Preach One: Lent 4B

Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  Ahh, John 3:16.  Do you remember a time when you didn't know these words more or less by heart?  They are so familiar even Episcopalians can quote them, chapter and verse. For God so loved the world...

It has been called the gospel in miniature, summarizing in one sentence the good news of God in Christ.  "John 3:16 has been the standard bearer in explaining the Christian message," claimed CNN's online Belief Blog in reporting about a Texas gas station that offered $15 off for customers who could recite the well-known scripture.  For God so loved the world that he gave...a giant discount on an oil change?!?  John 3:16 is everywhere.  We've heard it preached from pulpits, learned about it in sunday School, seen it waved on posters and painted in eye-black at sporting events, watched it scroll across the sign outside the bank.  For God so loved the world that he gave...

The words weren't at all familiar to Nicodemus when Jesus spoke them to him.  A prominent leader among the Pharisees, Nicodemus came to Jesus under cover of darkness in hopes of being enlightened.  He groped blindly, though, at Jesus' insistence that he must be born again, born from above, born of the Spirit.  How can these things be, Nicodemus asked.  But Jesus went on about earthly things and heavenly things, about ascending and descending, about belief and understanding, before finally saying something that Nicodemus recognized, something he had heard before, something that made sense.

John 3:...14.  Let's recite it together: Jesus said to Nicodemus... You don't know that one?  It's not as familiar to us as the words that come two short verses later.  Jesus said to Nicodemus, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness...," and Nicodemus would have nodded, knowing to which story from their shared faith Jesus was referring.  We don't read it often ourselves, although perhaps, like me, you remember with a little shudder pictures of it from your children's bible.  Snakes slithering all over the ground, Moses holding high a serpent made of bronze, people sick with snake venom gazing up at it in hope...

In the book of Numbers, the Hebrew people are still making their way through the wilderness, now far from Egypt but also far from the Promised Land.  Why have you brought us out here to die, they asked, and not for the first time.  The wilderness didn't bring out the best in them.  Over and again they are certain they are dying, when over and again God has given them life - freedom from slaver, escape at the Red Sea, manna from heaven, water from a rock, a covenant at Sinai, a snake set upon a pole.  Whether their misfortunes have been perceived or real, a natural consequence of wilderness wandering or the result of unfaithfulness, God has over and again forgiven and rescued them, and not simply by a pronouncement of love and mercy but by saving actions that also invited action on the part of the people.  God parted the waters, but the people had to choose to walk across.  God provided manna, but the people had to gather it.  God offered water, but the people had to cup their hands to drink.  God promised to be faithful to them, but the people would also have to work at faithfulness and health and making the journey.  God would always love them, always save them, always make them alive.  Whether they...whether we...choose to live, choose to act, choose to see, choose to love...that's another whole story...

...Or perhaps the same one, or isn't the whole of scripture a story about learning to see just how God so loved the world?  In John's gospel, the word "world" tends to refer to those who are opposed to the good news of God in Christ, who prefer darkness to light, which only makes the love story all the more poignant and powerful.  From in the beginning, God has loved the world and everything and everyone in it, calling it good, giving it life.  In your infinite love you made us for yourself, we read in one of our Eucharistic prayers.  God made us.  God called us into covenant.  God set a bow in the clouds.  God freed us from oppression.  God spoke to us through prophets.  God returned us from exile.  God gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes...

Nicodemus has faded into the background by the time Jesus gets to these words, the ones we know as John 3:16.  We don't see Nicodemus again until he is tenderly taking Jesus down from the cross on which Jesus had been raised up to death, and laying Jesus deep within a tomb from which he would be raised up to life.  I wonder if, on that darkest day, with the Light of the World in his hands, Nicodemus harbored a hope none of the others had.  I wonder if Nicodemus remembered how Jesus had said, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."

