Power and Possession (February 1 2015)

Homily:  Yr B Proper 4, Feb 1 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  Deut 18:15-20; Ps 111; 1 Cor 8:1-13; Mk 1:21-28

This year our Sunday gospel readings will be drawn mostly from Mark’s Gospel.  I like that.  Because the Gospel of Mark pulses with a raw energy, it radiates urgency and immediacy and purposefulness, and that’s stuff that many of us could use in our own lives.  No words are wasted, there’s no time to lose in the Gospel of Mark.

We may miss this sense of urgency when we only hear snippets read from week to week.  But consider this.  We are only 28 verses into this gospel and already Mark has proclaimed his purpose in writing, set up his story as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecies, and introduced us to John the Baptist.  That’s just the first 8 verses.  Jesus arrives in verse 9, and the pace picks up.  He’s baptized, and as he comes out of the water, the Voice sounds and the Spirit descends and immediately drives him out into the wilderness.  The cosmic battle with the forces of evil is engaged.  Jesus reappears, proclaims his first sermon, and calls the fishermen.  Immediately, they follow him.  Then, Jesus enters the synagogue in Capernaum and performs the first public act of his ministry and it’s a confrontation, the exorcism of an unclean spirit.

Those of us who work in the church or government or in big companies must be thinking by this point, “Hey, slow down.  Where’s the strategic planning process?  How about the task force or the committee responsible for evangelism?  What about public consultations?  Who’s taking minutes?”

Why the urgency?  Why does Mark love to use the word “immediately”?  What is so important that it makes Mark’s words tumble from his pen in such a rush?  Who is this Jesus?

At first glance, you might think from today’s reading that Jesus is a great teacher and healer.  Jesus goes into the synagogue and teaches.  Jesus encounters a man with an unclean spirit, and he heals him.  Or does he?  Mark tells us that Jesus casts out the unclean spirit, but he doesn’t actually say us whether the man is healed or not.  In fact, the last thing we hear about the man is that he is convulsed!  And the teaching?   Mark tells us that the people are astounded, but he doesn’t record one word of what Jesus actually taught in the synagogue.  Wouldn’t you like to know what he said that was so astounding?

You see, the details of the teaching and healing don’t matter, because this text isn’t about teaching and healing.  This is about power.  It’s about power and authority.  Jesus’ power and authority.  Listen to what is said:  “Jesus taught, and the people were astounded at his teaching, for taught them as one having authority”.  “Jesus rebuked the unclean spirit, and he came out of the man, and the people were amazed because he commanded the spirit with power and authority”.

Last week, we heard Jesus first sermon.  It was short and to the point.  Mark tells us that Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, saying “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

Now if I had been there in Galilee, and I had listened to that sermon, I would have had a few questions.

What exactly do you mean by the kingdom of God?

What is the good news?

What is it that I have to do to repent and believe this good news?

But in Mark’s gospel there is no time for a question and answer session with Jesus.  We have to figure it out on the fly, to come along for the ride.

You want to know what it looks like to repent and believe in the good news?  Just watch what happens when Jesus says to the fishermen “follow me”.  Immediately, the fishermen left their nets and followed Jesus.  That’s what repentance looks like.  That’s what it looks like to believe in the good news and change your life.

You want to know what it looks like for the time to be fulfilled and the kingdom of God to come near?  Watch what happens when Jesus goes into the synagogue in Capernaum.  He is confronted by a man with an unclean spirit.  He rebukes the unclean spirit that enslaves the man and it is overpowered and silenced.  Mark does let slip that this happens on the Sabbath day.  That’s no wasting of words.  Often our understanding of the Sabbath is based on the Genesis story, that the Sabbath is a day of rest.  But Mark’s understanding, Jesus understanding of the Sabbath, is based on the Exodus story, in which the Sabbath is the day of liberation, the day that God releases slaves from bondage in Egypt and sets them free.

In the Jewish understanding, the man with the unclean spirit was a slave, someone who had been captured by the power of evil and as a result had been separated from God.  When Jesus encounters evil he rebukes it.  The word chosen by Mark, rebuke, from the Hebrew ga’ar, is something that only God does in the Hebrew scriptures and it means to overpower and drive out.  Every Jew standing in that synagogue would have seen the exorcism as a sign that what they had been waiting for was finally happening.  God was acting, the end time they’d been hoping for had finally arrived.  God was going to overpower the forces that enslave us.  And the power and presence of God was breaking into our reality in the person of Jesus.

