Lent 4C

Episcopal Church of the Advent, Sumner

Joshua 5:9-12; Psalm 32; 2 Corinthians 5:16-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

Our son is in kindergarten, and I took him on his first spring break trip this week to visit my mother in South Carolina. You drive past a lot of churches on the road from Spartanburg, South Carolina to Jackson, Mississippi, all shapes and sizes and denominations, many with those signs out front where they post a weekly bible verse, or some wise or witty proverb, or the title of the Sunday sermon. Just so you know, in small towns across the southeast this morning, there are sermons being preached on “Priming the Pump of Morality,” “Who’s Excluded,” and “How Much Will My Sin Cost You.” A church in Greenwood has a month-long series titled “March Into Heaven.” Now, I know we Episcopalians need to work on being more inviting, but thank goodness we don’t put sermon titles on a sign outside the church. I've always been terrible at titles. Some preachers think of the title first, whether it’s straightforward or clever, and then write the sermon from there. Not me. I’d have to do the title last, and even then….on my computer this sermon will be titled “Lent 4C”.

Titles, whether of sermons or stories or songs or anything at all, convey something of the essence of the whole work. A title has to capture our attention, pull us in, convince us that this work has something we are looking for. The title is the first and perhaps only chance a preacher or writer has at letting the world know what she or he has to say. It may describe the circumstances of writing (Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians), or focus on one element within the text (Jane Eyre, Charlotte’s Web), or reveal a theme that runs throughout the whole work (Much Ado About Nothing). Always, though, titles are at least gently interpretive, telling us what’s important about what we’re about to read or hear.

“The Parable of the Prodigal Son” is the title we hear most often for this morning’s gospel reading. It’s what I wrote down when I started making my sermon notes. I was struck as I read through various commentaries, though, by how many different titles I saw for this passage. Some used “The Prodigal Son”, but there were others, as well, which got me thinking about the significance of titles when we’re telling the stories of our lives and of our faith. WWJT – What Would Jesus Title this or any of his parables, his stories?

We think we have these parables all figured out – especially one as familiar as the prodigal son; but the thing is, as soon as we think that, we’ve actually completely missed the point both of what parables are and of whatever it is Jesus is trying to tell us in any particular parable. So here we go. Perhaps the title of the rest of this sermon might be: “The Parable Formerly Known as the Parable of the Prodigal Son”.

Volumes have been written about the nature and purpose of parables as used by Jesus in his teaching. It turns out that most things we think parables are – metaphors, illustrations, allegories, explanations, riddles – they’re not. The Greek word for parable means something like “to lay beside.” In his parables, Jesus laid ordinary images and actions that his listeners would understand beside images and actions of God at work in and through creation in extraordinary ways they couldn’t begin to imagine. Theologian Walter Wink writes, “Parables are tiny lumps of coal squeezed into diamonds…that catch the rays of something ultimate and glint it at our lives.”

What is the ultimate something reflected in this morning’s parable, filled with such ordinary images as family, far countries and failure, pigs, parties and pouting? What is glinted at our lives, illuminating extraordinary things we might not otherwise see? Again, Walter Wink writes, “Parables participate in the reality which they communicate…they can never be exhausted; they always contain more than we can tell.” Parables are more than a metaphor, more than an allegory; they are also more than a single story, for Jesus turns every parable like a diamond so that we can glimpse whatever ultimate something he wants us to know in many facets. No wonder it’s so hard to come up with a title for this or any parable. Each title gently interprets what we see, refracting the light through one facet or another of the diamond.

Suppose we do call this “The Parable of the Prodigal Son.” It’s such an appropriate story for Lent, isn’t it, this wayward young man who by his own fault strayed far from where he belonged, and then when things got rough came to himself, Luke writes, and finally returned home to confess his sins and to try to bargain for a new life for himself. It is a story of repentance, which we are called to in this season – repentance, coming to ourselves, putting on our right minds, returning to where and to whom we belong.

But now notice, because surely the prodigal son did, that his father embraced and kissed him before he ever even opened his mouth to begin his carefully rehearsed confession. Some say this is when the real moment of repentance occurred, when breathless in the arms of his father the prodigal son understood that he was already forgiven and made his confession as a humble response. Ah…is that a glint, something ultimate, perhaps? What can we see in its light…

…How have we squandered what we have been given – not just things, but abilities, relationships, responsibilities, faith? How far are we from where we belong (What if the title was “The Parable of the Far Country”? One preacher suggested that the ‘far country’ can be as close as a single step away when that step takes us in a different direction from God’s will for us…)? How do we come to confession – bargaining for forgiveness, or in humble gratitude for having already been forgiven?

Now suppose we call our passage “The Parable of the Elder Brother.” It’s only fair to give him a chance – elder brothers always get the short straw in the bible: Cain, Ishmael, Esau, Simeon, Judah, Isachaar and seven other elder brothers of Joseph… And after all, this morning’s parable ends with the father standing before the elder brother, his arms once again outstretched in love for one who is wayward, although this one seems to have always done everything faithfully, everything right. He’s never left home, never been to a far country, never (apparently) even been to a party. The elder brother is (or fancies himself to be) the voice of reason in what appears to be a highly unreasonable situation. That’s great he’s back, dad, but the fatted calf? The nice robes? Your best ring? Dad, it’s Lent. Those who are penitent put on sackcloth and ashes, they wail and weep, they eat bread (if they eat at all) and drink water. He doesn’t deserve a party. I do.

And so there they stand, surrounded by merriment because what was dead is alive, what was lost is found. The irony at this point is that if the elder brother would just relent – if he would just repent – and go to the party, he would find that it was indeed for him as well. We don’t have to be in a far country to be lost – we can be in the midst of the kingdom and feel alienated from it if we for a single moment think that deserving has anything to do with being there, that deserving has anything to do with being forgiven. In the elder brother, we see the painful, lonely, angry moment before repentance has occurred, before there has been reconciliation, the restoration of a right relationship as a son and as a brother.

Who among our brothers, our sisters, perhaps even ourselves, have we not forgiven because it does not seem deserved? In our families, our communities and our churches, are there more prodigal sons or elder brothers? How would you write the next part of the elder brother’s story?

One commentary I read titled this “The Parable of the Father Who Had Two Sons.” In many of Jesus’ parables there are two or more sons or servants who behave in varying shades of faithfulness or unfaithfulness, and so right away the expectation is set up for one of the sons to be the winner and the other to be the loser. That’s also the game the world plays today, right? There can only be one person at the top….

But notice what Jesus has done – in this parable, the father calls both the prodigal and the elder sons, and everything he gives them, everything he does for them and everything he says to them is rooted in that relationship, no matter what they do or say. This is not a good son/bad son story – it is the story of a father who had two sons, the story of God who has more sons and daughters than stars in the sky... Yet another glint...

