Seeing God In The Mirror

 

February 27, 2022 – The Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year C

Exodus 34:29-35; 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2; Luke 9:28-36

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of this service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 20:40.

When you look in the mirror, what do you see? A sinner? A saint? Something good? Something not so good? Are you too old? Too fat? Worn out? Worn down? Do you even look anymore? Have two years of seeing your face on Zoom—and not having to show the world the rest of you—made you want to hide even from yourself?

Years ago, Al Franken, the now-cancelled comedian and former U.S. Senator, played Stuart Smalley on Saturday Night Live. Dressed in a light-blue cardigan and a yellow button-down shirt, Smalley, “a caring nurturer, a member of several 12-step programs, but not a licensed therapist,” began each episode of “Daily Affirmation,” his mock-self-help-show, by looking into a mirror and reminding himself, “I’m going to do a terrific show today, and I’m going to help people because I’m good enough; I’m smart enough; and doggonit, people like me.” By the end of each skit, however, Smalley had fallen apart, overwhelmed by his emotional struggles, hardly reminiscent of the mantra he had spoken only minutes ago. Accordingly, he concluded each broadcast the way he started, looking into the mirror and trying to convince himself of his own worth, though the second time around there was nothing convincing about it.

In a way, that is what Paul is trying to accomplish in his second letter to the Corinthians: “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.” Paul wants the Christians in Corinth to remember that, when they look into a mirror, what they should see are imperfect and broken people who are being made whole—being made perfect—one step at a time by the God who has united them to God’s own glory in Jesus Christ. But how are we supposed to look into the mirror and see that?

Paul used a story that was familiar to his readers in order to help them understand what it means to undergo that sort of transformation: the story of Moses coming down from Mount Sinai with his face shining like the sun. This is a strange story from Exodus that had piqued the curiosity of rabbis and biblical scholars for centuries. As amazing as it was, Moses’ shining face is only mentioned in one chapter of the Bible—Exodus 34—but that was enough to inspire volumes of spiritual interpretation.

The Exodus story tells us that, after spending forty days and forty nights in the presence of God, Moses’ face radiated with God’s glory. His shining face was enough to scare the people of Israel, who were afraid to draw near. Nevertheless, Moses beckoned to them, and, when they came close, he spoke to them all that the LORD had said, but, when he was finished, whenever Moses was not talking with God or telling the people what God had said, he veiled his face in order to avoid unnerving the people.

By the time Paul wrote this letter, however, different traditions associated with Moses’ shining face and the veil he used to cover it had arisen. Capturing one of them, Paul noted that Moses “put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside.” In other words, the glory that was reflected in Moses’ face was fading, and he veiled it in part because the people couldn’t stand to see it disappear. Despite being a considerable departure from the original biblical text, Paul was not making that part up. Rabbinical scholars had used other biblical passages like one later on in Exodus when even Moses was not allowed to enter God’s presence and another in Numbers when Moses was praised for being the meekest human on the earth and yet another when Moses was refused entry into the land of Canaan because of his disobedience to discern that, indeed, that divine glory, which had once beamed from the prophet’s face, must have faded.

Paul borrowed that tradition, which must have been familiar to his readers, and expanded it, reprojecting it through a Christian lens and adding a distinctly gospel-focused theological layer to it. When the old covenant—the Law of Moses—is read, Paul argued, that veil still covers the hearts and minds of those whose relationship with God is only defined by that covenant. Only in Christ, he wrote, is that veil set aside. This isn’t an anti-Judaic or anti-Semitic argument, as far too many Christians have made it out to be. This is merely Paul’s way of celebrating what is different and distinct about the Christian faith.

As a faithful Jew, Paul had excelled in his religious tradition, and his letters make it clear that he valued deeply that part of his life. When he encountered Jesus, however, he discovered a new way of belonging to God—one that allowed non-Jews to become adopted children of God without having to convert to those distinctly Jewish practices of the old covenant. Instead, as followers of Jesus, who in the waters of Baptism have received the Holy Spirit, we belong to God not through the customs we keep but through the one who lives inside of us—even God himself. And because God lives within us, God’s glory shines not as a reflection on our face from having experienced a momentary encounter with the divine but as the divine nature beaming forth from within our very being. Because that radiance comes from God living within us, we need no veil to cover the glory that otherwise would inevitably fade away. In Christ, therefore, who lives within us, that veil is set aside.