“The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near.”

We tend to view things a bit differently some 2000 years later.  Most people, in our modern scientific world, don’t believe in demon possession.  We probably would have diagnosed the man in the synagogue as someone experiencing psychosis and prescribed medication.  

Because of this change in perspective, most preachers I know would just as soon avoid preaching on texts like today’s.  We don’t like talking about exorcisms. Couldn’t Mark have picked something else as his first illustration of God’s kingdom breaking into our world in the person of Jesus?  Maybe a more straightforward healing, or Jesus eating with tax collectors and sinners, or Jesus forgiving sins, all of which are coming up in the gospel as illustrations of the good news.

Nope, today we get an exorcism.

I don’t understand exorcism.  But I do understand liberation.

I don’t understand what it means to be possessed.  But I do understand what it means to be enslaved.

I don’t understand what it means to have an unclean spirit.  But I do understand what it means to be controlled and overpowered by forces that do us harm.

I’ve experienced what happens when someone is dominated by anger.  When the forces of anger and rage enter into their soul and cause them to say hurtful things, cause them to do violence to those they love.

I’ve experienced what happens when someone becomes a slave to resentment.  When the accumulation of past grievances and grudges becomes such a driving force in your life that it changes the way you see things and controls the way you react to people around you, where you’re reduced to interpreting the world in a way that feeds and strengthens the resentment that drives you.

I’ve seen the power of addictions to control and enslave people, to harm and destroy.

The twelve step program of Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the most successful methods of treating addictions in our world today.  Do you know what the steps are?  Here are the first three:

1.   We admit that we are powerless over alcohol - that our lives have become unmanageable.

2.   We come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3.   We make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him.

Forces that harm us, that possess and enslave us, are just as much a part of our world as they were a part of Mark’s world.  Each one of us here has battled these things, whether in our own lives or in the lives of those we love.  Our world isn’t that much different from the one that Mark wrote about.

Today’s gospel is telling us that Jesus has the power to free us from all these things that can hurt and enslave us. That Jesus will battle these forces and will win.  That Jesus comes into our world to set us free, to be the people that God created us to be.  Starting now.

 “The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”

That same power and presence of God which manifested itself in Jesus in Galilee is offered to us here in Ottawa.  That same divine power and authority that cast out demons in Capernaum 2000 years ago is alive and well today and longs to cast out the forces that dominate us.  Our God is a God of liberation, a God who liberates captives and sets us free from the powers of evil and death.

The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news.

Amen.

It's Time! Which Way Are You Going to Run? (January 25 2015)

Homily Year B P3, Jan 25 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  Jonah 3.1-5,10; Ps 62.5-12; 1 Cor 7.29-31; Mk 1.14-20

It’s time!

There are, in life, critical moments.  Times of fulfillment.  Times that are so important that we even do a  count down, like the launch of a rocket ship or the last ten seconds of the gold-medal hockey game, or the number of days until Christmas.

We’re not talking about ordinary times here.  We’re talking about special times, the time of action, the beginning of a new era.  If we know or if we hope that the time is coming, we do so with an air of expectancy, of preparation, of anticipation, perhaps even of fear, for we don’t always know what sort of change will be ushered in at that critical moment.  We may spend years preparing for the time:  studying and working hard so that when it’s time we will be called to the bar or licensed as a doctor; practicing hard on the ice and working out in the gym so that when the coach taps you on the shoulder at that critical moment and says “it’s time” you’re ready to go over the boards and do what needs to be done.

Jesus begins his mission by saying “it’s time”.

“The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God has come near.”

This is the good news, the good news that people have been waiting for, waiting for centuries.  It’s time.  God is here.  God is about to act.  Now it begins.

And as befits the urgency of the time, Jesus speaks in imperatives, in demands, in calls for action, in calls for life-changing action.  No time for explanation, no time for the niceties of please and thank you.

Repent.  Believe.  Follow.

And immediately they left their nets and followed him.