I like this one – “The Parable of the Waiting Father.” He waited on the front porch for – how long? – for the prodigal son to return. He waits on the front porch for – how long? – for the elder brother to come inside. And so God waits…and waits…and waits…not just to glint a ray of something ultimate our way but to shower us with resurrection light, the ultimate gift of forgiveness once given, never earned. God is always waiting with open arms for our return.

In just a few moments, we will have the opportunity to make our humble and grateful response - to repent, to make our confession, laying before God our sins, those things that stand between us and the party of a lifetime. Paul tells us we are then given not just the fatted calf but the ministry of reconciliation – the calling to carry out in the world the work that has been carried out in us.

It might help then to read this as “The Parable of the Father’s Servants,” looking through the facet of the unnamed, unnumbered servants who ate bread enough and carried out the father’s commands without hesitation. What gifts has God entrusted to us – individually and as a church – to distribute among those who have found their way home? How eagerly do we share the good news, as the father’s servants share the good news of the prodigal’s return? Ultimately, we are called to imitate the actions of the father, as Jesus himself did. Our diocesan vision statement makes a nice title, then: “The Parable of One Church in Mission: Inviting, Transforming, Reconciling,” for the story teaches what it means to be ambassadors for Christ, always waiting, always welcoming, always embracing, always seeking, always forgiving….

It’s not easy to come up with titles, but endings can be tough, too. The Rev. Robert Farrar Capon suggests this ending: “God will say to everybody, ‘You were dead and are alive again; you were lost and are found; put on a funny hat and step inside.’” Amen.

Lent 1C

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Psalm 91:9-15; Romans 10:5-13; Luke 4:1-13

The summer after 7th grade, my family went to stay at Kanuga, an Episcopal retreat center near Ashville, NC, for a week. Our cabin was nestled with others at the foot of a steep hill, along a pathway of pine needles and pebbles and the twisted roots of trees whose green branches unfurled overhead. Late every afternoon, about an hour before the dinner bell sounded, it would rain. No, not rain – it would pour. My family would sit tucked in on the screened porch, talking and telling stories, shivering slightly in the damp breeze, counting the long seconds it took for thunder to rumble across the mountaintops.

One afternoon, as it poured, we heard the sound of heavy footsteps crunching through wet pine needles and twisted roots. Moments later, a line of young people appeared, trudging along the path in front of our cabin, each carrying a large backpack with a sleeping bag tied above or below, each wearing what looked like a clear garbage bag over their heads and packs, with dripping holes for their faces and arms, each singing a song loud enough to rival the pounding of rain on the leaves above.

We watched this strange, this wild and unexpected procession round a corner that continued uphill and out of sight, and we figured that they must have been from Camp Kanuga, just a mile down the road. As the sound of their singing faded, I remember very clearly saying to my mom and dad, “They will be wet forever. That will never, ever be me.”

I didn’t think about that day again until one afternoon several years later. It rained – no, it poured, the afternoon I led my first campout as a Camp Kanuga counselor, trudging along the very same path, catching the eye of a little girl dry on the front porch of her cabin. We were indeed wet forever, or at least all summer.

It didn’t seem at first that I was going to be very good at wilderness living. I had never been on a campout before – the knots and the tarps and the trail-following (straight uphill with your backpack and three of your crying campers’ backpacks because there might have been a bee back there) and the fire-starting (in the rain) and the stew-cooking…it was all new to me. I was pretty miserable those first few campouts, out there in the wilderness, wet.

I wonder how miserable Noah was, forty days and nights of nothing but wet. We know how miserable the Israelites were, forty years of wandering through the desert wilderness. I wonder if Jesus was ever miserable, even once, forty days in the wilderness, led by the Spirit, tempted by the devil, eating nothing at all. Maybe Jesus couldn’t light a fire in the rain, either. Maybe he didn’t like stew.

Over and over again in our scriptures, the wilderness is a place of testing and temptation, of wild beasts and wrong turns, of too much water or not enough. The wilderness is unfamiliar, unfriendly, and uncomfortable. And forty days or forty years – no matter, the number forty was simply used to signify a long time, with wilderness stretching as far as the eye could see.

If you looked back, you might see as a tiny speck on the horizon the place where you stood when God called you into the wilderness. Neither the Israelites nor Jesus simply stumbled off a pathway of pine straw and pebbles – God called them there. Sent them there. In Luke’s gospel, the Spirit led Jesus there, he was led by the Spirit in the wilderness.

I wonder if Jesus looked back, back to the moment not so long before when he was still dripping with Jordan River water, when God had said, You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased. It had quite possibly been a moment of revelation, and certainly deep affirmation, for Jesus. In those waters, God confessed Jesus’ identity, who Jesus was. You are my Son, the Beloved. In the wilderness, the devil would try to dry Jesus out, try to drain him of who he was and fill him instead with the devil told him he could be if he would step off the path just a little…

Just think how much good you could do, Jesus, if you turned these stones to bread. Just think how many would hear you if you had authority over all the kingdoms of the world. Just think how many would notice if you pulled that stunt from the pinnacle from the temple – the whole world would see and know who you are.

That was just the thing, though, wasn’t it. The world wouldn’t have known who Jesus was at all. Instead they would have known a man who, like so many others before and after him, had believed those words whispered his ear. Real temptation beckons us, entices us, to do that about which much good can be said – no self-respecting devil entices us by suggesting we fall into ruin (another preacher suggested, “ruin is in the small print at the bottom of the temptation”).

Wiping out hunger, overturning oppressive governments, letting all the world see the power of God…Luke makes it sound as though Jesus had his answers at the ready, but I wonder if Jesus struggled. He hadn’t yet preached a sermon or called a disciple or healed anyone…it was all new to him. He didn’t exactly have an instruction manual. He knew the Jewish people had high expectations of a messiah, one whose political and religious power would sweep in and restore God’s rule. Stones to bread…He must have struggled. We are only tempted by what is within our power – temptation appeals to our strength, to what we are capable of, not our weakness. Jesus must have struggled mightily. But as the sweat began to drip down his brow, the Spirit stirred in him and he remembered and looked back to that moment dripping in the river and heard again God’s confession, You are my Son, the Beloved.

The words were then very near indeed to Jesus’ lips, as he responded with his own confession. Two of the verses he quotes in this passage are part of the great confession of the Jewish faith, shema yisrael, adonai eloheinu, adonai ehad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength. And so Jesus faithfully resisted the temptation to be less or other than he was called to be. God was all that Jesus needed. We don’t get to hear in this reading what happens next, which is that filled with the same Holy Spirit, Jesus goes to Galilee and begins his ministry of telling the world that all they need is God, too.

