Have You Loved Today?

Matthew 5: 38-48

Here we are still up on top of that mountain in the region of the Galilee with Jesus, his disciples and several others. Perhaps they gaze out over the shimmering Sea of Galilee and watch a magnificent sunrise looking east over what is today the Golan Heights, and the borders of Syria and Jordan.  It’s a small area really that is rich with history of love and war, of battle and peace, and of changing borders...then, as it is today.

And it is here that Jesus gives the first of five discourses in the Gospel of Matthew.  This discourse is affectionately known as the Sermon on the Mount.

The last few weeks of the lectionary have been devoted to the Sermon on the Mount and all of its  insights and new ways of interpreting the law that it holds during a time of political occupation and oppression by the Romans in first century Palestine.  Jesus begins with some blessings for right living, the beatitudes, and then talks about salt and light as a calling of folks into mission.  

Jesus tells his disciples that he has come to fulfill the law, which is Torah, not to abolish it.  He then gets into the heart of what we call Christian ethics.  How we should live our lives as ones whose hearts follow Jesus.  It’s about the demands placed upon us and the types of decisions we make for our existence with others as Christ followers.

Jesus knows that, all too well, that the vicissitudes of life can present you with some pretty challenging situations that you will have to negotiate your way around, or out of.  He wants to make sure that we know how to live into our God given identity while stuck in the muckity muck of life.

Here now the good news for today from the Gospel of Matthew, the 5th chapter.   

‘You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also; and if anyone wants to sue you and take your coat, give your cloak as well; and if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also the second mile. Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you. 

  ‘You have heard that it was said, “You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.” But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. 

Some good news eh?  Don’t resist someone who does evil.  If you get slapped on one check offer up the other to be slapped.  If someone wants your new LL Bean jacket, just give it to them and while you’re at it hand over your new North Face coat as well.  These sayings, which sound like invectives, are not so much really that as they are ways of retributive justice that seeks to place some balance in rectifying a situation where an injustice has occurred.  And that’s good.  We need that.

These sayings have also been understood by great people such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. as a call to non-violent resistance because they are that too.  Resist someone although do not resort to using violent methods of resistance.  That’s what Rosa Parks did when she refused to give up her seat on December 1, 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama.   And that was the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott and the civil rights movement in the US.  

Stand your ground, stand up for what you believe, don’t cave in and in doing so you will have faced those evildoers with courage and fearlessness not violence.  That, Jesus says, is the ethical way to handle a situation and in this way you are living into your God given identity.  But this passage takes it one step further.

The big one.  Love your enemies.  Pray for those who persecute you.  I know what you’re thinking.  I’ve been down that road.  Love my enemies?  Not only should I resist my enemies but love them too?  You’ve got to be kidding, Jesus.  You want me to love someone or something that is heck-bent set on destroying me?  He wants Rosa Parks to pray for those who may have spat on her and called her denigrating names?  That’s a pretty tall order Jesus!  

But as St. Thomas Aquinas says, "Loving only friends to the exclusion of enemies goes unrewarded by God." And I would add it goes against everything that God wants us to be and how God wants us to live for in the last verse of this reading Jesus says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father [sic] is perfect.” (v. 48) God’s image and ours should be as one.  That’s also a tall order but we should strive to be like God in all ways.  But really that’s almost impossible because God doesn’t discriminate, God loves and God loves all people including our enemies equally.  Does the sun not shine on you and also your neighbor who has loud parties, or who encroaches upon your property line? 

A couple of weeks ago we celebrated Valentine’s Day, Cupid’s arrow is still circling overhead and Valentine’s candy is 1/2 price at CVS.   It’s a good time to examine love while love is still in the air.  Sure as shootin’ love is not some chocolate covered cherry in a red foil, heart shaped box!  So let’s have a look at what it means to love and to love our enemies.  

Love, as most of us probably think of it, is an emotion that warms our innards.  You fall in love with a spouse or partner and nothing else in the world matters, you long for his or hers presence.  You bring a baby home from the hospital and you are awestruck at his tiny little hands, her itty-bitty toes and you are ‘in love’.  You bring a new puppy home and no matter how many times he ‘goes’ on the carpet, you are willing to clean it up because you have fallen in love hook, line, and sinker for that little furry, four legged stinker.

