Who Are the Blessed Ones of God?

Who are the blessed ones of God?

Who are the blessed ones of God? Weren’t those who heard Jesus’ first sermon blessed? Perhaps some of them had been with Jesus at his baptism and seen the dove alight on him or heard God’s voice speaking to him. Perhaps they had heard him call Peter, Andrew, James, and John and were now following him themselves. Maybe some of them had witnessed, or even benefited from, the healings that Jesus had done after he had called the fishermen to follow him. Now they watched him go up the mountain, to begin to deliver the first of the five sermons that the Gospel of Matthew has recorded. Up on the mountain, perhaps Jesus reminded some of the disciples of Moses, who had come down from Mount Sinai bearing God’s commands. Would Jesus give these fledgling disciples a new set of commandments? Would he renew or restate God’s covenant with the Jewish people? Those who heard Jesus preach that day were oppressed by the Romans and ignored by their religious leadership. They definitely needed something. Actually, what they heard from Jesus didn’t sound like anything Moses had taught. In his sermon Jesus sounded more like one of the prophets, especially Micah and Isaiah, offering them God’s reassurance. In fact, in what Jesus said some of the disciples even heard echoes of the consolation offered to the returning exiles towards the end of the book of Isaiah.

As he began this first sermon up on the mountain, Jesus drew deeply on Jewish tradition. Perhaps he especially had in mind the blessings mentioned in the book of Deuteronomy or in some of the psalms. He did not give his disciples new commands. Instead he told them that they were God’s people. They were God’s people now, and they would be truly blessed by God when God’s realm was a full reality. They were God’s people because of who they were now. Even though it was not yet fully manifest, because they were following Jesus, a change had already taken place in their lives – the kingdom of heaven had come near to them. Perhaps the way Jesus taught the disciples that day sounded to them just a little like his teachings sound in Clarence Jordan’s Cotton Patch Version:

The spiritually humble are God’s people, for they are citizens of God’s new order.
They who are deeply concerned are God’s people, for they will see their ideas become reality.
They who are gentle are God’s people, for they will be God’s partners across the land.
They who have an unsatisfied appetite for right are God’s people, for they will be given plenty to chew on.
The generous are God’s people, for they will be treated generously.
Those whose motives are pure are God’s people, for they will have spiritual insight.
People of peace and good will are God’s people, for they will be known throughout the land as God’s children.
Those who have endured much for what is right are God’s people; they are citizens of God’s new order.
You are all God’s people when others call you names, and harass you and tell all kinds of false tales on you just because you follow me. Be cheerful and good-humored, because your spiritual advantage is great. For that’s the way they treated those of conscience in the past.

And when Jesus had finished reassuring the disciples that the reign of God belongs to anyone who hears themselves in any of these statements, that as his followers it belongs to them here and now, he gave them a challenge. Could they fully live into God’s blessings in their own lives? Could they form communities of love that were fully blessed by God? Could they help these communities of love endure in a hostile world? They had God’s reassurance: could they join him in fully living into their identity as God’s people?

Who are the blessed ones of God? At first glance it was unlikely that, at her birth in the middle of the fifth century, a baby girl named Brigid would be considered blessed by God. She was the daughter of the slave of a royal official, and she spent her childhood as the servant of the family of a Druid priest. Early in her life she became a Christian, possibly after having heard St. Patrick preach. When she reached her teens, Brigid followed the law and returned to her father, who arranged for her to marry a young bard. Brigid refused. Instead, she went to her bishop and took her first vows as a nun. Other women began to join her. In 468 she founded a convent at Cill Dara, (Kildare), “Church of the Oak,” a place that was sacred to a pagan goddess and that was a source of sacred fire. To make sure that her community could receive the sacraments, Brigid persuaded the anchorite Conlaed to seek ordination and to move his community of monks to Kildare to establish a double monastery for women and men. Brigid and her nuns took equal roles with the men in governing the community, and Brigid herself actively participated in policy making at church conventions. She was also great traveler, and at the invitation of other bishops, she started convents all over Ireland. Brigid’s fame spread rapidly throughout Ireland. As Irish monks wandered throughout the rest of the British Isles and the Continent, others came to know of her.

