Sermon for 1.16.11

Scriptures for today are here: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpi2_RCL.html

SERMON NOTES FOR 1.16.11

Glory to God whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.

I was at a conference this week called Gathering of Leaders, for Episcopal priests engaged in transformational ministries like church planting. One of the other participants was the rector of Trinity Church, Asbury Park, NJ, David Stout. He became the rector there 7 years ago, and since then, the church has increased average Sunday attendance from 45 to 280. But if you’re like me, the first thing you want to ask the rector of Trinity Asbury Park is not, how did you lead this remarkable renaissance – but have you ever seen Bruce Springsteen? Because of course Asbury Park’s one claim to fame, as far as I know, is that it is the boyhood home of arguably the biggest rock star of last 35 years.

He laughed indulgently when I asked him this question, as if he had never heard the question before (although I heard at least two other people asking the same question at the conference), and told me this story: Trinity Church has a soup kitchen to feed the many homeless people in their area. Two years ago the Health Dept. was ready to shut them down because they needed a $3,000 commercial sink. They were interviewed on local radio about the problem because they just didn’t have the money and didn’t know what they were going to do. Two days later a check for $15,000 arrived in the mail from guess who. Apparently Bruce Springsteen still listens to Asbury Park local radio.

But even more striking: Bruce heard the story of what this congregation was doing to transform lives and decided to be a part of it, help make it possible. What a blessing to be able to help God’s mission in this way. Money truly empowers mission and is one of the things that makes it possible. We don’t all have the power to write $15,000 checks, though some do. But we all have the power to be part of God’s mission in some significant way. When you see Christ’s power at work in the world, it’s hard not to want to be a part of it – because Christ’s power is absolutely life-changing.

All three scriptures today are about how God calls us to be partners in God’s life-changing ministry of transforming the world. In our reading from Isaiah, the prophet tells us about his call to become a prophet, an agent of God’s life-changing power. Before he was born, he says, God formed him to be a prophet – the prophet genes are in his DNA. Remember who a prophet is – not a fortune-teller, but someone who sees where God is working and calls people to join in that transforming work. A prophet is someone like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we celebrate this weekend, who gave his life for his ministry of prophecy (as public servants too often do – as we saw in Tucson last week). The ministry of the prophet is a lonely and dangerous one, as both MLK and Isaiah discover. But there is comfort: we are not all called to be prophets, though at some point we are all required in some way to listen to prophets, hard as it may be. But, the Bible is clear, we are all called to some kind of ministry. We are all agents of God’s transformation, called to use the gifts and talents God created us with, in some kind of ministry of God’s justice & love. Because following Christ means being part of God’s work in the world, an agent of God’s transformation.

And how are we to react when given the impossible task of transforming the world It won’t necessarily be easy, says Paul in the letter to Corinthians today, but it won’t be impossible either. Anything that God calls us to do is possible, says, Paul, because God has already given our church communities every gift we need to answer God’s call. One person is given the gift of healing, one the gift of prayer, another the gift of leadership, another the gift of teaching, etc. One individual doesn’t have all the gifts, but a church community together has all the gifts they need to accomplish whatever God calls them to do. Which is one reason we are called to be part of church communities, instead of worshiping on the golf course – all of us are called to take part in the community’s call to transform the world around us. In the words of retired Bishop Claude Payne of Texas, we are a community of miraculous expectation – if Christ is present, miracles occur routinely, and each of us has our part to play in making miracles happen. Whatever it is that we are called to do by the circumstances of our lives and the situations we find ourselves in, whatever God calls our communities to become, God has given us the strength and the means to do it already.

If we are a community of miraculous expectation, the challenge our gospel lesson gives us today shouldn’t be too difficult – the challenge of evangelism – sharing the good news of Christ with others. In our gospel lesson, John the Baptizer points to Jesus, and two of his disciples follow Jesus. Jesus turns and asks them: what are you looking for? A profound question each of us could ask ourselves – what are we looking for? What brings us to seek out this Jesus, to be one of his followers? What kind of personal or world transformation are we asking for? Maybe Jesus’ question is a warning: do you truly want to see and feel the power of God at work in you? Because if not, Jesus isn’t the person to follow.

