A sermon by Josh Prescott on the 4th Sunday of  Epiphany.

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71:1-6
1 Corinthians 13:1-13
Luke 4:21-30

            Then Jesus said “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing”.  This statement rings out in the gospel according to Luke, concluding all that comes before and summing up all that comes after.  Luke has just recounted Jesus’ baptism at which the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descends, a voice from heaven saying, ‘This is my Son.’  After which Jesus fasts and is tempted.  He returns, then, to Nazareth and reads from Isaiah “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 favour.” After this he claims to have already fulfilled this prophesy! 

For us, reading this account in Luke this claim does not seem so odd, we already have been told by Jesus’ baptism and John’s preaching that Jesus is the messiah.  Of course, we are already accustomed to Jesus as Messiah (or its Greek equivalent Christ) and as the Son of God.  But for his audience in the synagogue that day such a statement would be more problematic.  First of all has he literally done these things mentioned in Isaiah that day?  Later, we know, as Jesus’ ministry continued he would literally bring healing to the sick and even the blind for instance, but he did not do so on that Sabbath in Nazareth.   This does not seem to be the source of the people’s reaction however.  In various translations they are amazed or marvel at his words, they were not simply confused.

Likely, this is because Isaiah already had a history of interpretation in the first century.  It seems to have been understood in Judaism at that time in two ways.  First it was understood as a reference to the mission of the prophet Isaiah and by extension to all prophets, including those in the first century.  Secondly, it was understood to describe the coming of the messiah, who would completely fulfil its promise of healing and salvation.  In both of these interpretations the promises are often seen as metaphorical.  So what the people in the synagogue were likely struggling with is first, whether he is claiming more than prophetic office, and second they seem to struggle even with the idea that he could be a prophet.  After all they know him “Is not this Joseph’s son?” they asked.

So the people, it seems, want a sign.  Interestingly Jesus has not yet performed any miracles or signs in the gospel of Luke.  Based on other Gospel accounts Luke’s placement is probably non chronological.  This placement seems to do two things.  First it serves to introduce Jesus ministry and provide a conclusion to the preparatory sections of Luke that take place before Jesus ministry.  More importantly it highlights that it is something about who Jesus is that fulfils the prophesies, not simply something he does.

Finally, Jesus explains something about his ministry.  He does this by referring to two prophets, Elijah and Elisha.  He does this just after saying that prophets are without honour in their home town, or as translated else where their ‘native place’.  The first reference is to Elijah’s stay with a widow, a gentile in Sidon.  The Prophet had gone there after telling King Ahab of the Northern Kingdom of Israel that God would send a drought because of Ahab’s adoption of his foreign wife’s religion.  Ahab tries to have Elijah killed for this.  While in hiding Elijah stays with a gentile women, and God sustains her household during the famine and restores her son to life.

This story combined with the proverb can make the mercy of God brought to a gentile household by Elijah’s visit seem like the direct consequence of Ahab’s rejection of both Elijah’s prophetic mission and of God.  It could be seen to say that if Israel will reject the Messiah, than he will go to the Gentiles instead.  The problem is that Jesus never abandons his mission to the Jews in Luke’s gospel and that mission is continued in Acts, Luke’s sequel if you will.

Secondly, there is the story of Elisha, Elijah’s disciple and successor.  In this narrative Naaman, the Commander of the army of Aram a rival kingdom, goes to Israel to find healing for his leprosy.  Elisha tells him to bathe in the Jordan to be healed, and after some hesitation he does and is healed.  Naaman returns to Elisha and declares “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth except in Israel.”  Here we see no turning away from Israel by God to turn to the Gentiles, instead God heals the gentile and affirms Israel’s special relationship with him at the same time.

Finally, after Jesus tells the people in the Nazareth Synagogue all of this they become very angry and decide to kill him.  But, miraculously, Jesus escapes.

  Today this scripture is fulfilled.  What has been fulfilled?  The coming of another prophet?  Could that make the people so angry?  I don’t think so.  Prophets were not unexpected in the first century near east, although there could often be disagreement over whether a particular person was a prophet.  It seems instead that his audience may have understood that he was telling them he was the Messiah.  This was a much more inflammatory statement, but even this is not necessarily enough to so anger them as to kill him.  Wouldn’t it be easier simply to ignore his claims and move on shaking their heads saying, “Poor Joseph, his son’s gone mad.”  I think what really infuriated them was how he defined his mission.