With an emotional love you will do almost anything for a person be it a lover or a friend because waves of fondness, devotion, delight, respect and passion exude within your heart.  Can you say that about someone who has hurt you though?  Someone who has betrayed you or tricked you or who has gone out of their way to make life truly difficult for you?  Probably not.  

Love is so much more than a feeling.  If you think of love as an action and not a feeling then you can begin to understand it better and parse it out according to the covenant that Jesus sets forth; that is God is a God for all people and we are to follow in God’s ways.  And, that we are to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves and yes, to even love our enemies.

In his book, Strength to Love, Martin Luther King once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”  This is what Jesus is trying to say to us, this is what Jesus means when he says, “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have?” (v. 46)

You may remember the movie, “Dead Man Walking”.  It’s the story of Sr. Helen Prejean and Matthew Poncelet who committed a heinous crime of torture and murder.  He is caught and incarcerated which is where Sr. Prejean meets him.  She develops a relationship with him through a prison ministry.  She listens and works with him to understand his grave mistakes and crimes.  She believes in God’s redemptive powers for all people, even those whom everyone views as an enemy.  She worked very hard to have him understand that. 

When the day of Poncelet’s execution came she spoke with him as he was walking to his death.  She said, “I want the last face you see in this world to be the face of love, so you look at me when they do this thing to you. I’ll be the face of love for you.”  From there she put her hand on his shoulder and walked with him to the execution room all the while reading scripture to him.  Scripture that gave hope that God will be with him to the end, and can and will redeem him.  

This, my friends, is loving your enemy in an active way.  Her actions spoke loudly of God’s forgiving love. Rather than choose to hate this man like everyone else did, she chose to love with her time and her actions, and her firm commitment to a redeeming God.

We may never be called upon to love an enemy such as this.  But we will have people and situations that will work very hard to wear us down, to beat us up, and to bring us to the edge of despair.  They will be our enemies and they will be a potent factor in our lives.  Will you choose the love them?  How will you choose to love them?  

I have a bumper sticker (not on my bumper) that reads, “When Jesus says love your enemies, I think he means don’t kill them.”  Our first instinct might be to ‘deck someone’ out but refraining from hateful, harmful behavior can be just as loving a gesture.  And in some cases restraint and refrain from harmful retaliation will be the best that we can offer up.  And that is loving too.

  

Fortunately, thankfully we are not alone in loving.  The grace in all of this is that God is with us helping us to love our enemies.  God has a vested interest in me, in you and in our enemies.  We are all of God’s own.  Forgiven.  Redeemed.  Love your friends.  Love your enemies.  Love God first and all things will be possible through God who made us.  

Amen.

Open Up and Let the Light Shine

Matthew 5: 13-20

My camera, a Canon Rebel T5, and I are now BFF’s – Best Friends Forever.  Many of you know that I have just returned from a ten day trip to Costa Rica with a group of kindred spirits who like to capture natural science images on digital film and paper through watercolor or pencil.  I thank you for the time off to refresh my soul’s deepest desire to travel and see this amazing world and to renew my spirit through my art and photography.  But this is not a sermon about my trip.  It is a sermon about light, God’s light in particular and our role as apertures’ of that light.

Getting back to my camera and how we became BFF’s.  I was warned that shooting photography in the rainforest could be a real challenge because of the specific lighting issues that present themselves.  Well the rainforest did not disappoint on so many levels.  It was difficult because shooting poison dart and red eyed tree frogs, snakes and leaf cutter ants along with the flora of the forest takes camera settings that let lots of light in because the trees, vines and abundant growth darken the floor of the forest. 

But when you hear Howler monkeys coming in the distance, and you look up to get ready to shoot, or you see an amazing bird with teal colored feathers perched high up on a branch you have to quickly change the settings to let much less light in because the strong and bright sun is piercing its way through the leaves of the highest trees. 