Brigid was surely blessed by God in her devotion to Our Lord and in the many holy communities that she founded. But Brigid was truly blessed by God in her care and concern for the poor and needy, especially lepers and the victims of violence. She especially could not bear to see anyone hungry or cold. While she lived with her father, she often gave away things that belonged to him. One story relates how she gave a leper a beautiful sword of her father’s. Unaware that this was an act of charity, her father was enraged. What could he do to control this wayward and profligate daughter? Stories also abound of Brigid’s concern for the poor and needy. When a leper woman asked her for milk, she was healed of her illness. Brigid enabled two blind men to receive their sight. She loved birds, and was also said to have tamed a wolf at the request of a local chieftain who had lost his favorite dog. When she died in 525, Brigid was buried beneath the altar of the small cathedral of Kildare. In England today there are at least nineteen churches dedicated to her, including St. Bride’s on Fleet Street in London, home especially to journalists. She is still venerated in Ireland and in many other places. We’ll remember her on Tuesday, February 1st, her feast day, which is itself an ancient sacred day celebrating Imbolg, the Celtic spring festival. Surely Brigid was a blessed one of God.

Who are the blessed ones of God? On this day in 1948 a young Hindu fanatic shot to death Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, called by his admirers Mahatma or “Great Soul.” Gandhi was marching together with Hindus and Muslims in New Delhi. He was vainly attempting to reconcile the two communities following the partition of the Indian subcontinent and the establishment of independent nations in Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. During his long life – he was born in 1869 – Gandhi did more than perhaps anyone else to advance the cause of nonviolence and to pursue change, even difficult political change, in ways that promoted peace and enhanced human dignity. He was not a Christian – despite the concerted efforts of many of his Christian admirers to convert him. He could not accept what some call the “singularity “of Christ, i.e., the church’s claim that salvation is available only through Christianity. Gandhi was also troubled by the tendency in the India of his time of converts to Christianity to leave behind their own cultures and become westernized. He was also critical of much religious authority, including that of Hindu priests, and he thought that missionaries in India exercised a kind of spiritual imperialism. Nevertheless, Gandhi was deeply influenced by the teachings of Tolstoy and by the Sermon on the Mount – today’s Gospel reading. He especially affirmed Jesus’ redemptive suffering on the Cross. Even though he never became a Christian, his fame spread far beyond India through his devotion to the cause of nonviolence and peace. When he died, a newspaper correspondent observed, "Just an old man in a loincloth in distant India: yet when he died, humanity wept." For many Christians, most especially for Martin Luther King, Jr., himself murdered by a fanatic, Gandhi is proof that even non-Christians can function for Christians as saints, as those who show forth to us, God’s love at work in the world. Surely Gandhi was a blessed one of God.

Who are the blessed ones of God? Listen, really listen to what Jesus is saying, for ultimately he is speaking directly to us. He offers us hope, and he points in the direction of compassion for all those around us. “You are blessed in this life, “ he reassures us, “whenever you acknowledge your spiritual dependence on God, seek to heal all kinds of brokenness in the world, grieve over the sufferings of others, forgive others, and ardently pursue peace, trusting always that God’s Spirit is leading you.” When we hear, truly hear, Jesus’ words as addressed to us, then we too are united with all the blessed company of his faithful followers.

Has Christ Been Divided?

Most high and holy God, pour out upon us your one and unifying Spirit, and awake in every confession of the whole church a holy hunger and thirst for unity in you; through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord. Amen.

What on earth was going on in Corinth? Were the members of the Christian community there so at each others’ throats that Paul was forced to write to them? Quite possibly they were. In the middle of the first century, Corinth was a thriving seaport that was home to a prosperous multi-ethnic community of both Gentiles and Jews. Consequently the Christian community that gathered around Paul and other evangelists in Corinth included people of different genders, ethnicities, social classes, and former religious allegiances, and they all had different ideas about sexual practice, divorce, worship of images, the importance of rhetoric, and how people should eat together, among other things. No wonder there were differences of opinion! And no wonder Paul felt compelled to write to the Corinthian Christians! Today, we’ve heard part of the very first section of the letter. We’ll be hearing sections from this letter through the end of next month, so we’ll get a good sense of some of the rest of the divisive issues among the Corinthians.

Let’s look at what Paul actually has to say in this opening section. First, following the required greetings, which we didn’t hear, Paul goes straight to the heart of the matter. He is rightly distressed by the divisions among the Corinthians that he has heard about. So he appeals to them to “be in agreement” and to “be united in the same mind and the same purpose.” Perhaps this was always a divided and fractious community, but Paul will not accept that situation and wants to see it changed. Second, notice that Paul addresses the Corinthians as “brothers and sisters.” He reminds them that they are now part of a new family, a family based not on the old patriarchal hierarchies, but on mutual love. Paul cares about the conflicts among the Corinthians, because he loves them as their brother, and doesn’t want to see this beloved family torn apart. Although Paul will strongly rebuke the Corinthians in later parts of this letter, he always does so out of love, because he and they are all now part of one extended family. Then Paul identifies the first issue that is causing division: “What I mean is that each of you says, ‘I belong to Paul,’ or ‘I belong to Apollos,’ or ‘I belong to Cephas,’ ….” He’s almost shouting as he rebukes the Corinthians for dividing their family by choosing one or another charismatic leader, perhaps by virtue of who baptized them, rather than caring about the community as a whole. You can almost see him throw up his hands in exasperation as he asks, “Has Christ been divided?”

