Clarification of Motives

 

March 29, 2024 – Good Friday

Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Mixed motives are a part of life, and they’re not always bad. Of course I want my son to hit the ball over the fence so that he will feel his own sense of accomplishment, but is it wrong for me also to want that, at least a little bit, to justify all the time his mother and I have spent taking him to practice? When my daughter does well on a test we studied for together, am I allowed to feel at least a small measure of pride that her good grade is effectively her teacher’s way of complimenting me on my excellent parenting skills? And, when that driver who cut me off a few miles back gets pulled over by a state trooper, must I only be thankful that a dangerous driver is now forced to slow down, or can I celebrate the comeuppance that he got because it feels so good?

When it comes to the death of Jesus, it’s hard to hide our true motives in the shadow of the cross, but that doesn’t mean that the reason he was killed is perfectly clear. Ultimately, the evidence points to a state-sponsored execution of an insurrectionist. The cross was a method of execution used by the Roman Empire to deter other would-be rebels or runaway slaves from even thinking about causing trouble. “This is what Rome does to any who dare rise against it,” the cross declared in its public display of shameful brutality. And the sign that Pilate put on the cross—“The king of the Jews”—leaves no doubt that the forces that drove the nails into his hands and feet were the forces that sought to preserve the power of empire.

But, if Jesus were executed as a would-be king of the Jewish people, he didn’t look much like one, did he? On Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into the capital city to admirers’ shouts of “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!,” but he didn’t ride into town on the back of a mighty steed, as a proper king might have, but on the back of a donkey. Have you ever ridden a donkey? They’re reliable and gentle, but they don’t get you anywhere very fast, and you don’t get a lot of compliments as you lumber along. Five hundred years earlier, when the prophet Zecheriah foretold the messianic king’s arrival on such a lowly beast, it was a reminder that the military might of chariots and war-horses hadn’t been able to protect God’s people from disaster. Only when God had delivered them with God’s own might would they dwell in such peace that their king need not wield a sword. There was no way this donkey-mounted Jesus could threaten the power of Rome.

Even when accusations were officially levied against Jesus, it took the religious leaders who brought him to the governor’s headquarters quite a while to get to the subject of political insurrection. “What accusation do you bring against this man?” Pilate asked them. They answered in a way that almost dodged the question: “If this man were not a criminal, we would not have handed him over to you.” At first Pilate, suspicious of their motives, dismissed their claims and told them to take Jesus and judge him by their own law, but, when the leaders insisted that he had done something deserving death, Pilate naturally assumed that he was responsible for some sort of rebellion, but even the Roman governor responsible for maintaining order in the province of Judea had a hard time seeing it.

“Are you the king of the Jews?” Pilate asked his Jewish prisoner. But Jesus effectively denied it—at least in the sense that Pilate had in mind. “My kingdom is not from this world,” Jesus said to him. “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over…But, as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” I’ve always heard those words as an enigmatic proclamation of Jesus’ other-worldly kingship, but, to the ears of a Roman governor, they’re also as much a denial that Jesus and his followers represented any violent threat against the empire.

Trying to placate the authorities, Pilate had the prisoner flogged, but that wasn’t good enough. The soldiers put a crown of thorns upon his head and dressed him up in a royal purple robe, mock-saluting him as a pathetic excuse for a king, but still Pilate was unconvinced. To look upon this powerless prisoner was to see a broken man. There was nothing threatening about him. “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no case against him,” Pilate said. But the people refused to let Pilate off the hook. “Crucify him, crucify him!” they shouted, more interested in Jesus’ death than the Roman governor. “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has claimed to be the Son of God.”

Finally, the truth comes out. We are not interested in crucifying Jesus simply because he threatens our empire. We want to kill him because he threatens our God.

But neither our motives nor those of the gospel writers are quite that straightforward. By the time the gospel accounts were written down, anti-Semitic and pro-Roman influences had shaped the text to blur the lines between the specific religious leaders who came against Jesus and the Jews who were Jesus’ fellow descendants of Abraham. Within a generation of Jesus’ death, before the these sacred texts were preserved in their final form, Christianity had begun to align itself with the Gentile world as a newfound rivalry with Judaism became hostile and violent. There is no doubt that, in the retelling of the story, Pilate’s role in Jesus’ death is ameliorated and the Jewish crowd’s anger is exaggerated, but the truth that Jesus’ rejection and death were as much a product of religious zealotry as political expediency is not an anti-Semitic trope but a universal problem of human nature. 

The thought that we belong to a humble God whose love for our enemies is as real and powerful as God’s love for us is threatening enough to make us want to kill Jesus, too. 