When we look at our own reflection in a mirror, Paul wants us to see a broken and imperfect person who is already being transformed into the image of Christ’s radiance one degree of glory at a time. That is not our doing, but God’s doing. Because of Jesus Christ, God comes to dwell within people who are far from perfect but in whom God’s perfection is taking shape. People like you and me. This is God’s gift to us, the work of the Spirit within us, and that work happening inside of us changes not only who we see in the mirror but how we see the world around us.

“Since, then, we have such a hope,” Paul wrote, “we act with great boldness.” God living within us and transforming us into God’s likeness gives us the courage and power to do great things in God’s name. Some scholars think that Paul added another layer of wordplay onto this passage. In Aramaic, which might have been on Paul’s mind as he was composing this letter in Greek, the word for “boldness” literally means “to uncover the face,” implying that one who acts boldly is one who looks you square in the eye and does not try to hide anything.[1] If, in Christ, the veil has been removed, we can afford to risk everything for the sake of the one who lives inside of us because we know that glory will never fade away. If the light of God’s glory shines from within us, always growing brighter, we need look no further away than a mirror to see one whom God has equipped to do great things.

What would you do if you knew that God had already given you everything you need to succeed? What risk would you take—what endeavor would you take on—if you looked in the mirror and recognized not only the person looking back at you but the brightness of God’s glory shining through the person standing there? What would be possible if it were not you alone who took up that cross but Christ living within you who bore it up on your behalf? You are already being changed into his likeness. Let that light shine forth for all the world to see.

1. Van Unnik qtd in Brevard S. Childs, The Book of Exodus: A Critical, Theological Commentary; Westminster Press, Philadelphia: 1974, 622.

The Healing The World Cannot Give

 

February 13, 2022 – Epiphany 6C

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

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 18:20.

How much would you spend on tickets to see your favorite musical artist in concert? How long would you wait to get an autograph from your childhood hero? How far would you drive to get a rug that would perfectly complete the décor in your living room? How much would you give up to see a specialist who might be able to cure your incurable disease?

People came a long way to hear Jesus, to be healed of their diseases, and to be set free from the unclean spirits that troubled them. People came from as far away as the coast of Tyre and Sidon, way up north in Gentile country, just hoping that they might touch Jesus and receive his healing power. They came to Jesus because they had heard that he could give them the healing that they could not find anywhere else.

A lot has happened in the gospel since last week’s story about Simon Peter putting out into deep water and letting down his nets for a catch. Since then, Jesus has made quite a name for himself but not in the way that most people expected the Son of God to act. After the episode with Peter, he healed a leper by touching him and making him clean. Then, when some people brought a paralytic to him, Jesus not only restored his ability to walk but also announced that the man’s sins had been forgiven. He called Levi, the tax collector, to be one of his disciples and joined in a banquet with other notorious sinners. He encouraged his followers to eat and drink and celebrate God’s goodness instead seeking a closer relationship with God through traditional means like prayer and fasting. One sabbath, he allowed his hungry disciples to pluck heads of grain and eat them, and, on another sabbath, he healed a man whose hand was withered. 

Jesus wasn’t like other rabbis or religious leaders. He did all of the things that faithful, religious people knew not to do. And so the people came. They came from all over because they knew that Jesus could give them the kind of healing that they couldn’t get from anyone else. These were people whose illnesses couldn’t be addressed by an ordinary physician and whose brokenness could not be bound up by a regular religious figure. These people were afflicted in ways that left them outside the bounds of polite, religious society. They had no where else to go, and so they came to Jesus, who offered them the kind of healing that the world could not offer.

“Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.”

God’s people had always heard that one day God would come and lift up the downtrodden and rescue the oppressed, but these people didn’t come to Jesus because they wanted someone to pat them on the back and tell them that one day everything would be ok. They didn’t come to hear him preach that someday God would hear their cries and make all things new. They didn’t need someone to assure them that things wouldn’t always be this bad—that, in God’s great and perfect time, at some point the fortunes of the world would be reversed. They needed healing now. They needed restoration now. They needed consolation now. And Jesus gave it to them.

This series of blessings and woes is not a prediction for the future. It is a pronouncement that the future reign of God has come to the earth and is unfolding even now in the person of Jesus Christ. It is Jesus’ declaration that the long-promised redemption of the world is already here among us—that now is the time for healing, comfort, and restoration—that those who cannot find hope in the powers of this world can now rejoice because in Jesus Christ their salvation has come.

But woe to those who cannot see it. Woe to those whose healing and comfort are found in the riches of this world. Woe to those who need not look to God for their salvation because whatever refuge they cling to in this life will soon fade away. Jesus’ proclamations are not warnings of what will come to pass. They are assurances that, even in this life, even now, the only hope worth holding onto is the hope we find in God.