Jesus tells them two things, both troubling.  That his message is troubling is nothing new for a prophet.  Jeremiah’s message, for instance, was also troubling.  Today we heard the story of his calling, which ends with his commission.  This commission includes to ‘pluck up, to pull down to destroy and to overthrow’.   These four phrases of destruction are off set by only two phrases of positive things, ‘to build and to plant.’  Clearly Jeremiah was not set out with only pleasant news that everyone would like.  Jesus also has a message his hearers don’t quite like. 

First, the obvious point and the one that probably most angered the people was that the Messiah would be interested in the Gentiles.  Not only to destroy their power or drive them out of Israel, but to heal them and bring them to the knowledge of the one true God, and even to save them from death (as the widows son was saved).  Israel was a defeated and occupied nation.  Oppressed by Roman arms and tax collectors, ruled by foreign installed princes, and besieged culturally by the Hellenistic world; many Jews both in Judea and Galilee were hoping for a powerful leader to take back their lands, restore their culture, and expel or kill the puppet rulers and collaborators.  This is not who came.

So who did come?  This brings us to the second point.  As we have already discussed Luke has not had Jesus perform any miracles yet, and he does not perform any in Nazareth before he says “Today the scripture is fulfilled.”  I think this highlights that it is who Jesus is that is bringing the salvation, freedom, and enlightenment promised in Isaiah.  Mathew says much less about this incident, but he places it just after a series of sayings about the kingdom of God, (for example it is like a sown field, yeast or a mustard seed), these are helpful to keep in mind.  If the Messiah does not come miraculously changing things in the here and now, if he does not come with unquestionable signs, if he comes to both Jews and their enemies, how will he re-establish the Kingdom of David?  How will he bring in a new age?  Jesus often said the Kingdom of God is at hand, but the listeners in the synagogue might ask where is it?  If it is here why do we not see it?  If the prophesy is fulfilled why are the Roman’s still here?   What do the gentiles have to do with it?

Perhaps the answer is, the Kingdom of God is not quite what they expected.  It is like a mustard seed.  It is, in Jesus, right there in front of them, but it doesn’t look as great as they expected.  In fact it just looks like a man, and what’s worse a man they know.  And, at the same time the Kingdom of God is greater than they expected.  It will include Gentiles, it will not just be about them or their country.  In fact, it won’t be about any country at all, for the Kingdom of God is far greater than that.  Jesus shows them that this Messiah that came also to gentiles should not be unexpected.  God healed Naaman, not only a gentile but a general who waged war on Israel.  Why should the messiah save only the Jews when God had been saving others as well for so long?     

Today this scripture is fulfilled.  Are we angry about this statement as well?  Maybe we should be.  After all, do the blind see?  Are the oppressed set free?  Where is the good news to the poor, whether they are poor in spirit in assets or both?  Where is the kingdom of God that the messiah who fulfils these writings by Isaiah is supposed to create?  Can we see it?  There is no man, the son of one of our neighbours, sitting here before us today making this claim, but if Jesus was all that he said then, why do we still seem to be waiting for the Kingdom of God?

Of course, we too might not be ready to see how this fulfilment is true.  Perhaps we can not see beyond our own Romans or tax collectors, or our own fears of cultural annihilation.  Perhaps we can only see the physical blindness around us, but never stop to think whether the physical blindness is a true handicap at all.  Does one need to literally see to have God ever before one’s eyes?  In Jesus’ incarnation God came among us mortals.  The Kingdom of God truly was among them in Nazareth, salvation and life were there, but they chose not to see it, they did not want to.  Whether because of their anger at their oppression, or fear of losing something in their way of life, or hatred of strangers, or even contempt for someone they had known all his life they could not see the greater reality of God right in front of them. 

Today the Kingdom of God is still right in front of us, and beside us, and behind us.  Christ is still fulfilling all that the prophets promised.  He did so in his death and resurrection, and he continues that work of salvation and healing in us and through us.  Not by our own power, not because we are especially worthy or able, but because he is the vine and we are the branches.  Because the Holy Spirit dwells in the body of Christ and we are that body.  We are also still fallible and finite humans in this age and so we do not always appear very much like the Kingdom of God, none-the-less we are called to be nothing less.  In a few minutes Christ’s presence will be made known to us who have faith in him in yet another way as we share his body and blood.  Hopefully in that sacrament we will be so strengthened that we can see God ever before us, that we can see Christ in one another and perhaps, by the grace of God, just a little bit in ourselves.  So that we can see how it is still true that “Today this scripture is fulfilled.”