For those of you who know cameras, you know that it’s all about the speed of the film, the speed of the shutter and the size of the aperture.   Kind of like the Trinity, each has its own function yet are dependent upon one another to produce a cohesive divine unit.  So when all three camera settings are aligned properly you get a National Geographic quality photo, or at least a good one that will be a nice remembrance of your trip.  Capturing an image is all about how much light you let in or don’t let in.  You are not the light source, merely the vehicle by which the light source is controlled.  That’s exactly what Jesus was talking about that day on the mountainside in Galilee.

Today’s scripture reading is from the Sermon on the Mount and falls directly after the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew.  It may seem a bit disjointed because what does salt and light have to do with the law and the prophets?  We have to remember that Jesus audience was quite different than Matthew’s audience.  Jesus was preaching to Israel and Israel had been called by God to be a light to the nations. (Isaiah 49: 6)

Jesus’ sermon was quite a divergent view in an already heated political and religious debate over the fate of Israel whose land by now had been occupied by the Roman Empire.  The land was no longer in the hands of the Jews but in the hands of the ‘goyim’, the non-Jews.  So there were divisions among the Jews on how to address the questions that would come up as a result of the occupation and their identity.  What does God want us to do?  Who does God want us to be?  What are we supposed to do? 

Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount as encouragement for the people to be Israel, just to be themselves and to be who God had called them to be through their covenantal relationship; to be open to the ways in which God was calling them. 

The Pharisees understood Torah in one-way and Jesus understood it in another.  The Pharisees were working with an outdated political and cultural model and were striving to maintain the status quo. Jesus was saying that God is doing a new thing, and he is the fulfillment of the ‘new thing’.  For us, Gentiles, we have now been included through the covenant made in Jesus, we have been incorporated into God’s covenant of love, hope, and redemption.

And so now we are to be the vessels by which the light of God can shine through.  We are the harbingers of God’s light we are the ‘light on the hill’.  The question for us is, how can we open our apertures large enough so that others can see this abundant light?  This is such an important question for us as a church today. 

We know people are seeking to have a spiritual connection with God and with others.  We know people search for a place where they can be accepted and loved for who they are.  We know there are people in need.  And we know that we can offer all of that and more, so why aren’t people knocking down our doors?

These are questions that need deep, soul searching exploration to realize the answers. It might just mean that we will need to change our ways but not the way of Jesus Christ and our commitment to him and his teachings.    

God IS doing a new thing right now with the church.  How do we even begin to envision what it is that God is doing?  How do we embrace change, which can be scary and unnerving?  How can we open wide our apertures rather than make them small only letting just a small amount of light out?  How can we be the Church and be relevant in the world around us?  Perhaps in this second year of my tenure together we can dig deep and come up with some answers.  We are just not about surviving and maintaining the status quo.  We are about fluidity and change because that is what God is about. 

Let the light of God fully come to you.  Let it warm you and guide you and then allow others to see it because it is essential to telling the story.  Open up and let God’s miraculous, tender and healing love be seen by others.

In the words of Maryanne Williamson, quoted by Nelson Mandela in his 1994 Inaugural speech, “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.  Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure…We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.  It’s not just in some of us; it’s in all of us.  And when we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.  As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” 

And that’s what we are about.

Amen.

Blessings You Can Live With

Matthew 5: 1-12

Blessings Everywhere

It seems like lately I’ve been inundated with blessings, or at least the word blessing!  I have found myself ending my hospital visits with most folks with, “Blessings to you for healing”, and I’ve even bid adieu by replacing ‘Good bye’, with ‘God bless’.  

More often than not lately it seems, us clergy folk seem to sign most emails with, ‘Blessings’ sort of like ‘Warmest Regards’ or ‘Cordially Yours’.

Now that probably doesn’t sound bad, and it’s not.  Who doesn’t want to be blessed?  I’m not a curmudgeon, I don’t think, it just beginning to seem too casual to me.  It’s sort of like when someone you don’t know gets on the elevator with you and asks, ‘How ya doing?’  Inquiring about my welfare?  A stranger?  I’m torn between telling that person how I really am, not that they want to hear how I’m doing, or just saying, ‘Good, and you?’, not really caring if I get an answer. 

