Sermons: January 2010

Sermon for Epiphany 1

Jan 10, 2010

Grace Episcopal

Rev. Vern Hill 

What brought Jesus to the bank of the River Jordan?  Why did he make his way to where John the Baptizer was at work?   

Today’s Gospel reading leaves behind the birth and early childhood stories of Christmas and marks the first report on Jesus as a man, at this point probably about 30 years old – an age when a Palestinian male would be expected to have a wife and begin a vocation.  

Creating a history story of Jesus – a continuous story from birth to death is all but impossible because what we have about him is not told as “historical record keeping” in the same sense as I might pick up a book and read a history of Abraham Lincoln.  We have Gospel accounts which have a completely different writing purpose – their purpose is to testify to how Jesus was Messiah and the one who fulfilled the hopes of earlier Hebrew prophets and writers.  What we have in the birth stories of Matthew and Luke, the story of the escape to Egypt to avoid the Herodian death squads, and the presentation in the temple story are singular pieces each designed to explain Jesus’ place in the environment of Jewish hopes for a savior.  Beyond these events surrounding our Christmas celebration there is silence about Jesus the person until we encounter him at this gathering at the Jordan River. 

At the Jordan the story suddenly resumes.  And so I return to my question, what brought Jesus to the Jordan that caused it to become part of the Gospel testimony?  In Matthew we are told that the whole Jordan district, a bunch of people, made their way to John and that as they were baptized they confessed their sins.  Did Jesus just come along with this crowd?  Still, what led him to baptism?  Had he come as others did to confess his sins?   

 In terms of “Jesus theology” and the attempt of theologians including the Gospel writers to explain who Jesus is, these sorts of questions really create a puzzling conundrum, because Jesus is “sinless” according to these same theologians; his birth sets him outside of the human sin of Adam.  So now we have the sinless one coming to John to take part in a repentance baptism, a cleansing of sin, an act of purification - Hmm.  Our church even has a hymn to offer a solution – No. 120 – which begins   “The sinless one to the Jordan came, and in the river shared our stain.” And this leads us now into the joyless and most difficult land of original sin. 

For my remaining few minutes I want to thankfully set aside all of this; stand back and look at the overall geography of what is taking place.

Let’s pretend for just a moment that Jesus comes to the Jordan led by his own search for self-understanding.  Let’s pretend that Jesus has been drawn to this place in part by the inner working of what we might call the Spirit, drawn to this location, as a place forepiphany. 

You see, this word that we use for this time after Christmas actually helps us understand what happens to Jesus in these moments at the water  with John.  An epiphany is something that happens to you - it is the sudden realization or comprehension of something.  It is self-understanding and clarity and meaning personalized – my meaning.   Jesus emerges from the Jordan dripping of the water, the waters of creation, the birth place of all life.  In the prayer-filled silence there came what Luke describes as the heavens opening, and the Holy Spirit descending upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."  The voice of God, that divine vibration, the energy of the universe, that which echoes through all things, giving them life, direction, and beauty.

In this moment of marriage between flood and wind, water and spirit, comes the beginnings of vocation – a calling to the genesis of a life journey. It is a journey that will be refined by a personal Exodus in the desert, forty days of wilderness, of perfecting understanding of who he is as God’s beloved child.

For Jesus baptism becomes the landscape for vocational birth – for hearing the words of God and the Cry to come forth as his Spirit-gifted child.

That Jesus came to John at the Jordan teaches us also another thing about his epiphany in self-revelation. Jesus is not to be a political savior or military warrior; this is not salvation’s path.  In John’s simple message of repentance we meet the essence of what a human is – a choicemaker, an ethical being who shares in the divine task of creating this earth, a choicemaker who chooses badly or loses his/her way on occasion and needs to repent, to turn about.  This is the heart and core of Judaism in the Torah. To be human is to live within the mind of God.  A recently deciphered inscription found in Israel, dating from the 10th century BCE, the time of King David, represents the earliest Hebrew writing and affirms this understanding of our human task.  It instructs:

1' you shall not do [it], but worship the [Lord].  
2' Judge the sla[ve] and the wid[ow] / Judge the orph[an]  
3' [and] the stranger. [Pl]ead for the infant / plead for the po[or and]  
4' the widow. Rehabilitate [the poor] at the hands of the king.  
5' Protect the po[or and] the slave / [supp]ort the stranger.  

