The Last Sunday after the Epiphany—Year A
March 6, 2011
Today is the last Sunday after the Epiphany—a season of light in which we celebrate the manifestation of the glory of God in the person of Jesus Christ. In our readings today we get a few more glimpses of the glory of God in Moses’ encounter with God on Sinai and in Jesus’ transfiguration as witnessed by his three disciples.
In our reading today from Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has already set his face toward Jerusalem when he takes his three closest disciples up the mountain with him where they witness his transfiguration. I wonder what those three disciples expected when they made that journey up the mountain with Jesus? Surely they didn’t expect to witness, first hand, the glory of God? Do any of us ever really expect to encounter the glory of God?
I think that we can relate to both the disciples and to Moses who witnessed God’s glory in slightly different ways. God calls Moses to come up the mountain to meet God and to wait indefinitely, not knowing when God will reveal God’s glory to Moses. And we get that, don’t we? We try to follow God’s call, but so much of our life is bound up in the waiting, and sometimes it is in how we wait that we live into God’s call in our lives.
And then sometimes the weight of God’s glory can steal upon a person, amidst both the holy and the mundane events of life. I have encountered the weight of God’s glory in the most mundane events—putting my children to bed, in a conversation or a meal; and I have encountered God’s glory in the holy moments—when you have shared details of your life stories with me, when I look into your shining faces as you kneel before God’s table. Sometimes God’s glory steals upon me when I witness people being able to set aside their own egos and agendas and to work together for the greater good.
Jesus’s three disciples were surprised by God’s glory in their trip up the mountain, and when God speaks to them, they are pressed to the ground under the weight of God’s glory and under the thrall of their own fear. They are raised up out of their fear by the glory of God as they encounter it anew in the touch of their friend and teacher and in his assurance to them: Do not be afraid. Then he leads them down the mountain and tells them to not speak of his glory until after many things have come to pass. And so they go about their lives.
One of the temptations that we face in this life, that we may encounter in the wilderness of this coming Lent, is the temptation to seek after our own glory, or in the absence of the evident presence of God’s glory, to try to manufacture some in our lives. We are like the children of Israel who see the initial signs of God’s glory up on Mt Sinai, but after Moses is away from them for 40 days and 40 nights, they begin to crave more evidence of glory, and so they attempt to manufacture their own, crafting the golden calf out of their gold.
So what is the good news in this? What are we to do when faced with the weight of God’s glory or when faced with the apparent lack of it?
Henri Nouwen wrote about how he struggled with the temptation of replacing God’s glory with his own, and he wrote about how he would pray and wrestle with the question of “how to live for the glory of God and not for your own glory.” Finally, he received some wise counsel from the abbot at the monastery where he was staying. Nouwen writes, “Well the first thing is to realize that you are the glory of God. In Genesis you can read: ‘Yahweh God fashioned man of dust from the soil. Then he breathed into his nostrils a breath of life, and thus man became a living being’ (Gen 2:7). We live because we share God’s breath, God’s glory. The question is not so much, ‘How to live for the glory of God’ but ‘How to live who we are, how to make true our deepest self?’ With a smile [the abbot] said, ‘Take this as your koan: ‘I am the glory of God.’ Make that thought the center of your meditation so that it slowly becomes not a thought but a living reality. You are the place where God chose to dwell…and the spiritual life is nothing more or less than to …create the space where [God’s] glory can manifest itself. …Ask yourself ‘Where is the glory of God? If the glory of God is not there where I am, where else can it be?”
“You are the glory of God.” The glory of God is revealed this day, not just in our worship, but in each of you, in each of your lives. And the gift of its surprise this day, if we can hold fast to its truth, will carry us through the wilderness of Lent, through the times in our lives when we are called to wait, to carry out the ordinary rhythms of life. It will carry us through the times of inconsolable sorrow, of boredom, of weariness.
How might each of our lives be transfigured if we can hold fast to the truth of this day—that each of us is a part of God’s glory and that it is never far away from us. It is always there, waiting to surprise us?
“You are the glory of God.” What a powerful statement! One that may make us wish to fall to the floor under the weight of its burden and our own fears. What must be expected of us if we are truly the glory of God? What must we do to live into that?
We make manifest the glory of God when we actively follow the way of Jesus in our lives: when we comfort the poor, pity the afflicted, when we offer hope and healing to those who have little, when we deliberately treat others with kindness and mercy. We live into the glory of God that is within us when we forgive others, when we choose life over death, blessings over curses. We become the glory of God when we live for others and not for ourselves alone; when we consider the impact that the way we live our lives and spend our money has on other people in our own society and around the world. We live into the glory of God when we hold fast to the hope of the resurrection, even in the darkest moments of our lives. We make space for the glory of God in our lives when we love God and when we love others.
Let us pray. O God, who before the passion of your only¬begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
7th Sunday after Epiphany Year A
7th Sunday after Epiphany
February 20, 2011
There once was a woman who had been married for 28 years. She and her husband had gotten a divorce because he had been having an affair with a much younger woman. He went on to re-marry this younger woman, and they and the former wife were all present at a social engagement. Through the whole evening, the ex-wife spent her time sending venomous looks toward the happy couple and rehashing all of the details of her betrayal with the person sitting next to her at dinner. Finally, when she was leaving, she said to her dinner companion, “Now you can understand why I am so happy to be rid of him!” Her dinner companion countered: “But you are not rid of him! In fact, you are more married to him right now than you have ever been. In fact, you are his prisoner. Until you forgive him you have completely bound yourself to him and to his new wife…” The woman responded: “I’ll never give him the satisfaction. Forgive him? I’ll see him burn in hell first, even if I have to go down there with him to stoke the fire.”
There was another man who was a young African student of theology studying in the United States. He received word, one night, that men in uniforms armed with guns, grenades, swords and clubs had entered his home village in Rwanda and killed about 70 people there, many of whom were his friends, neighbors, church members and included most of his family. At first this young man wanted to wreak vengeance upon those who had murdered all those dearest to him. But as he studied and prayed and prayed some more, he became convicted that God was calling him to a ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation in his home country of Rwanda, and he knew that he had to begin by forgiving those who had killed all those whom he loved.
How are some people able to forgive when they are injured while others are consumed by their desire for vengeance, even when it poisons their own life?