When God taps you on the shoulder and says “It’s time,” what will you do?  Will you immediately follow like Simon, Andrew, James and John, the fishermen?

Or will you be more like Jonah, and run as fast as you can in the opposite direction?

Do you know the story?  We only heard a bit of it in our reading this morning.  The word of the Lord came to Jonah, saying “Go to Ninevah, that great city, and cry against it, for their wickedness has come up against me.”

And no sooner had the Lord said to Jonah, “it’s time, go to Ninevah,” than Jonah high-tailed it as fast as he could in the opposite direction.  Maybe it’s because he hated the people of Ninevah.  That’s quite likely.  Ninevah to an Israelite was like an ancient equivalent of ISIS, only much more powerful and much more cruel.  Ninevah was the capital of the Assyrian empire, which had already destroyed and occupied the northern kingdom of Israel.  I can understand why Jonah might refuse to go there.  Maybe that was the reason.  Or maybe Jonah just didn’t want to be a prophet, maybe he had his heart set on being, I don’t know, maybe a farmer or a carpenter.  Whatever the reason, when God calls, Jonah flees, and he gets on a ship, and there is a terrible storm, and eventually he is thrown into the sea and swallowed by a big fish, let’s call it a whale.

And deep in the belly of the whale, it seems that Jonah has a change of heart.  Maybe at this point he feels like he really doesn’t have much of a choice.  He calls on the Lord in his distress, and the Lord hears his prayer.  God speaks to the whale, and the whale then vomits Jonah out of his belly onto dry land.

And that’s when the Lord gives Jonah a second chance.  The word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time, saying “Get up and go to Ninevah.”  This time, still dripping with whale vomit, Jonah goes.

Jonah goes to Ninevah, enters the great city and proclaims God’s message, “Forty days more and Ninevah will be overthrown.”  And, surprisingly perhaps, the people of Ninevah believe God, and they repent, and proclaim a fast and put on sackcloth, every one of them, great and small, and even the animals too.  And when God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity that he had said he would bring upon them; and he did not do it.

And Jonah, who some might say had been extremely successful as a prophet, Jonah is thoroughly pissed.

“I knew it, I knew it,” Jonah says angrily to God. “That’s why I fled in the first place.  I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and ready to relent from punishing.”

You see, Jonah wanted to see those people from Ninevah punished, after all they were the enemy and they deserved it.  And Jonah wanted to see his own words come true, it was, after all, quite embarrassing to go around proclaiming a destruction which didn’t come true in the end.

Jonah didn’t want to follow a God who was concerned about and cared for Jonah’s enemies.  He says that’s why he ran away the first time, not because he didn’t know God well enough, but rather because he knew God only too well!

I don’t know how well Simon, Andrew, James and John knew Jesus when they made their decision to follow him.  We really, all of us, only learn who Jesus is after we’ve been following him for a while. I expect that the fishermen, like Jonah, were surprised when Jesus reached out to foreigners and told his followers that they must love their enemies.   I do know that eventually Simon, Andrew, James and John, they all  ran away too, because when Jesus’ enemies arrested him and nailed him to a cross, following Jesus became just too hard, too dangerous, just too much for them to stick around.

We can take some comfort in the fact that our God does seem to be a God of second chances.  The people of Ninevah were given a second chance, Jonah was given a second chance, even the fishermen after they denied Jesus at the cross, they too were given a second chance.  We’ll get second chances.  He is a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. 

But knowing that, wouldn’t you want to respond the first time? 

When it’s your time, when God taps you on the shoulder and says, “Go”, or “Follow me” which way will you run?  Will you be like Jonah, who ran away, or will you be like the fishermen, who followed?

Or will you be like so many people, who, when God says “It’s time”, respond by saying “Sorry I don’t have time, let me check my calendar, maybe I can fit you in next month.”

Jesus came proclaiming the good news.  And the good news is this:  It’s time, God is here, God is about to act.  And his first act will be to tap some of us on the shoulder and say, now it’s your time.  Follow me.  This is what I want you to do.