Perhaps it’s too big a question, so they ask him a smaller question – where are you staying? And he invites them to come and see. We don’t know what they saw, but we know that it was powerful enough and amazing enough that they couldn’t keep it to themselves. The next day Andrew brings his brother Simon, Peter or Cephas. And John’s gospel goes on to tell us of ever-widening circles of invitation and sight, as more people are invited to see Jesus and stay with him. The power of God at work is so transformative that people can’t keep it a secret – once people see it in action, they have to share it. Being a community of miraculous expectation means that we routinely expect Christ to transform the lives of not only ourselves, but others too.

I read an article this week by Anglican bishop Bill Atwood, who tells of meeting an old retired priest in the 70s, who told him this story. His Bishop hired him in the late 30s to plant a church in a small town in the US. The priest knew exactly how to go about it, and knew he couldn’t do it alone. So he called for help: he hired – get this – an engineer, an architect and a builder. He bought tickets for them all to go to England, toured the English countryside until they found the perfect English village church, created blueprints from the church, bought native stone in England to be shipped to the US, and came back and built that church – an authentic reproduction of an English village church. As a church planter, I said – what??? I read that story with astonishment. You want to plant a church, so you hire an architect? That’s the old model of doing church – the model where you expect everyone to be Christian, so if you come to town and open an Episcopal franchise, you might attract people away from the Presbyterian franchise, the same way they might choose McDonald’s over Burger King.

But things aren’t like that in our world any more. It was clear to me from the beginning of planting this church that a church is not a building; to plant a church, you don’t build a building, you build a community. The building will come in time – I have confidence in that. But people don’t come to church to see a building, except perhaps out of mild aesthetic appreciation – if it’s really a church, then people come to church to see the authentic power of Christ at work – and when they see Christ working and transforming lives, there is no power that will keep them away.

I see an amazing power of Christ at work here at Nativity – a power that enables us to build houses with Habitat for Humanity; to give blood, to donate blankets for Navajo youth to give to the homeless, to provide Christmas presents for children and young people, to provide food, education and medical care for barrio children, etc. I see the power of Christ at work in our children and youth, who are growing together as a community of young people who love God and love each other, experiencing amazing growth and transformation to equip them for life. I see the power of work among our ministries of healing, prayer, meals for the sick, as we live out the power of Christ in our care for each other. I see the power of Christ at work in our ministries of worship, which provide our own touchstone to God who strengthens each one of us for ministry. And I see the power of Christ at work in people in our congregation who go out from here to live out that power in their everyday lives, as teachers, healers, bankers, businesspeople, parents, friends, neighbors.

The transformation Christ asks for is the revolutionary power of love that spreads through every place that Christians gather, live or work. So Christ asks each one of us to pray and think about how we are called to live out that power of love, in church and in the rest of our lives. And Christ gives each one of us a call to evangelism, a word that simply means, telling the good news. It means saying, I’ve found something that means a lot to me, and I invite you to come see for yourself.

A book I’m reading on evangelism (Unbinding the Gospel, by Martha Grace Reece) says most mainline Protestant churches aren’t “how” churches but “why” churches. A “how” church wants to know what steps to follow to do evangelism. A “why” church wants to know why to do evangelism. A “why” church is where someone says, You do evangelism, I’m going to go alphabetize the Sunday school closet. Episcopal churches have been a “why” church for too long – which is why we plant churches by building buildings rather than building communities. A church founded like that is at risk of becoming a nice club to belong to instead of a community of miraculous expectation. No wonder many Episcopal churches are in decline.

But we are part of a community of miraculous expectation. Which is why I think we are called to invite others, why we bother to do evangelism: the reason is, Christ has made a life-transforming difference in my life, I have felt the power of God working in me, Christ is transforming the lives of other people around me and other people I don’t even know. Life transformation means simply inviting others to come and see Jesus. When the power of Christ is at work, Christ will do the rest. So we say: Glory to God, whose power working in us can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine. Glory to God in the highest.