How do we live into God’s command to be holy? A people who are set apart, a people who forgive and do not seek vengeance? How do we, as disciples of Jesus Christ, choose life and organize our lives around the missions of love of the other and peace? How do we live into his seemingly impossible command to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”?
In our Old Testament reading for today, which is the only time our Revised Common Lectionary has us read anything from Leviticus, we get a glimpse of the heart of the Torah, what is known as the holiness code. “The Lord spoke to Moses saying: ‘Speak to all the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy…’ ‘You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord’.”
And in our gospel, we have Jesus’s continued teaching for his disciples in this week’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount: “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…”
Both of these readings are so very powerful and challenging to us because they are portraits of the very heart of God. They show that God acts out of love and concern for the other; that God chooses peace and harmony over vengeance and retribution. They show us that God loves the unlovable, suffers the worst that humanity can offer, and then rises to forgive us.
These reading remind us that God calls us to holiness, to being set apart from the way that the world works; Jesus calls us to discipleship, to perfection, to being complete in God; and in this call, we are, once again, asked to make a choice: to choose life over death, blessings over curses, reconciliation over retribution, peace over vengeance, the way of Jesus (the way of the cross) over the way of the world.
“You shall be holy…” God tells God’s people. It is both a command and a promise of fulfillment. We cannot be holy on our own. The very nature of holiness is that it belongs to God, and for anything to be holy other than God, then it must be somehow marked by God. In Christ’s humanity, God’s holiness was pleased to dwell, and when we are baptized into Jesus Christ, we are “marked as Christ’s own forever;” we share in his holiness. The goal of the children of God, the goal of discipleship in Jesus Christ, therefore, is imitating God. It is loving how God loves.
I am the Lord…God says again and again to the children of Israel in the reading for today. It is God’s refrain in this call to holiness, and it serves to remind us that we cannot live into God’s call for us, we cannot live into Jesus’s call for our discipleship, when we are focused on ourselves. We must look at God Incarnate, we must look to Jesus Christ as the model for holiness, as the model for peace, as the model for our lives, as the model for how we love as God loves; and we must work to imitate him. In that process of imitation, the Holy Spirit will transform us, more and more, into the image and likeness of Christ. And in that way, we become, every day, more and more holy.
There once were two parents of a five year old little boy. One day this boy slipped away from his nanny and went to the nearby small military base to play with ‘his’ soldiers. On that day, one of the soldiers put the boy up on a horse-drawn bread wagon, and let him go for a ride. As they were passing through a gate on a bumpy cobblestone path, the boy leaned sideways and his head got stuck between the door post and the wagon. The horses kept going. The boy died on the way to the hospital, a son lost to parents who adored him. When the soldier whose carelessness had caused the little boy’s death went to court, the boy’s parents insisted that they would not press charges saying, “Why should one more mother be plunged into grief, this time because the life of her son, a good boy but careless in a crucial moment, was ruined by the hands of justice.” After the solider was discharged from the army and went home unpunished, the father of the little boy would make the two day journey to visit the young soldier because he said he was concerned for the soldier and wanted to talk to him once more of God’s love, which is greater than our accusing hearts, and of the parents’ forgiveness.
Those two parents were able to forgive the soldier because they looked to God and remembered how God had forgiven them. It was not an easy choice; choosing life never is, and they lived with the pain of their loss their entire lives. But they embraced God’s call to holiness in their lives. They lived into the call of their discipleship in our Lord Jesus Christ as they loved the unlovable in imitation of God.
May we have the courage to go and do likewise.
February 20, 2011
There once was a woman who had been married for 28 years. She and her husband had gotten a divorce because he had been having an affair with a much younger woman. He went on to re-marry this younger woman, and they and the former wife were all present at a social engagement. Through the whole evening, the ex-wife spent her time sending venomous looks toward the happy couple and rehashing all of the details of her betrayal with the person sitting next to her at dinner. Finally, when she was leaving, she said to her dinner companion, “Now you can understand why I am so happy to be rid of him!” Her dinner companion countered: “But you are not rid of him! In fact, you are more married to him right now than you have ever been. In fact, you are his prisoner. Until you forgive him you have completely bound yourself to him and to his new wife…” The woman responded: “I’ll never give him the satisfaction. Forgive him? I’ll see him burn in hell first, even if I have to go down there with him to stoke the fire.”
There was another man who was a young African student of theology studying in the United States. He received word, one night, that men in uniforms armed with guns, grenades, swords and clubs had entered his home village in Rwanda and killed about 70 people there, many of whom were his friends, neighbors, church members and included most of his family. At first this young man wanted to wreak vengeance upon those who had murdered all those dearest to him. But as he studied and prayed and prayed some more, he became convicted that God was calling him to a ministry of forgiveness and reconciliation in his home country of Rwanda, and he knew that he had to begin by forgiving those who had killed all those whom he loved.
How are some people able to forgive when they are injured while others are consumed by their desire for vengeance, even when it poisons their own life?
How do we live into God’s command to be holy? A people who are set apart, a people who forgive and do not seek vengeance? How do we, as disciples of Jesus Christ, choose life and organize our lives around the missions of love of the other and peace? How do we live into his seemingly impossible command to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”?
In our Old Testament reading for today, which is the only time our Revised Common Lectionary has us read anything from Leviticus, we get a glimpse of the heart of the Torah, what is known as the holiness code. “The Lord spoke to Moses saying: ‘Speak to all the people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy…’ ‘You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord’.”
And in our gospel, we have Jesus’s continued teaching for his disciples in this week’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount: “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…”
Both of these readings are so very powerful and challenging to us because they are portraits of the very heart of God. They show that God acts out of love and concern for the other; that God chooses peace and harmony over vengeance and retribution. They show us that God loves the unlovable, suffers the worst that humanity can offer, and then rises to forgive us.
These reading remind us that God calls us to holiness, to being set apart from the way that the world works; Jesus calls us to discipleship, to perfection, to being complete in God; and in this call, we are, once again, asked to make a choice: to choose life over death, blessings over curses, reconciliation over retribution, peace over vengeance, the way of Jesus (the way of the cross) over the way of the world.