It’s unlikely that we’ll be asked to go to Ninevah.  And not many of us will be itinerant ministers wandering around Galilee either.  But we will be given the opportunity, possibly this very week, to participate in the realization of God’s kingdom.  It might be something at work, it might be something at home.  It might be an opportunity to speak, it might be an opportunity to listen.  It might be a life-long task, it might only be for an instant.  But whatever it is, it will be real and concrete and specific to you, because following Jesus isn’t something that we do in general terms nor in the abstract.  It’s something we do in concrete, practical ways, right in the midst of the confusion, messiness and yes even the time-constraints of our everyday life.

Are you ready for it?  When that tap on the shoulder comes and it’s time, which way are you going to run?

Amen.

Come and See (Jan 18 2015)

Yr B P2, Jan 18 2015, St. Albans

Readings:  1 Sam 3.1-10; Ps 139.1-6, 13-18; 1 Cor 6.12-20; Jn 1.43-51

I remember when my daughter was back in elementary school.   Whenever the school had an open house for parents, we used to go together.  And even before we’d get to the door of her classroom, as we were walking down the hall, I’d sense her rising excitement, a bit of a bounce as she walked, and as we stepped into the classroom, there would be this tugging on my arm, and my daughter would say to me, “Come and see”, and we’d head straight over to the place where her latest artwork or writing project was displayed, and she’d show it to me.

Over the past few years I’ve gotten really excited about the basketball rivalry between Ottawa and Carleton U, the two best university basketball teams in the country.  The games are skilled, intense, and exciting.  It’s a big rivalry, and the two teams play with a lot of passion.  And so when I found out that Carleton and Ottawa were playing a week ago Saturday, I called one of my friends, told him about the game and said, “Come and see the game with me”.  And we went, and it was the best game I’ve ever seen in my life, with the Ottawa Gee-Gees sinking a basket with 4 seconds left to win the game 68-66.

“Come and see.”  It is the simplest, and the most effective, of all invitations.  It conveys passion and excitement.  I've found something that’s valuable to me, and I want you to come and see.   It conveys a sense of on-going personal investment.  It’s different from saying, “you should go and see that.”  It’s more like saying, this is important to me, I want to share this with you.  Come with me, and see.

In today’s gospel reading, Philip is excited.  He’s seen something that he’s passionate about, he’s found something that he and his ancestors had been looking for, longing for, for hundreds of years. 

“We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus, son of Joseph of Nazareth.”

Philip has met Jesus, and he’s excited about it.  You can imagine him running to tell his friend Nathanael all about it.  That’s what we do when we’re passionate about something.  But Nathanael, well, he’s a bit of a wet blanket.  “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”  His sarcastic tone provides the answer to his own question.  His words aren’t just negative, they’re downright insulting.

Now, Philip could have responded to Nathanael in a number of ways.  He could have said, “fine then, you stay here, I’ll go find someone else.”  Or, he could have started arguing with Nathanael, arguing about the merits of Nazareth, or trying to convince him by telling him more about Jesus.  But instead of rejecting Nathanael and instead of arguing with him, he does something which is much more grace-filled.  He simply invites him to come and see.  Philip is convinced that what he has found in Jesus is so good that if Nathanael just comes and encounters Jesus for himself, he too will see. 

And Nathanael does go, and that’s not surprising, because when one of your friends is so excited by something, and invites you to come along, that’s what you do, and when Nathanael does encounter Jesus, neither he nor Philip are disappointed, because Jesus kind of blows his mind.

And that is the heart of John’s gospel, the gospel we read from today.  John’s gospel is all about the encounter with Jesus, one mind-blowing encounter after another.  Nathanael, Nicodemus, the woman at the well, the lame man, blind Bartimaeus, the Roman Centurion – one mind-blowing encounter after another.  The encounter with Jesus speaks for itself.  All Philip had to do was say, “Come and see.”

That simple, grace-filled invitation is at the heart of Christian evangelism. 

Now, sometimes the word evangelism makes us uneasy.  Jesus urges his followers, people like us, to proclaim the good news and to make disciples.  And we have, over the course of history, responded to that calling in a whole variety of ways.  We have tried to argue with people, to convince them that we’re right.  We have tried to force people to see things our way, we’ve even, shamefully, resorted to violence at times.  But the best way, the most grace-filled way to proclaim the good news of our faith is to follow the example of Philip, who was in turn following the example of Jesus, and that is to simply invite people to come and see.