Jesus may have been executed as an enemy of Rome, but he was brought to trial by those who could not stand for a religious leader to speak of a God who welcomed sex workers, tax collectors, and other notorious sinners to the divine banqueting table. He was rejected first by those whose ability to stay in power was undermined by Jesus’ teaching that the poor and the disabled have as much a right to be called children of God as anyone else. The King of kings may have been nailed to the cross by officers of the empire, but he was led there by those who refused to believe that God’s Son would use humble, gentle, non-violent means to bring God’s reign to the earth.

It’s always easier to believe in a God whose plan of salvation matches our own plans for our lives and the world, but that’s not how God works. We can accept a God whose vulnerable love wraps its tender arms around us, but what happens when we realize that that love also belongs to the people in this world whom we find hardest to love? What happens when the one who comes to save us reveals that he also came to save them as well? What happens when the savior we’ve been waiting for comes to us riding on a donkey instead of driving an M1 Abrams tank? The answer is the cross.

We come to the foot of the cross to behold a God whose love has no limit and to confront our own complicity in the rejection of that love. Paradoxically, the further we stretch God’s limitless love in our minds, the harder it is for us to accept it because, eventually, we are forced to confront the truth that God’s unconditional love is given to exactly that person for whom God’s love threatens us the most, unnerves us the most, enrages us the most. The good news of Good Friday is that, even though we don’t have the power to imagine a God who loves us enough to die for us and, in so doing, embraces the whole world with God’s love, that’s exactly how God loves you and me. And that’s how God saves each one of us—with a love that defies our motivations and transcends our expectations. 

The King We Need

March 24, 2024 – Palm Sunday, Year B

Isaiah 50:4-9a; Philippians 2:5-11; Mark 14:1-15:47

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

Have you ever asked for something, received exactly what you asked for, realized it wasn’t what you thought it would be, and then regretted asking for it in the first place?

Last week, as our family drove from Colorado into New Mexico on our way to Amarillo, Texas, we started seeing the signs: “Free 72oz. Steak.” Every few dozen miles, we’d see another sign: “Free 72oz. Steak.” You may have heard of the Big Texan 72-ounce steak challenge. If you can eat a 72-ounce steak, shrimp cocktail, baked potato, salad, roll, and butter in under an hour, it’s free. If not, you’re out $72.00. Either way, you’re a loser.

Somewhere along the way, one of my children asked if we could go there for dinner. “I could eat that!” this child boldly exclaimed. Yeah right. If I had known at the time that this would become a sermon illustration, we probably would have gone so that I could tell you first-hand what happens when someone asks for something, gets exactly what they asked for, and then regrets it almost instantly, but I couldn’t see that far ahead. Instead, we’ll just have to imagine together how nauseating that experience would be.

In a way, though, we live through that same wild swing of emotions every year on Palm Sunday. “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord,” we proclaim at the beginning of our worship. “Hosannah in the highest!” we shout in words of jubilation. But, by the time we get to the passion narrative, our cry has become, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” We asked for a king, and a king we did receive, but he wasn’t the king we were hoping for, and so we turned against him.

When Jesus entered Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the street was lined with people who had come to see their king. Word had spread among the people that God’s anointed had come among them and that this was the time when he would bring them victory. “This is the one who has come in the name of the Lord!” they said to one another. “This is the one who will usher in the kingdom of his ancestor David! This is the one who will defeat our enemies! This is the one who will restore the throne of God’s chosen king!”

Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords, but he isn’t the sort of monarch the people were hoping for. Instead of claiming his rightful place in the temple, he turned over the tables of the money changers and brought the nation’s worship to a halt. Instead of inciting rebellion among the people, he taught them to forgive their enemies so that they, too, might be forgiven. Instead of consolidating power among the religious and political leaders of the day, he openly challenged their authority and criticized them as self-seeking and faithless. Instead of praising the rich and powerful and promising his followers unqualified success, he celebrated the poor and assured his disciples that only hardship awaited them. No wonder the people in power turned against him. No wonder his disciples deserted him. No wonder a member of his inner circle betrayed him.

How quickly the attitude of the crowd changes from celebration to rejection when they learn that Jesus hasn’t come to give them the kingdom they expected! How quickly our admiration becomes condemnation when we realize that it’s our power, our comfort, our wealth, and our status that the King of kings has come to overthrow!

But not everyone in the story turns against him and runs away: “There were also women looking on from a distance; among them were Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome. These used to follow him and provided for him when he was in Galilee; and there were many other women who had come up with him to Jerusalem.” In a world that celebrates power and legitimizes greed, it is the women whose faithfulness is heralded by the gospel. Their witness reminds us what it means to seek not the kingdom of our own desires but the reign of God that sets the world free from its slavery to sin. 