The thing is, I don’t think Jesus so much left the wilderness as he just exchanged one wilderness for another. The cities of Galilee and beyond would, in the end, be no safer than the sands of the desert. They were filled, as our communities today are filled, with people who believed cleverly whispered words that power, authority, and wealth made you who you were. That gender, skin color, age, sexual orientation and able-bodiedness were measures of worth. That a little violence and deception and betrayal were justifiable means to an end. In the wildnerness of the world there were wild beasts on the prowl in the form of religious and political leaders, skeptics, and even, sometimes, friends. Jesus would face temptation again, in the beautiful garden of Gethsemane that was for one anxious night a wilderness. Jesus would pass that test, too, even though nailed to a cross it would look for all the world like he had failed.

The wilderness tested the faith of Jesus, as it had tested the Israelites, as it continues to test our faith. In the wilderness, we are stripped down to the very essentials. And the essentials are these: God made us, God loves us, and God keeps us. That is enough for us as we go about the work we were called to back when we came dripping out of the baptismal waters and our identity was confessed: You are sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever. That, sisters and brothers, is who we are. God is all that we need.

It’s a jungle out there, as the saying goes. We live all the time in the wilderness, full of temptations and tests, wild beasts and wrong turns, too much water or not enough. Both scripture and experience bear testimony to a power which opposes love, health, peace, and wholeness. Because we fear we won’t survive, we pack on as much gear as we possibly can – not just the backpack, the sleeping bag, and the clear garbage bag for when it rains, but the tent, and the grill, and the cooler, and the air mattress, and the LED headlamps and the titanium stove, and the GPS…after all, haven’t we stepped a little off the path, couldn’t we be getting a little lost…?

In the season of Lent, we have the opportunity to be stripped down to the essentials. We don’t need all that gear. The messiah didn’t turn stones to bread, he wasn’t a magician, or a conquering hero, or a one-man show. You are my Son, the Beloved. God was well-pleased for the messiah to walk the paths around the Jordan River valley, teaching and preaching and healing and laughing and eating and loving the Lord his God with all his heart, and with all his soul, and with all his strength.

We are more able than we think we are to live out who we are called to be. I certainly learned that in the wilderness of the mountains of North Carolina. I may never win on Survivor, but I can light a fire in the rain. I may never win a Nobel Peace Prize, but I can comfort a homesick camper and carry her backpack for her.

So are we all more able than we think we are to live out who we are called to be in our baptism. It’s a jungle out there, but the Spirit leads us in the wilderness, ready to meet us in wild and strange and unexpected ways as we go, ready to be our strength, ready to help us to remember who we are. Out there in the wilderness, Jesus himself is the food and drink that nourishes us. And while we may not be wet forever out there in the wilderness, the word is always very near us, the confession that we are Christ’s own forever – we carry it here, where once water ran across our brow. That is all we need. Nothing else. Everything else is temptation. Amen.

Epiphany 6C

Jeremiah 17:5-10; Psalm 1; 1 Corinthians 15:12-20; Luke 6:17-26

One of the happiest, places in the world for me, when I was very little, was my grandparents’ house. And one of the happiest places in that house was my mom’s old room, where some of her stuffed animals still sat in the window seat, and a bulletin board was covered in pictures from high school and summer camp, and the shelves were filled with books – Nancy Drew and Vicky Barr mysteries, stories about dogs, and Peanuts books.

Do you remember those little books, kid-sized, with brightly colored pages on which Snoopy danced and Schroeder played his piano and Lucy gave out advice and Charlie Brown smiled despite it all? The words were kid-sized, too: “Happiness is a warm puppy.” “Security is a thumb and a blanket.” “Happiness is when the bell rings just before you are called on to recite.”

Those books are back in print right now, looking just the same as they did at my grandmother’s house thirty years ago. Happiness is picking up the book at the bookstore and seeing the familiar pictures, re-reading the familiar words. Familiar to me, anyway, until the very last page, which it seems I hadn’t remembered at all. It says: “Happiness is one thing to one person, and another thing to another person.”

I suppose we’re not all warm puppy people. There are as many different means to happiness as there are people who seek it. For me, these days, happiness is a lap full of yarn and a pair of knitting needles. For my husband, happiness is having a guitar and spare time in his hands. For our son, happiness is any quantity of matchbox cars. The means are different, but the happiness – the contentment, satisfaction, security and comfort – is very much the same.

This morning we are re-reading the familiar words of the Beatitudes (from the Latin, beatus; the Greek means both “blessed” and “happy”). The words are so familiar to us that we hardly have to remember them at all. It’s the same familiar picture of the crowds surrounding Jesus, and Jesus sounding for all the world like one of those old Peanuts books…happy are they who...blessed are you when…

In the Hebrew scriptures, beatitudes were a common formula for prescribing moral, faithful behavior. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord…they shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream, wrote the prophet Jeremiah. In our psalm this morning, Happy are they who have not walked in the counsel of the wicked, nor lingered in the way of sinners. For a people whose lives were rooted in Torah, in the law, the connection between following that law and being blessed, being happy, made sense.

In the world, there are (there have always been) many formulas with many variables for finding what is also called happiness and sometimes even blessedness. In some of those formulas, luck is the only variable that counts. In others it’s hard work. In some it may be fate. And setting such variables as warm puppies, knitting needles, and matchbox cars aside, the constant always in play is our deep and desperate need for security, for our share of comfort in world that never seems to have enough for all. For a people whose lives are caught up in the world, the connection between what we have, who we have, what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve acquired, how far we’ve come and being happy makes sense.

I wonder who Charles Schultz had in mind on that very last page of his sweet little book about happiness. Did he really mean that for some people happiness is a warm puppy and for others it is a fuzzy sweater? As I re-read the now not-so-familiar words, other pages began to stand out. “Happiness is a bread and butter sandwich folded over.” “Security is knowing you are not alone.” “Happiness is owning your own home,” with a drawing of Snoopy hugging his doghouse. One whole book in the series is devoted to the comfort of food, another to the comfort of friends, and still another to the comfort of home.

“Happiness is one thing to one person, and another thing to another person.” When I was little, a bread and butter sandwich folded over was an after school snack. For very many people in the world, a bread and butter sandwich is more than they will eat all week. Happiness would be even the bread by itself. Butter would be a step up, a blessing…

In this season of Epiphany, of revelation, of coming to understand who Jesus is, we have the opportunity to re-read the Beatitudes and find the words of blessing and of woe now not so familiar, not so sweet, not so formulaic. Jesus tenders blessings that have nothing at all to do with luck, or hard work, or even faithfulness but instead have everything to do with who God is. God’s calling of the people of Israel had begun with a blessing, when God said to Abram, I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you…and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. The oldest existing fragment of parchment containing words from scripture has upon it the blessing God asked Aaron and Moses to speak over the Israelites in the wilderness: The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace. Blessing immediately and unconditionally conveys something of the life-giving, life-transforming power of God upon those who are blessed. Blessing conveys something of who God is, of how God acts, of what matters to God.