Will people respond?  Well, that depends.  Mostly it depends on how excited we are, and the extent to which we are able to convey that this really is something that we love and value.  There was no way that I was going to turn down the invitation from my daughter to come and see her Grade 1 art project, she was just way too passionate about it for me to not go and take a look.

Same thing with Nathanael.  Despite his skepticism, despite his negativity, there was no way that he was going to turn down Philip’s invitation, Philip was just too excited about his encounter with Jesus.  And once Nathanael had accepted the invitation to come and see, Philip didn’t have to do anything more, Jesus took care of the rest.

Now, I have to acknowledge that it’s a bit more complicated for us.  We can’t just invite people to come and see Jesus the way that Philip did.  I wish that we could.

But  we can invite people to come and see the community of those who are inspired by Jesus enough to follow him, the community that Paul calls the ‘body of Christ’.

We can invite people to come and see how God continues to work in the world and in our lives.

We can invite people to come and see this community of people whose lives have been changed for the better and who do amazing things inspired by their faith. 

We can invite people to come and experience for themselves the Spirit of God in our midst on a Sunday morning.

But we’ll only truly be able to say ‘come and see’ if we’ve seen it for ourselves first.  And our invitation will only be compelling if we ourselves enjoy and value what we’ve seen, and we’re excited and we’re passionate about it.  And our invitation will only be comprehensible if we can actually name what it is that we’re excited about.

I saw a great example of that this week.  On Tuesday, Zack, Colin, Lisa, Eliot and others were on campus at uOttawa for clubs day, and they had a table, and they were serving hot chocolate and inviting people to answer the question “What is God for you?” with a few words on a big poster that is posted on the wall at the back now.  And there was a buzz around the table.  The young adults who are part of our student club were passionate, and they were able to name what they were passionate about, the sense of the community they experienced at their Tuesday night meetings, their joy in being able to ask and explore any questions about faith that they wanted to, and the fact that anyone was welcome regardless of beliefs or background.  Come and see, they said.  And this past Tuesday evening, on a frigid winter’s night, there were four new people who came out in response to that invitation.

That’s what I saw.  And I’m excited about it.  I’m excited about so much of what I see in this community of St. Albans.  There’s awesome stuff happening here.  The spiritual growth taking place among our interns when we gather on Tuesday mornings.  The one who came to us at a rough point in his life, was baptized in our midst and then a year later became engaged right in the middle of our evening service.  The person who had a sense of looking for something in their life, who just wandered in on a Sunday and over the course of few months now thinks they’ve found what it is they were looking for.  The amazing work being done by Peter and the folks at Centre 454 on a daily basis.  The amazing things that many of you do in your paid work and your volunteering.  The powerful sense that God is with us and that God’s Spirit is calling us forward on our journey together.  That’s what I see.   That’s what I value and get excited about.  That’s what I want people to come and see.

What do you see?  What are you excited enough about, what is important enough to you that you want to share it with others?  And are you inviting people to come and see? 

Amen.

The Pattern of Ministry (Baptism of the Lord, Jan 11 2015)

Homily:  Yr B P1 Baptism of the Lord, Jan 11 2015, St Albans

Readings:  Gen 1.1-5; Ps 29; Acts 19.1-7, Mk 1.1-11

Beginnings matter.  Good writers know this.  They know that the way a book or a story begins can set the tone for what is to come, can alert the reader to significant themes and characters and can set up patterns that are important and may be repeated as the story plays out.

Many of the great beginnings are familiar to us:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”

“Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.”

And from today’s reading,

‘In the beginning when God created the heavens of the earth, the earth was a formless void, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while the Spirit of God swept over the face of the waters.”

This is of course, the first of the great beginnings.  It introduces the main character, God, and it sets up an air of expectancy as we look to God to act, to make something happen out of the formless void and darkness.  And as we read on in the first five verses of Genesis, God does act and there is a pattern which is set up:

The Spirit of God comes down to our world.

There is a voice:  God speaks.

That voice creates a new reality:  God said, ‘Let there be light’, and there was light.

And God surveys what has come into being and sees that it is good.