We don’t need a savior who crowns our desire for power, victory, and success. We need a savior who rescues us from it. And thanks be to God that that’s exactly who Jesus is. The good news of Palm Sunday is that our flawed expectations cannot thwart God’s plan of salvation. No matter what king we wish to receive, the one we are given is exactly the one we need—the one who challenges our strengths by glorifying our weaknesses. That is the way of the cross, and it is the way of our salvation. Our thirst for worldly power has nailed Jesus to the hard wood of the cross, but God has used the very worst impulses within us as the very means of our forgiveness. 

We may not have received the king we were hoping for, but, even without realizing it, Jesus is the king we asked God to give us, and, thankfully, he’s the savior we need most of all.

Our Daily Bread

 

March 10, 2024 – The Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year B

Numbers 21:4-9; Ephesians 2:1-10; John 3:14-21

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video can be seen here.

Is there any such thing as bad bread? From the nutritionally vacuous white bread to the hardiest whole-grain varieties, just about any bread will do. Yes, I know it can get moldy, but you can usually cut off the green edges. Yes, I know it can grow stale, but that just means it’s time for croutons, breadcrumbs, French toast, or even bread pudding. Although bread can go bad, it all starts off pretty good. As a child, I didn’t like the end-piece or the heel, and I preferred pillowy soft Wonder Bread to the more healthful stuff my mother bought, but, these days, it’s hard to find a bread I don’t like. 

But, after wandering in the desert for almost forty years, the people of God had had enough of the bread that God had given them. “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness?” they grumbled against God and against Moses. “For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food!” Literally, “Our very souls loathe wretched food,” implying, perhaps, that the Israelites had eaten so much manna for so long that they wretched or gagged at the mere thought of it. I suppose four decades of eating the same thing would make any of us a little irritable.

But God wasn’t having it: “The Lord sent poisonous serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many Israelites died.” The poisonous snakes—sometimes translated “fiery serpents,” presumably because their venom felt like burning to those who were bit—were God’s response to the people’s ingratitude. Apparently, taking for granted God’s heavenly provision made God angry enough to teach them a deadly lesson. But what is this strange story supposed to teach us?

The manna from heaven was always designed to be a test. In Exodus 16, shortly after the Israelites had escaped captivity in Egypt, the people ran out of food. So they grumbled against Moses and his brother Aaron, saying, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” Back then, God heard the people’s complaint, and God said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not.”

The next morning, when the Israelites awoke, there was a layer of dew all around the camp. When the dew lifted, a fine flaky substance was left behind, “as fine as frost on the ground.” The people asked, “What is it?”—a phrase which in Hebrew sounds like “manna.” “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat,” Moses explained to them. “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather as much of it as each of you needs, [one measure] to a person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.” In other words, the people were told to gather as much as each person needed—no more, no less. If they gathered too much, by the next morning, the excess had become foul-smelling and worm-infested, unless it was the sabbath. On the day before the Sabbath, the people were told to gather two portions per person because the manna did not appear on the sacred day of rest. And, if they forgot to gather a double-portion, they went hungry for a day.

The rhythm of receiving, gathering, and depending on God’s provision, which was literally their daily bread, was itself a test. Each day, God gave them everything they needed, but there was no opportunity to horde leftovers, to commodify God’s bounty, or to leverage their blessings to get ahead. The test God gave them, therefore, was not a test of survival but one of faithfulness. When everyone has exactly what he or she needs and no one must struggle to survive, there is no way to confuse our accomplishments with God’s generosity. In a manna economy, people learn to depend on God each day, and the test is whether we will be satisfied with the portion we have been given.

That’s why the people’s grumbling in Numbers 21 invokes such a strong response from God. Their complaints are not merely a reflection of their “menu fatigue” but also of their collective refusal to accept what God had given them. “There is no food and no water,” the Israelites claimed, shoving the manna away like a dissatisfied toddler, refusing even to consider it as real food. “We would rather die than eat what God has given us,” they effectively said. “We would rather be slaves in Egypt than free people who belong to God.”

In effect, God gave them what they asked for, though it came in the form of poisonous snakes rather than starvation. When interpreting this strange passage, the rabbis teach that God sent serpents upon the people because a snake was the first creature who slandered God.[1] Because the people had spoken falsely against God’s goodness, they were to be punished by the original slanderer. But there is more to this punishment than the fiery serpents that bit the people. In the reading of this story, we cannot separate the punishment from its remedy.