Blessed are you who are poor, Jesus said, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry, who weep, who are hated and excluded and reviled and marginalized. Blessed are you. Happy are you. None of that would ever make it onto Charles Schultz’ list – or anyone else’s list for that matter – of what happiness, contentment, satisfaction, or security is. Happiness is being rich, having full bellies, laughing, being accepted and included and honored….right? Jesus had the world backward, upside-down.

But Jesus wasn’t describing the world with which everyone was familiar. Jesus was describing the world with him in it, divinity mingled with DNA, heaven and earth inseparable. Jesus was describing the world with the kingdom of God in it, of which he had heard his momma Mary sing, He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. Happiness, blessedness is one thing to people, and another thing altogether to God.

Blessed are you who are poor, Jesus says, for yours is the kingdom of God, for you matter to God. In the kingdom of God, which is mine to bring, you matter. In the words of these Beatitudes, in these words of blessing, we read what matters to God. Poverty matters to God. Hunger matters. Weeping matters. Those who are hated and excluded and reviled and marginalized matter. In all of our gospel accounts, but especially in the gospel according to Luke, Jesus’ life and ministry is spent among people who had been told by the world, “Happiness is…not for you.”

And so what are we to do, we who believe that Jesus was indeed God-with-us? Happiness is having something practical to offer on the last page of a sermon: how to be a better disciple, how to start a new ministry, how to live a more faithful life. But we must take care with the Beatitudes, because they are not a to-do list. They are not about how to get into the kingdom – do this, and you will be blessed, do that, and woe is you. They are not a glorification of truly wretched social and economic conditions that continue to diminish those whom God has blessed. They are not, by themselves anyway, a divine formula for altering those conditions, for we who eat buttered bread are a variable in that formula, too – Jesus will in many other teachings ask us to alter some conditions in our lives.

Instead, the Beatitudes simply and powerfully reveal the kingdom of God already present here, now, a kingdom utterly unfamiliar in a world that measures out happiness, that awards blessedness. Indeed, woe are they who continue to measure out happiness, to award blessings and store up security, for they are living in a world that no longer exists – the kingdom of God in which blessedness is for all is now in the world, but they cannot see it.

What are we to do? We are to understand what matters to God. We are to understand what matters to Jesus. We are to understand that, as his disciples, these things must matter to us. Blessed are we and all the whole world when the kingdom in our midst becomes what is most familiar. Amen.

Epiphany 3C

Nehemiah 8:2-10; Psalm 113; 1 Corinthians 12:12-27; Luke 4:14-21

The Lord be with you….

….and also with you, right?! I knew you’d say that. Those words are encoded, I think, in the DNA of every Episcopalian. They are part of who we are. The Lord be with you….and also with you. There are so many words we Episcopalians know on a cellular level. Our Father, who art in heaven….Lift up your hearts….we lift them to the Lord….the word of the Lord….thanks be to God.

In the same way hundreds, maybe thousands, of less liturgical but probably no less sacred words can feel as natural as breathing. They are part of who we are. I discovered some of my sacred words when we lived in New York, where no one knew how to spell y’all or had ever eaten grits or rotel, bless their hearts. And I’ve discovered lots of those words as a parent, words I don’t remember learning when I was younger – perhaps they seep into our cells through cups of milk or orange kool-aid. Words like mommy and daddy and why, words like where does it hurt and because I said so.

Despite what we say about sticks and stones, words are so very powerful. It’s amazing, don’t you think, that this jumble of shapes in black in white, this stream of sounds shaped by breath and lips, these words have such tremendous power in and over and through our lives. They create and convey such meaning. They are part of who we are, and in part they shape who we become. Words like, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…I take you to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward…Into your hands, Lord, we commend your servant and we commit his body to the ground…

Words are powerful whether they are spoken by prophets or politicians or poets or ordinary people. The words of national leaders can bring a country to war. The first words of a child can make parents’ hearts skip a beat. Words of anguish and desperation – I can’t do this anymore – can rip families apart. Words can crush egos and dreams – you’re not right for this job…you didn’t pass…we can’t give you a loan. Words can offer hope and healing – I’m sorry…I love you…let us pray. A single word can change everything, can reshape us and our world. Cancer. Deployment. Infertility. Promotion. Recovered. Yes.

In our readings this morning, two men, separated by four centuries, unrolled sheets of papyrus and, reading from them, proclaimed the word of the Lord. Ezra stood among the scattered stones and people of Jerusalem. Nothing was as it had been seventy long years before, before the Babylonians destroyed the city and the temple and carried most of the people into exile. In a strange land where strange gods were worshipped, many of the people of Israel struggled to remain faithful to the one God whom they had worshipped in a temple that no longer existed. When they finally returned….home? Jerusalem itself was unrecognizable, and the few who had been left behind were strangers.

But when Ezra opened the scroll of the law – the Torah – and began reading, the words washed over all who were gathered there, filling the cracks in their broken hearts, reviving their spirits, quenching their thirst to remember who and whose they were. Powerful words of a covenant that God had not forgotten. I am the Lord your God, they would have heard Ezra read from Genesis. Behold I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you again to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done everything I have promised. I am the Lord your God…. On that morning, the word of God changed everything, rebuilding from rubble a community of lived faith.

Jesus stood among the gathered people of his hometown, which probably looked exactly the same as it did twenty years before, when he was a young boy running through the streets, laughing with his friends, bringing home frogs in his pockets. As he drew in his breath to begin reading the words of the prophet Isaiah, some who were there doubtless could think back some of the very first words he said as a child, so many years ago...amma…abba…why…

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, Jesus read, words everyone there would have known as well as they knew their own names, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

All eyes were on Jesus as he rolled up the scroll and drew in his breath to begin commenting on the words he had just read. Then, Luke tells us, he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” On that morning, the words of God spoken through the prophet Isaiah, like the town in which the words were read, and the people who gathered there…the town, the people, and the words were the same as always. On that morning, the Word of God changed everything. On that morning, Jesus began to say to them, “I am the Living Word, I am the one anointed by the Spirit to bring good news, to proclaim release, to recover sight, to free what has been bound. The words you hear have come to life in me, divinity mingled with DNA. Today and every day in me this scripture is fulfilled.”