With the frequency that I hear the word blessing or blessings it makes me wonder the efficacy of it and just what it is that we are saying.  That’s the cynical voice screaming inside my head.   Then there is the hopeful and trustful voice inside of my head that knows and believes in the power of God’s amazing grace and how God has the ability to bless us beyond any of our juiciest imaginations and that is a promise.  You see a blessing is a gift that we can’t manufacture. It happens and we recognize it.

 Today’s Context for Blessing

Today we are talking about blessing within the context of the Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew.  The Sermon on the Mount is at the beginning of Jesus’ teaching ministry in the Galilee region after he left Nazareth. 

Let’s hear now this account from the Gospel of Matthew:

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,

         for they will be filled.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is

         the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

Jesus makes his home now in Capernaum.  It’s here he calls his first disciples and he begins to gather followers, lots of them.

He does this by teaching in the local synagogues throughout the region.  He cures diseases and heals people with every sickness making concrete the advent of the kingdom.  His proclamation is effective and his fame spreads throughout Syria to the North, from the Decapolis, which is a collection of ten cities east of Jerusalem, Judea in the south and from way beyond the Jordan.  By now it was a rather large crowd of people who was following him.

When Jesus saw the crowds following him he high-tails it up the mountain!  His disciples follow and that is where he begins the first of five great discourses recorded in Matthew where Jesus reinterprets the law and offers a new way of thinking.  It was one ‘knock your socks off’ sermons because it contains the Beatitudes which are beloved to most Christians, some great stories about salt and light and this is also when he teaches the disciples how to pray saying, ‘Our Father who are in heaven, hallowed be they name.’ 

Two poignant points in one sermon, the Beatitudes and the Lord’s Prayer.  Both have been crocheted on canvas, carved into wooden platters, hung upon people’s walls and have been put to tune.  And why?  Because both address our deepest concerns about the life that we live in the here and now, and the life that we will have in the kingdom of God.

The Beatitudes are not rules for a good life, and they are not ethical demands put upon us, they are promises of God’s purpose in the world.  They are challenges for a life worth living.  Beatitude means blessed, or happy, or fortunate, and so they are not calls to action, but promises given in a specific context from a first century perspective.

It was a world of conflict and oppression and Jesus turns things upside down from the prevailing culture; he’s got an opposing point of view on how things should be.  People who normally would not have seen themselves as blessed are promised a place in God’s realm because in fact from God’s perspective, they are blessed.  The fishermen.  The farmers.  The marginalized people of the Roman Empire.  The ‘little’ people.  All blessed!  And so are we.

The Beatitudes are challenges to worthy living because in today’s world the poor, peaceful, merciful and meek get nowhere in a culture that is so firmly grounded in competition and self-indulgence.  The Beatitudes are a vision for us of faithful living today towards God’s realm. 

What would it mean for you to engage in more faithful living in this crazy world? How can you stay God-focused throughout your week?

Our answers are in the Beatitudes:

            Possess a humbleness of spirit – God’s in charge, not us!

            Desire for right living – God’s path is the path that will get you there!

            Thirst for justice – Where there is justice there is peace!

            Recognize a need for forgiveness – God forgives us and then we can forgive others!

These are blessings that I want and indeed have, as you do too.  They are blessings from a God who loves us dearly. They are gifts and all we need to do is recognize them, open our hearts to them, live into them each day and then you’ll be able to really ‘count your blessings.’

Peace Pilgrim's Beatitudes

A woman named Mildred Norman, calling herself Peace Pilgrim, set out from 1953-1981 on a personal pilgrimage for peace.  She walked over 25, 000 miles.  She vowed to ‘remain a walker until humanity has learned the way of peace.’  She walked until her death in fact. She penned a set of beatitudes in her effort for peace, I want to read some of them to you, she expanded ‘blessed are the peacemakers for us to contemplate today:

Blessed are they who give without expecting even thanks in return, for they shall be  

          abundantly rewarded.