You can view an archived copy of The eClarion here.

The Friday Letters

29 January 2010

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Nothing too fancy by way of a letter this week. I’d merely like to remind you of three upcoming events I hope you’ll have a chance to be present for.

First, this Sunday is our Annual Meeting. I know parish governance isn’t the most fun one can have at 9:00AM on a Sunday morning, but it is part of our community life. Plus, it’s only once a year! We don’t have a complicated agenda. Mostly the meeting consists of handing out annual reports from various people and committees, presenting the budget that the Vestry has recently passed, and nominating and electing a new slate of Vestry members. Our budget is not real pretty this year, but I’m hoping that isn’t a surprise by now as the Vestry and I have been making an effort to forewarn you. Come with questions if you have them. A special Annual Meeting edition of The eClarion went out yesterday. Look there for biographies of our Vestry nominees.

Second, a week from tomorrow, on Saturday, February 6^th, at 5:00PM, is our 2^nd Annual CECoP Chili Cook-Off. I’ve been talking this up for a few weeks now and I hope you’ll come if you’re free. Last year’s inaugural event was a great time and this year promises to be just as much fun.

Due to the economic and budget restrictions we’re all living under, this year’s Chili Cook-Off will be a variation on BYOB in order to keep costs down all around. When you come to the Cook-Off, please bring either A) a pot of chili to enter into the competition, B) a 6-pack of beer or soda, or a bottle of wine to share, or C) five bucks. This way we should have enough chili to eat, enough beverages to drink, and enough cash to cover the disposable dinnerware and the prizes. It’s a community party!

Once again, awards will be given in five categories. Three awards are given by popular vote: Best Presentation, Most Original, and Best Overall Chili. Two special awards are given based on very unscientific principles: the Father’s Choice Award and the Best 18 and Under Youth Chili Award.

Third, while it may seem as if Christmas is only just over, we are nearing the season of Lent. But before we get there, we must eat some pancakes! The Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper will take place on Tuesday, February 16^th. Dinner is served from 5:00 until 7:00PM. This year we’re adding board games to the usual fare of pancakes and ham, so bring a favorite along or plan to join in.

These last two events are part of a larger plan to hold more such low-budget, high-fun activities at the church. Finances are tight this year, so why not spend some quality time with our parish family? I hope you’ll come when you can.

See you Sunday!

Peace,

Ben.

There’s an archived copy of this Special Annual Meeting Edition of The eClarion available here.

A sermon by The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland on the third Sunday after the Epiphany

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

Psalm 19

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Luke 4:14-21

If one member suffers, all suffer together with it;

if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

-1 Corinthians 12:26

In the course of his writings, the Apostle Paul suggests several images of Christ and the Church, or of the Christian community in general. We are, at various places in his letters: a building, a temple, and a field—and these images are only the ones on offer in the first letter to the Corinthians. The fourth metaphor is the one that sticks in our minds; it is the one born of this morning’s epistle reading: “Now you are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.”

It is important to know that Paul uses the image of one body and many members precisely when he addresses issue of division within a community. Paul did not invent this image, by the way. To refer to a group of people—whether it be a religious group, a society, or even an entire empire—as a body made up of various parts was an established image of the first century world Paul addressed. The difference was that the metaphor was normal employed to do just the opposite of what Paul wanted to do.

Previously, the comparison between the human community and the physical body

“had reinforced hierarchy, suggesting that the lowly workers, the drones, should obey and support their military, mercantile, and political leaders. Those at the bottom of the social ladder should stay put and be grateful for the guidance and protection of their natural superiors. After all, the brain that makes crucial decisions is more critical than the lowly organs that sustain routine daily functioning. Even today, the analogy retains a seductive plausibility. Our culture assumes that a talented CEO is worth more than a janitor and should be remunerated accordingly. Similarly, congregations often shower the homiletically gifted [Preacher] with accolades and allow the [Sunday School teachers] to languish unacknowledged in the shadows.