And so it would be, Luke goes on to show throughout his account of the life and ministry of Jesus. That very day, and the next, and the next, and every day after that, Jesus spoke the good news of God’s love, proclaimed release to those enslaved by sin, restored sight and hearing and mobility and health, brought freedom to those bound by oppression, bound by the hate or fear of others. That very day, and the next, and the next, and every day after that, one person at a time, Jesus showed that the word of God is much more than a jumble of shapes in black and white or a stream of sounds shaped by breath and lips. The Word of God is Compassion. Inclusion. Welcome. Justice. Invitation. Healing. Wholeness. Restoration. Forgiveness. Grace. The Word of God is Love.

Every Sunday morning, we gather together to open up the scriptures and read the words that have shaped us as individuals and as a community of faith. Sometimes the words sound familiar and sometimes they sound very strange. How do they sound today? If we’re also opening up newspapers or listening to words on television or looking at the seemingly infinite number of words on-line, all of which try to shape us as individuals and as communities, well then the Word of God must sound very strange indeed. How can the scriptures be fulfilled when today and every day we are bombarded with words like escalation, poverty, epidemic, genocide, hunger, hate crimes, abuse, abandonment, strained relations, sickness and schism?

Today, Jesus said, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Today...in our hearing. Against all those words with which the world tries to tell us who we are, who we should be, Jesus asks that we listen to him, to the Word of God. The Word of God is Love, and because the Word was made flesh and bone and breath in Jesus Christ, we now have that Word – that Love – encoded in us, encoded far deeper than DNA. It is part of who we are as the Body of Christ, shaped by power of the Word of God, anointed by the Spirit in baptism to proclaim the good news in our flesh and bones and breath, with our hands and feet and eyes and ears and only as a last resort our lips (to paraphrase St. Francis, who said, “Proclaim the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”).

The scriptures are fulfilled in our hearing that the Word of God changes everything. What if we, as the gathered Body of Christ and as individual members of that Body, what if we really brought that word to life? What if we made our lives speak today and every day? What if we brought to life today the words from Isaiah? What if we brought to life today the words of our baptismal covenant, words we know on a cellular level? Will you continue in the apostle’s teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers? I will with God’s help. Will you persevere in resisting evil, and whenever you fall into sin, repent, and return to the Lord?....Will you proclaim by word and example the good news of God in Christ?....Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?....Will you strive for justice and peace among all persons, and respect the dignity of every human being? I will with God’s help.

Are we really hearing this? Then, sisters and brothers, today and tomorrow and the next day and every day after that, these scriptures are fulfilled. On this we have God’s Word. Amen.

Feast of the Epiphany

Isaiah 60:1-6, 9; Psalm 72:1-2, 10-17; Ephesians 3:1-12; Matthew 2:1-12

In every neighborhood there is a house that hangs their Christmas lights long before the rest of us have even thought about where ours might be stored. We drive past that first twinkling house, and as the tiny lights reflect off our car windows we wonder for a moment what day it is and then roll our eyes, realizing it’s not even….what, is it Labor Day, now, when lights start going up?!

The thing is, though, most of us love Christmas lights. I look forward, anyway, to those weeks when it seems that every night another home here, another yard there is draped in strands of light. And unlike streetlights or houselights that cast their glow throughout the year, these strands of light do far more than just provide illumination as we make our way in the dark. Whether we’re expecting party guests or Santa Claus or the Son of God, we know that the more Christmas lights we see, the closer we are to whatever it is we are waiting for.

A few nights before Christmas, we went out driving to see the lights. There was only one six-year old in the car, but you would have thought we were all children with our faces up against the windows, oooh-ing and aahh-ing our way through the neighborhood. Of course there was such a wonderful variety, perhaps reflecting something of the people who lived in each home. White lights neatly wrapped around fenceposts. Multi-colored icicle lights hanging from the eaves. Flashing lights chasing one another around the trunks of trees. Lights in the shape of reindeer and sleds and stars and crosses and angels and elves and candy canes. “Which kind do you like best,” we asked our son. “All of them,” he replied without hesitation.

Someone had told us that one house in that neighborhood had a particularly grand display. But we didn’t know our way around the streets by daylight, much less at night, and so at each intersection we would look both ways and then set off in the direction with the most lights. Finally, through a dark stretch of trees, we saw what we knew must be the house, surrounded by an entire galaxy of Christmas lights. Keeping our eyes on its brilliance, we followed the streets around until we finally found the house and were overwhelmed with the delight of it.

If the appearance of Christmas lights like stars in the sky heralds a long-anticipated event, the disappearance of those lights announces that the event has come and gone. Last night only two houses on our street still twinkled. Darkness had returned. It’s not dark, really – there are plenty of streetlights and front porch lights, but without the merry multi-colored glow it looked dark. The holidays are over, the parties are only pictures, the family has returned home, the sales have ended. School is starting up again. Life is starting up again. We take down our lights and store them away until next Labor Day….

How strange it is that darkness returns in time for us to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, a Feast of Lights, when the appearance of a star in the sky heralded the birth of a king, when wise men followed that star through an unfamiliar neighborhood until they found the house that shone with the Light of the World.

We’re all six years old again when we hear the story, so rich with color and light and wonder and majesty. In the time of King Herod, the narrator of the Christmas pageant would read from Matthew’s gospel, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, wise men from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage….” They were wise men – kings, perhaps, but the word is magi in Greek (magoi), people who studied the stars and who understood much better than we do now how the movements of the earth and the heavens are linked, how a new king might illumine the lives of his people the way a new star shines in the night.

It was quite customary for royal representatives to travel great distances to greet a new king, and what wise man wouldn’t expect to find the King of the Jews in Jerusalem? In the palace? Herod was not the proud father, however, and he sent them on to Bethlehem, nine miles and another world away. And there, ahead of them, went the star that they had seen at its rising, until it stopped over the place where the child was. When they finally found the house bathed in light, they were overwhelmed with the delight of it, overwhelmed with joy.

It is a rich story, with royalty and adventure and intrigue – the villain is thwarted and the underdog is showered with extravagant gifts. It is a delightful story, told in many places tonight by six-year-olds covered in leftover drapery fabric, carrying boxes spray-painted gold and adorned with plastic jewels, singing Star of wonder, star of night, star with royal beauty bright. And we might be so delighted as to almost forget that it is a story in which there is also deep and terrifying darkness.

Go and search diligently for the child; and when you have found him, bring me word so that I may also go and pay him homage. Did the wise men see the shadows set in King Herod’s eyes? Could they hear the fear in his voice, sense his sinister thoughts? Would they have acted differently if they had known that by taking another way home they would infuriate Herod, who was bent on destroying the tiny king, and that in his rage he would slaughter all of Bethlehem’s baby boys? There was never a darker night.