Sermon for 1.9.11

Scriptures for today are found here: http://www.io.com/~kellywp/YearA_RCL/Epiphany/AEpi1_RCL.html

We wake up this morning in a world that has been shocked by an act of senseless violence. Eighteen people were shot by a lone gunman in Tucson yesterday. Six of them died, including a 9-year-old girl and a federal judge. And a U.S. Congresswoman is in very critical condition, fighting for her life. It is heartbreaking and horrifying, and it reminds us that people die in senseless acts of violence every day. And it makes us wonder how to make sense of what is happening in our world and our country.

And then we come to church and hear this lovely story of Jesus going down to the river to be baptized, and we have to ask ourselves, what does this nice sweet story have to do with a world where a horrible shooting like yesterday’s in Tucson can occur. What, in fact, does it have to do with the everyday lives that most of us lead?

Heather Murray Elkins, professor of preaching and worship at Drew Theological Seminary, tells this story that might help us begin to make a connection. She was leading a pastor’s retreat, several days long. At the beginning, she instructed the pastors gathered to spend the next few days searching through the Bible for a story that told their own story. The Word speaks through our lives, she says, the Word is living and active. And somewhere in it we should each be able to find our own story, the story that utters us. And that story will give us a new name, a Biblical name that speaks our lives.

On the last day of conference, she asked each person to tell their biblical name. She set up a circle of chairs with one chair in the center, and each person took a turn to tell their biblical name, and explain how it told their story. They took turns, names were spoken: Jacob, Rebekah, Mary, Peter, John. Then it came turn for one young man to sit in the center chair, and he sat. He sat for a long time in silence, till the silence became uncomfortable and people began to fidget and look at their watches. Finally, Heather asked: “Do you have a name to speak for us?”

He said: ‘I can’t speak a name from the Bible, because I have another name. This name is so strong that no other name can overcome it. My father gave me this name, and it was repeated so often that it has become a part of me. I can’t imagine myself by any other name.”

Silence fell again. Finally, Heather asked: “What is this name? Will you share it?” And the young man answered: “My name is, Not Good Enough.” And he began to cry.

The pastors all sat in silence, shocked. Someone was drowning, said Heather, and here we were, a room full of lifeguards, and no one knew what to do. But after a moment, a spirit swept the room, she said, like a wind, or maybe just an impulse, and one by one, people stood, walked to him, laid hands on him. And several of them began to speak, words they hadn’t rehearsed, words that came to each one separately. One after another they said these words: “You are my Child, my Beloved. With you I am well pleased.”

We don’t have any way of knowing how Jesus felt when he was baptized. We don’t know what made him one day put down his hammer, take off his apron, and walk out of his father’s carpenter shop, and walk south to find his crazy cousin John on the banks of the river Jordan. We don’t know what struck him as he listened to his cousin preach about One who was to come, who would baptize with water and fire, or what made him decide to walk down into the river and wade in the water. We don’t know whether he felt he was good enough to be the Messiah.

What we know was that he apparently answered the call to baptism, not because he needed his sins forgiven, but simply because it was God’s call. And we know that as he emerged, dripping, from the baptismal water, he heard a voice that named him, affirmed him, and loved him. “You are my Son, my Beloved. With you I am well pleased.”

All 4 gospels tell us that Jesus’ baptism was the beginning of his ministry. That somehow this affirmation of his identity as God’s Beloved Son was foundational to everything Jesus would ever accomplish or teach or lead. It was in a sense, his commissioning ceremony, his anointing as the Messiah. It was the moment when God’s affirmation gave Jesus his identity, and his identity empowered him for his world-transforming mission.

On this first Sunday after the end of the 12 days of Christmas, the question of Jesus’ identity is fresh in our minds. We know who Jesus was: the Son of God. But it helps for us to understand what the people who first gave him that title would have meant by it. When people of Jesus’ time said that Jesus was the Son of God, they would have had in mind what a son was in their culture. A son was not only expected to enter into his father’s business. A son was considered to represent his father in every way – if the father was honored and respected, so was the son, and vice versa. You could look at a son and understand who his father was.