Paul inverts the force of this metaphor… Rather than arguing for hierarchy or subordination, Paul uses the figure of the body to advance a rationale for diversity and interdependence with a strongly egalitarian thrust. According to Paul’s analogy, the assertion of superiority is ridiculous, for it implicitly reduces the church to one body part and its function. In reality, however, ‘privileged’ congregants are so intimately bound to their lower-status brothers and sisters in one body that the entire notion of status is subverted.[1]

Christians too would be tempted to return to an earlier implication of this community as body metaphor. In later letters written in Paul’s name (but most likely not by Paul himself) images of us as the body while Christ is the head introduced an element of hierarchy back into the concept that Paul did not originally intend. That we are all members of one body implies that we are all an important part of a living thing: while certain parts may seem more interesting or important, the complete cannot be whole without all the members.

The image of one body and many parts is a powerful one in our religious tradition. It is in fact more powerful than we often realize. There are two sides to this idea, though we often only see the first. Paul starts by saying that Christian communities must treasure each of their members; for though the eye might be more pleasing to look at than the ear, a body without hearing is crippled. And though the hand is more attractive than the foot, a body that has no feet could not get it’s hands to the places they wanted to go.

The message is deeper than merely insisting to  those within the inner circle that they need those outside the circle. For Paul, not only does the inner circle need those on the outside, the inner circle cannot exist without those outside. The inner circle is in fact dead, unless it is a big enough circle to enclose all the members.

This is an important concept, so I’m going say it again: not only are we all welcome parts of the body despite our differences, we are different by the very will of God, and God would not have us any other way. God made us differently able, and differently skilled. And beyond making us different, God made us so that we could not prosper without each other. It is not so much that Christianity can accept very different people, it is rather that Christianity demands very different people. Not only does Christian unity not require uniformity, it cannot tolerate uniformity.

We have not always heard this message of Paul’s throughout history. We have, more often than not, decided that the most important thing about the body was its skin, and that what God wanted most was for it to look the same. That this lesson falls the week after Martin Luther King Jr.’s holiday forces me to hear Paul’s message more clearly. That this lesson falls into the aftermath of the devastating earthquake in Haiti gives it all the more poignancy. That earthquake has pointed all of our eyes directly at something that has been true since long before the earth shook: there are people in various parts of this world who have black skin and very little resources and who suffer unreasonably. They too are a part of the body of Christ, and we need them.

It is too easy to turn Paul’s metaphor into a lesson for children, about eyes and ears, hands and feet. Paul is not talking about different sensory organs on your head. Paul is talking about the difference between people who are free, and people who are not. Paul is not talking about the difference between a hand that is for grasping and a foot that is for walking. Paul is talking about the difference  between a child born with black skin and a child born with white skin; between a child born into poverty, and a child born into plenty; between a healthy child whose parents expect it to live to be seventy, and a child whose parents know malaria, or AIDS, or any one of dozens of diseases will shorten its life to less than half of that.

In God, says Paul, there are no differences, and so there should be none among us. Sure, you can create a church where all the members are the same, but what you will have created is not of God, it is not a Christian community. It’s not so much that a body can have different members, its more like a body must have different members. And so must we, if we are to live. AMEN.

[1] “Bartlett, David and Barbara Brown Taylor, ed. “Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary”, year C, vol. 1, pg. 278-9.

View an archived copy of this week’s eClarion here.

The Friday Letters

22 January 2010

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Do you know what “authentic” means? How about “real”, do you know what “real” means? We all use these words, and I’m guessing we all have fairly accurate working definitions of their meaning in our minds. In any given conversation the use of either of these words won’t leave you wondering what the speaker meant. Yet both of these words have hidden depths; if you stop and think about what they mean for too long you can fall into an existential hole which it might be difficult to climb back out of in time for dinner.

I ask because I’ve just been reading that my generation in particular seeks authentic and real experience. That’s why we like tattoos so much, I read, because there’s something particularly real about the experience of getting a  tattoo. They’re authentic too, I suppose, unless of course you paid for someone to permanently mark some Japanese characters into your skin and you don’t really know what they mean. And neither did the tattoo artist, as it turns out…

I have to admit to feeling some relevance though, as I read this passage. Generational studies are always oversimplifications—they apply only to a huge group and not to individual member of it; they are plagued by a difficulty to separate out the unique differences between generations rather than simply things each generation feels about the ones that precede and follow it. Given these shortcomings however, I think the generational researchers are onto something, at least in my case. I have always been somewhat preoccupied with “authentic” and “real”.