Does any of this sound familiar to us? Two thousand years after Paul wrote to the Corinthian Christians, we live in a deeply divided church don’t we? We’re in the middle of the week of prayer for Christian unity, but you might rightly ask, “What unity?” The western church centered in Rome and the eastern church centered in Constantinople (now Istanbul) have been irreparably separated since the year 1054. The Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century shattered the unity of the western church. Just in this country, to say nothing of the rest of the world, we find a host of Christian denominations. Some denominations reflect the different waves of immigration to this country, some came about as a result of the split between North and South in the Civil War, some have grown out of late nineteenth and early twentieth century Pentecostal movements, some trace their beginnings to a charismatic leader, and some exist for trivial reasons, e.g. differences of opinion as to whether music should be used in worship or not. Some people split off from the Episcopal Church in 1976 in opposition to the ordination of women, some in 1979 in opposition to our current prayer book, and, as we know, some in the wake of the consecration of an openly gay bishop in 2003. Similar divisions can be found in every denomination in this country and in the church in every country in the world. Surveying the church today, would Paul shout at us, “What I mean is that some of you say, ‘I belong to the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch,’ or ‘I belong to Luther,’ or ‘I belong to the Pope,’ or ‘I joined the church through the Azusa Street revival?’” Wouldn’t he throw up his hands in exasperation and shout, “Has Christ been divided?”

Fortunately, Paul’s exasperation is not the end of his letter to the Corinthians. For Paul goes on to instruct the fractious Corinthians as to how to begin healing the divisions in their community. He reminds the Corinthians that they did not receive Christ’s saving power through any human leader: not Apollos, not Peter, not even Paul himself: “Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul?” Rather, Paul reminds them that they received God’s saving grace through the Gospel. He makes it crystal clear to them that God’s saving love is best known in the Cross of Christ. And if – you can almost hear him raising his voice again – if the Corinthians focus on the sacrificial power of Christ, as demonstrated by the Cross, then they will come together as the new people that they were called by Christ to be.

Does Paul’s advice ring true for us divided twenty-first century Christians? If we focus on what we hold in common, rather than the limited truths we are so passionate about, if we give our allegiance to our crucified and risen Savior, rather than to human traditions and practices, might we be able to take the first steps in healing what our prayer book calls “our unhappy divisions?” Perhaps we’ve already taken some baby steps. Following the early ecumenical movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the World Council of Churches was inaugurated in 1948. Today the WCC includes 349 denominations, fellowships, and church bodies in 110 countries, and it has even been able to agree to a common statement on Baptism and the Eucharist. The ecumenical movements that began in the U.S. in the late 1960’s created out of separate bodies, among others, the United Methodist Church, the Presbyterian Church (USA), and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Episcopalians and Lutherans deepened our ties and allowed for shared communion and ministry through the Call to Common Mission in 1999. And, as you know, the canons of the Episcopal Church now allow all baptized Christians, of whatever denomination, to receive communion. Yes, we are still divided, but we have at last begun to look again to the Cross of Christ and to focus again on what unites us as members of Our Lord’s family.

What else can we concretely do, especially in this place? Perhaps the most important thing we can do is to recognize our need for fellowship around the communion table. Just as sitting down to dinner together increases our cohesion as a family, so too does receiving communion together. It’s just about impossible – or it should be – to regard someone you’ve shared communion with as a stranger. For, just as we are united with Jesus when we partake of his body and blood, so also are we bonded to each other. I’m reminded of a lovely hymn in Evangelical Lutheran Worship It’s a Eucharistic hymn entitled “Gather us In.” I’m just going share with you the second verse.

We are the young, our lives are a mystery,
we are the old who yearn for your face;
we have been sung throughout all of history,
called to be light to the whole human race.
Gather us in, the rich and the haughty,
gather us in, the proud and the strong;
give us a heart, so meek and so lowly,
give us the courage to enter the song.

What a wonderful vision for us as we gather around this table! Can we invite others to join us around the table? Perhaps too can we leave the silo of this parish and begin establishing bonds with other Episcopal parishes? Could you come to a deanery event, participate in a workshop at our diocesan conference center, or serve as a delegate to Diocesan Convention? Every time I go to a diocesan event I never cease to be encouraged by the sight of “all sorts and conditions” of people. We might even – gasp – begin establishing some ties with Episcopalians across the river!