Blessed are they who translate every good thing they know into action, for ever

          higher truths shall be revealed unto them.

Blessed are they who do God's will without asking to see results, for great shall be

          their recompense.

Blessed are they who love and trust their fellow beings, for they shall reach the good

          in people and receive a loving response.

Blessed are they who see the change we call death as a liberation from the

          limitations of this earth-life, for they shall rejoice with their loved ones who

          make the glorious transition.

Blessed are they, who after dedicating their lives and thereby receiving a blessing,

           have the courage and faith to surmount the difficulties of the path ahead, for

           they shall receive a second blessing.

These beatitudes are thoughtful and loving blessings. These are Peace Pilgrim’s Beatitudes, what would yours be? All good things come from God.  The challenge for us is to see theses gifts and name them as a blessing.  In doing so your life will be blessed.   

Amen.

Drop the Nets!

Matthew 4: 18-22

So often people form their identity by what they do in life; that is their profession or vocation.  They take pride in what they do, the accomplishments they have made, and their ability to sustain their livelihood and families by how they spend their time.  Often it supplies a healthy dose of self esteem so that their personal identity becomes intertwined with their work life.  But what happens when one’s identity is traded in for another identity? 

I remember back in 2011 when I lived in New Haven the headlines one of the New Haven Register read, ‘Time to Turn the Page.’  It was referring to Senator Joe Lieberman’s decision not to run again for a fifth term for the US Senate in 2012.  After 22 years Lieberman said, it’s time to turn the page to a new chapter, and so he announced that he would not be a candidate for re-election to a fifth term in the Senate.…he goes on to say, “This was not an easy decision for me to make, because I have loved serving in the Senate, and I feel good about what I have accomplished. But I know it is the right decision and, I must say, I am excited about beginning a new chapter of life with new opportunities.”

Whether you liked Joe Lieberman or not, whether you have agreed with Joe’s politics or not, whether you like the fact (or not) that he switched parties, that’s not the point.  The point is, for this now former Senator a new identity had to be forged.

Maybe it was frightening for him to leave the halls of the Senate building that had sheltered him all of those years.  After all, it was pretty comfortable, he knew where the bathrooms were, he knew where to park and where to buy the morning paper.  The fact is letting go  is not without its anxieties and trepidation.  Now we know that he has a new focus as Chairman of the Executive Board of the private equity firm, Victory Park Capital.

What we find in today’s text is a letting go and a picking up.  As Jesus walked next to the Sea of Galilee, which is not large, he sees two brothers Simon Peter and Andrew casting their nets into the sea, fishermen they were.  Fishing was an important aspect of the Galilean economy in the first century.  We’re not sure if Simon Peter and Andrew were day laborer fishermen, or fishermen who owned the boat and employed day laborers, or if they were even tax collectors with a fishing franchise…all were part of the Roman system which was not a free market.  The text is silent on this one.  All we know is that they were identified as fishermen.

Simon Peter might have heard people say, ‘Oh, there goes Simon Peter the fisherman’, or ‘Hey, that fisherman Andrew might have some good catch for us today.’  However you want to look at it, their profession and identity were one.  How often do we hear the Bible say, Simon Peter the husband and father?  Not often, never in fact.

But as providence would have it Jesus was walking on the basalt rocky shore of the Galilee and at the port he sees these two fishermen.  “Follow me” he says, “I’ll make you fish for people.”  The Bible states that ‘immediately’, IMMEDIATELY they left their nets and followed Jesus.  Same thing happens with the Zebedee brothers, James and John.  So now this little band of fishermen soon-to-be disciples have dropped their nets to follow Jesus. 

They didn’t ask questions like I would have asked.  Questions like, ‘Well Jesus, where are we going?” or “Why should I?”, “How long will we be gone?” or even “What will I have to give up or let go of?”  No, the Bible says that they ‘left their nets’.  They dropped them.  Right there.  In the Capernaum port on the shore of the Galil they dropped their nets and they were no longer fishermen.