The people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned by speaking against the Lord and against you; pray to the Lord to take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed. But, instead of taking the serpents away, as the people asked, God devised an even stranger means for their salvation. “Make a poisonous serpent, and set it on a pole,” God said to Moses, “and everyone who is bitten shall look at it and live.” In so doing, the people were saved not because they looked upon the cast bronze image of a snake but, as the rabbis teach, because they lifted up their eyes to heaven.[2] A symbol of death became the window through which God’s people looked for God and God’s salvation. And, thus, by returning to their dependence on God’s sustenance, the people returned to their faith.

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he taught us to ask our heavenly Father for our daily bread. Every time we gather as God’s family, we ask God to give us this day the sustenance we need to make it until tomorrow—no more, no less. Our test is no different from that of the Israelites in the wilderness. Will we recognize that God has given us enough, and will we be satisfied with what we have been given? In an economy like ours, which rewards the accumulation of wealth and punishes those who have nothing, it is perilously easy to confuse our accomplishments with God’s generosity and fail the test that we have been given. When it comes to remaining faithful to God by depending solely on God’s daily provision, we are snakebit.

But there’s hope, although it might not be the answer we want. We want God to take away our struggles and hardships, even when they are the problems of our own making. God hears our prayers and beckons us to return, but the window through which we gaze upon God and God’s mercy is, again, the symbol of our own death—nothing less than the cross of Christ. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus taught us, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

We look upon Jesus, crucified for our sins, in order that we might lift our eyes up to heaven. The cross is a sign of our failure to believe in God and trust in God’s sustenance. It is the embodiment of our greed and our self-indulgent ways. It is the ultimate sign of our refusal to accept what God has given us and our decision to choose our own death and slavery to sin rather than the freedom and abundant life God chooses for us. And yet that same cross becomes the means of our salvation—the window into our forgiveness, our redemption, and our eternal life. 

The hope that God gives us is not a denial of our failures but our salvation from them. We must journey through the death of the cross in order to enter everlasting life. We must look upon the one who was crucified for our sins that we might be forgiven. And, by returning to our dependence on God’s sustenance—on God’s saving grace—we return to our faith—the faith by which we are saved. Here, we receive the true bread that came down from heaven to give life to the world, even God’s Son, Jesus Christ, our savior, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.

__________________________________________

1. See, for example, Bamidbar Rabbah 19:22.

2. See Ein Yaakov (Glick Edition), Rosh Hashanah 3:1.

How Far Will We Go?

 

February 11, 2024 – The Last Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B

2 Kings 2:1-12; 2 Corinthians 4:3-6; Mark 9:2-9

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon is available here. Video can be seen here.

Where must we go to see the power of God manifest in the world? How far are we willing to travel in order to find God’s Spirit taking hold in this life?

When the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, he said to Elisha, his protégé, “Stay here, for the Lord has sent me as far as Bethel.” But Elisha replied, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.” A second time, Elijah said, “Stay here; for the Lord has sent me to Jericho.” But Elisha replied, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not forsake you.” A third time, Elijah said to his faithful companion, “Stay here, for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.” But Elisha replied yet again, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not abandon you.”

Elijah knew that his time had come to depart the earth. Elijah knew it. Elisha knew it. All the prophets knew it. Everyone knew that the day had come for God to take the prophet from them. In his last great act of faithfulness, Elijah travelled from place to place throughout central Israel, going wherever the Lord commanded him. He knew that being faithful to God had gotten him this far and that remaining faithful would see him through. But, for some reason, he didn’t want Elisha to follow him. 

“Stay here,” he said three times. But why? Maybe it was because Elijah believed that his successor was already called to work among the cities and villages of Israel and not to waste any time venturing out into the wilderness beyond the Jordan River. Or maybe it was because Elijah wasn’t fond of tearful goodbyes and wanted to approach the end of his life on this earth alone. Or maybe it was because Elijah knew that, unlike any human being who had ever lived, he was to be taken up into heaven in a fiery whirlwind and that God’s power and might, which were to be revealed in that dramatic ascension, should not be seen—or could not be seen—by mere mortals.

But Elisha would not listen. “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you,” the prophet-in-training vowed three times, using a word for “leave” that carries the force of abandonment. If Elijah knew that being faithful to God meant going wherever the Lord sent him, Elisha knew that for him it meant staying beside his master until God decided to split them apart.