I wonder if, because Nicodemus knew the story of Moses and the serpents so well, because he knew so well the great arc of the story of salvation...I wonder if the cover of darkness under which Nicodemus first came to see Jesus fluttered and he saw a glimmer of light.  The light of the first day of creation.  The light of Easter's dawn.  The light that shines in the darkness, that no darkness has ever overcome.  The light of the world that God so loved.  Maybe Nicodemus, who at first, like the Hebrew people in the wilderness, like us, appreciated the signs and wonders but not the work of being saved... Maybe Nicodemus was the first to look upon Jesus and see what salvation looks like - a life lived in faith, a life offered in love, a life acted out and given for those whom God loves, which is to say, the world, which is to say, for everything and everyone, even for those who seem to prefer the darkness.  Maybe Nicodemus was the first to look at Jesus and see the one who has always been at the center of the love story, from in the beginning to the end of the age, the one whose very name means, "God Saves."

By grace you have been saved, we read in the letter to the Ephesians, in the tradition of another leader among the Pharisees, Paul.  You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world.  So it has been ever since the garden first became a wilderness, since we first knew we had a choice of courses to follow, since we first tried to hide ourselves from God, to cover ourselves with darkness.

And so, for a second time in salvation history, first in the garden and finally in the wilderness of our sin, God came looking for us.  God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which God loved us even when we were dead through our sins, made us alive together with Christ, and raised us up with him.  This is how God so loves us, how God so loves the world, even as we remain in the dark, blinded by our own impatience or anger or prejudice or fear or addiction or shame or pride or...let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.  Even there, even in our darkness, even when we were dead, God so loves us as to make us alive, to make us alive together with Christ, who taught us how to live and how to love and how to save and how to act as, to be, the hands and feet and heartbeats of God's amazing grace and healing in this world.  For God so loved the world...

We are still making our way through the wilderness of Lent, far from Ash Wednesday but also far from Easter Morning.  Our sins are not far from us, though, nor are the ways we try to hide our sins from others, from ourselves, and from God.  We have been carefully uncovering them on our Lenten journeys, and while we do not hear the word repent in our readings this morning, we are invited to turn (which is what the word repent means)...to turn from the darkness toward the light that is the life of all people and to see in him what salvation looks like.  It looks like compassion.  It looks like non-judgment.  It looks like mercy.  It looks like kindness.  It looks like grace.  It looks like living in the wilderness and not dying there, like shining in the darkness and not succumbing to it, like loving the world so.  We are invited to turn and see, and seeing to believe, and believing to love the world as God does, to show the immeasurable riches of God's grace in kindness.

Then will the gospel in miniature become the gospel at large in this world, written not just on billboards or bumper stickers but emblazoned across our lives, our choices, and our actions, not just telling but showing the world that God loves it so.  Amen.

Preach One: Epiphany 1B

Genesis 1:1-5; Psalm 29; Acts 19:1-7; Mark 1:4-11

"Oh, ketchup!"

I don't know why that's what we would shout, my dad and me.  Sometimes we called out other condiments, "Oh, mayonnaise! Oh, mustard!", as we crested another wave with splashes and giggles.

Dad must have started carrying me out beyond the breakers when I was very small, and he didn't stop until long after I was old enough to remember riding out to sea on his side, my arms encircling his neck, his arms holding me up and out of the way of the rise and fall of saltwater and foam.

I remember the thrill of feeling waves crash around my feet as we moved farther from shore.  I remember the lightness of floating together over the rolling rounded tops of waves in what seemed like the middle of the ocean to me.  I remember the relief of shouting out silly words every time we made it over, somehow aware that even though my dad was a grown-up and his feet could touch the bottom, and even though the waves weren't really as big as mountains, the water was powerful and could be unpredictable.

I remember the feeling of fear as every once in a while a wave was going to break just before it reached us, and we would have to go under instead of over, and we would hold our breath and duck our heads, and for a moment that seemed forever there was no sight or sound but only water and my dad.  And I remember the security of knowing I was always safe, because dad was always there and he would never let go.

Is there anything in the world more essential to our lives than water?  Our bodies are made up of mostly water, every cell a tiny sea in which our essence floats.  Thirst threatens our lives long before starvation does.  Rain nourishes the soil that supports the plants at the bottom of the food chain in which we are at the top, dependent on everything below us for life.