In today’s gospel, Mark the evangelist, picks up on this pattern as he begins his story.  His first line echoes the beginning of Genesis:  “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Then there is a prologue, a reference to the prophesy of Isaiah, and an introduction to John the Baptist, the precursor of Jesus who sets the scene for us in the wilderness at the Jordan River.

But the story really begins with the baptism of Jesus, as Jesus is coming up out of the water.

And here the pattern of creation that we saw in Genesis is repeated:

The heavens are torn apart and the Spirit comes down on him.  The voice of God speaks.  That voice creates a new reality, and God sees what he has created and declares it to be good.

Baptism is both an act of creation and an epiphany.

It is an act of creation, because when God speaks a new reality is created, something new has been formed from the dust of the earth.

And baptism is an epiphany, a revelation, or if you like, an “aha” moment, because it reveals to us the truth about ourselves, the truth about who we are, and who we are in relation to God.  We are not just flesh and bones, we are something much, much more.  The heavens are torn apart, and we see something that we may not have seen before.

What we are, who we are is both created and revealed to us by the Voice.

“And just as Jesus was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.  And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

What a gift, what a moment of grace.  Because when you think about it, here is everything that is most essential to us as human beings, all wrapped up in one declaration.

There is the gift of identity.  “You are my Son.”  From this moment on, Jesus knows who he is.  He is a child of God, God’s Son.

There is the gift of belonging.  “You are my Son and you are loved.”  You belong. You are beloved member of the family of God.

And there is the gift of affirmation.  “With you, I am well pleased.”  Unwavering, unconditional positive regard and acceptance.

This is the gift, this is the new reality, this is the insight that Jesus received at his baptism.  Gifts of identity, belonging and affirmation.  And these become the foundation of his ministry.  The gospel of Mark makes it very clear that this is the foundational event of Jesus’ ministry.  There are no birth stories in the gospel of Mark, no stories from Jesus childhood, nothing is thrown in that might confuse us or distract us from the fact that Jesus’ baptism is the foundational event of Jesus’ ministry.

And with this event, a new pattern is established.  Jesus, having received these gifts in baptism, these gifts of identity, belonging and affirmation then becomes the one who gives them to others.  Jesus’ ministry, at its most essential, boils down to doing for others what was done for him at his baptism, telling people by word and by deed that they are God’s beloved children with whom God is well pleased. 

That’s why Jesus’ ministry is tilted towards the outcasts and the marginalized, towards the ones who have been told that they are no good, the ones who have been told that they don’t belong, the ones who have been told that God rejects them.  He will go to the leper on the outskirts of town and touch her and heal her and invite her back into the community.  He will see a paralyzed man, who has been told all his life that he is being punished for his sins and he will say, “Son, your sins are forgiven”.  He will turn to the woman who has been suffering with a hemorrhage and hasn’t been allowed out in public for twelve long years and say to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace and be healed.”  He will call Levi the tax collector and he will go and eat at Levi’s house with the tax collectors and sinners.  In these and many other encounters, Jesus will do for others what was done for him at his baptism.  He becomes the voice that says “You are a child of God, you are loved, and God is really pleased with you.”

This is the pattern of Jesus’ ministry.  This is the pattern of Christian ministry.  In baptism, you too were commissioned for this ministry, given the opportunity and encouraged to follow this pattern.

Because at your baptism, there was a voice that said to you, “You are a child of God, you are loved and God is really pleased with you.”

Now, I know that when I say this it might raise some questions.

Some may wonder whether that voice was only meant for Jesus, and not for all of us.

Some may wonder what that means for those of us who were so young when we were baptized that we don’t remember our baptisms.

And some who can remember their own baptism may be thinking to themselves, “I don’t remember anything like the heavens being torn apart, and I certainly didn’t hear the voice of God.”

And it’s true that most of us didn’t experience anything in our own baptism as dramatic as the story that Mark tells us in today’s gospel.

But remember the pattern of ministry that we’ve been talking about.  Jesus hears the voice from heaven, and he in turn becomes the voice that speaks the good news to others.  God doesn’t need to speak from heaven every time, because he has all of our voices to do the speaking for him.  You see, when you were baptized you were given the gifts of identity, belonging and affirmation.  But you were also given something else, and that is the gift of ministry.  It’s now your job to do for others what God has done for you.  That’s the pattern.