Among God’s people, no prophet except Moses had rivaled Elijah in importance. God had sent him to confront Ahab, the King of Israel, who had made a career of leading God’s people astray. False worship, unholy alliances, and inhumane practices had defined Ahab’s rule, and Elijah alone had stood up to the monarchy and all its pomp and power. Numerous times, after denouncing the king’s policies, Elijah had fled for his life. And it was during one of those desperate times that God came to Elijah and, in a whisper, told him to seek out Elisha and anoint him as his successor. When he found him, the great prophet threw his cloak around the unsuspecting man’s shoulders, literally passing the mantle onto his successor. But neither of them knew whether God’s Spirit could be passed along so easily.

“Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you,” Elijah said to Elisha after they had crossed the Jordan and entered the wilderness. “Please, let me inherit a double-share of your spirit,” Elisha begged, in effect asking for the double-size portion of an inheritance that would traditionally pass to a first-born son. Elisha knew that, if he were to follow in the footsteps of Elijah’s greatness, he would as much of the prophet’s spirit as he could receive. But God’s Spirit does not change hands as easily as a piece of land or a beloved cloak. “You ask a hard thing,” the senior prophet replied to the junior’s request, acknowledging his own uncertainty of whether that spirit was his to give away. “Yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.”

Elijah recognized that the passing of the Spirit from one prophet to another is the work of God and God alone. If God allowed Elisha to see this holy departure that was about to take place, it would be a sign that God had indeed chosen him to be Elijah’s fully empowered successor. But, if the would-be prophet were not worthy of that charge, he would not be able to see his master being lifted up into heaven, and he would know that the full power of God’s Spirit would not rest on him. As it was beyond their control, all Elisha could do was remain beside his teacher as far as he could go and pray.

Our reading from the Old Testament stops before we know for sure whether the spiritual transfer was complete. In fact, even Elisha isn’t sure until he leaves that place and comes back to the Jordan River—the boundary between the untamed wilds where God’s Spirit runs free and the domesticated territory of the king, who does his best to suppress that Spirit. Like Elijah before him, Elisha takes the prophet’s mantle and rolls it up, striking the river’s surface, proclaiming, “Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?” The text is unclear, Walter Bruggemann argues, whether Elisha strikes the water once or twice, suggesting that the successor prophet may not have as much spiritual power as his predecessor. Regardless, it is enough. The river divides in two, and Elisha walks across on dry ground, returning to the jurisdiction of the earthly king and taking with him the power that God had bestowed on him to confront that king.

The kingdoms of this world rely upon clearly defined mechanisms for the transfer of power. Whether it is the death of a monarch, the inauguration of a president, or the surrender of a general, we recognize how authority is passed from one leader to the next. And we know that when the peaceful transfer of power is disrupted or discredited—when the mechanisms that we have established and accepted are threatened—our confidence in the society in which we live can be shaken. And we don’t like that.  

But God doesn’t rely on the mechanisms we choose. God’s Spirit and power cannot be confined to predetermined channels. We do not get to decide when and how that Spirit will show up or on whom that Spirit will come to rest. Not even Elijah had that power. And sometimes the church has a hard time remembering that. In a church like ours, we pretend that we are good at defining the ways in which God’s Spirit will become manifest. Principally, we pass along the Spirit’s power through the hands of bishops, who, themselves, were set apart by the hands of other bishops, who were set apart by bishops before them. With the laying on of those episcopal hands, we set people apart for the holy work of ministry. But is that the only way we think God works among us? 

God’s Spirit and power cannot be confined to authorized prayers and processes because how else will God’s Spirit ever rise up and challenge those in authority? How can the untamed power of God confront those in power if only those in power get to decide when God is allowed to show up? We don’t spend a lot of time in this church talking about the gifts of the Spirit—gifts like prophecy, healing, and speaking in tongues—because there aren’t many things less Episcopal than speaking in tongues. But who are we to tell God how God should become manifest? Who are we to decide when and where God will show up? Maybe God is already showing up in powerful ways that we haven’t noticed because we aren’t willing to leave our domesticated lives behind and look for them out in the wilderness.

How far are we willing to go to find the power of God taking hold in this world? When our lives are enhanced by the earthly powers at work around us, we are generally content to stay put—to stay here—and leave the work of prophets to someone else. But, when we see that the ways of the world are a betrayal of the ways of God—when God opens our eyes and shows us how far we have strayed from the world that God envisions—how can we afford to stay put?

Baptizing Baby Jesus

 

January 7, 2024 – The 1st Sunday after the Epiphany: The Baptism of our Lord, Year B

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

© 2024 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

In a little while, we are going to baptize baby Jesus. A few weeks ago, here at St. Paul’s, Ceclia Diane Johnson, our baptismal candidate, played the starring role in our Christmas pageant. And she was wonderful! Each year, as we approach Christmas, we look though the congregation for a young child about her age—seven months—who is small enough to play the role but old enough not to be too fragile for the kid playing Mary to hold during the pageant. Sometimes we get wiggly, screaming babies who miss their real mothers, and other times we get babies like Cecelia—babies who take to their stage mothers, soak up the spotlight, and seem born for their role.

