was anybody that day in the crowd with Jesus whose opinions really got his goat. Or maybe he was afraid that John, who seemed to know things about Jesus that others didn’t, would turn him away. In the story of Matthew, John says, You are the one who should be baptizing me. But Jesus was like, Nope, it’s gotta be the other way around. He was pretty adamant. Which further reinforces my wondering about why. It could have been because he knew that it was to be a sign or a fulfillment of ancient prophecy, or perhaps because he needed to be baptized. Maybe he had things he needed to turn from so that he could turn towards other things.
One thing I noted is that Jesus was praying after he was baptized. Did he not get what he was expecting when John baptized him?
I can imagine him exclaiming, directing his frustration toward God. I’m wet, I’m cold, and there’s seaweed in my epic hair, but I feel the same. I’m supposed to be your son, but I just feel like some guy, and I can’t stop. Are you even up there? Are you even listening? Continuing from the gospel account, it says, “And as he was praying, heaven was openedand the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”
Well, gee, that was worth the weight and some seaweed. I don’t know about you, but those are words that I have wanted to hear my entire life. The desire for those words has caused me to go to crazy lengths and to put myself in some less-than-desirable situations. To hear that I am loved, chosen, the pride of someone’s life, I wanted to hear that from my parents. As long as I can remember, those words should be a given from our parents at least. No child should have to wonder about the love of their mother or father, but many of us do. It is no wonder then that many of us struggle to believe in the unconditional love of God.
I wonder if this was part of Jesus’ struggle. At least in the Luke telling of the story. There’s no fanfare from the crowd after this heavenly announcement. There’s no article in the Jordan Times “Dove descends and names Jesus the carpenter as God’s son.” In fact, it could be the case that nobody other than Jesus even knew that this happened.
What if Jesus were or is just like us? What if he wondered about the nature of God’s love for him? What if he wondered if he’d missed the mark or been replaced by some other kid, a few villages away, who really never did fight with his siblings? What if he came to the river that day needing an epiphany?
To hear the voice of a parent speaking the words, You are my son. You are the one I want. You are special. You are loved. You make me proud. Now, that would be worth any price. Waiting all day in the hot sun with a bunch of sweaty sinners. Any amount of seaweed, fish swimming around my ankles, and slimy river sand and stones between my toes.
At the beginning of the next chapter of Luke, it says that immediately, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit and probably some newly found confidence in his identity, left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wild.
We know how the story goes. The devil comes and tests Jesus, and he gets all the answers right. How do you think he could do that? Here’s what I think. When you hear God, or even someone whom you respect and whose love you desire, when you hear them claim you as their own, when they show you how much you are loved. When you know, then you know that no matter what, their love for you could never & would never change. You can do anything. You can give up whatever’s holding you back. You can face any challenge. You can look the devil in the eye and say, I don’t need what you’ve got.
Even if you mess up and pick some questionable friends or call a lady a dog or flip over some tables out of righteous anger, you can still know that they love you, and you can know that God will work it all out.
The other thing that I think is that once you hear that voice, you are free to live into who God has called you to be, who God calls all of us to be in the community. There was this thought that had never occurred to me. Jesus comes to this place where John is preaching a message of repentance and forgiveness of sins, of turning back to the selfless ways of caring for the weak and the marginalized. It’s not just about what we turn from, but also what we turn to. The selfless, caring for the weak and the marginalized. He turned from whatever he needed to leave behind so that he could turn toward what God had for him.
I think that’s how it is for us too. It doesn’t end with accepting Jesus and being baptized. We’re called to more.
Where are you this morning? Do you need an epiphany? Do you need to be baptized? Are you waiting in line for the prophet to heal you?
I believe that God is saying to everyone, Here you are, my child. You are chosen. You are special. I am proud of you. Just think on that for a minute. Let it soak in, let it wash over you, like the water of the Jordan River and don’t mind the seaweed or the thing that just brushed your ankles.
The heavenly parent loves you. The heavenly parent looks at you and smiles. You make God happy. Maybe this week is a good time for you to spend some time in the unconditional love of God and get to know how freedom feels.
Or maybe you’ve already had that experience. Maybe you’re living in the freedom of knowing what it is to be loved, but still, something is missing. What’s next? You may wonder. Maybe it’s time to take another turn. A turn toward the work that God calls us toward. The work of justice and building community. Maybe for you, this week is about seeking opportunities to join God in the work of restoring shalom to this war-torn earth that we live on.
Either way, it’s good news. And I think we could all use a little bit of that these days.
My wife and I have six sons between us, and when our sons began getting married, we discovered that when holidays come, you don’t see your sons because daughters go home to their mothers for holidays.
Rather than fight that fight, we decided to create our own holiday. About the end of October, we picked a date that nobody had picked for anything, and we decided everybody would come to our house for turkey, stuffing, and sweet potato pie, and all the trimmings. We have done that every year for over 10 years. We call it hollowgiving.