“You shall be holy…” God tells God’s people. It is both a command and a promise of fulfillment. We cannot be holy on our own. The very nature of holiness is that it belongs to God, and for anything to be holy other than God, then it must be somehow marked by God. In Christ’s humanity, God’s holiness was pleased to dwell, and when we are baptized into Jesus Christ, we are “marked as Christ’s own forever;” we share in his holiness. The goal of the children of God, the goal of discipleship in Jesus Christ, therefore, is imitating God. It is loving how God loves.
I am the Lord…God says again and again to the children of Israel in the reading for today. It is God’s refrain in this call to holiness, and it serves to remind us that we cannot live into God’s call for us, we cannot live into Jesus’s call for our discipleship, when we are focused on ourselves. We must look at God Incarnate, we must look to Jesus Christ as the model for holiness, as the model for peace, as the model for our lives, as the model for how we love as God loves; and we must work to imitate him. In that process of imitation, the Holy Spirit will transform us, more and more, into the image and likeness of Christ. And in that way, we become, every day, more and more holy.
There once were two parents of a five year old little boy. One day this boy slipped away from his nanny and went to the nearby small military base to play with ‘his’ soldiers. On that day, one of the soldiers put the boy up on a horse-drawn bread wagon, and let him go for a ride. As they were passing through a gate on a bumpy cobblestone path, the boy leaned sideways and his head got stuck between the door post and the wagon. The horses kept going. The boy died on the way to the hospital, a son lost to parents who adored him. When the soldier whose carelessness had caused the little boy’s death went to court, the boy’s parents insisted that they would not press charges saying, “Why should one more mother be plunged into grief, this time because the life of her son, a good boy but careless in a crucial moment, was ruined by the hands of justice.” After the solider was discharged from the army and went home unpunished, the father of the little boy would make the two day journey to visit the young soldier because he said he was concerned for the soldier and wanted to talk to him once more of God’s love, which is greater than our accusing hearts, and of the parents’ forgiveness.
Those two parents were able to forgive the soldier because they looked to God and remembered how God had forgiven them. It was not an easy choice; choosing life never is, and they lived with the pain of their loss their entire lives. But they embraced God’s call to holiness in their lives. They lived into the call of their discipleship in our Lord Jesus Christ as they loved the unlovable in imitation of God.
May we have the courage to go and do likewise.
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
6th Sunday after Epiphany sermon Year A
6th Sunday after Epiphany—Year A
February 13, 2011
There is nothing like death to help give us perspective on life and how we are living it. Moses shares some of his own insight with us and the Children of Israel as he faces his own impending death on the outskirts of the Promised Land and as the Children of Israel prepare to enter the Promised Land and begin their new life there.
“Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and adversity…I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life.”
There at the end of his life, Moses encounters the reality that most of us are not able to choose the manner of our death, but that our lives are made up of millions of opportunities in which we are allowed to choose between adversity and prosperity, curses and blessings, death and life.
In his valedictory sermon, Moses doesn’t just tell the Children of Israel to choose between life and death, blessings and curses. He tells them how they may choose death or choose life. You choose death, he says, when your hearts turn away from God; when you do not listen to God, when you do not obey; you choose death when you bow down and serve other gods.
You choose life, he says, when you love the Lord your God. You choose life when you walk in God’s ways and when you observe God’s commandments. You choose life when you hold fast to God.
Jesus’s message in today’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount is a much harsher and hyperbolic way of articulating this choice between death and life. “Let your word be ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no,’” Jesus tells his disciples. Others have said this in various ways: “You’re either for us or against us.” “Do… or do not….There is no try.”
Choose life.
Jesus speaks strong words about the choices people face over the course of their lives: the choices of nursing and nurturing our anger against one who has wronged us or one whom we have wronged versus doing the difficult work of forgiveness and reconciliation. In this he tells us to choose reconciliation, choose life. He speaks of the choice of lusting after another, of coveting aspects of another’s life versus being reconciled with the reality of our own lives and what we have, and again he urges us to choose reconciliation, to choose contentment, to choose life.
He speaks of divorce and urges people to work to preserve marriage, and he lays out again the choice between divorce versus reconciliation. When at all possible, choose reconciliation; choose life. Finally, he offers the choice between making false vows versus reconciliation between your values and your action, reconciliation between your words and your works. Choose reconciliation; choose life.
In his piece of the Sermon for today, Jesus says that the Way of God is the path of reconciliation; it includes being reconciled with ourselves, who we are, the reality of our lives, and being reconciled with others, rather than holding onto our anger, past wrongs or injustices. Choosing life means knowing and believing that no matter what we have done, God continues to reach out to us, that we do not have to live a life of curses, of adversity, of death; we may accept God’s forgiveness and our restored relationship as God’s beloved that we might choose life.
Again and again we are offered this choice, between death and life. It is the choice between living our lives for ourselves alone, not worrying about who we crush to get what we want versus striving for justice for all people and care for the poor, searching for something deeper than our own comfort. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between living our lives in a rush to meet deadlines that are, in the scheme of things, completely insignificant, and ordering our lives around those lesser things versus spending time with those who are dearest to us, and letting them know how precious they are in our sights. And we are urged to choose life.
It is the choice between shutting down our emotions, not dealing with the reality of grief and loss in our lives versus acknowledging our losses and grieving…. grieving well. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between shuttling our children through the countless round of sports and activities, expecting as much or more from them than we expect from ourselves versus spending some time every day playing with them, enjoying their childhood, and sharing in their joy that they so freely give. And we are urged to choose life.
It is the choice between being polite and saying what we think the other wants to hear, our tongues held captive by the fear of hurting feelings versus speaking the truth in love when the truth begs to be told. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between making all our decisions, living our lives based on fear versus living our lives out of a deep and abiding hope that nothing can separate us from God’s love. And we are urged to choose hope, choose life.
It is the choice between bowing down and serving anything less than God: ideas that are not worthy, the demands and priorities of our culture, our own over- programmed calendars, our jobs, our loneliness, our despair, our own deep control needs and plans for how our lives should go versus holding fast to God, offering to God nothing less than our whole hearts during worship, praying, and giving thanks for all of God’s good gifts. And we are urged to choose life.
And here’s the really good news in all of this. We are always offered the choice, and even when we continue to choose death, for whatever reason, God can and will redeem that too, if we will let God. God can take the death that we choose, and God offers us in its place reconciliation… redemption…. resurrection.