I find this preoccupation in my faith life, for one. I don’t make the best theologian, because I’m always more interested in the real application of what thinking something about God might mean than I am in thinking the most correct and academically rigorous thing about God. I want faith to matter—in real terms—not just to me but to others. I want Christianity to be authentic, and not a pop-culture target of ridicule.

This seeking after the real is not just limited to faith, either. On occasion I’ll try something new simply to discover whether or not it might be a particularly authentic experience. It was one of these whims that led me to be three thousand feet above ground with no visible means of propulsion last Sunday morning.

Soaring (they used to call it gliding, which you could do in a glider, but now you need a sailplane) attracts me in a similar way that sailing does. I’m fascinated by these vehicles that are designed to work with the environment they traverse rather than against them. A sailboat can circle the world without any help from deceased dinosaurs or human power plants. Sailplanes, admittedly, need the assistance of a dead-dinosaur-powered prop plane to get themselves started, but once up there they operate solely by the power of wind, and gravity, and thermal dynamics. Plus, in a sailplane there’s the immanent threat of destruction, which tends to heighten the experience. Provides some extra authenticity if you will.

I very much enjoyed my first ride in a sailplane and I hope to repeat the experience. It was a quiet morning north of Fort Collins in Colorado last Sunday, so the ride was smoother than I expected. Smoother than the Southwest Airlines flight into Denver had been a couple days before. I’ve had some experience with light aircraft and the smaller airports that they use, so I wasn’t overly dismayed to find that all but one of the runways at Owl Canyon Gliderport were just straight grassy lanes marked off with painted tractor tires. Most suburban lawns are smoother than your average rural runway.

I was a bit more dismayed to realize how utterly mechanical the sailplane was. Without an engine, there is no power steering. The flaps on the wings and the rudder on the tail were powered by the muscles in my pilot’s arms and legs. This is the kind of visceral connectedness to reality that qualifies as authentic. On the plus side, most people’s greatest worry about flying is that the engines will fail. No worries there; there wasn’t an engine in the first place!

(If you have a Facebook account and would like to see some footage of my trip, there’s a 4 minute video on my page for you to check out.)

This seeking after a direct connection to reality is fascinating to me. The removal of those things that mediate your experience of reality is something of a quest for certain people, and I understand their motivations even if I’m not one of their most dedicated members. Walking a tightrope without a safety net is something I understand, even if I might not want to try it just yet.

I wonder how this kind of seeking after reality plays out in the realm of faith. If you want to more directly experience the reality of flying, just take the motor out of the plane. If you want to more directly experience the reality of God, what do you take out? Where is the safety net between us and the divine, and how could we remove it if we were ready? These are not rhetorical questions; I’d really like to know. It seems like Lent is a good time liturgically to think about removing those things between us and God. Maybe between us we could figure out what some of those things might be.

Peace,

Ben.

You can view an archived version of The eClarion here.

The Friday Letters

15 January 2010

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

In my letter last week I mentioned that I had read Leaving Church by Barbara Brown Taylor. I found it to be an excellent reflection on one particularly insightful person’s journey of faith. I liked it well enough that I have now read An Altar In The World also by Taylor, which I purchased most of a year ago and had never gotten around to reading.

If you’ll forgive me two book recommendations in two weeks, I’d like to put this one on your radar screen too. An Altar In The World is a book of spiritual practices that take place in everyday places and situations. It is a reflection on how a real desire for closeness to God by necessity overflows the walls of the churches we build for that purpose. It isn’t anti-church by any means, but it is also not limited by church buildings. Each of the chapters is self-sufficient and contains one particular practice. They are very common human activities that Taylor asks us to dwell deeper in. For example, here are some of her chapter headings:

The Practice of Wearing Skin: Incarnation

The Practice of Getting Lost: Wilderness

The Practice of Saying No: Sabbath

The Practice of Feeling Pain: Breakthrough

One chapter Taylor does not have is, “The Practice of Balancing the Budget: Suffering.” If she did, I would read it right about now. I want you to know that your Vestry met this past Tuesday evening to pass a budget that would then be presented to you at our Annual Meeting on the 31^st. We didn’t manage to pass a budget, because nobody was happy with the one we had. So, we’ve decided to spend more time working on it and to meet again in a special session in order to put together something that we can reasonably present to you, the congregation.