Jesus does not touch lepers and eat with tax collectors and flaunt sabbath regulations because he wants to enrage the religious authorities of his day. He does so because, in a society in which the dominant religion has become enmeshed with the powers of this world, there is a great multitude of outcasts and rejects who cannot find God’s healing touch. And healing them in God’s name is enough to enrage those in power. He does all of those radical things not because they are controversial. They are controversial because he, a holy man, the incarnate Son of God, would dare to do them and dare to do them now. 

Even today, people still come to Jesus in search of the healing that this world cannot give them. In the ancient world, it was the poor, the hungry, the mournful, and the persecuted who needed God’s salvation the most. And that hasn’t changed. The world would convince us that God’s goodness and blessing are reserved for those who have it all figured out—economically, materially, emotionally, and relationally. In our culture, the dominant religion identifies success with salvation. But we are broken in ways that the world cannot fix. Just below the surface—and sometimes in ways that cannot be hidden—we are falling apart. We need the healing that no earthly remedy can give.

We need Jesus. We need a God who loves us not because we are good enough, holy enough, or successful enough but simply because God loves incomplete, broken, worn out people like us. We need a savior who touches us and embraces when no one else will—one who will sit down and eat with us when, if the truth were ever known, no one else would dare to have us at their table. We need someone who loves not the person we wish we were but the one we really are. That person is Jesus.

When The Kingdom Comes For You

 

February 6, 2022 – Epiphany 5C

Isaiah 6:1-13; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio for the sermon can be heard here. Video for the service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 20:30.

Have you ever been fishing with someone who doesn’t belong in a boat? Someone who won’t touch the bait or recoils in horror when they actually catch a fish? Someone who doesn’t realize that sudden lateral movements aren’t a good idea when someone else is already leaning over the side? Someone who never stops talking and still can’t figure out why they haven’t caught anything?

I love fishing, but chatty preachers like me rarely get an invitation. Jesus liked quiet time a lot more than I do, but, in today’s reading from Luke, he didn’t get into Simon’s boat because he wanted to go fishing. He wanted to get enough space from the crowd that was pressing in to hear his message and use the natural amphitheater that the harbor would provide. We don’t hear much about his sermon that day, but it was probably similar to the message he had been preaching throughout that region—something like, “The kingdom of God is imminent, and it becomes manifest not among the holy and powerful but in the lives of outcasts and sinners.”

After he was done preaching, Jesus told Simon to take the boat out into deep water and put down his nets for a catch. That was a little bit like me delivering a sermon in a mechanic’s garage and then telling the owner how to rebuild a transmission. Jesus wasn’t a fisherman. He didn’t grow up on the water. Before he became an itinerant preacher, he was a carpenter, like his father. Simon and his companions had worked all night, and they had caught nothing. Plus, their nets, scholars tell us, were probably trammel nets, which were made of linen and only used at night, when the fish couldn’t see them.  Jesus telling Simon to put down those nets in the middle of the day, when the professionals couldn’t find any the night before, didn’t make any sense. But, then again, neither did the resulting catch.

They shouldn’t have caught anything, but, when they did what Jesus asked, their nets became so full that they had to call their partners over to help out, and still both boats were in danger of being swamped. When he saw what happened, Simon threw himself down at Jesus’ knees and said, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Simon’s reaction was almost as astounding as the catch of fish. 

This is the first time that Luke uses the word sinner in his telling of the gospel, yet Simon Peter invokes that label for himself in a way that doesn’t fit with all the other times that Luke uses it. Every other time, Luke uses sinner as a singularly defining label for someone obviously beyond the bounds of polite, religious society. Jesus eats with “tax collectors and sinners.” A notorious sinner comes and anoints Jesus’ feet and wipes them with her hair. Jesus predicts that he will be handed over to sinners and be crucified before being raised on the third day. Usually, the gospel presents sinners not as ordinary but imperfect people like you and me but as the kind of ungodly human beings who deserve to be on a wanted poster or, worse, the target of our hypocritical gossip.

Peter wasn’t a sinner in that sense. He wasn’t a tax collector or a prostitute. He wasn’t poor or diseased or disabled, which in that time would have signified someone whom God had rejected. Peter wasn’t a rich man—not rich enough to stay ashore while hired hands went out in the boat—but he was successful enough that everyone would have assumed that he was just fine in God’s eyes. And yet, when he saw that overwhelming catch of fish, Simon Peter was cut to his core, and he threw himself down in a gesture of complete unworthiness and begged Jesus to depart from him.