Is there anything in the world more destructive to our lives than water?  Surely we are especially sensitive to that here in Mississippi, where just south of us on the coast waves have more than once rushed ashore unchecked, pulling people from their homes and even homes from their foundations out to sea.  Just north of us in the Delta too much rain has often flooded fields full of crops, uprooting or rotting or ruining a season's investment of seed and labor.  But it doesn't have to take a flood for water to be destructive - it is said that even the strongest swimmer can drown in even the shallowest water.

It is no wonder, then, that some of scripture's most dramatic and familiar stories take place around or in water.  In the beginning...  The very first sentence of the very first story on the very first page is about the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.  Noah and his menagerie would spend months at sea as forty days and nights of rain made the waters rise and cover all the earth. Moses and his people would walk safely through the waves of the Red Sea - oh ketchup! - before those waters came crashing down on Pharaoh's army.

Jesus would go down with John into the Jordan River to be baptized, the story at the heart of the first Sunday after the Epiphany.  He would ride - and sometimes walk - through fierce storms on the Sea of Galilee, stilling the water with a word, saving his friend Peter from sinking in foolishness and waves - oh mustard!

Water, for us, means refreshment and relief and nourishment and life, and it means risk and danger and drama and death.  Too much water, or not enough, can hurt us.  Our way of baptizing errs on the side of not enough as we sprinkle just a hint of water over a person's head and wipe it immediately away before it causes any discomfort or drowning, or, heaven forbid, threatens to damage any clothing.  It is not at all like the baptismal story we hear in Mark's gospel - Jesus is still waist deep and dripping all over in the waters of his baptism when the heavens tear open and a voice tells him, you are my beloved.

Listen, though, to what we say as we pray over the water we will use so sparingly in our baptismal liturgy: We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism.  In it we are buried with Christ in his death.  By it we share in his resurrection.  Though it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.  The image of the waters of baptism are not just about waters of life, but waters of death.  In baptism we claim that we die with Christ so that we might live with him.  Baptism is about going all the way under before it is every about coming up out of the water.

Please understand that I love our liturgy, and that baptism is my sacrament to participate in as a priest.  But while it is possible to drown in two inches of water, I don't think anyone every went under, let alone drowned, in one of our baptismal fonts.

I wonder if that is why it is so hard for us - for anyone, even if they are baptized by immersion - to truly die to sin, to die to self, to die to the fears and anxieties that wash over us in waves.  We never go deep enough with Christ.  We are so afraid of losing control, of losing our lives, that we never go to the place where there is no sight or sound or security except for Jesus, his arms wrapped around us, never letting us go.

And so we sprinkle a few drops of water, a sweet little sacrament in which we oooh and aaah over the lace on the gown more than we do over the significance of the death and resurrection that have just taken place at the font.  All of our sacraments seem somehow miniature - a drop of water, a wafer of bread, a sip of wine... My liturgics professor in seminary said the occasion of God's grace at work in us is so significant that the symbols we use in worship should be as well.  Use enough water to drown in, he said.  Serve as much bread and wind to feed a multitude, with leftovers.  This is the nature of God's grace.

Baptism, for Jesus, was the moment at which he knew precisely who and whose he was.  You are my beloved.  It was the moment after which all moments were lived in and for God, in and for the good news that God loves, that God saves, that only God can quench our thirst for meaning, that only God can pull us from the waves of sin and doubt and fear that threaten our becoming who we were created to be.

What impact has baptism had on our lives?  Most of us in the Episcopal Church don't remember the moment of our baptism.  But we renew the promises made on our behalf over and again on feast days like today.  We remember the promises Christ made to us, that if we will die to ourselves and be buried with him we will also rise with him.  Far from being a sweet and safe sacrament, baptism is full of risk and danger and drama, as is a life truly lived not for ourselves but for the gospel.  What impact has baptism had on our lives?

We cannot help but wade out into a world in which wave after wave of obligation, need, fear, envy, temptation, sin, and grief threaten to sweep us off our feet and carry us out to sea.  By our baptism, though, we come to know precisely who and whose we are, beloved children of God, sealed by the power of the Holy Spirit, and marked as Christ's own for ever.  By our baptism we come to know that if we are willing to trust him, Christ will carry us and never let go, even when for a moment the waves overpower us.  By our baptism we come to know that we can cling to him and boldly confess, "Oh, Jesus!  Oh, Christ!  Oh, Savior!  Oh, Lord!"  Amen.