The story is a reflection of our lives, isn’t it, a mixture of light and darkness, of joy and fear, of delight and grief? The streets before Christmas told a similar story, if indeed the lights reflect something of the people who live in each home. Some shine boldly, brilliantly; some flash on and off and on and off; some offer a soft and steady glow; some give off no light at all. "They’re probably just not home," we told our son, moving on to the next house. But the truth is, sometimes people don’t hang lights. Writer Molly Wolf says, “Dark can be the midnight blue against which stars are shot silver. Or it can be just plain dark.”

Some people don’t celebrate Christmas (Santa or Jesus) – perhaps their path is within a different faith or no faith at all. Some people who know the baby to be Jesus the Christ are not able to feel delight or joy this year. Perhaps they are sad or angry or depressed or anxious or grieving. Some people are too weak or sick to hang lights. Some people are busy with more jobs than there are hours in the day. Some people simply cannot afford a penny more on their utility bills. Some people, perhaps resentful or bitter, do not feel they owe the world any light. Some people choose the dark, afraid of what the light might reveal.

The story is a reflection of our lives in that life is not always what even the wisest of us would expect. It’s not always full of light, even when we’re following a star. Color and majesty and wonder mingle with desert dust – we’re celebrating just two weeks after Christmas, but the story in Matthew suggests it took two years for the wise men to reach Bethlehem. The real journey was not for six-year-olds, to be sure. Comfortable homes were left behind. Nights were spent on the road. Noisy, smelly, ornery camels were noisy, smelly, and ornery. Shifty travelers and paranoid kings were confronted. Every expectation was changed about what a king was supposed to look like, where he was supposed to live, and how he would illumine the lives of his people.

The Epiphany journey – a journey of discovery, of revelation, of coming to understand, of changing expectations, of light and of dark – the Epiphany journey is the pattern of Christian living. Like the wise men we are beckoned by the light not just of a star but of the Christ Child – God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God. And though there may be discomfort and darkness and risk and dust along the way, at the end of the journey (which is never the end of the story but, rather, the beginning of a new chapter) is overwhelming light and joy.

Herod was right to be afraid – as one preacher has said, Herod's love of power was no match for the power of love. The starlight that night illuminated far more than the humble home of a baby king – it revealed the brilliance of a new kingdom, the kingdom of God. Do you see it? Wise men kneeling before a child. Power paying homage to weakness. Rich giving gifts to poor. Gentile and Jew, men and women, old and young, heaven and earth binding themselves to one another in light and love and generosity.

One light led the wise men to that little house. But three lights would leave as they turned their camels back toward home – by another way, because once they understood where true light, true richness, true power resided, they could never take the same roads they had once traveled. The gift of illumination they had received far exceeded the gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.

Tonight marks the beginning of the season of light, when we, like the wise men, plunge back into the darkness with a gift of light, with a story about a newborn king, Love Come Down, the Light of the World that shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Molly Wolf writes, “We can be lights, by our witness of the love of God to this world, which sometimes seems nothing but night. We can be steady in that light-giving; and then, even if the darkness doesn’t go away, it’s softened and made somewhat less impenetrable and more hopeful near us, at least for a time. And we will have shown other people how it’s done, this light-giving.”

We’ll take down our Christmas lights tomorrow, and forget where they are stored by next week. Let us not forget, though, as we resume our journeys, how rich and wonderful and varied are the lights that are our lives. Arise. Shine. For our light has come, and the glory of God is shining on us and through us and all around us. Amen.

Advent 3C

Zephaniah 3:14-20; Psalm 85:7-13; Philippians 4:4-9; Luke 3:7-18

“I would rather preach a gospel sermon to an appreciative, receptive congregation than write a hymn,” insisted Robert Wadsworth Lowry, an American Baptist minister in the late nineteenth century. But the melodies in his mind and the poetry in his proclamation would not be stopped. Today, appreciative, receptive congregations continue to sing his gospel songs. “I need thee every hour.” “All the way my Savior leads me.” “Shall we gather at the river?” And this one:

My life flows on in endless song; above earth’s lamentation
I hear the sweet though far off hymn that hails a new creation:
Through all the tumult and the strife I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul – how can I keep from singing?

How can I keep from singing? That’s how I feel this time of year. How can I keep from singing in these seasons of Advent and Christmas, filled as they are with melody and poetry? I secretly don’t mind that the music starts playing in stores before the end of – what, is it May now when sleigh bells and silver bells start to jingle all the way?!?

I’m sure my love of preparing for and celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ in song goes back to first grade, when I was in the children’s choir at Otey Memorial Parish in Sewanee, Tennessee. We practiced and practiced our little Christmas anthem. We practiced and practiced a handful of Christmas carols. We practiced and practiced and practiced singing while walking in a straight line carrying a lighted candle. But none of that prepared me for the wonder I felt on the first night of the Annual Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, when we processed slowly around a darkened All Saints Chapel, illuminated only by the soft glow of our candles, half-singing and half-listening to the university choirs (or were they angels?) singing with us, Once in royal David’s city, stood a lowly cattle shed…. Twelve years later, although at a different school, I was in the university choir, holding a candle, processing slowly around a darkened church, singing the same beautiful hymn.

One week from tonight we’ll all be singing once again all those beautiful gospel hymns – good news of great joy hymns. Our Advent hymns are also lovely, their melodies and poetry reflecting this strange season – sometimes set in darkness and minor keys, and sometimes filled with rejoicing. How can we keep from singing?

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion, the prophet Zephaniah exclaims to Jerusalem and her people. Shout, rejoice, and exult with all your heart! For God is in your midst; you shall fear disaster no more. Rejoice in the Lord always, the apostle Paul exclaims to the church in Philippi. Again I will say, rejoice!.... The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything.

This third Sunday in Advent was traditionally known as Gaudete, from the Latin word for rejoice. The penitential purple was lightened to rose. The readings and even the liturgy itself reflected a shift toward joy. In the Roman missal, a new antiphon was appointed, more hopeful than those sung earlier in the season – we know it as the sixth verse of a beautiful Advent hymn: O come thou dayspring from on high and cheer us by thy drawing nigh; disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death’s dark shadow put to flight. Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel!

On this day even God rejoices. God sings. God exults over you with loud singing, Zephaniah writes, as on a day of festival. Perhaps C.S. Lewis had this image in mind when he wrote The Magician’s Nephew, one of the books in the Narnia series, in which the lion Aslan sings the world into existence. Madeleine L’Engle imagines in one of her stories that the universe is held together by song. Even science sings – I once had a scratchy record on which astronomers had layered the pulses and beats and sounds associated with wavelengths measured from distant stars. So many ancient melodies and harmonies. So much poetry. How can we keep from singing?