Next we can reach out across our “unhappy divisions” to our fellow Christians in other denominations. I was so greatly moved by the gathering in this church for our community Epiphany service. Christians of several denominations came together to worship and make a joyful noise in celebration of the acknowledgement of Jesus by the Magi. As we were vesting in my office, Msgr. Myers, the pastor of St. Louis Roman Catholic church, who was our preacher, must have felt that sense of unity, because he expressed the wish that all Christians might agree on a single common date for Easter. We’re not quite there yet, but we will continue our shared community Lenten service, and Fr. Myers and I agreed to share the Blessing of the Palms in the park on Palm Sunday this year. I even persuaded the Rev. Scott Baker, the pastor of New Life Lutheran Church, to share an Easter Vigil with us. And we know that it is not only liturgy, perhaps not primarily liturgy, that unites us. Several churches share our Loaves and Fishes, and we distribute diapers at the Methodist Church through a ministry organized by Lutheran Social Services.

Towards what other opportunities for shared ministry is the Holy Spirit leading us? If we bond with each other around the altar, if we focus on our shared confession of faith in Christ Crucified and Risen, and if we join together for ministry, what else might we be able to do to bring the Kingdom of Heaven nearer?

I Saw the Spirit Descending

In his seventies, the great Italian sculptor Michelangelo wrote a letter to his nephew Lionardo. Alluding to all the sculptures, paintings, and poetry that he had created, he told his nephew, “Many believe – and I believe – that I have been designated by God for this work. In spite of my old age, I do not want to give it up; I work out of the love of God in whom I put all my hope.” Inspired by his love of God, Michelangelo embodied in marble flesh the towering figures of Moses and David, the inspiring figure of Christ carrying his Cross, the heart-wrenching scene of Jesus lying across Mary’s lap in the Pietà,. Inspired by his love of God, Michelangelo filled the ceiling of the papal Sistine chapel with glorious paintings illuminating stories from Scripture. One of the best known of these paintings is the breath-taking fresco of the Last Judgment that is behind the altar. Showing the Second Coming and the judgment that comes with it, the fresco depicts men and women without any symbols of earthly rank or status and presents them as equals now before Christ. In the center of the fresco stands a radiant Christ surrounded by the saved who rejoice in light and joy, while the damned are carried into darkness.

In creating this great art, which still inspires our own faith, Michelangelo might have felt that he was just doing a job or executing another commission. Instead, Michelangelo understood his work as a vocation, a way of life to which he was called by God for a purpose, in which his art was inspired by God, and in which he was sustained by God throughout his long life. Michelangelo knew that if the work was great, it was because God’s greatness was reflected in it. He also knew that however great his own work was, however much it was acclaimed by others, it paled in comparison to the saving work of God in Christ. In the end, drawing others into a deeper relationship with God, into a deeper understanding of what God has done for us in Christ, was the purpose for which God had called Michelangelo, the vocation to which Michelangelo remained faithful throughout his life.

John the Baptist and his two disciples, Andrew and his friend, also knew something about drawing others into a deeper relationship with God. As always John’s Gospel, the last of the Gospels to be written, gives us a different take on the events of Jesus’ ministry. Last week in our reading from Matthew’s Gospel we witnessed Jesus’ baptism. Here, we hear about Jesus’ baptism from the testimony of John the Baptizer. Still a fiery preacher of repentance who had collected many disciples and drawn many others to the Jordan for baptism, John knew that he was only a forerunner of the Messiah, God’s Anointed one, or God’s Chosen one. However, initially he did not know who that person was. Through the act of baptizing Jesus, John’s eyes were opened, and he gained a deeper understood his role: his role was to see the Spirit descend on Jesus and to proclaim the coming of the Messiah in Jesus. Thereafter John forthrightly related his own experiences to all would hear him: “I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” “I myself.” Called to proclaim the coming of the Messiah, called to point to his coming, called to decrease as the Messiah increased, through his declaration of his own experience, John faithfully began leading others into closer community with Jesus.

Andrew and his friend, perhaps the Beloved Disciple mentioned later in this Gospel, were among those who heard John’s proclamation. Perhaps they had been among John’s disciples. When John proclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God,” they heard John’s implicit suggestion that they leave him and become a disciple of Jesus instead. They ran off in Jesus’ direction and asked where he was staying. In response to Jesus’ invitation to “Come and see,” Andrew and his friend followed Jesus, stayed with him, and listened intently to his teaching. Then they turned around and did the same thing that John the Baptizer had done: they spoke of their own experience. They went to Andrew’s brother Simon and declared, “We have found the Messiah.” And then they took one more step: they went back to where Jesus was staying, bringing Simon with them. Imagine how it might have been: Andrew and the other disciple might have said, “That was nice,” and never said another word to anyone about what they had heard from Jesus. Instead they enthusiastically proclaimed what they had seen, “We have found the Messiah,” and they brought Simon to Jesus. And thereafter lives were changed for all eternity! Simon, Andrew, and the other disciple now understood that they too had a vocation, a God-given role: to tell of their own experiences of Jesus and to bring others into closer relationship with Jesus.