It is the power and the hope of the resurrection: that God’s love is stronger than anything this world has to offer—stronger than our bad choices, stronger than evil and hate, stronger than anything. God’s love is stronger than death. So when we choose God, we choose life.
I discovered a quote from Garrison Keillor this week, that I will close with this morning: “Thank you God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.” Amen.
February 13, 2011
There is nothing like death to help give us perspective on life and how we are living it. Moses shares some of his own insight with us and the Children of Israel as he faces his own impending death on the outskirts of the Promised Land and as the Children of Israel prepare to enter the Promised Land and begin their new life there.
“Today I have set before you life and prosperity, death and adversity…I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life.”
There at the end of his life, Moses encounters the reality that most of us are not able to choose the manner of our death, but that our lives are made up of millions of opportunities in which we are allowed to choose between adversity and prosperity, curses and blessings, death and life.
In his valedictory sermon, Moses doesn’t just tell the Children of Israel to choose between life and death, blessings and curses. He tells them how they may choose death or choose life. You choose death, he says, when your hearts turn away from God; when you do not listen to God, when you do not obey; you choose death when you bow down and serve other gods.
You choose life, he says, when you love the Lord your God. You choose life when you walk in God’s ways and when you observe God’s commandments. You choose life when you hold fast to God.
Jesus’s message in today’s portion of the Sermon on the Mount is a much harsher and hyperbolic way of articulating this choice between death and life. “Let your word be ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no,’” Jesus tells his disciples. Others have said this in various ways: “You’re either for us or against us.” “Do… or do not….There is no try.”
Choose life.
Jesus speaks strong words about the choices people face over the course of their lives: the choices of nursing and nurturing our anger against one who has wronged us or one whom we have wronged versus doing the difficult work of forgiveness and reconciliation. In this he tells us to choose reconciliation, choose life. He speaks of the choice of lusting after another, of coveting aspects of another’s life versus being reconciled with the reality of our own lives and what we have, and again he urges us to choose reconciliation, to choose contentment, to choose life.
He speaks of divorce and urges people to work to preserve marriage, and he lays out again the choice between divorce versus reconciliation. When at all possible, choose reconciliation; choose life. Finally, he offers the choice between making false vows versus reconciliation between your values and your action, reconciliation between your words and your works. Choose reconciliation; choose life.
In his piece of the Sermon for today, Jesus says that the Way of God is the path of reconciliation; it includes being reconciled with ourselves, who we are, the reality of our lives, and being reconciled with others, rather than holding onto our anger, past wrongs or injustices. Choosing life means knowing and believing that no matter what we have done, God continues to reach out to us, that we do not have to live a life of curses, of adversity, of death; we may accept God’s forgiveness and our restored relationship as God’s beloved that we might choose life.
Again and again we are offered this choice, between death and life. It is the choice between living our lives for ourselves alone, not worrying about who we crush to get what we want versus striving for justice for all people and care for the poor, searching for something deeper than our own comfort. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between living our lives in a rush to meet deadlines that are, in the scheme of things, completely insignificant, and ordering our lives around those lesser things versus spending time with those who are dearest to us, and letting them know how precious they are in our sights. And we are urged to choose life.
It is the choice between shutting down our emotions, not dealing with the reality of grief and loss in our lives versus acknowledging our losses and grieving…. grieving well. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between shuttling our children through the countless round of sports and activities, expecting as much or more from them than we expect from ourselves versus spending some time every day playing with them, enjoying their childhood, and sharing in their joy that they so freely give. And we are urged to choose life.
It is the choice between being polite and saying what we think the other wants to hear, our tongues held captive by the fear of hurting feelings versus speaking the truth in love when the truth begs to be told. And we are urged to choose life. It is the choice between making all our decisions, living our lives based on fear versus living our lives out of a deep and abiding hope that nothing can separate us from God’s love. And we are urged to choose hope, choose life.
It is the choice between bowing down and serving anything less than God: ideas that are not worthy, the demands and priorities of our culture, our own over- programmed calendars, our jobs, our loneliness, our despair, our own deep control needs and plans for how our lives should go versus holding fast to God, offering to God nothing less than our whole hearts during worship, praying, and giving thanks for all of God’s good gifts. And we are urged to choose life.
And here’s the really good news in all of this. We are always offered the choice, and even when we continue to choose death, for whatever reason, God can and will redeem that too, if we will let God. God can take the death that we choose, and God offers us in its place reconciliation… redemption…. resurrection.
It is the power and the hope of the resurrection: that God’s love is stronger than anything this world has to offer—stronger than our bad choices, stronger than evil and hate, stronger than anything. God’s love is stronger than death. So when we choose God, we choose life.
I discovered a quote from Garrison Keillor this week, that I will close with this morning: “Thank you God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough.” Amen.
Monday, February 7, 2011
5th Sunday after the Epiphany--Year A
5th Sunday after the Epiphany
February 6, 2011
Two songs come to mind when hearing our gospel lesson for today. The first is one that many of us have been singing since our childhood. Our children sang it at the St. Nicholas feast a couple of months ago, and our choir presented us with a rousing version of it just a few weeks ago: This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.” Many of us have been taught all of our lives the importance of letting our lights shine.
While I worked at the Stewpot soup kitchen in Jackson, I encountered another song about our shining lights. It quickly became one of my favorite songs that we would sing in the noon day chapel service, and the pianist would sing the verses, and the congregation would sing the chorus, in the kind of call and response that is common in African American spiritual singing. The chorus goes “Let your light shine, shine, shine. Let your light shine, shine, shine. May be somebody down in the valley tryin’ to get home.” This gave us a reason for why it’s important to let our little lights from childhood shine, so that we could serve as little lighthouses to inspire others and help them find their way when they are lost.
I love both of these songs, and they both share important theological truths, but I think that they skip ahead of an important truth that we see in today’s gospel story.
Our story for today is the second part of Matthew’s depiction of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. In last week’s gospel, Jesus had been ministering to the crowds, and when he seems them following after him, he goes up the mountain, where his disciples follow him. He then sits down, and he begins his Sermon on the Mount, with the beatitudes. What is especially important to remember about our story today, the continuation of that Sermon on the Mount, is that Jesus is not teaching the masses in the sermon; rather he is preaching to his small group of disciples, his closest, most dedicated followers. He is teaching what it means to be his disciple, and he preaches that to them and to us across the centuries.