Here’s the basic problem: some of our expenses have gone up. Not many really, and not by an unreasonable amount. Our budget is very basic, and for the most part reflects simply the reality of the bills we must pay plus salaries. The amount of money in our budget for “programming” is minimal, and we get a huge bang for our buck there. The other half of the basic problem is that our income is going to be down this year. We have received more than 206 thousand dollars in pledges at this point, for which we give tremendous thanks. We have new families and individuals pledging this year, and a few folks have increased the amount they gave last year. Unfortunately, and as we all know, times are tough. Some folks have had to give less this year and others cannot give at all. I’m saying this not in order to distribute guilt or shame, but simply by way of saying that this is the reality in which we live right now.

On last Tuesday evening our budget showed a deficit of $39,923.00. The Vestry decided this wasn’t acceptable. We are going to try to bring this down, and to offer you a balanced budget. While we cannot balance the budget simply by cutting it, we are planning to make several cuts. None of our staff are getting raises this year, and we are almost certainly going to defer an increase in salary that I was to get mid-year when I achieved ten years of ministry.

In addition to the cuts we can make, we are contemplating under-paying our diocesan assessment (that amount we pay each year to the diocese in support of our common ministry as Episcopalians). This is not a step we take lightly, and we will not do it without being in consultation with the Diocesan Budget and Finance Committee.

Finally, we are probably going to have to cover the rest of the deficit with money from our savings. Nobody thinks this is an ideal thing to do, but there aren’t a great many other options out there right now. Money was put aside before I came to CECoP in case it took us a few years to adapt to paying a full-time priest. We haven’t needed that money so far, in large part due to your great generosity, and this may be the time to use it.

We can hope, even after passing a budget such as this, that we can make gains during the year. As new members of the church come through the door they may be called to join our giving. As financial times ease we can hope for increased income for many of our parishioners that they might then share. We can be creative in saving costs and doing ministry on shoestring budgets. The budget is only ever a financial statement, and not a statement of faith. If the Vestry was charged with creating a Budget of Faith, ours would show a surplus, year after year.

Above all, I want you to know you have good stewards working for you on the Vestry. Our budget is a public document, so if you’d like to take a look at it ask a Vestry member. You are also encouraged to ask someone on the Vestry if you have any questions about this process. We are meeting again on Tuesday the 26^th, at which point we hope to have a budget approved for the Annual Meeting on the 31^st. You may expect to hear more between now and then about how we’re working on things.

Finally, and on a completely different topic, Sunday is my thirty-fifth birthday. Jieun and I both mark this milestone this year, and we’ve been talking a lot about where we are and where we’d like to be in another five years. One thing we’ve already decided is that we are in an amazing place right now, and have much to be thankful for. This is a good year for taking stock, and I plan to spend this weekend doing just that. Ann Saunderson, who was already scheduled to preach the sermon this weekend, volunteered to celebrate as well, giving me the time off. It’s not that I don’t want to be with you all in church on my birthday, but given this opportunity I’m going to take a bit of a retreat for the long weekend. I have a particular plan for Sunday morning which I’ll tell you about next week.

Thank you for all that you’ve given me; thank you for letting me be the priest in your midst; thank you for being the kind of place where a budget deficit is a challenge to be met and not a crisis that might destroy us. God bless you all in this place, and I’ll see you next week.

Peace,

Ben.

A sermon by The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland on the first Sunday after the Epiphany

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Acts 8:14-17

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

The Sunday that follows after January sixth is always loaded up with themes. It is January sixth itself that is the feast of the Epiphany, yet most of us aren’t free to come to special church services in the middle of the week, so we end up dealing with the Wise Guys and their sudden realization on the next Sunday after. The first Sunday after the Epiphany is also the traditional day to observe the Baptism of Jesus, which can be a little disconcerting as it was just four days ago that Jesus was a baby lying in a manger and now he’s thirty-something and wading in the Jordan River.