Artwork: Various photographs; "Baptism," by Eliz Kim; "Stormy Blue Waves," by Trine Meyer Vogsland.

Birthday Hat

Yesterday was my birthday.  A big one.  Or not so big - I can't decide.  Either they all are, or none are, and I am beginning to think that all birthdays are big, every new year a blessing both in its celebration of what has been and its anticipation of what will be.

A friend knit me a hat.

It is knit from the softest, squishiest, warmest yarn you can imagine, in the most beautiful shade of frosty blue, and it fits perfectly.

Another friend knit me a scarf.

This one wasn't a birthday gift.  She gave it to me a few weeks ago at our annual Knitting and Needlework in Advent retreat (yes, the one I haven't blogged about yet!) after we had all ooo'd and ahhh'd over it as she knit.  It is knit from Yarn Bee's Chrysalis (in lots more colors at Hobby Lobby stores), in the most beautiful shade of purple, and it fits perfectly.

Like birthdays, all knitted gifts are big, no matter their size.  Hats and scarves, afghans and sweaters...they all grew from nothing more than a single cast-on stitch.  They all represent the intentionality and effort and creativity and perseverance of the knitter, and they all hold the promise of joy for the recipient.

Thank you, friends!

Preach One: Advent 3B

Preached at St. Andrew's Episcopal Cathedral, Jackson, MS, and St. Matthew's Episcopal Church, Forest, MS.  I actually sang the song in the sermon and haven't been able to get it out of my head all weekend...

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28

I know it is still Advent.  There is yet one candle left to light.  Shadows are yet growing longer, although lessened somewhat on this Sunday known as Gaudete, which is Latin for rejoice.  Even if we lightened our liturgical color to rose today, as many churches do, there is yet another Sunday of deep purple and blue.  Our scripture readings do not yet tell of mothers mild or mangers, only prophets, warnings, and promises.  The air is yet expectant.

It is still Advent, I know.  And while we are faithfully tending our wreaths and talking about hope at St. Andrew's Lower School, you must understand...there are nearly 500 children there...it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  In Big Chapel an angel has already visited Mary at her house, and in chapel class the angel has returned with friends to give shepherds good tidings of great joy.  Handmade ornaments hang in every hallway, elves sit on every shelf, glitter covers EVERY surface, and children fill every day with cheer.

So it was that I lingered longer than I needed to in the copy room last week, because from just next door in music class came the sound of Christmas carols, and I couldn't quite tell if the singing belonged to herald angels or third graders.  They were heavenly either way.  As one song ended, though, and a new one began, I thought for a moment that they were finished caroling.  The new song was one we used to sing at summer camp as we hiked through the hills in the heat.  Children, go where I send thee.  How shall I send thee?  Well, I'm gonna send thee one by one...

And suddenly, as they sang, I realized that the song I learned at camp really did belong at Christmas.  I had never thought about it before - we just sang it to pass the time on the trails.  Well, I'm gonna send thee one by one, one for the itty bitty baby, wrapped in swaddling clothing, lying in a manger, born, born, born in Bethlehem.

It's an old spiritual, a counting song that builds on itself as you sing it, like "The Twelve Days of Christmas," so that by the end you're being sent twelve for the twelve apostles, eleven for the eleven that got into heaven, ten for the ten commandments...and so on, all sent finally for the itty bitty baby born in Bethlehem.

Advent, of course, is about the coming of that itty bitty baby; but it is also, it seems, about sending.  At least, that's what our gospel readings for the first three Sundays in Advent have been about.  On the first Sunday, Jesus spoke of when angels would be sent to gather the elect from the ends of heaven to the ends of the earth.  Last week, and today, it is John the Baptist who is sent to prepare the way of the Lord.  For that matter, next Sunday an angel will be sent to Mary, who will be sent with Joseph to Bethlehem.  Christ's coming is itself a sending...for in these last days you sent your Son to be incarnate from the Virgin Mary, to be the Savior and Redeemer of the world...