But, as far as I can remember, we’ve never had the chance to baptize baby Jesus on the Feast of the Baptism of our Lord a few weeks later. Ceclia better be careful that she doesn’t get typecast at a young age. Of course, as we hear in the gospel, Jesus wasn’t baptized as an infant, but I still think the connection is too good to pass up. Each year we celebrate Jesus’ baptism on the first Sunday after the Epiphany because it was a pivotal moment in salvation history. For the first time, all three persons of the Holy Trinity were manifest to humanity—the Son is baptized; the Spirit descends; and the Father speaks. That’s a moment worth remembering. But the fact that this year we have a closer connection with the Jesus who is baptized this day—even if it’s a humorous one—gives us the chance to think more carefully about our relationship with the one who was baptized in the River Jordan all those years ago.

Why was Jesus baptized in the first place? John the Baptist, who dunked Jesus under the water, preached a baptism of repentance. He told the people to repent of their sins and be baptized as a way of preparing themselves and purifying themselves for the one who was coming after him. But Jesus was the one he had been talking about. Jesus was the one they were getting ready for. And Jesus, we believe, was without sin—perfect God and perfect human from the moment of his conception. Why did Jesus need to be baptized? Mark’s gospel account doesn’t make a big deal about it, but Matthew’s version of the story has John initially refusing to baptize Jesus, saying, “I need to be baptized by you!”

It could be that Jesus wanted to endorse John’s message as the starting point for his own ministry. After all, both of them preached that the reign of God was coming and that we need to prepare ourselves to receive it. Or it could be that Jesus wanted to give us a pattern to follow—a “do what I do, not just what I say” sort of thing. In Matthew’s version, the reply Jesus gives to John’s objection is, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” I don’t really know what that means. It’s a fairly enigmatic statement. But it sounds important and suggests that something of eternal significance is at work. I think allowing ourselves to come closer to the Jesus who was baptized is a good way to receive the truth that those words convey.

What is the connection between Jesus’ baptism and our own? As Episcopalians, our doctrine—what we believe—is expressed primarily through our worship—how we pray. So, if you want to know what the Episcopal Church believes about Baptism, there’s no better place to look than our baptismal liturgy. When Sara asks God to bless the water before Cecelia’s baptism, she will pray, “We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit (BCP 306).” Listen to those incredible words! In Baptism, each one of us is buried with Christ, raised with him to new life, and endued with the Holy Spirit’s power. That means that, in the waters of Baptism, we become one with Jesus and all that he has accomplished on our behalf. In Baptism, we become a part of Jesus who, at the Incarnation, has become a part of us.

But how does that work? Does that mean that we must be baptized in order to be saved? I believe that God already loves Cecelia Diane Johnson as fully and perfectly as God will ever love her, even before she is baptized. And I believe that is true for every human being who has ever lived. Baptism does not change the way that God loves us. It changes the way we participate in that love. If the work of salvation belongs to God, then our work is to recognize it, receive it, believe in it, and celebrate it. In the incarnation, Jesus took upon himself our human nature. At the cross, he purified what was broken within us. In his resurrection, he restored and redeemed every one of us. Because of Jesus, we know that God’s infinite grace, acceptance, and love await each one of us in the next life. But it is Baptism that allows us to know and live fully into that love here and now.

Jesus is baptized on our behalf so that, in our baptism, we can be immersed in those waters with him—within him. Baptism is what makes God’s universal work of salvation real and personal to every baby, every child, every person who comes to the font. Baptism is what makes that salvation real and active not only in the moment of our death but in every moment of our lives. Baptism is how we as individuals and as the community of faith recognize the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus within ourselves and each other. 

Because we have been baptized into Jesus Christ, he takes us with him under those waters. We emerge from the water with him and see that the way to heaven, which had been hidden from us, is now torn open and that the fullness and nearness of God is now revealed to us. We see the Holy Spirit descend upon us, and we feel its power equipping us for the life ahead. And, because we are in Jesus, we hear the Father say to each one of us, “You are my child, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” 

Jesus was baptized so that we might be baptized into union with him. That means that every child we baptize is Jesus, whether they had a role in the pageant or not. And that means that you are Jesus, too. You have died with Christ. You have been raised with him. You have received his Spirit. Therefore, you are God’s beloved child, with whom God is well pleased. Receive that truth again today—God’s truth of who you really are. And let that truth shape your life until you recognize it every time you see your reflection looking back from the water.