With Jesus, this title of Son of God tells us this: if Jesus is the Son of God, then we know that Jesus is like God, Jesus is God-like. This was utterly shocking to the people of Jesus’ time, for a person to claim to be God-like. So shocking that it is one reason they put him to death. But it gets even more shocking the more you think about it, because the converse is also true: if God is Jesus’ father, then we know that God is Jesus-like. God does all the things that Jesus does. God eats with sinners, God heals the sick, God proclaims good news to the poor, God opens the eyes of the blind, God says to love our enemies and then puts that love into action by forgiving his killers from the cross, God gives his own life for the sake of the people he loves. This is God, the creator of heaven and earth, who is claiming Jesus for his Son, and on the cross it is God who is dying for us.

And the implications go on and on, because it doesn’t stop there. Not only is Jesus God-like and not only is God Jesus-like – shocking though those are. Here’s the kicker: in our baptisms, God is claiming us as God’s children too. We become one with Jesus in our baptism. And that means that we too have become God-like. And in claiming us, in becoming one of us, God has become like us. We can look at each other and say: you are baptized. And that means that God is Bob-like, God is Susan-like, God is Christine-like, God is Dorothy-like. We can look at each other, baptized children of God, and see God in each other.

Now sit with that for a moment. Sit with that idea: I am a baptized child of God, and that means that God said to me: You are my beloved child, and with you I am well pleased. Now ask yourself: what are the implications of that as I live out my life?

It is said that Martin Luther, the prophet of the Reformation, as he was trapped in a castle in Wartburg, hiding from the church officials who wanted to bring him to trial, struggled with the darkness of despair. And as he struggled, he would repeat to himself over and over: I am baptized, I am baptized, I am baptized. He wrote it on a sign above his bed, he scratched it into the wood of his desk. That assurance of who he was and how much he was loved gave him the strength he needed to continue his mission. So much that throughout life, he would tell others: Remember your baptism.

Many of us were baptized as infants, and we can’t remember the event. But that’s not what Martin Luther meant by “remember your baptism.” We remember our baptism by living into it, by accepting our identity as children of God, by realizing that as God’s children we have been initiated into the family business: to heal the sick, to associate with sinners and all those in need of God’s love, to open the eyes of the blind, to proclaim good news to the poor, to give ourselves for each other, to change the world.

We remember our baptism when we work to bring justice and peace to our hurting world, a world in a sad and troubled state that was brought home to the citizens of Arizona forcefully yesterday in that terrible shooting of 18 people. A world where a senseless act of violence like this can happen is a world where people have forgotten about God’s love, where people are failing to see God’s image in one another, where anger and violence has taken the place of careful and compassionate debate, where people have forgotten the spirit of God that dwells in them and in others around them, where people think it’s okay to see each other as objects instead of beloved children of God. Our world is in desperate need of God’s love, it’s crying out for people willing to live out a ministry of love, remembering our baptism.

Which is what we do today, on this celebration of the baptism of Jesus. Not just remember his baptism, but also remember our own. Remember who we are and whose we are. Remember that we are like God, and God is like us. Which means that no matter what names the world has given us, no matter what life situation we struggle with, no matter who we think we are or who we have been told we are, only one thing matters, only one name defines us, only one label will be ours for eternity: We are God’s children, God’s beloved. And because we are God’s children, God empowers us to change the world.

Heather Murray Elkins continued her story of the young man who believed his only name was, “Not Good Enough.” She says that after the conference was over and everything was packed up, she saw him in the parking lot and went over to him. She asked, “I have to know, will what happened make any difference to you?” He answered, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. But I feel like something inside me had been broken, and it’s not any more. And what I do know is that it will make a difference every time I baptize someone else. Every time I hold a child in my arms to baptize him, or every time I put my hand into the water to name another human being, I will remember who he is, and I will remember who I am.”

And that, she says, is the secret of our baptism.

We are God’s beloved children, and in us God is well pleased.