  

If we go with that image of dropping the nets as a metaphor for letting go of the past and embracing the future I think that it can bear some juicy fruit for us today as individuals and as the church.  When the disciples dropped their nets it was a casting off of an old identity, the usual way of life, the way of life that had become very comfortable. 

Probably some traditions, both good and bad, had to be abandoned, some mindsets, also good and bad had to be discarded, maybe even some veneered identities, that had become part and parcel of who they were, that had to be let go of so that they could walk with Jesus unencumbered.  They took their skills and know-how from the fishing trade and applied them to the changing world about them.  They were no longer fishermen but disciples who followed the call placed on them.

We like our identities don’t we? We like the things we do or the possessions we own.  We like, or if not like, we need to sustain some level of control or sanity (whatever you want to name it,) even if it has just stopped working or become dysfunctional.  We like to hold tightly onto those nets that we have cast into the sea of life because to do otherwise might harm or even destroy us.

Being exposed is one of our greatest fears and if we let go we clearly step into the unknown where anything could happen, maybe even failure because if you live in one way for so long it is easier to maintain the status quo of your life rather than to risk fear, anxiety, or disorientation.  And so you hold on to those nets, but perhaps you will never reach your greatest potential.  And don’t we all want to be the best that we can possibly be?

You might ask, how do I know what my greatest potential is?  It’s by asking ‘What is God calling me to be?’.  Throughout our lives we must ask the same question at different junctures, “What is God calling me to now and how can I best achieve that call that God has placed upon me?”  Maybe, just maybe you’ll need to drop the net to follow Jesus into a deeper and clearer path.  A path of forgiveness, hope, healthy living and relationships, the path of devoted discipleship.  Let go. Drop the net.  Follow Jesus.

A former Clinical Pastoral Education supervisor of mine gave a blessing at the end of the program which to me it is reassuring, “When we walk to the edge of all the light we have, and step into the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen: there will be something solid for us to stand on, or we will be taught to fly.”

Dropping the nets to follow Jesus means you are walking into the world of unknown, the edge of the light, yes…but knowing that you will land on solid ground or will be taught to fly.  And that is faith.  That is following Jesus.

Amen

Come and See

John 1:29-42

I think that most of us can think back in time and remember a person who has influenced your life.  For me that person was my Jr. Year English teacher.  He was young and probably not much older than we were.  This was his first job out of college.  We all thought he was very cool.  He was not a warm and fuzzy teacher.  He was a deep thinker and serious.  He taught us words and philosophies such as existentialism.  You can just imagine how that went over with my conservative parents who sent me to a very conservative Lutheran High School to learn sound doctrine.

What this teacher did was to challenge us to think for ourselves; that we can make meaning of our lives through free will, choice, and personal responsibility.  While for us Congregationalists that sounds pretty consistent with our theology it was quite a different message than I had received in my life up until then.  He invited us to come along and see possibilities beyond our teenaged selves.

Maybe there is someone who has done that for you, maybe there are several people whom you’ve met that have transformed your living all because of the invitation to come and see, to expand your horizons.

That is the invitation that Jesus offers his newly called disciples in the scripture today.  Hear now this account in the Gospel of John…………. 

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

Shortly after, in fact the very next day, after John had baptized Jesus he sees Jesus coming towards him, it was a small world back then.  To everyone around, friends, acquaintances and passersby, John announces, “Here is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!”  WOW – that’s some grand introduction.  Can you imagine meeting Jesus in that way? The Agnus Dei?  The Lamb of God?  John really ups the anty for Jesus.  He takes Jesus humanity and trumps it with divinity.

Somehow I don’t think that is how Jesus would have introduced himself and yet John announces that Jesus is the source of all redemption, the Lamb of God.  But we should remember that John had experienced an epiphany just the day before when the heavens opened with a dove and a voice, “The heavens opened up.  I heard God’s voice proclaim love for his son.”

It was so profound for him that the next day John was with two of his own disciples and he started in again, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.”  His witnessing never stops!  But then again, when something remarkable happens to us, something that is transformational, don’t you just want to tell the world?  What John saw compelled him to share it with everyone.  He says, “I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.” 