Fortunately the story that we are given to grapple with this Sunday is a story of Epiphany even if it isn’t about the Wise Men. The story of Jesus’ baptism at the River Jordan is a moment of Epiphany for Jesus. It is a sudden realization, an instant of clarity, a deep moment of understanding. So deep and clear was this moment that Jesus remembered it as a moment when God spoke to him plainly and out loud.

This story is written in each of the first three Gospels. Mark, Matthew, and Luke all tell the story of Jesus being baptized by John at Jordan River. This year we are presented with Luke’s version of that story, so let’s consider the aspects of it that are most particularly Luke’s.

The first thing to notice is how Luke sets the passage up. The people gathered are “filled with expectation,” and are “questioning in their hearts”. Neither of the other two Gospels give us this insight into the minds of those who have gathered to hear John preach. This is not a crowd of innocent bystanders nor a group of rubberneckers come to see the spectacle. This is a people, assembled, who are expectant and concerned. They know there is a God and they have come here seeking a way to be closer to God. Who will show them that way? Will it be John, or will it be this One who is to come?

The second thing to notice about Luke’s version of this story is that when the voice of God speaks, when the dove comes down from heaven, Jesus is praying. Luke is very specific about this, while the other Gospels are not. Indeed, this is a theme we will continue to see all year long in Luke’s account of Jesus’ life. Jesus prays at his baptism, at the transfiguration, at various points throughout his ministry of healing and teaching, in the garden at night, and on the cross. That Luke mentions it while others do not is not to say that Jesus only prays in Luke’s Gospel, but it is a significant statement that Luke makes to us: Here is Jesus at prayer, in communion with God, at all of these deep places. This is what Jesus has to teach the church: a life lived in prayer.

The third thing I’ll say about the story this morning is not something that Luke did. It’s something the people who choose our Sunday readings did. We skipped two verses from the middle of the story. We skipped from John telling of Jesus to come straight to what happened after the baptism. The act of baptism itself is not mentioned, but that isn’t what got cut out of our reading. Here are the missing verses:

But Herod the ruler,^* who had been rebuked by him because of Herodias, his brother’s wife, and because of all the evil things that Herod had done, ²⁰added to them all by shutting up John in prison.

It’s an odd place to mention John’s arrest, I’ll admit. First we see John telling of Jesus, then we see John getting arrested, then we cut back to the scene immediately following John baptizing Jesus. It isn’t a logical progression of events, chronologically speaking. Instead of telling us the story in a step by step way, Luke is telling us the more important story: John the Baptist’s message is given and his time is over. This is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. This is the line between everything that came before and what Jesus had to say.

There are two more things I want to say about this story. First, I love that in Luke’s version of the story God speaks to Jesus. Mark has it that way too, but in Matthew the words are “This is my Son, the beloved…” I really like “You are my Son, the beloved…” better. This is Jesus’ Epiphany, and I feel like God really owed it to him at this point. He’s about to head into the wilderness to be tested and then he’ll have a year of whirlwind teaching, and preaching, and healing, and breaking bread. At the end of the year either the world will be completely changed or he’ll be dead. Given how much the world likes being completely changed, it wouldn’t have been hard to guess how it was going to turn out. So I love this moment that is both public and private. Maybe people overheard it, but the words were for Jesus, not the crowd. You are my Son, the beloved.

The second thing that always gets me about this story is the dove. I know that the dove is a widely recognized symbol for peace, and in Christian terms is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, so this is a story of Jesus being granted the gift of the Holy Spirit. But really, if you unload the bird of its symbolic weight (some of which had to have been added later anyways) you’re left with a pigeon. I looked it up in an encyclopedia: doves and pigeons are the same birds. In common speech we tend to call the smaller ones doves and the bigger ones pigeons, but they’re all the same family of birds. If you can look at a German Shepherd and a Yorkshire Terrier and call them both dogs then you’re gonna have to read this story of Jesus’ baptism and call the Holy Spirit a statue pooping pigeon. I feel like I felt in 5^th grade when the teacher told me that instead of the Bald Eagle we almost had a Turkey for our national bird. “What?” I thought. “How was that even a contest?”

Of course we’re speaking a different language here. When we call the Holy Spirit a Dove we’re using the deep language of symbols, which doesn’t always translate well into English. Still. I sometimes wonder if instead of descending as a dove the Holy Spirit isn’t more likely to dive as a hawk, and maybe Luke just cleaned things up because he thought people would be afraid of the talons.

AMEN.