Notice, that the first thing he tells us today is not what we are supposed to do. First, he tells us who we are. “You are the salt of the earth…” Salt in its very essence is a preservative. It enhances the flavor of what is already, innately there. That is who we are as disciples of Jesus. “You are the light of the world…” Light illumines and dispels the darkness. It reveals what is hidden, and its very essence is to shine.
First, before he tells us what we are to do, he tells us who we are. We are the light of the world because we are baptized into Christ Jesus who is the true light of the world. We are salt because Jesus is the truest, purest salt, and we are a part of him. Martin Luther once said that we are not called to be Christians. In our baptism we are baptized into Christ, and thus we are called to be little Christs to all the world. That’s how Paul can say to the Corinthians that “we have the mind of Christ.” And it’s how Jesus can say—you are salt; you are light; because I am salt and I am light and you are a part of me.
It’s only after he tells us who we are that he tells us what to do. You are salt, so you must keep your saltiness; do not let it be bleached out by your cares and concerns and burdens nor by the priorities of the world. You are light, he says, so you must “let you light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
There is a certain amount of effort and work required in being salty, in letting our lights shine, but primarily the work of salt and light is in the remembering: I am salt; I am light; I am baptized into Christ Jesus, and I continue to be transformed into his image and likeness when I remember who I am and when I try to live more fully into that.
We have to be in touch with our identity in Christ, and we have to remember it over and over again to live into the work of who Christ calls us to be, before we can be those who help enhance the gifts of what is already there or those who shine the light to reveal the hope and the good news for a hurting and broken world. It is a continued process of remembering, of falling away and coming back; of reshaping our own wills, desires, priorities according to the “mind of Christ” that dwells within us.
You are the salt of the earth, the light of the world. Remember it weekly when you are fed in the Eucharist, in daily prayer and in reconnecting with our Lord who calls you. And only then can you live into the call of your saltiness, your call of being the light and “Let your light shine, shine, shine. Let your light shine, shine, shine. May be somebody down in the valley tryin’ to get home.”
February 6, 2011
Two songs come to mind when hearing our gospel lesson for today. The first is one that many of us have been singing since our childhood. Our children sang it at the St. Nicholas feast a couple of months ago, and our choir presented us with a rousing version of it just a few weeks ago: This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine. This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.” Many of us have been taught all of our lives the importance of letting our lights shine.
While I worked at the Stewpot soup kitchen in Jackson, I encountered another song about our shining lights. It quickly became one of my favorite songs that we would sing in the noon day chapel service, and the pianist would sing the verses, and the congregation would sing the chorus, in the kind of call and response that is common in African American spiritual singing. The chorus goes “Let your light shine, shine, shine. Let your light shine, shine, shine. May be somebody down in the valley tryin’ to get home.” This gave us a reason for why it’s important to let our little lights from childhood shine, so that we could serve as little lighthouses to inspire others and help them find their way when they are lost.
I love both of these songs, and they both share important theological truths, but I think that they skip ahead of an important truth that we see in today’s gospel story.
Our story for today is the second part of Matthew’s depiction of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. In last week’s gospel, Jesus had been ministering to the crowds, and when he seems them following after him, he goes up the mountain, where his disciples follow him. He then sits down, and he begins his Sermon on the Mount, with the beatitudes. What is especially important to remember about our story today, the continuation of that Sermon on the Mount, is that Jesus is not teaching the masses in the sermon; rather he is preaching to his small group of disciples, his closest, most dedicated followers. He is teaching what it means to be his disciple, and he preaches that to them and to us across the centuries.
Notice, that the first thing he tells us today is not what we are supposed to do. First, he tells us who we are. “You are the salt of the earth…” Salt in its very essence is a preservative. It enhances the flavor of what is already, innately there. That is who we are as disciples of Jesus. “You are the light of the world…” Light illumines and dispels the darkness. It reveals what is hidden, and its very essence is to shine.
First, before he tells us what we are to do, he tells us who we are. We are the light of the world because we are baptized into Christ Jesus who is the true light of the world. We are salt because Jesus is the truest, purest salt, and we are a part of him. Martin Luther once said that we are not called to be Christians. In our baptism we are baptized into Christ, and thus we are called to be little Christs to all the world. That’s how Paul can say to the Corinthians that “we have the mind of Christ.” And it’s how Jesus can say—you are salt; you are light; because I am salt and I am light and you are a part of me.
It’s only after he tells us who we are that he tells us what to do. You are salt, so you must keep your saltiness; do not let it be bleached out by your cares and concerns and burdens nor by the priorities of the world. You are light, he says, so you must “let you light shine before others so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”
There is a certain amount of effort and work required in being salty, in letting our lights shine, but primarily the work of salt and light is in the remembering: I am salt; I am light; I am baptized into Christ Jesus, and I continue to be transformed into his image and likeness when I remember who I am and when I try to live more fully into that.
We have to be in touch with our identity in Christ, and we have to remember it over and over again to live into the work of who Christ calls us to be, before we can be those who help enhance the gifts of what is already there or those who shine the light to reveal the hope and the good news for a hurting and broken world. It is a continued process of remembering, of falling away and coming back; of reshaping our own wills, desires, priorities according to the “mind of Christ” that dwells within us.
You are the salt of the earth, the light of the world. Remember it weekly when you are fed in the Eucharist, in daily prayer and in reconnecting with our Lord who calls you. And only then can you live into the call of your saltiness, your call of being the light and “Let your light shine, shine, shine. Let your light shine, shine, shine. May be somebody down in the valley tryin’ to get home.”
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Christmas Eve sermon 2010
The Reverend Melanie Dickson Lemburg
The Eve of Christ’s Nativity—Year A
December 24, 2010
“The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.”
The darkness hangs
Like a shroud over the world.
In its depth and its silence
It numbs and paralyzes
Oppresses and subdues.
Until suddenly
The messengers of God appear
In the darkness
With a blinding, brilliant light
Throwing us ordinary mortals
Into chaos and fear.
“Do not be afraid!” they proclaim.
We bring you good news and joy—
Your savior is born this night,
And you will call him
“God with us.”
And even the stars sing with them in their glory.