Well, John’s two disciples decided to check this claim out for themselves. Right? Have you ever just become a believer in something because someone, who is especially displaying zealous (unique) behavior just tells you to?  Probably not.  You’d want to check it out for yourself.  So they went up to Jesus themselves and he sensed them following him.

“What are you looking for?”, he asked.  Well they probably had no clue of what they were looking for, so instead they asked him where he lived. They were confused!  “Come and See”, said Jesus.  So they went, they followed.

One of the disciples was Andrew and he brings Simon to Jesus and Jesus says to him, ‘you, Simon, are to be called Cephas, which means Peter.  And we know how Peter’s life was changed that day.  He dropped his fishing net and became an ardent follower of Jesus and we, as the church, are the legacies of Peter’s witness today all because of a great invitation, come and see.

It’s curious to think what Jesus could mean when he says, ‘come and see’. There is no doubt that when Jesus says ‘come and see’ he calls forth two actions from us.  First is to get out of our comfortable and complacent living spaces and to follow him even if you don’t know quite yet where he’s headed with you, he’ll show you the way.  He asks us to get up, to become aware of, t embrace his ways in all we do.

And the second is to open our eyes and see, just see, simply see.  It’s an invitation to see beyond your little world into the greater one around you. See what needs to be done, see how you have been given the gifts to do the things that need doing.  To see the gifts that you have rather than long for those you don’t have.  To see how you can use your creative spirit that God has entrusted to you for the good of the Kingdom of God here on earth. 

It means to follow him to the mountaintops and also into the deep dark valleys of humanity and open my eyes to the suffering and sadness.  To see the pain in another persons face and to sit with that pain; to help them hold that pain for as long as needed.  To see injustice and to witness a different way of living that can happen.

It is well to remember this weekend that the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. did just that.  He followed Jesus and loved deeply his Lord and because of that he saw that he must do all he could to end the terrorism perpetrated upon black men and women.  He’s remembered for making good speeches and that he marched, and that’s ok, but really it is about what he did for African Americans first and foremost.  He followed the invitation of Jesus to come and see the possibilities to effect change.  He lived as a black man in the 1960’s he was moved to active love, just love, non-violent resistance.  And isn’t that what Jesus is all about?

All Jesus asks is for us to ‘come and see’.  To follow in his ways and to see all of the infinite possibilities for our lives and those around us.  We each have been given the ability to effect change in some way, let us not waste what we have been given but accept this gracious invitation of love.     

Amen

Rev. Suzanne Wagner

A Baptized Life

Isaiah 42:1-9, Matthew 3:13-17

In the passage from Isaiah that we heard a few minutes ago, we are reminded that God is faithful to promises.  And in return God expects and wants the people Israel to live in a certain way. How they live, matters.

Righteousness, or right living that is congruent with God’s purposes and law, is one of the major themes expressed by the prophet Isaiah.  Israel is to serve God and “righteousness is expressed as compassionate justice, care for the poor and marginalized, humility and faithfulness that always point to God as the One who is at work for transformation.”[i] Israel is to establish justice not by brute force but by humility and endurance. This passage is about what is demanded of those who are called by God.

This call to reconciliation is what was heard by the people who were in exile in Babylon who were given a glimpse of freedom.  This call to establish justice was heard throughout the successive generations.  This call to righteousness, reconciliation, faithfulness was what must have been in Jesus’ heart and mind when he came to John that day for his baptism.  Jesus lived as a Jew and was brought up steeped in scripture of the Torah and the books of the Prophets. He knew what was required of him, his time had come.

Here now the account of this baptism from the Gospel according to Matthew, the third chapter:

Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him.  John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?”  But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.”  Then he consented.  And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.  And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matt 3:13-17)

Up until now Jesus had been living his life up North in the region of the Galilee and he comes to the Jordan River to be baptized by his cousin John.  This is the first recorded public appearance of Jesus as an adult according to Matthew. 