Most holidays are arbitrary anyway. We can make one up on Christmas Eve. I’ve always wanted to come to the blue Christmas that Kathryn was doing here for years, but Christmas Eve was always when we see the grandchildren in New Jersey. On Christmas Eve my wife and I usually exchange presents because Christmas Day is filled with grandkids and all that kind of stuff.
It occurred to me that maybe we need another time when we can exchange our presents with each other. I called it Donkey Day, the day Joseph loaded up the donkey to go wherever he was gonna go. It happened before everything else happened. There was Donkey Day, and we’ve been practicing Donkey Day, except when I reread the Christmas stories recently. There’s no donkey in the Christmas stories.
We tell ourselves there has to be a donkey, but there’s no donkey in the Christmas story. If there’s no donkey in the store, I really can’t call it donkey day. As far as we know, Joseph and Mary simply walked to wherever they had to go. Having a donkey was probably a very middle-class thing to own livestock, and there’s no indication that they were anything other than wandering migrants, so they didn’t have a donkey.
But Matthew tells us another story about Christmas.He tells us a story about astrologers.
How many people here have checked their horoscopes recently? Some people we were with recently were checking their Chinese Zodiac to see what year they were. 2026 is the year of the horse, and they were going on about things.
Did you ever ask yourself why Herod had no astrologers in his court? We talk about the stars as if everybody saw them. I’ve seen articles that it had to be a comet. There’s no indication in the story that anybody other than these guys from the foreign country actually saw this star, which meant they were professional stargazers or astrologers. Herod did not have any astrologers in his court. They didn’t see the star. You know why? It was forbidden knowledge.
The Pleiades (or the Seven Sisters) is the name of an open cluster in the constellation Taurus.
That’s why the story goes back to the first Samuel. One of my favorite stories in the Old Testament was about King Saul going to consult the last witch available in Israel because he’d killed all the witches and he’d chased all the witches, astrologers, tarot readers, necromancers out, and all those who foretold the future and read palms out. He got rid of them all because it was all forbidden knowledge. That’s why, when it comes back to the Christmas story, there are no astrologers in the royal court because it’s forbidden knowledge.
But yet we all know about the stars. We all know about the Zodiac signs. My wife’s gotten to be an excellent stargazer at 1:30 in the morning. She’s got pictures to prove it. She was out looking for the Pleiades the other day, but it was too overcast to see them.
We haven’t let go of forbidden knowledge, and sometimes it takes people with different languages and different perspectives, who have knowledge that’s supposed to be forbidden to us, to tell us things that are true about our own stories.
Matthew tells his story in the gospel, which is addressed to the churches. They are modeled after the synagogue, so bear with me on this. The only religion that I know of, which was devoted to telling the sacred stories, or telling the stories about what God has done for the people, happened in the synagogues. The other religion celebrated rituals, events, and current things that were going on. But only in the synagogues do you get together to hear the old stories because people didn’t have Bibles. You didn’t have scrolls, you didn’t have a big book at home. You couldn’t go read the stories for yourself. The only place to be in touch with the history of the old stories was to get together and listen to the rabbi read from scrolls. The Rabbis knew the old stories and the scholars knew the old stories. We got together back in the day, once a week on Saturday, to listen to the old stories because the old stories were important.
Matthew tells an old story. The story he tells about the birth of Jesus and the visitors from the East who see the stars in the sky is the same story that some of the old documents that did not get into the Bible tell about Abraham and Abraham’s birth. Abraham’s birth is foretold by a star in the sky. Abraham’s birth was accompanied by the slaughter of innocence. Matthew tells a story that is not even original. The scholars would’ve known the references to Abraham. So Matthew’s trying to make Jesus into the new Abraham, the new father of a nation, a new people. He’s telling the old story that’s been told about Abraham over again in the context of Jesus.
Some of you may be aware of the crusades. Did you know there was a children’s crusade? The children all ended up being sold into slavery.
It seems historically, over and over again, powerful people, to maintain political and economic control, do it at the expense of the most vulnerable and the most innocent. It’s happened before. All I’m gonna say about it happening now is I’ve heard that 20,000 children have died in Gaza. I’ve read that it’s estimated that 20,000 children have disappeared from Ukraine. I’ve heard it said that this year, mostly in Africa, 600,000 people have died from lack of medicine and lack of food, and 400,000 of those have been children. So we ask ourselves, what are we to do?
Well, we have a story. Maybe, from that story, we could create a holiday? The 12 days of Christmas didn’t really work. The Russians celebrate gift-giving on Epiphany. Today is the day of Epiphany, by the way, when the wise, the magi, the astrologers, the foreigners, brought their gifts to Mary. We could make it a holiday where we all give gifts to our mothers, but we don’t. We could make it a day when we celebrate making places safe for people who wander, are homeless, or people who feel threatened, but we don’t. So we ask ourselves, what are we to do?
I think I have a clue, with all that’s going on in the world, that maybe we’re simply asked to be witnesses to the light to say. This is light, and that is darkness. If we say it loudly and often enough to remind each other of what’s light and what’s darkness. Maybe just maybe we’ll find that the darkness is not overcome, and the light shines in the dark, and we have to confess sometimes that we are not the light, but we can bear witness to the light, we can testify to the light, we can point to the light. We can even sometimes light a light. One of the earliest songs I remember singing is “This Little Light of Mine.” We’ll let it shine.