There was something about what Jesus did in that boat, by showing the professional fishermen a measure of fruitfulness and success that they could not otherwise fathom, that called Simon up short in the most profound way. I don’t want to suggest that, in order to understand Peter’s reaction, we need to read back upon this gospel lesson the kind of Pauline understanding of sinfulness that we get in Romans 3, where Paul writes that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” But I do believe that, when the fullness of God’s kingdom came that close to Peter and touched upon his vocational life in a way that he found deeply personal, he recognized in one huge, overwhelming moment that his life was woefully inadequate for what God was doing in and through Jesus Christ.

When the power of God’s reign comes that close to us, we don’t need to be a notorious sinner in order to feel like we don’t belong, like we don’t measure up. We can listen to sermons and read the lessons and sing the hymns each week and not worry about our place in the kingdom of God, but, when God’s holy power hits us square between the eyes and comes up next to us in our own particular circumstance, our reaction is the same as Peter’s: “Not me, Lord. You don’t mean me. You can’t mean me. I’m not good enough. You must mean someone else. Someone in that pew over there.”

This wasn’t the first time that Simon had met Jesus. Simon had heard Jesus preach in the synagogue at Capernaum. Afterward, he had invited the rabbi to come back to his house for a meal. There, Jesus had healed his mother-in-law and, after sunset, had stood at the door, casting out demons and healing a multitude of sick people. At least a twice, Simon had already heard Jesus’ message that the kingdom of God had come near and that God’s vindication would be found in the lifting up of the downtrodden, the release of the prisoner, and the consolation of the poor. He had sat in the boat that day and listened to Jesus tell the crowd standing on the shore about the transforming power of God’s love. But it wasn’t until he put out into deep water and let down his nets for a catch that Simon Peter discovered that the kingdom of God had come to find him. 

We don’t belong in that fishing boat with Jesus either. We don’t deserve to inherit the magnificence of God’s reign. We can’t imagine our place in something that perfect and wonderful. We aren’t good enough, talented enough, or holy enough to be the ones God welcomes into God’s kingdom. And yet that kingdom comes to find us. And it asks us to devote our lives and labor to the building up of God’s reign in the world. We are the ones to whom Jesus says, “Do not be afraid; from now on you will be catching people.” 

We know that God’s love belongs to all people. We’ve heard Jesus say it before. But have we heard him say it to us? It’s easier to believe that God loves notorious sinners and outcasts than it is to believe that God loves us like that. That’s because God’s love is easier to understand in the abstract—when it’s given as a platitude instead of a prescription. But Jesus came to bring God’s love to sinners like you and me—real and imperfect people who need to be loved just like that. There is no one on this earth who belongs in that kingdom any more than you do. So put out into deep water and let down your nets for a catch. Allow the magnitude of God’s reign to come right up next to you in your own particular circumstances. And be astounded that the power of God’s love has come to find you—even you.

A Love Worth Dying For

January 23, 2019 – The Conversion of St. Paul, Apostle (tr.)

Acts 26:9-21; Galatians 1:11-24; Matthew 10:16-22

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the service can be seen here with the gospel and sermon beginning around 18:10.

Before sending the twelve out to do God’s work in the world, Jesus told them what success in ministry would look like: “They will hand you over to councils and flog you in their synagogues; you will be dragged before governors and kings…brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.”

Jesus’ own vision for the disciples is not one of achievement, victory, and celebration but one of suffering, betrayal, and death. The standard of success that he provides for his followers is not measured in sermons preached or miracles worked or souls saved but in whether they endure to the end—whether they stick it out. What it means for Jesus’ disciples to be faithful as vessels through which God brings God’s reign to the earth is to carry on in the face of great hardship and to persevere to the end. There is no other way for us to measure our success as followers of Jesus.

But is it worth it? In an era in which people who claim an allegiance to Jesus are, for the most part, not persecuted but promoted, should any of us have to suffer or, even worse, die for the sake of the gospel? We believe that God loves everyone regardless of what religion they practice, so why would any of us need to risk our lives in order that someone else might come to know our particular brand of faith? How good must this good news be in order for us to risk everything to share it with others?

Along the wood-paneled walls of the chapel at Ridley Hall, the theological college in Cambridge where I studied, are the names and dates of clergymen and bishops who, as alumni of the college, went overseas as missionaries and evangelists. They went to places like southern Africa and east Asia and South America, and, when they went, they never expected to come back. Those were terminal assignments. They accepted the call to leave their homes in England and go to places where the hope of the gospel had not yet been preached in order that they might spread the good news of Jesus to the ends of the earth. They believed that sharing the gospel was worth all the hardship that came with those assignments, even knowing that those assignments would cost them their lives.