Because of Simon, Andrew, and the other disciple, because of the others who heard what they said about their own experiences with Jesus, and because of the communities of faith that formed around them, people are still being drawn into deeper relationship with God and into a deeper understanding of what God has done for us in Christ. Today this is especially true in Africa, where churches are still growing rapidly, even as the churches of Europe and North America seem to be slowly dying. Can we learn anything from African Christians about how to speak of our own experiences with Jesus and how to draw others into closer relationship with him?

In 1973 Roman Catholic Christians of the Mafa ethnic group in Cameroun in western Africa began looking for ways to fulfill their own vocation to make Jesus more understandable to those around them and to bring others into closer relationship with Jesus. They formed a committee to select the stories from Scripture they knew to be most important in drawing people to Christ. Then they photographed and sketched village people living out their lives. The committee gave the photos and sketches to a French artist who created a series of 63 paintings depicting scenes from the Annunciation to Pentecost, using the lives of the rural Mafa as the context.1 You can see one painting depicting Jesus’ invitation to Andrew and his friend on your bulletin cover. Can you see how such a picture might help Mafa people understand better who Christ was? In a way, these paintings are somewhat like medieval stained glass windows or manuscripts, which show Jesus, Peter, Andrew, and others often in the context of medieval life. The Jesus Mafa paintings depict Jesus in the context of Mafa life, and so they help catechists and teachers make Christ more accessible to people as they hear the Scriptures and stories about his life. Since their initial production, the paintings have been widely distributed to Christian communities of all kinds in Africa, to catechists, churches, missionaries, schools, libraries, booksellers, and private individuals. You yourself can even buy them through the Jesus Mafa website!

Do these Jesus Mafa paintings speak to us? They speak to me. They remind me that through my commitment to Jesus, I am charged to speak of my own experiences of him in my own language, and to draw people into closer relationship with him. Indeed that responsibility belongs to all of us, by virtue of our own baptisms, not just to those who wear clerical collars. Along with John the Baptizer we too are charged with saying, “I saw it myself.” Along with Andrew and the other disciple, we too are charged with saying, “We have seen the Messiah.” How do we do that? It’s not easy. Episcopalians don’t like the e-word. We thinks of zealots spouting hell fire and brimstone, of fanatics like those of the Westboro Baptist church in Kansas who picket military and other funerals and spout their message of a hateful God.

My friends, that’s not what evangelism is. Evangelism actually means using the i-word or the w-word, “I experienced this as a disciple of Jesus. We have seen Jesus in this person or place or offering of ministry.” Evangelism means using language, images, and pictures of Jesus that come out of our own mouth, time and place, not the mouths, times and places of other centuries and countries, beloved as they may be. Let me be clear. I am most decidedly not urging that we neglect our traditions or abandon ancient forms that still nourish us. What I am talking about is understanding that the Gospel message is for us, our time, and our community too, that indeed Christ came for people of every “language, tribe and nation.” But the Gospel message is best heard through the testimony of real people speaking of their own actual experiences. When we can say, “I have experienced Jesus when…” or “I see Jesus in…” or, “Here is what Jesus looks like to me…” then we are following in the footsteps of Michelangelo, John the Baptizer, Andrew and the other disciple, and the creators of the Jesus Mafa paintings. And here is the good news: God continues to enhance our ability to make Christ known to others. God has given us models of how to speak of our experiences of Christ. When we open our mouths to begin doing so, God will be there with us, just as God was with all those who have come before us. Are you up for it? Can you open your mouth and say, “I saw…?” Can you say, “We have seen…?” May it be so!

1. More information about the Jesus Mafa paintings is available at http://www.jesusmafa.com/index.htm .

Down by the Riverside

Why are we celebrating the baptism of Jesus today? Why did Jesus need to be baptized? Wasn’t baptism, at least as John proclaimed it, all about repentance? And why would Jesus have needed to repent? And does it really matter to us that Jesus was baptized? These are real questions, and they are questions with which the earliest Christian communities wrestled, most likely even the community for whom the Gospel of Matthew was written.