John had been out baptizing many people that day but when Jesus came to him he stopped.  ‘Wait a minute,’ he says, ‘I need to be baptized by you, not you by me!’  ‘Just do it’, says Jesus, ‘baptism is a fundamental part of living a righteous life’.  Isaiah’s words must have echoed in Jesus’ ear.  And then just as Jesus was coming up from his submersion in the Jordan the heavens broke open.  The Spirit of God, sort of like a dove, alighted on him.  And a voice from heaven reassured Jesus, ‘you are my son, you are marked by my love, I am delighted.’

Jesus then begins his ministry and a short lifetime of following the precepts of God.  Jesus never points to himself, always to God as the source.  So with Isaiah in his heart he begins a life of servant hood.  That’s what was conferred on him that day in the Jordan River under the hot wilderness sun.  Baptism set him apart to be about the work of God.  It’s been said that “Baptism is a once in a lifetime event but it takes a lifetime to complete”.  Jesus lived his baptized life until the end and so do we.

One year ago I preached my first sermon here at Orange.  And, like today, we celebrated the Baptism of Jesus. I’m sure you remember the words of my first sermon (!!), when I said that we were beginning a baptized life together. That this interim time could be one of the most exhilarating, affirming and exciting times in the life of this congregation because you are not bound by ‘should’s’ but surrounded by ‘what if’s’.  I also said that the work we do together is essential and with Christ leading us we can do great and wonderful ministry together as a community of baptized believers. 

So how are we doing?  Have we maintained our baptized life together, striving to do the will of God, and not our own?  Has everything we’ve done furthered the mission of the church?  Have we followed Christ, could we count ourselves as disciples?  Have we made a difference in Orange, in the surrounding communities, and in your personal life? 

Making a difference is what we are about, that is, making a spiritual difference.  How do you think the spiritual vitality of OCC is?              We all have ‘vitals’, you know blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate, etc.  These are our bodily functions that let a doctor know how your body is operating.  You can’t go out dancing when your heart rate is too fast!  You can’t sing an aria or even “Jesus Loves Me” if you lung capacity is far below its functioning level!   

Same thing is true of a congregation.  If a congregation’s spiritually vital then it is functioning nicely.  And if not they will feel as if they are spinning their wheels and going nowhere, dancing to a tune that never ends.  What are functioning vital signs of a spiritually healthy congregation?

Well to name a few your focus is ALWAYS on God – Jesus Christ - God is why we are here – God is why we exist together as a congregation.  If you loose God – you’ll loose your way.

God is your purpose, God is the heartbeat of a congregation.  Does each meeting begin and end in prayer asking God for guidance of the Spirit?  A spiritually vital congregation asks, what would please God most when we make decisions?

Another spiritually vital sign is your spiritual health.  Do we help one another reach God’s greatest potential for our lives?  Making disciples is just not about ‘church growth’, it’s about growing your own discipleship and what it means to follow Jesus.  It means paying attention to your own spiritual welfare and being.

Are our doors open to all, do we extend that most extravagant welcome to every soul?  Yes, you might say.  But how will people know?  How will those who have been hurt by the church know that it can be a safe haven offering reconciliation and hope?  We have such an important part to play in ministering to all of God’s children.  

I believe that we all thirst for a spiritual connection to something greater beyond ourselves and the church can be that place where we can find community, connection and contentment.  It is where we can live out our baptized life together.

Figuring this out together is a part of bringing our Baptismal promises to bear at this time and in this place.  We are the keepers right now of this sacramental act.

Baptism sets us apart to do God’s work.  Our baptism is not over when the water dries for when the water dries it is just the beginning for us.  Our baptism sets us apart, not because we are special, but because we now carry the mark and ministry of Christ and the command to love God and to love our neighbor.  And to do both means that we uphold the ethical standards that God has set out for us and to work towards justice, equality, reconciliation and freedom.

The seeds of a Christian life are sown at our baptism.  May those seeds be nurtured again and again and may they grow into a life that’s filled with the word and work of Christ for we are called as disciples claimed long ago through our baptism.

Amen. 

---

[i] Kate Huey, Weekly Seeds, UCC.org, for January 9, 2011.