There I go again, looking a lot like Christmas when I know it is still Advent, when our gospel reading is not about Mary or Joseph but John.  There was a man sent from God, our reading begins as this evangelist picks up the story of salvation in exactly the same place Mark did last week.  Luke and Matthew also tell us about John the Baptizer, so that we have a remarkably full account of him.  We know his momma and daddy, and the circumstances of his birth.  We know what John looked like, where he lived, what he wore, what he ate.  We know what John did, how he went about preaching and baptizing and crying in the wilderness.  We know that John always had a flair for the dramatic, his passion palpable, like a child leaping in its mother's womb.

And yet, when John was questioned by priests and Levites, who came demanding to know who he was and what he had to say about himself, he told them mostly who he was not.  He was not, as some supposed, the messiah, and I suspect they were relieved, for they wouldn't have known what to make of a messiah who wore animal skins and ate bugs.  Nor was he Elijah, as others thought, whom many believed would return to announce the messiah's advent.  Nor was John a prophet, although for all the world he looked and sounded like one, shouting words like "repent" and "prepare" and making those in authority nervous.

What then?  Who are you?  What do you say about yourself? they asked.  And about himself, John answered, I am a voice.  I am a witness.  I am a testifier.  I am a preparer of the way for the One who is coming.  Who John was, by his estimation, had nothing to do with himself and everything to do with who Jesus was.  Although, by some accounts, he was not yet sure who Jesus was.

Surely they had been childhood playmates, as cousins often are.  Surely they had grown up together, gotten into mischief together, played make believe together, learned about God and faith and doubt and fear together.  By the time they stood together in the Jordan River, waist deep in the waters of baptism, John sensed there was more to Jesus than he had realized, but until then John only knew that Someone great was coming, and that nothing would ever be the same again.  He trusted that the God who sent him to prepare the way was up to something, that something wonderful was going to happen, indeed, had already happened, but we just did not know it yet.

Prepare!  Get ready!  Make straight the way of the Lord! John shouted, and in another gospel, someone asks him how.  How does one get ready to welcome the One who will come speedily to help and deliver Israel?  Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none, John answered.  That's how you get ready.  Whoever has food must do likewise.  That's how you prepare.  John may not have been sure who the messiah was, but he knew what the messiah would be about, how the anointed one of God would change everything, and John wanted everyone to be prepared.

How marvelous it is to imagine that John and Jesus might have been together when, as boys, they learned the words of the prophet Isaiah: The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me, the prophet wrote.  His words were addressed to God's people at a time when their hope had been reduced to rubble.  They were desperately in need of a messiah, someone to help them build up the ancient ruins and repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.

This building up and repairing, though, according to Isaiah, would not be about replicating in bricks and mortar what had been before.  The new community would be built on a foundation of justice and mercy.  God has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to the prisoners...to comfort...to provide...to give...these would be the building blocks, stone upon stone.  The spirit-filled anointed one of God would change everything, turn the world upside-down and inside-out.  The new kingdom would be characterized not by power but love, not by darkness but light, not by ashes but garlands, not by mourning but - gaudete - rejoicing.  It would be nothing short of a revolution.  A revolution, John knew, whose time had come.

There was a man sent from God...another who, like John so very many generations before, cried out in a wilderness of injustice and devastation.  The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King preached at our own National Cathedral in March of 1968, the last Sunday sermon he delivered before his death.  Like John's message of repentance, it was a sermon he had preached many times, with increasing urgency.  In it, Dr. King recalled the familiar short story of Rip Van Winkle, who fell asleep a subject of King George, III, and awoke, twenty years and a revolution later, a citizen under President George Washington.  "One of the great liabilities of life," Dr. King concluded, "is that all too many people find themselves living in a great period of social change, and yet they fail to develop the new attitudes, the new mental responses, that the new situation demands.  They end up sleeping through a revolution."

Jesus would not have us sleep through the revolution he has begun.  Keep awake, he instructed us at the beginning of Advent, for you do not know when the time will come.  And yet we do know, for he has come, that the time is now.  Indeed, after his baptism by John and upon reading aloud from the prophet Isaiah about the one sent from God, Jesus would say in the synagogue, Today - today - this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.