And then we have a choice to make,
To stay in the dark
Which is no longer quite so comfortable for us
Now that we have been blinded
By light
And had a taste
Of glory.
Or to listen to these small stirrings of hope
In our hearts
And to search out and to seek
The source of the joy
The source of the glory
The source of the light.
And wonder of wonders,
We find it this night,
As they told us we would,
This baby who is
God with us,
This baby come with glory
Falling all around him,
Dripping of glory as if
The stars themselves had bathed him…
This baby who is
The reality of
God’s love for us,
The proof of God’s zeal,
The fruit of God’s desire
For us—
And the fulfillment of our deepest longings:
(To be loved and to love—
to be made lovely and to have our every day ordinary lives bathed in glory…)
Into the darkness and chaos of our lives
Comes a God who is wild and free
A God who does new things
A God whose love and zeal for us
Whose pursuit of us leads to
God becoming human, becoming vulnerable.
Such is the magnitude of God’s zeal
Such is the glory of God’s love…
And on this night we realize that
God’s love is a vulnerable love,
As vulnerable as a new born child.
As vulnerable as all love is vulnerable.
But even yet we cling to darkness….
As we see the Love of God
Swaddled and lying in straw.
And we are invited to choose Light.
We cling to darkness
As we see the Love of God
Hanging and dying
Arms open to embrace the world.
And we are invited to choose Light.
We cling to darkness
As we see an empty tomb.
And in the absence of light, in the silence of God
We hear the echo that
Love, this vulnerable love,
Is stronger than death.
And we are invited to choose Light.
As we see on this night
Our God with us,
Who leaps in joy
So that neither cross nor cradle
Can contain him,
Whose mystery bursts forth
From his bed and from his tomb
The mystery of birth, of life, and even death
(For even at his birth, his future is present)
The mystery of the power of his love
That shatters even the darkness of death…
We are being offered the light of the world, the one light that can truly lighten our darkness
And it is in this
That our hope is born.
From this night forward,
May we never be content to
Dwell again in the dark,
May our new hope spill over into everything
That we are
And that we do,
May we dance and sing with the stars and the angels,
Allowing our joy to shine forth,
And may we forever live
In this one moment,
On this one night,
When all of our deepest longings
Have been fulfilled.
The Eve of Christ’s Nativity—Year A
December 24, 2010
“The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness—
on them light has shined.”
The darkness hangs
Like a shroud over the world.
In its depth and its silence
It numbs and paralyzes
Oppresses and subdues.
Until suddenly
The messengers of God appear
In the darkness
With a blinding, brilliant light
Throwing us ordinary mortals
Into chaos and fear.
“Do not be afraid!” they proclaim.
We bring you good news and joy—
Your savior is born this night,
And you will call him
“God with us.”
And even the stars sing with them in their glory.
And then we have a choice to make,
To stay in the dark
Which is no longer quite so comfortable for us
Now that we have been blinded
By light
And had a taste
Of glory.
Or to listen to these small stirrings of hope
In our hearts
And to search out and to seek
The source of the joy
The source of the glory
The source of the light.
And wonder of wonders,
We find it this night,
As they told us we would,
This baby who is
God with us,
This baby come with glory
Falling all around him,
Dripping of glory as if
The stars themselves had bathed him…
This baby who is
The reality of
God’s love for us,
The proof of God’s zeal,
The fruit of God’s desire
For us—
And the fulfillment of our deepest longings:
(To be loved and to love—
to be made lovely and to have our every day ordinary lives bathed in glory…)
Into the darkness and chaos of our lives
Comes a God who is wild and free
A God who does new things
A God whose love and zeal for us
Whose pursuit of us leads to
God becoming human, becoming vulnerable.
Such is the magnitude of God’s zeal
Such is the glory of God’s love…
And on this night we realize that
God’s love is a vulnerable love,
As vulnerable as a new born child.
As vulnerable as all love is vulnerable.
But even yet we cling to darkness….
As we see the Love of God
Swaddled and lying in straw.
And we are invited to choose Light.
We cling to darkness
As we see the Love of God
Hanging and dying
Arms open to embrace the world.
And we are invited to choose Light.
We cling to darkness
As we see an empty tomb.
And in the absence of light, in the silence of God
We hear the echo that
Love, this vulnerable love,
Is stronger than death.
And we are invited to choose Light.
As we see on this night
Our God with us,
Who leaps in joy
So that neither cross nor cradle
Can contain him,
Whose mystery bursts forth
From his bed and from his tomb
The mystery of birth, of life, and even death
(For even at his birth, his future is present)
The mystery of the power of his love
That shatters even the darkness of death…
We are being offered the light of the world, the one light that can truly lighten our darkness
And it is in this
That our hope is born.
From this night forward,
May we never be content to
Dwell again in the dark,
May our new hope spill over into everything
That we are
And that we do,
May we dance and sing with the stars and the angels,
Allowing our joy to shine forth,
And may we forever live
In this one moment,
On this one night,
When all of our deepest longings
Have been fulfilled.
First Sunday after Epiphany--baptismal letter
A letter to Alexandria Marie Denley upon the occasion of her baptism.
Dear Alex,
Today is an important and exciting day in your life and in your life of faith. Today you are baptized into Christ’s body which means that you will be a new creation, a new Alex. You will have new brothers and sisters in this church and in all baptized people who promise to walk with you and to help you in this new journey. You will make promises about how you will try to live your life, modeling your actions, your choices, your words upon the teachings of Jesus, who taught that we must love everyone, be kind to everyone, and especially help those who are poor, elderly, and sick. You will teach us things, and we will teach you things, and we will all be better off because we are in this thing together.
You have already taught me something, and I want to share it with you and these people here today. When we met a few weeks ago to talk about your baptism, there was a lot going on around us. I was distracted, you were probably a little restless, your parents were distracted because you were restless. We were there meeting together because it was important, because it was what we were supposed to be doing, because it was something that we had promised to do…a part of our responsibility, a part of our duty.
But do you remember what happened toward the end of our time together? It is something that I will never forget! I asked you if you wanted to hear the story about Jesus, this story into which you are being baptized this day, and you said yes.