We can read today’s gospel, that’s how. John the Baptist doesn’t sing. He shouts. Zephaniah and Paul sing such lovely songs of gladness and love and gentleness and rejoicing, and then John comes along shouting about slithering snakes, and axes at the roots of trees, and fire burning away chaff. (My homiletics professor suggested that “You brood of vipers!” is perhaps not the most effective way to hold on to a receptive, appreciate congregation!) John was shouting. But then, most of the crowd that came to see John weren’t interested in singing, anyway. They weren’t there to hear a sermon or join the choir. They came because darkness had been looming as Roman rule grew more oppressive and the application of Jewish law more rigid. Fears of impending divine judgment were rising. Most of the crowd that came to see John were interested only in proving their innocence before God. They believed that a quick trip into the wilderness for baptism, which at the time was simply a ritual act of cleansing, would do the trick. They were, after all, God’s chosen people.

Perhaps they had forgotten – as we are still inclined to forget today, in this wilderness season of Advent – perhaps they had forgotten that the wilderness is not a place to rush into and out of. In the story of the Exodus and in all the history of salvation, the wilderness is a place to journey through on the way to a renewed and restored and fruitful life as people of God. Getting wet, whether in the Red Sea or the Jordan River, wasn’t enough. In fact, it was and still is only the beginning of the journey.

By now John was preaching a gospel sermon to an agitated, anxious congregation. What then should we do? they asked him, and it became a refrain. Teacher, what should we do? And we, what should we do? Take your fingers out of your ears, John seems to reply. Let the wilderness filter out the cacophony of sound that assaults you each day, and listen to God’s song of salvation. Hum its melody, learn its poetry, and make your life become that song. Let your life resonate with the ancient song of love and peace and mercy and righteousness and truth and gentleness. Let your life be what God created it to be – a song sounding outward just as a tree bears fruit.

John is preaching repentance, in Greek metanoia, which means a change of mind. Not just washing clean but literally taking out one mind and putting in a new one. Taking out one song, perhaps, and putting in a new one. One is coming, John said, who is more powerful than I and he will fill you with that very song if you let him. He will light a fire for you to carry into the darkness.

How can we sing, though, when we are choked by chaff – things that don’t matter but are nonetheless mixed up with our lives, like bits of husks and stems and leaves mixed up with wheat. How can we sing when we are breathless with anxiety? How can we sing when our voices crack from despair? How can we sing when are throats, like our lives, are aching and raw? When we hurt, the call to rejoice can sound as harsh as the call to repent. And yet, it is precisely our hurt, our voicelessness, our diminishment, our losses, our sadness, and our weight of sin that Advent confronts and calls us out of that we may face the divine judgment, which is….Emmanuel, God-with-us. Remember the good gospel hymn? Good Christian friends, rejoice with heart and soul and voice, now ye need not fear the grave: Jesus Christ was born to save! Calls you one and calls you all to gain his everlasting hall. Christ was born to save! Christ was born to save! The fire he brings is not punishment but refinement, for we all have chaff, we all need a change. The burdens we carry do not make us unfit for Advent’s message of joyful expectation. They qualify us for voice lessons.

It will be true for many of us that the noise in our lives will increase this week – work to be done, cookies to bake, relatives to entertain, parties to attend, traffic to negotiate, gifts to wrap, cards to write, expectations to be met, or not met…. But let us not forget that we are still in the wilderness of Advent. Where might we hear God singing, out in the world, in our life together, and in our own lives? In the gospel of Luke, which has journeyed with us through this season, God is heard through the songs of Zechariah, father of John the Baptist, and Mary, Jesus’ mother, and Simeon, an old priest who thought he would never see the light. They sing about a world in which all voices are heard and honored and nurtured and comforted.

Perhaps John isn’t shouting, but rather singing very loudly and off-key the same song, and showing us by example that we don’t have to master complex arias, we don’t have to save the world. What then shall we do? Hum a tune in our daily life. Live and sing the good news right where we are. Give a coat. Be honest in our work. Respect others. Be nice. Tell the truth. Share. We’d be surprised what joy the most ordinary songs can bring, suggests Madeleine L’Engle, noting that the melody of one of Bach’s most beloved chorales was the melody of a popular street song. “There is nothing so secular that it cannot be sacred,” she writes, “and that is one of the deepest messages of the Incarnation.”

John’s strident chord of repentance doesn’t seem to belong with today’s songs about rejoicing, but as it resolves it moves us into what will be a new key in that ancient refrain of God’s power to save. It’s a good gospel hymn – may we be receptive and appreciative.

What though my joys and comforts die? The Lord my Savior liveth;
What though the darkness gather round? Songs in the night he giveth….

I lift mine eyes; the cloud grows thin; I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smoothes since first I learned to love it:
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart, a fountain ever springing:
All things are mine since I am his – how can I keep from singing? Amen.

Advent 2C

Baruch 5:1-9; Psalm 126; Philippians 1:3-11; Luke 3:1-6

Moving three times in the past six years has given me so many opportunities to take a good look all around myself and not have any idea where I am. We moved most recently, of course, from here to Jackson, where my internal compass is still spinning on roads that only pretend to go north-south or east-west (they curve so gradually that you have no idea you’re actually going at a right angle to the direction you think you’re going), and where the geography of city and suburbs baffles me. My husband works in Brandon, east of where we live, but when we go south from our house to find the road that pretends to go east, we have to drive through Ridgeland, which is north of us.

Moving to Meridian from New York City, from one grid to another, wasn’t as easy as I expected. In New York, 10th Avenue was as far west as you could get before hitting the West Side Highway and the Hudson River, which made working on 23rd Avenue in Meridian, well….that would have been in Jersey, I guess! And whereas in New York the grid system starts to break down south of 14th Street, where streets mysteriously change names, or change directions, or dead end only to reappear again several blocks away, in Meridian, that happens north of 14th Street.

Moving to New York City wasn’t as hard as I expected. If you can count backwards and forwards, you can pretty much get around . I can still picture the little wallet sized subway map I carried with me, with its tiny grid of city streets and avenues that was like graph paper on which brightly colored lines indicated the trains that always rumbled underfoot, and points indicated all the stops. Underground, though, there’s no grid – it’s a tangled maze of tunnels instead – but color-coded signs overhead and on the sides of the trains tell you everything you need to know. Even so, you're sometimes just going on faith when the sign says the number one train is that way, and that way is a tunnel that slopes downhill until its ceiling obscures the end from sight.