Are we prepared?  For surely not even John knew how the revolution would take an unexpected turn early one morning at an empty tomb when everything changed again with the rising sun.  The evangelist tells us Jesus came to the place where his followers were hiding and said to them, 'Peace be with you.  As the Father has sent me, so I send you.'  When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit'.  So have we been Spirit-filled.  So are we anointed.  So are we sent as Christ's body to bring good news, to bind up, to proclaim release, to comfort, to provide, to give... So do we tend to the broken-hearted of the world in this season, not because it is Christmas, but because it is the only way to make sense of who we are.  "Our world is a neighborhood," wrote Dr. King.  "For some strange reason, I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be.  And you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be.  This is the way God's universe is made."

There was a man sent from God... And there is another, and there is another [pointing to members of the congregation].  And there is a woman sent from God.  And there is another... Just as John, Christ's forerunner, knew his whole identity to be bound up with the One who was coming, so do we, Christ's followers, know our whole identity to be bound up with the One who has come, who is coming again, who comes day after day with bountiful grace and mercy.  Indeed, this is what we will celebrate - what our Lower School is already celebrating, bless their hearts - at the great Feast of the Incarnation, how heaven and earth were bound up together in the person of Jesus the Christ, the Messiah, the Spirit-filled anointed One of God, the Revolutionary.

It is still Advent, I know.  But I can't get that Christmas song out of my head.  Children go where I sent thee.  How shall I send thee?  I'm gonna send thee one by one...by one by one by one by all of us together, and always sent where Christ himself is going before.  We are voices.  We are witnesses.  We are testifiers.  We are forerunners in a kingdom that has already come.  We are followers of an itty bitty baby who has yet to be born.  We are sent, both to prepare the way of the One who is coming and to proclaim the good news that he has already come, Emmanuel, God-with-us.  In this season, on this day,  in this Advent, who are you?  What do you have to say about yourself?  Where is God sending you?  How will you prepare the way for God's coming?  How will you proclaim the good news that God is here?  Amen.

Artwork: "Epiphany Triptych - The Baptism," by Katherin Burleson; "The Voice of One in the Wilderness," by Gwen Meharg; "Prepare the Way of the Heart," by Gwen Meharg; "Rhythm (redo)," by Brian Zahnd.

Preach a Little One: Advent 3B

Preached at my last Lower School Faculty Eucharist at St. Andrew's Episcopal School.  Every Friday morning, a few of us gather in the Jean Jones Downey Chapel for a brief and quiet service of Holy Eucharist before the children descend upon our day.  Still, the best part of the service for me is when the early-arriving children put their hands and faces against the narrow glass windows of the chapel to see what's going on...

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Do you remember nights at summer camp, when all the lights were finally out, and all the giggles were finally quiet, and you were finally falling asleep?

Perhaps you were cuddled under a quilt or snuggled inside a sleeping bag, already half-dreaming and yet still half-hearing the wilderness intone its evening prayers...a rise and fall of the cadences of crickets and bullfrogs and owls...

...and the shrill, high-pitched buzz of a mosquito in your ear.  The one you shoo away with a flick of your hand, but that returns, hovering directly over your eardrum.  Over and over you brush it off, pull up your covers, hide under your pillow, try to get comfortable with your hands over your ears, but still somehow the buzz pierces every defense.

With apologies to John the Baptist for comparing him to a pesky insect, that's what I thought of when I read this Sunday's gospel reading.  Perhaps his voice wasn't shrill (who knows?) but it certainly is strident in this quiet season of dreaming and listening, watching and waiting.  Like a mosquito that won't go away, John is back for a second week in a row, a voice crying out in the wilderness of Advent, keeping us awake with his buzz about the One who will come after him.  Prepare.  Testify.  Bear witness.  Make a straight path...

Shoo, the authorities tried to tell him, but John just cried out all the more.

In the wilderness and wildness of this Advent, I wonder what we are only half-hearing?  What voices are we trying to shoo away?  Whether shrill and strident, or soft and silent, what words from God keep buzzing in our ears, piercing every defense?  Keep awake.  Be not afraid.  Prepare.  Rejoice.  What is God trying to say to you?

Amen.