I told you the story—how he was born, how he was baptized and proclaimed as God’s beloved son, how he lived his life: preaching, teaching, healing; how he showed people the way to God and taught us that it’s important to love each other and to help each other. I told you how he had a group of friends and they would eat together, and I told you about the special meal, their last meal that they had the night before Jesus died, and about how we remember and share in that meal together every Sunday.
And then I told you about how he died, nailed to a cross, and I will never forget how so very still you became, looking at me with big, round eyes.
I told you how his friends were so very heartbroken, and they buried him, rolling a big, heavy stone in front of the opening of his tomb. And then they came back later to do the burial rites, and guess what they found! The stone had been moved, the tomb was empty, and there was a messenger there who told his friends, “He is not here! He is risen!”
“ ‘He is risen?’” You said. “What on earth does that mean?”
That’s exactly what they said! I told you. It means that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death, and that we can live our lives in the freedom that gives us, that even when we die, it is not the end, but just another part of our journey back to God. And I finished the story, telling you how Jesus was there with them again until he was taken up to heaven and how he sent the Holy Spirit, to whisper in their hearts, to be present with them and to help them. And they spent the rest of their lives telling people the amazing thing that had happened to them, and that is what we are supposed to do too.
Do you remember how the four of us sat there in silence for several minutes, in wonder of the holiness of what we had experienced together?
That time with you taught me and helped me to remember that sometimes when we offer love because it is what we are supposed to do, because it is our duty, our responsibility as Christians, what we have promised to do in our baptism, then God takes that duty, that love that we offer, and God transforms it—like the bread and the wine—so that it becomes so much richer, fuller, broader, greater than a love that is born from duty. It becomes a brush with Mystery; pure grace; it becomes one brief glimpse of the face of God.
And so this day, when you make your baptismal vows, your promises to God, and on every day in the future when you renew them, may you remember that you are God’s beloved child, and you are marked as Christ’s own forever. May you remember that you need not be afraid of anything because God’s love is stronger than anything, even death. May you remember that you have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, which will help you pray and will whisper in your heart and help you know what to do and even give you strength and courage. May you remember, during those times in your life, when darkness weighs upon you like a tomb, that the light of Christ, our Savior who is the light of the world, shines within you and will light your way in the dark.
May you remember that every time that you lift your shining face to God with your hands outstretched to receive the bread and the wine, that you are being fed the body and blood of Jesus who loves you, so you may go out into the world to share that love with others. May you delight in doing your duty, and may the God who loves you as God’s own child transform your duty into a love through which you see the face of God.
Your sister in Christ,
Melanie+
Dear Alex,
Today is an important and exciting day in your life and in your life of faith. Today you are baptized into Christ’s body which means that you will be a new creation, a new Alex. You will have new brothers and sisters in this church and in all baptized people who promise to walk with you and to help you in this new journey. You will make promises about how you will try to live your life, modeling your actions, your choices, your words upon the teachings of Jesus, who taught that we must love everyone, be kind to everyone, and especially help those who are poor, elderly, and sick. You will teach us things, and we will teach you things, and we will all be better off because we are in this thing together.
You have already taught me something, and I want to share it with you and these people here today. When we met a few weeks ago to talk about your baptism, there was a lot going on around us. I was distracted, you were probably a little restless, your parents were distracted because you were restless. We were there meeting together because it was important, because it was what we were supposed to be doing, because it was something that we had promised to do…a part of our responsibility, a part of our duty.
But do you remember what happened toward the end of our time together? It is something that I will never forget! I asked you if you wanted to hear the story about Jesus, this story into which you are being baptized this day, and you said yes.
I told you the story—how he was born, how he was baptized and proclaimed as God’s beloved son, how he lived his life: preaching, teaching, healing; how he showed people the way to God and taught us that it’s important to love each other and to help each other. I told you how he had a group of friends and they would eat together, and I told you about the special meal, their last meal that they had the night before Jesus died, and about how we remember and share in that meal together every Sunday.
And then I told you about how he died, nailed to a cross, and I will never forget how so very still you became, looking at me with big, round eyes.
I told you how his friends were so very heartbroken, and they buried him, rolling a big, heavy stone in front of the opening of his tomb. And then they came back later to do the burial rites, and guess what they found! The stone had been moved, the tomb was empty, and there was a messenger there who told his friends, “He is not here! He is risen!”
“ ‘He is risen?’” You said. “What on earth does that mean?”
That’s exactly what they said! I told you. It means that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death, and that we can live our lives in the freedom that gives us, that even when we die, it is not the end, but just another part of our journey back to God. And I finished the story, telling you how Jesus was there with them again until he was taken up to heaven and how he sent the Holy Spirit, to whisper in their hearts, to be present with them and to help them. And they spent the rest of their lives telling people the amazing thing that had happened to them, and that is what we are supposed to do too.
Do you remember how the four of us sat there in silence for several minutes, in wonder of the holiness of what we had experienced together?
That time with you taught me and helped me to remember that sometimes when we offer love because it is what we are supposed to do, because it is our duty, our responsibility as Christians, what we have promised to do in our baptism, then God takes that duty, that love that we offer, and God transforms it—like the bread and the wine—so that it becomes so much richer, fuller, broader, greater than a love that is born from duty. It becomes a brush with Mystery; pure grace; it becomes one brief glimpse of the face of God.
And so this day, when you make your baptismal vows, your promises to God, and on every day in the future when you renew them, may you remember that you are God’s beloved child, and you are marked as Christ’s own forever. May you remember that you need not be afraid of anything because God’s love is stronger than anything, even death. May you remember that you have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, which will help you pray and will whisper in your heart and help you know what to do and even give you strength and courage. May you remember, during those times in your life, when darkness weighs upon you like a tomb, that the light of Christ, our Savior who is the light of the world, shines within you and will light your way in the dark.
May you remember that every time that you lift your shining face to God with your hands outstretched to receive the bread and the wine, that you are being fed the body and blood of Jesus who loves you, so you may go out into the world to share that love with others. May you delight in doing your duty, and may the God who loves you as God’s own child transform your duty into a love through which you see the face of God.
Your sister in Christ,
Melanie+
First Sunday after Epiphany--early service sermon
First Sunday after the Epiphany Year A
January 9, 2011
This past week, I spent some time with a fellow priest talking about the challenges of Jesus’s call to love which echoes again and again throughout the gospels. She was lamenting the challenge of loving and being loving when that warm, fuzzy loving feeling just isn’t there. As the week went by, I thought more and more about that conversation. How do we love people when they aren’t being particularly lovable?