So it’s time to practice.  We all need to hear the voice, we all need to know that we are God’s children, loved by God, and that God is really pleased with us.  And, as the baptized, we all need to practice the pattern of ministry.  And so I’d like us all to do something.  I’m going to start by telling the people nearest me the following:

“You are a child of God.  You are loved, and God is really pleased with you.”

When you’ve heard it, take a second to receive this as a gift, and then you can turn and tell the same thing to the person standing beside you.  And so on, the pattern will repeat, until everyone in this room has heard this voiced at least once.

  

This is how we do ministry.  We receive the grace of God, the gifts of identity, belonging and affirmation, and we in turn give them to others.  That’s the pattern.  It’s the pattern that Jesus followed, it’s the pattern that we are called to follow as the baptized people of God.  And when we do this we become the voice of God in the world.

Amen.

Lessons for the Journey (Epiphany 2015)

Lessons from the Journey of the Magi

Readings:  Mt 2:1-12; Ps 72;Eph 3.1-12;Is 60:1-6

Have you ever set out on a long journey, and when you arrived at your destination, realized you were in the wrong place?

That’s what happened to the wise men from the East in today’s gospel reading.  But let’s start from the beginning.  Around the time of Jesus birth, there were astrologers in the East, likely in Persia or Iraq, who observed a new star in the night sky.  They understood this to mean that a child had been born as king, and so they set out on their westward journey across the desert to seek for the child and to pay homage to him.  Now this wouldn’t be an easy trip.  It would be a long, challenging journey through difficult terrain, a trip that would take them months.   And so as they loaded up their camels with supplies for the journey, they also brought along various scrolls and texts that would help guide them on their way. 

One of the books that these wise men would have consulted would have been the Hebrew scriptures, the collection of scrolls that we call the Old Testament.  And after diligently pouring through the scriptures they would have found the same texts that we heard in our readings today.  They would have read Psalm 72, which tells of a great king who will be born in the land of Israel, a king who will rule righteously, a king who will rescue the poor and bring peace.  This sounded like the king they were searching for, the one for whom the star had risen.  But where would he be born?

As they continued to search the scriptures, they would have come across the poem addressed to the city of Jerusalem by the prophet Isaiah which proclaims to the city:

“Arise, shine: for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.  Nations shall come to your light and kings to the brightness of your dawn.  A multitude of camels shall cover you.  They shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the LORD.”

 “Aha!” they would have exclaimed.  It is to Jerusalem that we must travel, to greet the child who has been born king.  This all made sense.  Where else would you expect the new king to be born?  Jerusalem was the capital city, the city of kings, the political and religious centre of the people of Israel.  Its temple was famous throughout the ancient world.  It was a city of great buildings surrounded by thick walls.  In the land of Israel, it was the home of the rich, the powerful and the famous.  Surely this was where the new king would be born.

And so they traveled across the desert, spurred on by the knowledge of where they were heading.  And when at last they saw Jerusalem, that great city on the hill, lit up by the rays of the morning sun, “surely,” they would have said, “surely we have arrived at our destination”. 

But when they went in through the gates, and up to the palace of the king, they were just as surely disappointed.  They were looking for a child who had been born king, one who would rule in justice and bring peace.  Instead they found King Herod, an old man who was frightened and suspicious, a corrupt puppet king of the Roman Empire who preserved his rule by playing one faction off against another, not a righteous king but a ruthless one who would slaughter children if necessary to preserve his throne.   

The wise men had arrived at their destination, but they soon realized that they were in the wrong place.  But at least they had the sense and humility to ask for directions.  “The child we are looking for, the one who is to be the king of the Jews, the Messiah, where is he to be born?”  King Herod called all his scripture scholars together and they too searched the Old Testament as the wise men had until they found another passage, this one from the prophet Micah:

“And you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler who is to shepherd my people Israel”

Bethlehem was a village about 15 kilometers south of Jerusalem.  Bethlehem was only a day’s journey from Jerusalem, but it might as well have been in another world.  It was a small, dusty peasant village, a place where the land was so poor that raising sheep was the main form of agriculture.  When the wise men arrived in Bethlehem, they must have been disappointed.  Who would ever expect to find a king there?  And yet they entered the tiny village, and found a little hut made of clay brick, and inside was a mother with her child. 