Thankfully, we’ve come a long way since the gospel was propagated primarily through colonial and imperial means, but, because, since then, and in part due to those efforts, Christianity has become enmeshed with the domination systems of contemporary society, we have also lost the good and holy sense of why the gospel is worth dying for. Nowadays, a preacher’s call to embrace suffering and death for the sake of Jesus Christ is hardly ever pure. At best, such exhortations are hyperbolic claims designed to whip up religious frenzy among the faithful. Worse still are those who reject the advice of public health officials and tell their congregations that real believers are protected by the blood of Jesus and should gladly die before wearing a mask or getting a vaccine. Most heinous of all are those who, in the name of religion, urge their followers to commit suicidal acts of terrorist violence deigned to hurt or kill others in advance of their cause. There is nothing holy or righteous about such perversions of our faith or any other religion.

Yet we identify Jesus’ death as not only holy but as the central, defining moment of our faith. We don’t second guess the goodness of that. And, in the waters of baptism, all of us have claimed to die with Christ in order that we might be raised to the new life of grace. Is all of that just empty theological language, or do we really mean it? In a world in which the call to sacrifice one’s life is usually misappropriated, how do we make sense of Jesus’ teaching that those who would follow him must lay down their lives and take up their cross? How do we respond to his definition of faithful discipleship as that of enduring to the end through suffering, betrayal, and death?

The Apostle Paul, our church’s patron saint, has something to teach us about the holiness of self-sacrificing love. Paul knew what it meant to give up everything for the sake of Christ. While facing execution, Paul wrote in his letter to the Philippians that his own suffering had actually served to advance the gospel and that the chains he wore during his imprisonment he wore for the sake of Christ (1:12-17). Having lost his freedom and likely soon to lose his life, Paul recognized that his own example of patient and faithful endurance was the best tool he had to teach others about the way of Jesus. But what sort of way is that?

Back when Christ met Paul on the Damascus Road, he literally stopped him in his tracks. The future apostle to the Gentiles had zealously dedicated his life to the preservation of Judaism, but Christ showed Paul that God’s love knows no ethnic bounds. Paul was on his way to arrest followers of Jesus when Christ blinded him with a heavenly vision, and, in that blindness, showed him a new way of understanding God’s relationship with the world. Because of the cross of Christ, there was no longer Jew or Greek, male or female, slave or free. Instead, God’s love belonged to all people without distinction. And that was something so wonderful and so radical that Paul was willing to give up the life he knew in order to share that love with the world. 

Paul did not endure beatings, imprisonment, and death to advance a narrow path to salvation but to show the world the breadth of God’s universal love. That is the gospel—the good news of God’s limitless, unconditional, non-partisan, non-sectarian love for the whole world. And, for that kind of love, Paul was willing give up everything he had, even his life. 

The call to give up our lives—whether that means literal death or the radical reorientation of all that we are—can only be holy if it is a call to extend grace and love to all people without discrimination. There can be no qualification or equivocation—no “they’re in, but they’re not”—or else that sacrifice becomes a self-serving gesture. The only belief worth dying for is the belief that no one gets left out. Only then can that death be truly selfless. And that is what God accomplishes with Jesus’ outstretch arms on the hard wood of the cross. The cross is where all people come within the reach of God’s saving embrace. And that kind of love is absolutely worth dying for.

But Paul also knew that we cannot know that love until we die to get it. As long as we approach God still clinging to our own particular identity, there will always be a part of us that cannot fully believe that God’s love is a complete and unconditional gift. Because we are human, until we die with Christ, there will always be a piece of us that thinks that God loves us because of who we are—because we’re successful, because we’re kind, because we’re holy, because we love our neighbors as ourselves, because we go to church, because we read the Bible, because we say our prayers, because we’re Episcopalians, because we’re Christians. And, if there’s even the tiniest part of us that believes that God will only love us because of who we are and not absolutely and unequivocally because of who God is, then we will never be able to trust in that love. There will always be a doubt that, when it really matters, who we are isn’t good enough. 

And it's not. We’re not. None of us is good enough for God’s love. But God’s love isn’t dependent on us—on who we are or what we do or what we believe. That's what Paul discovered on the Damascus Road. It all depends on God—the one who loves us completely and perfectly from the very beginning. In order to finally let go of our belief that God’s love belongs only to those who have earned it—in order to truly believe in God’s grace and unconditional love—we must die. And that is why our endurance to the end—even to our own death—is the only real measure of faithfulness.