I thought about my own life, and particularly about what motherhood has taught me about love. Many times in life, I act in a loving manner because that is what I have vowed and promised to do—in my baptism vows, in my marriage vows, in my ordination vows. There are many times in life when I love other people only because of these vows; I love out of duty.
Sometimes the only way we can love is out of sheer duty. And sometimes when we offer love and acts of love out of this sense of duty, God takes that duty that we offer, and God transforms it—like the bread and the wine—so that it becomes so much richer, fuller, broader, greater than a love that is born from duty. And it becomes a brush with Mystery; pure grace; it becomes one brief glimpse of the face of God.
A few weeks ago, I had an appointment at the church one evening with a 10 year old and her parents. The parents wanted the child to be baptized, and I was doing her baptismal instruction to prepare all of them for her baptism (which is actually taking place later this morning). I will confess that I had some trouble being there that night. My childcare had fallen through and both my kids were at the church with me, pretty much unsupervised and running around with the other kids who were at the church that night. I was more than a little distracted.
But I was there because it was what I was supposed to do, what I had promised to do. The 10 year old had been restless and a little fidgety during our time together, and her parents were embarrassed and distracted by her restlessness, and I was searching for a way to make this a meaningful engaging experience for her. So finally, I asked her if she wanted to hear the story of Jesus, and she agreed.
I told her the story—how he was born, how he lived his life, preaching, teaching, healing; how he showed people the way to God and taught us that it’s important to love each other and help each other. I told her of how he had a group of friends who went around with him and how they would eat together, how they ate together one last time the night before he died and how we remember that special meal and share in it every Sunday with communion.
And then I told her about how he died, nailed to a cross, and she became so very still with big round eyes. I told her how his friends were so very heartbroken, and they took him and buried him, rolling a big, heavy stone in front of the opening of his tomb, and then they came back a few days later to do the burial rites, and guess what they found! The stone had been moved, the tomb was empty, and a messenger was there who told them, “He is not here! He is risen!”
“’He is risen?’” She said. “What on earth does that mean?”
That’s exactly what they said! I told her. It means that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death, and that we are invited to share in that gift and live our lives with freedom because we know that we will be with God when we die. And I finished the story, telling her that Jesus was again with them until he was taken up to heaven and he sent the Holy Spirit to whisper in their hearts and be present with them to help them. And they spent the rest of their lives telling people about the amazing thing that happened. And that is what we are supposed to do too.
When I finished, the four of us sat there in silence for a few minutes, stunned by the holiness of what we had just experienced together.
Sometimes when we offer love, even out of a sense of duty, God takes that love and transforms it, filling it to overflowing with God’s presence.
On this day, when you renew your own baptismal vows, may you remember this duty out of which love may flow. May you remember that you have been baptized and named as God’s beloved child, and that you are called to act accordingly. May you find delight in doing your duty, and may God who loves you as God’s own child transform your duty into a love in which you see the face of God.
January 9, 2011
This past week, I spent some time with a fellow priest talking about the challenges of Jesus’s call to love which echoes again and again throughout the gospels. She was lamenting the challenge of loving and being loving when that warm, fuzzy loving feeling just isn’t there. As the week went by, I thought more and more about that conversation. How do we love people when they aren’t being particularly lovable?
I thought about my own life, and particularly about what motherhood has taught me about love. Many times in life, I act in a loving manner because that is what I have vowed and promised to do—in my baptism vows, in my marriage vows, in my ordination vows. There are many times in life when I love other people only because of these vows; I love out of duty.
Sometimes the only way we can love is out of sheer duty. And sometimes when we offer love and acts of love out of this sense of duty, God takes that duty that we offer, and God transforms it—like the bread and the wine—so that it becomes so much richer, fuller, broader, greater than a love that is born from duty. And it becomes a brush with Mystery; pure grace; it becomes one brief glimpse of the face of God.
A few weeks ago, I had an appointment at the church one evening with a 10 year old and her parents. The parents wanted the child to be baptized, and I was doing her baptismal instruction to prepare all of them for her baptism (which is actually taking place later this morning). I will confess that I had some trouble being there that night. My childcare had fallen through and both my kids were at the church with me, pretty much unsupervised and running around with the other kids who were at the church that night. I was more than a little distracted.
But I was there because it was what I was supposed to do, what I had promised to do. The 10 year old had been restless and a little fidgety during our time together, and her parents were embarrassed and distracted by her restlessness, and I was searching for a way to make this a meaningful engaging experience for her. So finally, I asked her if she wanted to hear the story of Jesus, and she agreed.
I told her the story—how he was born, how he lived his life, preaching, teaching, healing; how he showed people the way to God and taught us that it’s important to love each other and help each other. I told her of how he had a group of friends who went around with him and how they would eat together, how they ate together one last time the night before he died and how we remember that special meal and share in it every Sunday with communion.
And then I told her about how he died, nailed to a cross, and she became so very still with big round eyes. I told her how his friends were so very heartbroken, and they took him and buried him, rolling a big, heavy stone in front of the opening of his tomb, and then they came back a few days later to do the burial rites, and guess what they found! The stone had been moved, the tomb was empty, and a messenger was there who told them, “He is not here! He is risen!”
“’He is risen?’” She said. “What on earth does that mean?”
That’s exactly what they said! I told her. It means that God’s love is stronger than anything, even death, and that we are invited to share in that gift and live our lives with freedom because we know that we will be with God when we die. And I finished the story, telling her that Jesus was again with them until he was taken up to heaven and he sent the Holy Spirit to whisper in their hearts and be present with them to help them. And they spent the rest of their lives telling people about the amazing thing that happened. And that is what we are supposed to do too.
When I finished, the four of us sat there in silence for a few minutes, stunned by the holiness of what we had just experienced together.
Sometimes when we offer love, even out of a sense of duty, God takes that love and transforms it, filling it to overflowing with God’s presence.
On this day, when you renew your own baptismal vows, may you remember this duty out of which love may flow. May you remember that you have been baptized and named as God’s beloved child, and that you are called to act accordingly. May you find delight in doing your duty, and may God who loves you as God’s own child transform your duty into a love in which you see the face of God.
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