Artwork: "Dabar," by Chuck Hoffman and Peg Carlson-Hoffman.  'Dabar' is Hebrew for 'word'.

By the way...

...I finished a few things I haven't really told you much about.  In the wake of three failed attempts to knit a sock, I thought now would be just the right time to save face show you some projects that worked out just fine.

You saw my unfinished Five Hour Baby Sweater this summer.  I really did knit it in something like five hours, alongside my mom who was also knitting one.  The pattern was simple and the yarn oh-so-soft (mine is the blue one).

Mom incorporated a few buttonholes to close her sweater with the sweetest little pink buttons.  I wanted mine to tie closed, and had seen a cute example on Ravelry of a sweater with a crocheted tie that encircled the yoke of the sweater.  My poor sweater waited patiently for weeks for me to decide to attach a simple i-cord instead.

The Spartanburg Knitting Guild was collecting the sweaters to donate to one of several children's ministries they support.  It was fun to add my sweater to the collection on display at the guild retreat in September.

You also caught a glimpse of my No-Fuss Mitts just before the retreat, in another softest yarn ever (Louisa Harding Thistle).  I learned so much knitting these sweet little mitts, from the knitting instructor that never sleeps and is ever patient and repeats instructions as often as I ask it to (yay, YouTube!): provisional cast-ons, picot edges, folded hems, and thumb gussets...

...and embroidery!  At the last minute (in fact, in the car on the way to the retreat!), worried that despite the sweetness and softness of the mitts they would look plain amidst the many other mittens and gloves in the annual retreat contest, I decided to add a little detail.  I found instructions for a little embroidered lamb and (yay, YouTube!) learned how to do a duplicate stitch, a chain stitch, and a french knot.

The contest was indeed packed with the most beautiful, warm, soft mittens and gloves I have ever seen.    Of all things, though...my mitts won first place!

I received a one-year subscription to Knitter's Magazine and the fun of being able to say I am an award-winning knitter!

Definitely way more fun than saying I am can't-seem-to-get-this-sock-to-fit knitter...

Preach a Little One: Last Pentecost A

Preached at the Lower School Faculty Eucharist, St. Andrew's Episcopal School

Matthew 25:31-46

The end times are upon us.

No, really.  This time, the end is actually near.  We are almost at the end of a liturgical year.  We are almost at the end of a calendar year.  We are almost at the end of a semester.  Advent and exams are in the air.

My tenth grade world history final exam had one question on it, and one question only.  Aliens have just landed.  Tell them the history of the world.  I stared at a blank sheet of paper for who knows how long, not knowing how to begin.  An hour and at least two sheets of paper later, full of names and dates and places and ideas, I had no idea how to end.

The end times are upon us.  Really.  At least, that is how it has seemed these past several Sundays as parable after parable has ended in outer darkness, where there sits a guest without a wedding robe, ten bridesmaids with no oil for their lamps, and a servant with a hidden talent.  Be ready, Jesus has warned us over and over again, for you do not know the hour or the day.

This Sunday, the last in the long season after Pentecost, the end is here.  The Son of Man in all his glory sits upon the judgment seat with all the nations gathered before him, and on the final exam there is one question, and one question only.  What did you do for the last of those who are members of God's family?

Did we feed the hungry?  Clothe the naked?  Visit the sick?  Take care of others?  Were we good neighbors?  Yes, sometimes.  And...no, sometimes.  Sometimes we are generous, selfless, and brave.  And sometimes we are self-absorbed, full of excuses, and fearful.  Sometimes we are sheep.  Sometimes we are goats.

The end times are upon us.

Not really.  The time that is upon us is now, this moment in time, and the next, and the next, and then the one after that, each now a new beginning, a new opportunity to do for God what God loves best - doing for others.  The exam has begun, but we have quite literally all the time in the world to finish, and even then the one who sits upon the throne is the one who will leave the ninety-nine to find a single strayed sheep.  Or goat.  Or guest.  Or bridesmaid.  Or servant.  Or me.  Or you.  For sometimes we are the least of those who are members of God's family...

The beginning times are upon us.  The question is before us, and the answer is within us.  What will we do at this moment, and the next, and the next, for God by doing if for another?  Amen.