As the train approaches your stop, you know that somewhere above you is your destination. Up there is natural light, fresh air (well, fresher than subway air), and sounds other than the rattle of subway cars and the screech of metal-on-metal brakes. Getting up there, though, isn’t just a matter of climbing the stairs. You have to climb the right stairs – there’s usually more than one way out, each leading to a different corner of the intersection of street and avenue. And at the top, you might find yourself facing the street or the avenue or the sidewalk or a building. I never could get my bearings. Many times I set off down the block only to find at the next intersection that I should have gone the other way.

What’s missing from subway maps is the friendly little star they put on maps at the entrance to the mall, the one saying, “You are here.” You put one finger on that star, and another finger on the color-coded block that is your destination in the mall, and then you trace the route from here to there. I always have to check the map at Northpark Mall with its double layer of stores, and in a hurry (especially during this season!) I locate the one I want – second floor, two down from Belk’s. But when I look up, I realize I don’t have my bearings. Am I even anywhere near Belk’s? Many times I set off down the mall only to find at the end that I should have walked the other way. I have to go back and look for the little star. When I know where I am, suddenly the map is readable. A path is prepared. A way is made in the wilderness.

“You are here.” The prophet Baruch writes to Jerusalem, fixing a friendly star six centuries before the birth of Jesus, when the Babylonians seized the Holy City and burned it, destroying the Temple and scattering the people of God, taking many of them into exile in Babylon. Jerusalem had lost her bearings, and her people their hope of ever finding their way home. You are here, in this time, in this place, but look, Baruch writes: you are also here, and he fixes a star on God. Arise, O Jerusalem, stand upon the height; look toward the east, and see your children gathered from west and east at the word of the Holy One. Suddenly the map was readable. A path was prepared. A way was made in the wilderness, traced by God, lighted by God’s glory, and not for the first time God led the way from here to there.

Once before, in the Exodus, God had led the people through what seemed an impassable wilderness from Egypt, a land where they had no bearings, to a land of promise where that Holy City would eventually be built. These journeys are how the people of Israel and the nations that watched them go would come to know God as One who saves, who offers hope, who is infinitely patient along way; as One who loves deeply and irrevocably, who is present in the story and on the way; indeed, as One who makes the way and who is the way.

“You are here.” Paul writes to believers, fixing a star some few decades after the death and resurrection of Jesus, when the church in Philippi was growing and maturing as a community of faith in the midst of some pretty rough terrain – suspicion, hostility, persecution, and internal division. You are here in this time, in this place. Paul rejoices, though, that the deep Love in which they were held by God, and in which the Philippians held one another - that Love would trace their journey and level their way.

Luke’s gospel is full of friendly stars – full of time times and places – and he fixes a very important one in the reading we hear on this second Sunday in Advent. “You are here.” In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when all these other folks were governors and rulers and high priests, in the region around the Jordan River, the word of God came to John son of Zechariah. This is a real story, Luke is telling us. A real story that happened at this real moment in history, when these real people lived, in this real part of the world. But look, Luke says as he reads in the very next breath from the poetry of the prophet Isaiah, you are also here in a real story about the One who saves. You are here, waiting in darkness, like the Israelites in Babylon to whom Baruch and Isaiah were writing, waiting for the day of the Lord when God will prepare a way and the salvation of God will be seen by all.

Luke portrays John the Baptist as the last in a long line of prophets, like Isaiah and Baruch and so many others who had spoken God’s word when the covenant community lost their bearings by taking off in the wrong direction (as they so often did...as we so often do) or by simply finding themselves far from home. Look for the star, John and all the prophets urged the people. Look for God. From wherever you’ve been wandering on your own, no doubt following some bright light the world has flashed your way (it will burn out, you know, at the top of some peak or the bottom of some valley), from wherever you’ve been wandering, return to God and God will shine on you and make a way for you through the wilderness and the darkness.

In the fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius, in the region around the Jordan, in the darkness with those waiting for a savior to come, the history of the world and the history of salvation were deeply and irrevocably joined in Jesus Christ, Love come down, Emmanuel – God-with-us. Later in this chapter of Luke’s gospel, just after Jesus is baptized by John, Jesus gets his bearings: the Holy Spirit descends upon him, and a voice from heaven says, you are my beloved Son. But by the power of the same Holy Spirit, in a story we’ll be hearing soon enough, the One who Saves was born of a woman, and as the voice from heaven still rings in our ears, Luke writes that Jesus was son of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, tracing the line back through every human generation, making every stop until he reaches Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.

And so, everyone who is part of history – everyone, back through the first generation, and up through ours, and in every generation to come – everyone who is part of the history of the world is also part of the story of salvation. In Jesus, God was here at a stop in Jerusalem, in Philippi, in the region around the Jordan, in Mississippi…. In Jesus, God walked with all humanity through all the valleys and hills and gorges and dark places of life. And nowhere is that more evident than in the gospel of Luke, in which Jesus personally brings the good news of God’s love to a wide variety of people: to sinners and tax collectors, to Jews and Gentiles, to women, to the marginalized, the oppressed, and the poor, to the sick and the hungry...and also to governors and rulers and high priests. All flesh shall see the salvation of God.

On the second Sunday in Advent in the year 2006, in the region of East Mississippi, in the darkness with those waiting for a savior to come, the word of God proclaimed by John comes to us: Prepare the way of the Lord! The Reverend John Pridemore writes, “Originally, the promise was that God would clear the road for the returning exiles. But the road [this gospel] looks down is the road to glory. The stumbling blocks on that path, symbolized by what prevents earth-bound travelers getting where they want to go – impassable mountains, impenetrable valleys, and the like…” …stumbling blocks like taped-off stairwells in the subway, turnstiles that won’t turn, seeing from one side of the tracks that you should be waiting on the other…stumbling blocks like racism, sexism, classism, corruption, violence, poverty, and prejudice…stumbling blocks like pride, despair, fear, self-doubt, greed… “stumbling blocks on that path…will all be leveled,” Pridemore continues. “Then, at the last, ‘all flesh shall see God’s salvation.’ This is Luke’s hope, the Advent hope, and the Christian hope. It is grounded in the universal of the love of God, and it is the keynote of the gospel.”

The season of Advent is a time for us to look all around in our life and faith. It is a time to discern where we’ve been going, where we’ve been wandering, and where we are. What stumbling blocks stand between us and the coming of Christ, what impassable mountains and impenetrable valleys must be leveled? Where is our wilderness? Where is our darkness? Advent is a time for us to get our bearings, to step back and look at the map, and trace the journey from where we are to Christmas day. Paul tells us the way is traced by Love, and John the Baptist will share his suggestions next week. When we finally do reach that destination, where a real star shines down on a stable in which a mother holds her newborn son in her arms and in her heart, then we will see the salvation of God, who says to all the whole world, “You are always here.” Amen.