We follow Jesus not by doing more but by doing less—even nothing—so that he might do more through us. We become vessels for God’s reign by emptying ourselves so that God might use us to pour out God’s love onto others. God’s love belongs to all people, and, once we get out of our own way, that love can take hold in our lives. But that kind of letting go means trusting that we aren’t in control of whether we are loved, and that can be a pretty scary thing. Sometimes it comes only with a great deal of struggle. But by enduring to the end—to the point where the only thing left is God’s love for us—we will be saved.

The Dove We Don't See

 

January 9, 2022 – Epiphany 1C: The Baptism of Our Lord

Isaiah 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

© 2022 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video of the entire service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 18:00.

One thousand seven hundred eighty-six years ago tomorrow, on January 10, 236AD, the heavens opened and a different dove came down and sat on the head of a man named Fabian. You may know the legend of Pope Fabian’s election as the Bishop of Rome. The fourth-century church historian Eusebius of Caesarea tells us that Fabian was among many “eminent and illustrious” church leaders who travelled to Rome to choose the next successor of Peter. After thirteen days of conversation, prayer, and debate, the synod was deadlocked. No one knew who the next pope would be. And then a dove flew down from on high.

Eusebius wrote that, before that incident, Fabian was a little-known preacher from the countryside, who was not in anyone’s mind to be the next pope, but it seems God had other plans. A dove flew down and sat on Fabian’s head, and those who had gathered immediately recognized, as Eusebius wrote, that this was “a scene like that of the holy Spirit once descending upon our Saviour in the form of a dove.” Without further discussion, “the whole body exclaimed, with all eagerness and with one voice, as if moved by the one spirit of God, that he was worthy; and without delay they took and placed him upon the episcopal throne.” 

Whether it is the legend that produces results or the results that beget a legend, we should not be surprised to learn that Fabian turned out to be an excellent leader of the church. He was chosen at a time when Christians faced significant persecution, yet under his tenure things began to improve remarkably. He was a gifted administrator and skilled diplomat, who helped give the early, decentralized church an institutional structure that would help it withstand the persecutions that arose later on. In every way, Fabian fulfilled the identity that God revealed in him when that dove descended and landed on his head. I suppose that sometimes we need a dove to fly down in order to see what God is trying to tell us.

Today we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus, but Luke’s retelling of that episode lets us know that the water part of what happened that day was only a small piece of the story. Matthew and Mark, the other synoptic gospel writers, both recall the moment when Jesus was plunged beneath the water by John the Baptist, but Luke seems to skip over it, preferring instead to focus on what happened next: “Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased’” By using three parallel, action-packed infinitive phrases—the heaven was opened, the Spirit descended, and a voice came—Luke helps us focus on what God made clear to the world that day—that Jesus was God’s Son, the Beloved, and that his life was God’s own delight—a manifestation of the divine will in the world.

This wasn’t an ordinary baptism. By that point, John had baptized hundreds—maybe even thousands of people—and there’s no record of any doves landing on anyone else’s head. The people had come to him from all over, seeking spiritual renewal and rejuvenation, and he had given it to them. He had invited the crowds to repent of their sins and undergo the kind of spiritual washing that represented a new start, the beginning of a new chapter in their lives. John’s message was popular, but he wasn’t able to give those people new life. He baptized them with water, but the one who was to come after him would baptize them with the Holy Spirit and fire. That successor would be the one to bring the fulness of God’s reign to the earth and give God’s people the Spirit-filled rebirth that was necessary to enter that reign. 

On the day when Jesus was baptized by John, when the heaven opened and the Spirit descended and the voice came, God made sure that we recognized that Jesus was the one whom God had chosen to bring God’s reign to the earth—that John’s baptism was giving way to Jesus’—that the time for spiritual preparation had passed and the time for spiritual fulfillment had come. When we celebrate the sacrament of Baptism, we do so as participants in that time of fulfillment. And because, in the waters of Baptism, God unites us with Christ, all those things that were true of Jesus on that day are now true for us as well.

Just as God poured out the Holy Spirit onto Jesus, so too is that same Spirit poured out onto those who are baptized. Just as the fire of divine love and power burned within God’s Son, so too it burns within those who are united to Christ through the waters of Baptism. We may not see any birds fly through the door today, but, because these baptisms forge an unbreakable bond between Christ and the baptized, we recognize the same thing taking place in them right before our eyes.

We don’t need a dove to come and land on anyone’s head in order to see that God is choosing these children of God and naming them as God’s beloveds. When we look into that font and see that water, we also see within it the death and burial of Jesus and his resurrection from the grave. And, because of our union with Christ, we also see in this water our own death and burial and our own resurrection from the grave. This, therefore, is the place where we are reborn in order that we might enter God’s reign. When we hear the minister say, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” we also hear God’s voice proclaiming to us, “You are my child, my Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” This is where we become full children of God.

