3rd Sun after Epiphany Year A

3rd Sunday after the Epiphany- Year A January 26, 2020 Our gospel reading for today begins: “When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea…” At this point in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus has been baptized by John in the Jordan River; he has been driven into the wilderness to face temptations, and he has just come out of the wilderness to begin his ministry when our reading for today picks up and he hears the news about John’s arrest. So what does Jesus do? He moves. He had been raised in Nazareth, a different region in Galilee, and Matthew tells us that he makes his home in Capernaum by the sea. Last year when we made our trip to the Holy Land, our tour group visited Capernaum. It was the end of the day, and we had spent the whole first day on a bus driving around Galilee, following the edge of the Sea of Galilee. We had seen the ruins of a huge Roman complex right in the heart of Galilee; we had visited the purported sights of some of Jesus’s miracles and teachings, and with less than an hour left of daylight, we pulled up in Capernaum. As we followed the crowds, I stopped at the entrance to take a picture of the sign: “Caphernaum the town of Jesus.” I wandered around an excavated synagogue and peered underneath a modern church which had been built over the ruins that were thought to be the home of Simon Peter’s mother in law. I walked past the large bronze statue of Peter to look out over the Sea of Galilee, all close together within the space of one of our squares in downtown Savannah. As I wandered around this place where Jesus had chosen to make his home, I thought about what it means to make a place home. Matthew suggests that Jesus chooses to make his home in Capernaum in fulfillment of the prophecy. But we all know that there is much more that goes into making a place home. Home is our comfortable place, where we are known and safe. It’s a place whose landscape and surroundings are familiar. Home is a place where we have friends and family and pets others who care about us, and home is a place that is layered with memories and experiences. It is the place where we can be most fully ourselves. (I know certain people who say that the first thing they do when they get home is take off certain articles of clothing!) This is why when we face disruptions in the places that we consider to be home, then these disruptions can be the most unsettling. However, in life as in this gospel reading, we see God calling, God working in and through the disruptions. Jesus heeds God’s call to make his home elsewhere as a result of the disruption of his cousin’s imprisonment. The disciples heed Jesus’s call to follow him, in the midst of their orderly, homely lives—doing the work of their families, called from what they have always known to lives of disruption in following Jesus. Those of us who have ever been in churches that are suffering from conflicts can relate to Paul’s appeal to the conflicted church in Corinth. When church feels like home and disruptions happen there, it is hard to hear God’s call in the midst of the clamoring factions. So Paul reminds them of their common call to preach the good news of the cross of Jesus Christ. He reminds them how God works through the ultimate disruption to bring about salvation for all and how we are invited to be a part of that. Our collect for today reminds us that each and every one of us is called by God, and we ask God for the grace to “answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works.” For this week, I invite you to think about your call and to think about the call of this church in terms of home and disruption. Where do you feel most at home right now physically, mentally, and spiritually? Then look at the ways that God is disrupting you in your life? It can be in those places or it can be elsewhere? Another way of asking this question is “what’s keeping you up at night?” Then pray about the ways that God might be calling you to a new way of being in and through the disruptions. In January of 2001, I met with the Bishop and he told me he saw in me a call to the priesthood that had also been seen by my community. He told me he was sending me to seminary that fall, and we talked about some practicalities. Before we finished our time together, his canon to the ordinary, who had been sitting there with a hymnal open on his lap the whole time, told me he wanted to share with me the words to his favorite hymn. It’s hymn 661—“they cast their nets in Galilee” and it was written by William Alexander Percy, a fellow Mississippian who had known his own share of disruptions and call in his life. In my 19 years of trying to faithfully follow God’s call in my life, these words have affirmed and upheld and haunted me: They cast their nets in Galilee Just off the hills of brown Such happy simple fisherfolk Before the Lord came down Contented peaceful fishermen Before they ever knew The peace of God That fill’d their hearts Brimful and broke them too. Young John who trimmed the flapping sail, Homeless, in Patmos died. Peter, who hauled the teeming net, Head-down was crucified. The peace of God, it is no peace, But strife closed in the sod, Yet, let us pray for but one thing– The marvelous peace of God.