And it is at this point that the magi showed their wisdom:  in the midst of that humble setting, in the midst of the poverty, in the vulnerability of a mother and child who were probably terrified when these strangers came to the house, the wise men were able to recognize the One whom they were seeking.  And they paid him homage, offering him their precious gifts, and then returned to their country by another road.

This is the journey of the magi, a journey that we remember each year as we celebrate Epiphany.  Are there any lessons that we can draw from their journey?  Well, I think that there are.

The first lesson from the journey of the magi is this:

When you see a star, follow it!

As humans, we are meant to journey.  That’s what we were made for.  So when you see a star, don’t just sit there, get up and get going.  Sometimes we might be talking about a real physical journey, a trip that takes us somewhere.  At other times we’re talking about our life journey, the human journey, the spiritual journey that all of us are on.  When the wise men saw the star, they were proactive.  They got on their camels and off they went.  We should do the same.  Let me give you an example.  How many of you would like to have a better relationship with someone, with your spouse or your sibling, or your child or parent?  Well that’s a star.  Now, how many of you actually did something about it during these Christmas holidays.  That would be the first step of the journey.   When you see a star, follow it.

But don’t go empty handed.  Like the wise men, take a travel guide on the journey with you.  It might be a companion who knows the way, or like the wise men, it might be a book.  It might even be the same book that the wise men used, the Bible.  Don’t assume that you know it all, or that as you journey you’ll figure out the way on your own.  Wise people learn from the wisdom of others.  On your spiritual journey, and all of life is a spiritual journey, learn from others who have walked the path before you.  Take a travel guide with you on your journey, and use it.  That’s a second lesson.

The third lesson that I take from the journey of the magi is this:  When lost, ask for directions.  Now I know that this might be more difficult for the men here than the women, but it applies to all of us.  When the magi arrived in Jerusalem and realized that they were in the wrong place, they didn’t just turn around and go home, nor did they travel on blindly.  Instead, they asked for directions.  Whenever you journey, you head into the unknown.  From time to time, you will get lost along the way.  When you do, ask for directions.  Sometimes that might mean asking fellow travelers, sometimes it might mean asking those who have passed that way before you, sometimes it might mean prayer.  When lost, ask for directions.

The fourth lesson I take from the magi’s journey is this:  Have the wisdom to recognize what it is you’re looking for, even if it doesn’t look like you expected it to.  The magi had the wisdom to see the glory of God in the child Jesus, even though they saw none of the kingly trappings that they were expecting.  We need this same wisdom on our journey.  One example of this is the search for happiness.  Many of us are seeking happiness, and we have our own expectations about what happiness will look like.  We might expect it to look like a good job with a good salary, a four bedroom house in a good neighbourhood, a family with two kids and a dog and an indexed pension.  But if we get too focused on what we expect happiness to look like, we may not recognize it when it shows up in a mud brick hut with a dusty floor.  We could say the same of our search for God.  Have the wisdom to recognize what you’re looking for, even if it surprises you by looking different than what you expected.

The fifth lesson from the magi is straightforward.  On your journey, offer gifts.  Journeys aren’t about getting, they’re about giving, giving the very best you have to those you encounter on the way.  All that we are, all that we have is a gift from God, and it has been entrusted to us for a time so that we can offer it as a gift to others.

And the final lesson that we can draw from the journey of the magi is this:  If you find what you’re looking for, don’t be surprised if you have to return home by another road.  Our life journeys are meant to be transformational, they are meant to change us, to bring us closer to the person that we were created to be.  It is this capacity to journey, this capacity to be transformed by our experiences that makes our human lives so exciting. 

There you go, six lessons for the journey courtesy of the wise men from the east.  May God bless you richly on your journey.

Amen.

Based in part on:

Herbert O’Driscoll, “Kingly Presence” The Christian Century, December 27, 2003, p.18.

Walter Brueggermann, “Off by Nine Miles”, The Christian Century, December 19-26, 2001, p. 15.