Love Has No To-Do List

 

December 24, 2023 – Christmas I

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

© 2023 Evan D. Garner

Audio of this sermon can be heard here. Video can be seen here.

Merry Christmas! You’re here. You made it. You can check getting to church off your list. Take a deep breath. Know that God is here and that, simply by showing up, you’ve already done everything you need to do in order for God to meet you in this place. I’m glad you’re here. And I believe that God is, too. I just wish the secret to navigating the rest of my holiday stress was as simple as showing up.

The holidays are hard, aren’t they? And that’s true even when Christmas Eve doesn’t fall on a Sunday. You’ve got to figure out what gifts to buy and where to find them. You’ve got to go to work parties and neighborhood parties and friend parties and family parties. There’s food to make for your own household and food to give away. Then there’s travelling—either loading up the car and setting out or welcoming your family in from out of town. Either way, it’s a hassle. And the whole time there’s the struggle of trying to keep the peace between people who seem to show up just looking for a fight.

All we really want is for the people we love to be happy, but making other people happy is a pretty stressful affair. Maybe if they just told us what they want—if they made a list of all the gifts and foods and conversation topics that would make them happy and gave it to us, then we would know exactly what to buy, what to cook, and what conversations to steer away from. If we could just add all of their preferences to our holiday to do list, then maybe everything would work out just right. But you know that isn’t how it works, don’t you?

When I was a little kid, I spent a week at my grandparents’ house every summer. It was a magical week of being the center of attention. Each day while I was there, my grandmother planned a different activity like going to the museum, playing miniature golf, or showing me off to some of her friends. One thing we never failed to do was go Christmas shopping. My grandmother would take me through the mall—from Toys-R-Us to Macy’s department store to Barnes and Noble—and let me pick out whatever I wanted to find under the tree five months later. At first, it was a fabulous arrangement. Who doesn’t want to pick out his own presents? There was no risk that an out-of-touch septuagenarian would choose the wrong thing. 

But, before long, the magic was lost. By the time I was eight, my memory was good enough that I could pick up every wrapped gift and know exactly what was inside before I tore off the paper. About that same time, I started to feel some pressure to pick out the “right” gift—the one that would make my grandmother happy. As we went shopping, I picked up on what I thought were subtle clues about what she thought her grandson should want, and I often ended up with a pile of books, CDs, and learning games that were better suited for a classroom than a playroom. She wanted to make me happy, and I wanted to make her happy, and, in the end, neither of us was.

Even perfectly made and perfectly executed plans fall short. We don’t want stuff under the tree. We want the stuff under the tree to be a sign that we are loved. And we want to be loved without having to tell someone what to get or what to cook or what to say in order to make us feel loved. We want to be loved by someone who loves us enough to know us and care about us and do all those things for us just because they love us. And we want to love them back in the same way. We want to love them in a way that shows them just how much we love them—more than they can possibly imagine. But loving someone like that isn’t easy. Even perfect plans fall short. And that’s why the holidays are so stressful. But it’s also why Christmas is so important.

On this holy night, we hear the angel say, “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” And, with those words, God let us know that it doesn’t matter whether our plans are perfect or whether they miss the mark completely. What matters is that God has already loved us and that God’s love has the power to make us perfect.

The birth of Jesus was not a plan set in motion but the fulfillment of God’s love for all time. The angel didn’t say that the child would one day grow up to be our savior. God did not tell the shepherds to come back in thirty years when the child was ready to take charge. God did not ask the world to stay tuned and wait for the day when Jesus would come and save them. The good news of Christmas is that our salvation comes to us as fully and completely as a newborn baby. Like any child who comes into our lives, God’s salvation isn’t something we need to learn how to take advantage of or figure out how to use. It’s not something we can mess up or get wrong. The gift itself is perfect because it is perfect love.

There in Bethlehem, all the love we would ever want to show or ever hope to receive is wrapped up in those bands of cloth and laid in that manger. That’s because, in the birth of Jesus, God has taken what is unavoidably imperfect within us and united it to God’s perfect self in order that all our brokenness might be made whole. And all we have to do is show up. There is no assembly required. There is no need to keep up with gift receipts. There is no chance that something will not fit. There is no worry that our plans will fall short. 

By coming to us as perfect love, God makes our love for each other perfect. God does not give us the Christ child to show us that we have the potential to become better—that, if we work at it hard enough, we might actually succeed in loving one another as fully as we hope. No, in the birth of our savior, God has already made our love perfect by loving us perfectly. 