1st Sunday after Epiphany-Baptism of our Lord 2020

Epiphany 1A_2020 bapt letter January 12, 2020 A letter to Holst Herring upon the occasion of his baptism. Dear Holst, Today, in our church we remember and celebrate Jesus’s baptism in the Jordan River by his cousin John the Baptist. We hear the story of how Jesus comes to John and asks to be baptized, but John protests. Finally, Jesus convinces him, and as Jesus comes up dripping out of the water, the Holy Spirit lands on him like a dove and the voice of God thunders from the heavens, “This is my son the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.” Our Psalm for today reminds us of the might and the power of God, whose voice overpowers the four elements: earth, fire, wind, and water. Our epistle reading for today is a sermon by the apostle Peter in the Acts of the Apostles, and in this sermon, Peter tells the story of all that he has seen and experienced as a disciple of Jesus: “You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ--he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” Holst, today you are being baptized into that story, into the body of Christ through his death and resurrection. Today, your parents and godparents (and all of us gathered here) are recognizing that you have been named and claimed as God’s beloved since your very creation. In your baptism, your parents and godparents are accepting that belovedness on your behalf, and they are promising that they will raise you in a way that teaches you how to live into that belovedness. Because you see, Holst, today isn’t just a special occasion, a chance to pull out the fancy clothes and have a party (although we do celebrate with you this new life in Jesus Christ which you are taking on today). Just as Jesus’s baptism is the beginning of his ministry, so today is the beginning for you as well. It is the beginning of your discipleship which means living your life in accordance with the teachings of Jesus, living your life in a way that befits God’s beloved. This means seeking and serving Christ in all persons; it means loving your neighbors as yourself. It means respecting the dignity of every human being, no matter how different they are from you, and striving for justice and peace among all people. It is wonderful and difficult and life-giving and life-changing work upon which you and your parents embark this day, and it is much too difficult to do alone. But the good news is that you don’t have to. Just as your parents and godparents have made promises to God on your behalf, so has this church, this gathered community made a promise, too. Our promise is that you will never have to do this work of discipleship alone. We promise to support and uphold you in it, to help your parents teach you the story of our faith, to help you remember when you forget, to speak God’s peace to you when you are afraid, to celebrate with you when you rejoice, to remind you that God forgives you when you falter and fail, and to sit with you when you mourn. It is the work of all disciples together to help spread the good news of God’s love—that is divinely all powerful and humanly vulnerable, a love that is stronger than death-- to everyone we come into contact with through our words sometimes, but mostly through our actions-in the way that we love, in the way we ask for forgiveness when we hurt someone or are wrong, in the ways we see that other people are as beloved by God as you are. May you never forget the truth of your belovedness, and from this day forward, may you live that truth out in the way that you love others in this world. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+

The 2nd Sunday after Christmas Year B_2019

Christmas 2B January 5, 2020 A letter to Sutton Lucius upon the occasion of his baptism. Dear Sutton, On this day of your baptism, our gospel reading is about a time when Jesus was a child, and his father Joseph listened to the warning of an angel in a dream and took Jesus and Mary away from their home country into a foreign land where they would be safe. But there’s more to this story that has been left out, and even though it seems like a strange thing to talk about today, upon the occasion of your baptism, it is an important part of the story. The story in Matthew begins with the visit to Jesus and his family from wise men from the East who follow a star the long way from their homes to Jerusalem, where Kind Herod lives. When the wise men approach King Herod to ask about this new king who has been born, Herod and the people around him become enraged. But Herod is sneaky, and so he acts like a friend to the wise men, and he tells them that the prophets say the king will be born in Bethlehem. They should go look for him there, and when they find him, they should come back and tell Herod where he can be found so he can also go and worship him. The wise men leave, and the star they have been following leads them all the way to Bethlehem to Jesus’s home, where they meet him and his parents and give him gifts and great respect. But an angel comes to the wise men in a dream and warns them not to return to Jerusalem to Herod, because he wants to harm the child, so they go home by a different road. After the wise men leave, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream and tells him that he needs to gather his family and flee Bethlehem to the foreign land of Egypt where they will be safe from King Herod, who wants to do away with his newly perceived kingly rival. Brave Joseph, who has learned to listen to his dreams does just this, and they remain safely in Egypt out of harm’s way. But the part that is left out of our reading today, the sad, hard part that seems strange to talk about on this happy day, is what happens back in Bethlehem after the Holy Family escape. When Herod realizes that the wise men have not returned to tell him where to find Jesus and his family, he becomes enraged. And he gives orders to send his soldiers to Bethlehem to kill all the boys who are 2 years old and younger. And they do. In the meantime, the Holy Family remain safe in Egypt until Joseph receives another message from an angel in a dream, telling them that Herod is dead and that is safe to return to their homeland, and they return and settle in the district of Galilee in a town called Nazareth. What does this story of light and dark, of safety and horror, have to say to us on this day, the day of your baptism, sweet baby Sutton? In baptism, we remember that the same Jesus who has known the fullness of our humanity including sorrow, danger, uncertainty and also joy, safety, and familial love gave himself up to death on the cross because of love for you and me and every person you will ever know. And this same Jesus, because of God’s love which is stronger and bigger, and gentler and tenderer, and fiercer and kinder than anything we can ever know, came out on the other side of the worst possible thing—that is death. And he shows us that no matter what bad decisions we make, no matter what corrupt rulers or people around us may do, no matter what griefs we may suffer, God is always with us. There is absolutely nothing that we nor anyone else can do that can separate us from God’s love in the person of Jesus Christ as it has been bestowed upon you at your creation and received by your parents and godparents on your behalf on this day and sealed by the Holy Spirit in your baptism. From this day forward, you are marked as Christ’s own forever, and there is absolutely nothing that can change that. So today, sweet Sutton, and for all the days forward, it is the job of this church, this gathered community and all who come after us, to help you remember this “hope to which [God] has called you;” to help you look for unexpected messengers of God’s love in your life; to help you grow into the person God has created you and calls you to be. And it is our job to help you remember that no matter what happens, nothing, absolutely nothing, can separate you from the love of God. God is with you, this day and every day. Always. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+