To answer these questions, we need to start with what our belief in the incarnation really means. Stay with me here, because I’m going give you a little theology. As Christians, we believe that to be human involves being physical, to be tangible, to have senses. We’re not just souls trapped temporarily in a body that has nothing to do with who we really are. We are body and soul inextricably woven together. As Christians, we also believe that the Word was made flesh in a very particular body in a very particular time and place. We believe that Jesus’ body was just like ours, that even as the Word he had a body that was subject to all the limits and constraints on human bodies from the very beginning to the very end of his life, and as a human being he experienced all that human beings experienced, with the exception of sin.

Ponder this for a moment: all that human beings experienced, from conception to death. Some of you know that in the last few years I have been discovering the beauty and power of icons. Icons, those strange mosaics, frescoes, and paintings to which Orthodox Christians are so devoted, but which most Protestants find so mysterious. Recently I read a lovely book, Ponder These Things, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, about praying with four different icons of Mary. It was Williams’s discussion of the third of these icons, the Virgin of the Sign, that helped me to see the baptism of Jesus in a new and arresting way.

As you can see from your bulletin, the Virgin of the Sign depicts the child Jesus within the body of the Virgin. Mary’s hands are extended in what’s called the orans position, i.e., the position for prayer. It’s the same gesture I use when I pray the Great Thanksgiving in the Eucharist. In his reflections on this icon, Williams suggests that Mary stands for the Church, for all of us who are members of Christ’s Body, and that Christ lives within us and the Church, teaching us and enabling us to live with his life and pray with his prayer. But what caught my attention most sharply as I read about the icon was how Williams related the icon to our understanding of the incarnation, our claim that the Word became flesh and blood and came among us in a real human body. Williams says, “We are pointed towards one of the most mysterious bits of our belief in God’s coming in flesh among us: for nine months, God was incarnate on earth, God was human, in a completely hidden way, as a fetus growing in Mary’s womb. We hear sometimes of the paradox of the newborn Christ child, the divine Word who cannot speak a literal human word; how much more striking the recognition of the Word growing silently in Mary’s body.” (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2006, pp. 44-5). In becoming flesh Jesus the Word of God experienced all that real human bodies, real human beings experience, not only hunger, thirst, fatigue, joy, anger, disappointment, and death, but also the utter powerlessness and dependence on another human being that being conceived, being born, and growing to adulthood entailed.

Fast forward now with Matthew to Jesus’ baptism. We learn from Matthew’s account that Jesus intended to be baptized, that he came from Galilee to the Jordan where John was issuing his call for repentance, in order himself to be baptized. He was the Word made flesh, he was sinless, why did he do this? He did this to experience all that human beings experience, including the need to be cleansed from sin. Unlike him, we are sinful creatures, who need to turn our lives around, who need the sacrament of ritual cleansing to help us do that. Jesus persuaded John to baptize him over John’s objections. Needing no repentance for sin, Jesus nevertheless went down into the waters of the Jordan, in order to be in full solidarity with us. He entered those waters to be in full solidarity with the lost, the needy, the broken, and the broken-hearted, with all those who came to John for healing. He entered those waters to identify with us, to take into his own personhood, our need for repentance. And because Jesus was baptized in water, the water itself became a means of saving grace for all those baptized in his name.

In addition to experiencing the cleansing ritual of baptism for and with us, something else happened to Jesus when he came up out of the water. He was anointed by the Holy Spirit and heard God speaking to him. Through God’s words to him, it was fully clear to Jesus himself, and to anyone else who may have heard the words, that God affirmed Jesus’ identity as God’s Son, and that God fully approved of his human life and the earthly mission which he was about to begin. At the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus was ceremonially anointed by God to take up the ministry for which he was born, as a unique and true human being.

So now, why does all this matter to us? If Jesus is in full solidarity with human beings, human beings are also now in full solidarity with him. Through Jesus’ baptism, the water of baptism becomes a means of saving grace for us. Through baptism God’s grace cleanses us from sin. Through baptism we are buried with Christ in his death, and we share in his resurrection. We are truly made new human beings. And – and this is the most important part – in baptism, just like Jesus, we too are anointed by the Holy Spirit, we too are anointed by God to take up the ministry for which we were born as unique human beings. We too are commissioned for ministry in Jesus’ name.