We come this night to see again how much we are loved—enough that God would be born in us and for us. On this night, our souls are filled again to overflowing, not because they have been empty or lacking but because, at Christmas, we see again that they have always been full. It is nothing less than our own perfect love that we behold in the birth of Jesus our savior. 

“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.” Let us see in the Christ child how much we have been loved by God—loved even to perfection—and let us love one another with that perfect love which is God’s gift to us this night.

The Days Are Getting Longer

 

December 21, 2023 – St. Thomas (Blue Christmas)

Habakkuk 2:1-4; Hebrews 10:35-11:1; John 20:24-29

© 2023 Evan D. Garner

St. Thomas feels like an odd choice for a congregation that is looking for comfort and reassurance at Christmas time. This Blue Christmas service is for those who are hurting during the holidays—those for whom the bright lights of the season obscure the loss and grief we carry underneath the surface. We’re used to hearing this gospel passage about Doubting Thomas on the Second Sunday of Easter, when associate rectors are called upon to preach about the one who was not with the other disciples when Jesus came.

But we also hear from St. Thomas at funerals. When families meet to plan the funeral of their loved one, we offer them a list of gospel lessons to choose from, but, more often than not, families choose the reading from John 14. “Lord, we do not know where you are going,” Thomas said to Jesus. “How can we know the way?” This was Jesus’ last supper with his disciples. He had told his closest friends that he would be leaving them. And, although Jesus promised to come back and take them to himself, Thomas—of course, it was Thomas—put into words the confusion and doubt that others must have been feeling, too.

In a very real and practical way, St. Thomas’ association with our Blue Christmas service isn’t really a choice at all. We commemorate St. Thomas this night—the longest night of the year—because, back in the 9th century, when the calendar of saints’ days was being compiled, this was the day when legend held that Thomas had died. In the Christian tradition, we typically remember the saints of God on the anniversaries of their deaths. But not every denomination celebrates Thomas on December 21. Centuries after the calendar of saints was established, a competing tradition was found—a legend that suggested Thomas died on July 3. And some churches, in an attempt to make the days leading up to Christmas a little less busy, moved Thomas’ feast day to that summer date.

I don’t know when Thomas actually died. And I don’t think it matters whether we remember him in the depths of December or the brightness of July. But I don’t think it’s an accident that Thomas’ feast was originally set for the longest night of the year. I can think of no better saint to commemorate in our moment of deepest darkness because doubt is just another word for grief.

Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?

Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.

Those are not the words of a skeptic but the confessions of a man whose grief is insurmountable. Faced with the loss of Jesus, Thomas no longer knew how to make sense of the world, and his words reflect an inability to hang onto the tenets of the faith he had been taking for granted. How could someone so sure of who Jesus was and what he had promised—sure enough to give up his life in order to follow him—now be left with nothing but doubt? 

Grief robs us of what we need most in our moment of loss. When we experience a loss that touches our souls and wounds us that deeply, we, too, find ourselves confused, disoriented, unsure of things we had always known to be true. That is the moment when we need God’s help most of all, but that is also precisely the moment when God feels furthest away. Sometimes without even realizing it, our language of grief comes out as words of doubt.

I don’t know if I can keep going.

I don’t know what do to without him.

I don’t know how to pray anymore. I can’t find the words. I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know whom to pray to. 

I don’t know if I believe in God anymore. I’m not sure I want to believe.

Grief has the power to turn everything upside down. Like a child caught by surprise under a pounding wave, we swim back toward the surface only to come up with a handful of sand instead lungs full of air. We no longer know which way is up, what day it is, or who we are. We can’t figure out how to take a single step. We’re not sure of anything anymore.

We remember Thomas on the longest night of the year because tonight is the night when we need to remember that God’s response to our disorienting grief is always to come and find us. “A week later, Jesus’ disciples were again in the house, and [this time] Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’” Do not be overwhelmed by your grief. I am here. I am with you. Come and see.

When we have lost the will to believe, God comes and finds us. When we have forgotten what it means to have hope, God comes and find us. When we aren’t sure whether things could ever get better, God comes and finds us.

In the moments of our lives when that message is hardest to receive, God does not hide it away from us, testing to see if we have the strength to go and find it. Instead, God brings it to us by coming and accompanying us in our grief. God declares to the prophet, “Write the vision, and make it plain on tablets so that anyone can read it. Make it big enough that even someone running by could make it out.” God wants you to know that it doesn’t matter whether you are sure of anything because God’s love for you is sure. Your grief—your doubt—is not an obstacle to God’s love but the very channel through which that love comes and finds you. God asks nothing more of you than to sit in your grief until you recognize that God is there with you—until that is enough for you to see that the days are getting longer.