Today, the heaven opens. Today, the Spirit descends. Today, God’s voice proclaims, “You are my child; you are my beloved.” Because those things were revealed of Jesus at his baptism, today they are revealed of us—of all who are united with him. We don’t need to see a dove fly down in order to see in each other what God sees. Because we have recognized it in Christ, we recognize it within the Christ that dwells inside us all.

All That Way

 

The Feast of the Epiphany

Matthew 2:1-12

The magi, wise men from the East, came to Jerusalem and ask, "Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage." That's a long way to travel just to meet a baby, no matter how special that baby is.

We often compress the biblical power of the Feast of the Epiphany--somewhat conveniently and unintentionally--by putting the three wise men at the nativity scene alongside the shepherds. But Epiphany comes at the end of Christmas, not at the beginning. In the church and probably in some of your homes, we start the twelve days of Christmas with the wise men on the other side of the room--in a windowsill toward the back--and they make their way, closer and closer, until they arrive on January 6.

Then again, maybe the wise men don't belong in the nativity at all. Luke is the only gospel writer to mention any shepherds coming to adore Jesus, and Matthew is the only one to mention the magi. It's as if each wanted to tell a different story of Jesus' birth being revealed to the world. Luke depicts angels breaking through into night sky to tell the humble shepherd, while Matthew has an astrology chart and a rising star declaring the king's birth to some far-away Zoroastrians. Maybe they should make two different kinds of nativity scenes--one for Luke's account and one for Matthew's. Or maybe it's up to us to see how both sides of the same event give us an even deeper insight into God's great plan of salvation.

Imagine coming all that way, from the East, to Palestine--to Jerusalem and then to Bethlehem--to greet an infant whom the starts foretold would be the ruler of someone else's nation. Though there's hardly any evidence to support it, the tradition holds that the three wise men came from Arabia, Babylon, and India--three different parts of the Persian Empire. It's even more astounding to imagine how three separate astrologer-priests would make their way to this shepherd-village to see the child king. And yet, whether they travelled together or separately, for God to reach down and show the plan of salvation to these sages from afar, to draw them into a story where they did not belong, helps us know how to make sense of Jesus' birth.

God's great cosmic plan of salvation comes to bear not only in a Jewish village under Roman occupation in the days of King Herod. It shows up in the stars of heaven in a way that speaks beyond country or ethnicity or ancestry or religion. It reaches out across the continents and grabs the attention of those who have no other connection to the people of Israel, the children of Abraham. It does not ask that the magi undergo Jewish conversion before they can properly interpret the star charts, nor does it require their formation as would-be disciples in order to receive and carry with them the news of the savior's birth. Two thousand years later, God wants us to know that in the birth of Jesus God has done more than give a people their long-awaited king. In Christ, God has reached out to bring into the story of salvation those who didn't even realize that they belong. So powerful is this intention of inclusion that even the stars declare it.

How far away are you? How far away have you drifted over the last twenty-one months? How far away have you been your whole life? How far away from the people who seem always to have known that they belong at the table are you? How far away from the One who made you do you feel? 

The wise men crowd into the nativity scene. They come with their exotic gifts and strange costumes and unfamiliar skin tones and unintelligible speech. They squeeze themselves into the story of Jesus' birth in order to be sure that we know that that's where we belong, too. No matter how strange you feel, no matter how far away you are, in the birth of Jesus Christ, you become an integral part of God's salvation story. They came all that way so that you might come, too.

The Christmas We Really Need

 

December 24, 2021 – Christmas I

Isaiah 9:2-7; Titus 2:11-14; Luke 2:1-15-20

© 2021 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video of the whole service can be seen here with the sermon beginning around 54:40.

How many of your packages didn’t arrive in time? In our house, we “watched” one present go from Texas to Missouri to Iowa to Tennessee before finally getting the notification that it wasn’t going to make it before Christmas. We got our hopes up when it left the facility just a few hours away from us but then were confused and ultimately disappointed as it inexplicably moved farther and farther away. You can get a degree in supply-chain management, but that wouldn’t help you get your presents on time.

For reasons other than presents, I have been looking forward to this Christmas for twenty-one months. Last year, we couldn’t gather together inside. The best we could do was encourage folks to watch the service on the livestream and then drive down to the church, line up on East Avenue, and come into this sacred space one household at a time to receive Communion before getting in their cars to go back home. It was a wonderful night, and I was so thankful to see people I hadn’t seen in months, but it wasn’t the same. So much was missing. As I drove home after the midnight mass, I just knew that this year’s celebration would be different.