But – and this is also an important part – your Christian life is neither finished nor complete with baptism. You are still growing and developing as the unique human being that God created you to be. That is why the Church also has a rite of Confirmation. Perhaps Confirmation should be called Commissioning, for that is what it really is, a commissioning ceremony for ministry. For those baptized as infants, Confirmation is the way in which we affirm what was done on our behalf by others, or what we began as children. We make an adult commitment to a way of life more closely modeled on Jesus’ way of life. Most important, we acknowledge that we too have been anointed by the Holy Spirit, that we too have been commissioned by the Spirit, for mission to the world. Ah, some of you might say, I was confirmed when I was twelve or thirteen. In our world, you can hardly call that an adult commitment, can you? My answer is, ”Probably not.” That’s why, in the current prayer book, we have one more rite, Reaffirmation. This rite is a means by which those who want to make another, deeper commitment to the promises made in baptism and confirmation may do so. And, like confirmation, this rite also includes the laying on of hands by the bishop. However, even without Reaffirmation, our Christian life doesn’t stop with baptism or confirmation. Just as Jesus was commissioned for ministry through his baptism, similarly, through the power of the Holy Spirit, we continue to deepen our relationship with Jesus, we continue to develop as the people God created us to be, and we continue to grow in our ability to carry out the ministry God has given us. When we are baptized or confirmed, when we reaffirm our baptismal vows, even when we are ordained, we cannot sit back and say, “Done, finished, I’ve arrived.” At each point, we must claim the unique ministry to which we have been called, for which we have been commissioned, into which we must grow.

Who knew that water could be so powerful? Who knew that a trip to the river or the font could change our lives forever? Who knew that a bishop’s hands on one’s head could empower us for ministry to a world that so desperately needs us? Have we lost our astonishment that the wonderful thing that happened to Jesus at the Jordan also happened to us? One spiritual writer suggests that whether we are conservatives, moderates, or liberals, we’re no longer any fun. Have we forgotten that God has called us, truly called us, into partnership in ministry? Perhaps what we all need is what this writer called “a good dunking like Jesus received, and then to breathe in the fresh air of the Spirit hovering over the waters.”

In a few minutes, we will renew our baptismal vows. As we do, God willing, we will all of us emerge with a deeper sense of God’s affirmation of us as distinct human beings and a clearer vision of the ministries to which God calls us.

Where's the Good News?

Why is December 28th red on our liturgical calendars? We’re still in the joyful season of Christmas tide, which lasts through the Epiphany, and in which our liturgical colors are white and gold. So why is the 28th a red day? Red days on our calendar mostly signify days on which we remember martyrs, those who died for their faith. On December 28th we remember those who died for a slightly different reason. Between the two paragraphs of our Gospel reading today there are three verses that we did not hear, but which we need to hear if we are truly to understand the meaning of today’s Gospel. These are the three verses, verses 16 through 18: “When Herod saw that he had been tricked by the wise men, he was infuriated, and he sent and killed all the children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or under, according to the time that he had learned from the wise men. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah: ‘A voice was heard in Ramah, wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.’” This event is what we are asked to remember on December 28th, Herod’s slaughter of the innocent children.

Whoa! What’s going on here? Why are we asked to remember such a horrendous event in the midst of our joyful celebration of the coming of the Prince of Peace? Why does the church give us this Gospel, with or without the mention of the Holy Innocents, in Christmas tide? Wouldn’t this text be more suitable for Lent? Perhaps so, but there’s a good reason for hearing this text now. Truth be told, this isn’t an easy text on which to preach. It would be much easier to consider the coming of the Magi, which precedes the events in today’s readings, or even Jesus as a young adolescent in the story from Luke’s Gospel, both of which are also possible Gospel texts for today. But we need to hear this text. We need to hear it to avoid becoming too sentimental about what the birth of Jesus was all about. On Christmas Eve we heard Luke’s lovely story, complete with angelic voices and awed shepherds. On Thursday we’ll hear of those strange eastern politicians who visited the young child and whose departure precedes today’s Gospel. Last week, I preached on the Word becoming flesh and blood and moving into the neighborhood. Well, perhaps the neighborhood wasn’t quite as idyllic as you and I remembered it. This text, this disturbing Gospel reading, forcibly reminds us that, indeed the neighborhood in which the Word became flesh and blood was not idyllic at all.

Herod “the Great” who lived from 73 to 4 BC, was given the title “King of the Jews” by the Roman rulers who put him on the throne in 40 BC. He was famous for his brutality, and he had had many of his relatives and other potential rivals killed. He was insecure and suspicious, and the last thing he wanted was someone else who could possibly be the “king of the Jews,” as the Magi had suggested. When his religious advisors informed him that the ancient texts foretold the birth of the Messiah in Bethlehem, Herod had all the possible infant boys in Bethlehem killed. Warned by God in a dream, the Magi did not return to Herod, as he had requested, but returned home via a different route.