We are called like John, not to necessarily be the light if we find it beyond our capacity, but for none of us is it beyond our capacity to bear witness to, testify, point to, and sometimes to hold the light.
Love is our theme for this fourth Sunday in Advent, and that seems like something we shouldn’t have to define, but right now I feel like we do.
I decided to define love by saying what it is not. It is called a negative argument. Love is not violence against someone who has different beliefs or values from us. Love is not violence against when we see our brothers and sisters of any faith or no faith hurt. That is not love. When we see it, and we remain silent, that is not love. Love is not cruel words meant to create hardship or pain for another; that is not love.
Then the scripture from 1 Corinthians came back to me, because we need a little bit of positivity here. “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable; it keeps no record of wrongs; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4-6
Our God has made it quite clear that the expectation of us is that we love. We are to love our God. We are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We are to love the stranger among us. We are to love our enemy, and we are to love ourselves. That is the commandment of God. We are to be people of love doing loving acts for others.
The Isaiah scripture today, Isaiah 7:10-16, was written 3,000 years ago and was written in Hebrew. Then in about the third century BCE, it was translated into Greek.
A lot of people didn’t speak Hebrew; the religious leaders spoke Hebrew, the scholars spoke Hebrew, but the people spoke Greek because that was the language of business at that time. There was a translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek. That was called the Septuagint translation. Sep meaning seven, it was the translation of the 70 because it was translated by 72 translators, six from each of the 12 tribes of Israel. So remember, like that’s still important. The 12 tribes of Israel were still important, so six people from each tribe got to come in, and they translated it, and when they translated it, they wrote, “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel.”
However, it wasn’t really accurate to the Hebrew. Fortunately, the NRSV, which is the Bible that you have in your pews, instead of using the Septuagint, went back to the original Hebrew. This is also a whole lot closer to what I have. “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son.” – Matthew 1:23.
Do you see the differences? One, she’s a virgin. It’s just she’s young. One place, she shall conceive, future tense. The other one, she’s already pregnant a thousand years before Jesus is born. I just told you all of that to say that this is one of the scriptures that Christians, particularly some Jewish people, feel that we have co-opted to make it fit Jesus. Because Matthew used the Septuagint when he wrote, so that is what was in Matthew’s gospel, and they like that to match. People want you to read it in Matthew and then go back to Isaiah and find it.
Scripture’s messy, folks, it’s not clean. It’s precise. But today is Joseph’s day, and I don’t wanna take time away from Joseph. I want you to think for a moment what you know about Joseph.
I’m going to guess that you know Joseph as the one who did what the angel told him to do. He gets lifted as that he gets celebrated. The angel told him not to be afraid, take Mary, and that’s what he did. But let’s give Joseph a little bit more credit. Not that, you know, if an angel shows up, listen to him, but we don’t all get angels. We can all sit and think about what the right thing to do is.
Joseph and Mary were not two teenagers who fell in love, and this was all wonderful. That’s not what marriage was in the first century. Mary was a liability to her family, especially when she was pregnant without being married. But Mary was a liability even before she was pregnant. She was a drain on the family system, so she needed to go. She needed to be married off. Where’s the dowry? Where’s the money for her? Let’s get her out. She’s of marrying age. Let’s get this woman married.
Joseph is portrayed as such a nice, innocent young man. What was good about that was that they did not portray the harshness of how the people lived under Roman oppression. I tell you that, but they depicted it well because the people were really struggling with poverty under Roman oppression.
But I think Joseph really struggled with this as he followed the angel. He looked at this situation, and he said, “What does Mary need?” Mary needs to be protected, and she needs security. She needs safety and security. He realized he could provide that. Joseph knew that he could do that. If Mary were pregnant out of wedlock, she would have been killed. That punishment is stoning. She would not have survived. So whether the baby was God’s or not, he was saving a life by taking her as his wife.
I think he just needs credit. Joseph needs credit for being the kind of man who is willing to stand up and say, I choose family. I can choose to be the earthly father of Jesus, and he accepted that choice.
They chose love. In the midst of fear, they chose love against all odds, and they knew that being together was better than being apart.
We are called to choose love.
As I sat with that, what came to me was how I love the church calendar because it is circular or maybe a spiral. We come around to the same stories, and hopefully we grow a little bit. I read the first verses of John’s Gospel on Christmas Eve and on Good Friday. I know that you probably didn’t pick up on that, so I’ll clue you in to that.
But I went back to see how I was closing my sermons in Lent, and this is what I said in Lent. One of the pieces that I love about the church year is that Lent and Holy Week tie to Advent and Christmas. So to complete the circle, how we treat others matters. What is the most loving thing to do now?
To quote Stephen Sills, love the ones you’re with, and remember from the wisdom of Stephen Sondheim, and maybe this will come back to you. Careful. The things you say. Children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see. Learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn what to be careful before you say, listen to me, children will listen.