Thankfully, it is. We are here together. We are singing together. We are celebrating together. But not all of us. The timing of the Omicron variant could not have been worse. Its arrival has forced some of us to stay home, stay away from church, even stay away from family and friends. Some of my colleagues in hard-hit communities have had to cancel in-person worship. We can’t help but wonder whether that will be the case for us before too long. Many of you have cancelled Christmas dinners and trips to see loved ones. A year ago, I imagined something different for us. This Christmas was supposed to be better, and it is, but it still isn’t perfect. 

In those days, Luke tells us, a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. The emperor could do that whenever he wanted—could order people all over the world from one place to another in order to be counted—and there wasn’t anything Mary and Joseph could do about it. It didn’t matter that she was nine months pregnant. It didn’t matter that they would have to travel for days down seventy miles of dangerous roads to get back to Joseph’s ancestral village. It didn’t matter whether anyone living there would have room for the young, expectant couple when they arrived. Imagine what the holy couple felt when they learned of the decree and counted the weeks, knowing how far they would be from home about the time she was likely to give birth. Nine months pregnant is a terrible time for a woman to be travelling. In many ways, it was a terrible time for the Son of God to be born.

And so it was, Luke tells us, that, while they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. Literally, “the days were fulfilled.” They “were accomplished.” What a statement about timing! Mary gave birth to her firstborn son and swaddled him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger—a feeding trough—because there was no room for them in the inn. Hardly any preparations could be made. Mary and Joseph didn’t even have a room for themselves. Likely bedding down with some distant relatives, there were no usual guest accommodations for them—a concept translated for us somewhat carelessly as “room in the inn”—so they slept on the floor, down with the chickens, goats, and sheep, while the family they hardly knew slept up in a loft. 

What an inadequate way to welcome the birth of a savior—not in the palace or in the temple, not even back home where loved ones might gather to celebrate and help out, but in a one-horse town, barely a speck on the map, where hardly anyone even noticed. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. It was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be better. What kind of divine cosmic timing is that?

But God’s sense of timing has the power to disrupt our lives in wonderful ways that surprise us when we need it most. Because of the intrusion of the emperor’s decree, Mary’s child was born not in Nazareth, but in the city of David. And yet, usually when we hear about “the city of David,” we think not of Bethlehem, where the shepherd boy grew up, but of Jerusalem, where the king’s palace was located. Yet God interrupted human affairs in a way that made sure that the world received its King of Kings who is as much a faithful shepherd as a mighty ruler. 

Think also about the ones to whom the good news of this birth was first shared. Instead of announcing the savior’s arrival to close family and friends, for whom this would be a wonderful local affair, God made sure that the first to hear of it were some anonymous shepherds, strangers in the fields, whose adoration of the Christ child was as rustic and uncouth as their lifestyle. God knew this good news needed more than a small-town celebration, yet, instead of ushering in this messianic age by declaring Jesus’ birth to powers and principalities, God shared this glorious moment with the lowly and meek, who become the first to carry the message of the angels to others. Knowing what we now know about Jesus, the friend of sinners and outcasts, could the good news of Christmas have been shared in any other way?

In many ways, that first Christmas could not have come at a worse moment. It came at a time when earthly powers seemed to be in control of how history unfolded and when that control seemed to run counter to God’s perfect plans. Yet we now recognize the ways in which God made sure that the birth of Jesus could not have been more perfectly timed. This year, our Christmas celebrations have been overshadowed by the terrible timing of supply chain issues and the new Omicron variant. Just when we most needed to hug our family and friends and travel to places where life feels normal again, something largely out of our control has gotten in the way. But isn’t that exactly what the miracle of Christmas means for us? Isn’t that why the birth of our savior came about in the first place?

Christmas comes not when the world is prepared to receive it but when the world needs it most. Jesus is born not when it fits into our plans but when God knows that our sense of timing needs disrupting. And doesn’t our sense of timing need disrupting now? We need God to come and take the messiness and imperfections of our world and redeem them, and that’s exactly what happens at Christmas. In Jesus, God comes and saves those whose lives aren’t perfect, whose plans are falling apart, whose need for love and connection are most profound. In other words, at Christmas, God comes to save each one of us.

On this night, we celebrate a God who refuses to let anything stand in the way of God’s love coming to the earth. Because of Jesus, there is nothing that can prevent salvation coming into your life. No matter how messy things have gotten, no matter how delayed your hopes and dreams may feel, at Christmas God comes to you. And that’s why this Christmas is exactly what we need most.