This is where today’s lection begins. No sooner have the Magi boarded their camels, then the angel warns Joseph to take Mary and the child and get away as quickly as possible. Imagine Joseph hastily packing, Mary climbing back up on the donkey, the three of them fleeing for their lives. Make no mistake: this was no trip back home to the grandparents, to make arrangements for the baby’s baptism in the home parish. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus became refugees heading to who knew what and where in Egypt. No maps, no credit cards, no embassy connections, no cell phone. Just the Prince of Peace and his parents running for their lives from a two-bit dictator! That’s the world that Jesus was born into!

That world wasn’t so different from our world, was it? We too live in an unstable and violent world, where the small and weak regularly experience tyranny and oppression. On January 12th it will have been a year since the earthquake in Haiti, an earthquake made all the worse by the environmental devastation visited on that poor country by its own two-bit dictators, Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier. Who can forget the genocide in Rwanda and Burundi in which the leaders of the majority Hutus murdered thousands and thousands of minority Tutsis? Communal slaughter in Darfur mercifully ceased in February 2010 but may well erupt again after this month’s elections. In Iraq, Christians have been especially targeted by extremist groups. In October, a siege at a Catholic church left 60 people dead, and just a couple of days ago two people were killed and 20 were wounded by bombs placed near the homes of Christian families. In this country, we perhaps have been spared political tyranny. However, we have a higher rate of both capital punishment and criminal homicide than any other western democracy. To make matters worse, many people have lost their jobs, their homes, and their retirement savings in the recession of the last two years.

The coming of Jesus into the world, the coming of Christ into our own lives, is the greatest gift anyone could receive. But maybe that gift should come with a warning label. That gift does not allow us to see the world through rose-colored glasses, or to imagine that the adorable child and the angelic voices are all there is to our faith. Rather, the gift of Christ strips away from us a kind of “unrealistic innocence.” Herods exist. Inside us and outside us. Herods do violent, nasty, and evil things. The world, Jesus’ world, our world, is not a nice, cozy, comfortable, peaceful place. Yet.

Whoa again! Where’s the good news? What happened to “God rest ye merry, Gentlemen?” Has the joy gone out of our lives with the Christmas tree ready for pickup on the curb? Rest assured, there is good news here, and this is it. The Word was born in a dark, violent world. God came and continues to come to the darkest places. When evil seems at its strongest, when the Herods of the world do their worst and stand ready to gloat in triumph, God leads us, God guides us, and God protects us. God enables us to find safe passage out of the darkness that threatens to overwhelm us. With Herod’s minions just hours away, God awakened Joseph and led the Holy Family out of danger. True, they were refugees in Egypt, but they were safe. When Herod the Great had at last died, God led the family back to Israel. Ah, but the more cruel of Herod’s sons was reigning in Judea, Joseph’s ancestral home, so God led Joseph to settle in Nazareth, in relative obscurity, but in safety. Herod had not triumphed, and the child grew, became an adult, and began his ministry. At the end of his life, the adult Jesus faced down those same forces of darkness, and again triumphed over them. That ultimately is the greatest good news.

God came to us and God comes to us in our darkest places. Haitians are suffering still, and the cholera epidemic has only made their plight worse. Even so, God is at work in Haiti, through our church, through other churches, and through many non-denominational agencies addressing the devastation of the earthquake and Haitian poverty more generally. Rwanda and Burundi are now at peace. God willing, the vote this month on the creation of an independent South Sudan will stop the bloodshed there. At the Sacred Church of Jesus, a Chaldean Catholic church in Iraq, the Rev. Meyassr al-Qaspotros, urged his followers not to flee Iraq, despite the dangers, but to trust God’s leading and work for peace among Iraq’s peoples. In response to the poverty in this county, God has brought the mobile food pantry here, God has led us to develop our diaper ministry, and God has encouraged us to become an Ohio Benefit Bank site. And God also comes to us in the darkness of our personal lives. When despair, doubt, and grief threaten to overwhelm us, when we feel as if God has abandoned us, God comes to us. If we are light enough sleepers, if we believe in dreams, or prayer, or the counsel of others, God can lead us and guide us into a safer place. Not a place where the Herods in our lives have disappeared. No, it’s not that easy, but into a place in which we are at least protected from them.

Make no mistake. The good news of this second Sunday after Christmas is not only that of our lovely Nativity scenes. The good news is not only that the Prince of Peace was born, or that the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood. The good news of this second Sunday is that God also comes to us in the darkest places of our lives and leads us out of the darkness. The world can be a nasty, violent place where nasty deeds are done by nasty people. But God is with us through all that the world can throw at us. With God’s leading and guidance, we will triumph over the worst that can happen. Evil and darkness will not have the last word. They did not triumph over the baby Jesus, they did not triumph over the Jesus who was executed on the Cross, and they will not triumph over us. Ever. That is good news for Christmas, for Easter, and for every day of the year. Thanks be to God.