Familiar?  Fairness, Advocacy of the weak, Building up, Protecting and sheltering, Supporting  - This is the heart of Torah.  And Jesus is Torah made flesh – the Word becomes a human being. 

All of this becomes the church’s understanding of baptism – of passing through the waters of creation, receiving the gift of God’s empowering Spirit and embarking on the journey of true human living in God’s image. 

The Baptism of Jesus causes us to turn our attention to our own baptisms and to this opportunity today to renew the commitment we made or which was made at first for us.  Baptism unites us to what our closing song “I am the light of the world” speaks of when it describes the work of Christmas – to find the lost and lonely, to heal broken souls, to feed hungry children, to make the powerful care, to dance at a baby’s new birth, to sing to the colors of the earth.  In Baptism we commit our beings to ordering ourselves and the world we live in after what we experience in Jesus, to creating a world as the community of God set free from the world’s powers that deny our life, labor and a peaceful future. 

As we answer the questions today in our renewal of vows, on some level we know that the world as the worldly powers have ordered it is not working, is not giving the human family abundant life as we were created and still ache for.  That some part of you believes that the world as it is on the front page of the newspaper is not the world as it was meant to be, you’re not crazy; you are feeling God’s continuing Cry coming from the mingled water and holy wind of our Baptisms.  It is the call and promise that Isaiah sang of along with his amazing vision of what the world could be, responding to those very same words “you are my beloved child” -       

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name; you are mine.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

For I am the Lord your God,

the Holy One of Israel, your Savior.  

May you and I hear the truth of these words – you are a beloved child of God.   Hearing these words and empowered by God’s Spirit, let us live as ones sent to live in the truth of God’s community. Let this be our epiphany. Amen. 

*I appreciate the writing of Bruce Epperly from Process and Faith, and Sarah Dylan Breuer from her web page SarahLaughed.net.  Both helped me turn a phrase or two in the above sermon.

Sermon for Epiphany 4

Jan 31, 2010

Grace Episcopal

Rev. Vern Hill 

In the months just before the great spasm here in the Diocese of San Joaquin two years ago, Melinda and I were wandering around Colorado and parked briefly in Rocky Mtn National Park.  We wanted to do church and decided to drive back down the “hill” 75 miles to Denver to attend the Cathedral.  Arriving early we found a rather empty church space causing us to wonder what toll gender and ordination controversy had taken in the mile high city.  By the time the service started the pews had pretty much filled up in front of us, but it was not until the Processional hymn began that we realized the place was full – on an ordinary mid-July Sunday.  Amazing. 

After service while still standing at our seats we struck up a conversation with a couple in front of us.  They were new to the Episcopal Church, having left their Roman Catholic homeland.  They left because of the politics of coercion – they were tired of being told how to vote on issues, particularly in areas where they had serious unresolved questions.  And now here they were in the Episcopal Church with its lengthy history of social witness and activism which they enthusiastically embraced. 

Ah – politics and the Church.  In Bakersfield it is not unlikely that you can find a religious house of worship, some of them quite large, which will happily provide you with a voting guide prior to any major election.  Of course these are informational – of course.  I recall how under- impressed I was at the outset of my ministry when I visited the  Assembly of God pastor in his rather spacious office – large oak desk, flags of the US and California displayed along with an autographed picture of then governor Ronald Reagan on his desk along with family mementos. 

Now I confess a fondness for politics.  I believe that politics is a legitimate extension of the theological process and command to be witnesses to the world.  I think it is inescapable to pretend that religion and religious experience have no relationship to the political world – to the world where power and authority are exercised, to the arena where the parameters of justice and dignity are shaped or misshaped.  To say that  “feeding the hungry,” “releasing the prisoner”, or “healing the broken” are meant only metaphorically as a hunger for salvation or a lack of clarity in life goals is nonsense within the context of our religious heritage. 

For Judaism and Christianity, the very nature of being a human is to be a choice-maker, an ethical being, a “choose this day who you will serve” being who participates in the creation and sustaining of our world – this is our divinely inspired task.  It is at the heart of the Jewish Torah and the “Torah made flesh” in Jesus that we who celebrate him understand ourselves in the reflective image of his being.  If someone asks me to not speak too often of issues of justice and peace and the use of earth’s gifts, and the holiness of life, I tend to ask back which one of  Jesus’ teachings in the Beatitudes would you have me leave out?

Today’s Gospel reading is a delicious affirmation of this call to be so engaged. Our story begins with a visit back home where Jesus engages in a bit of dramatic political – yes political – confrontation with the back home folks.  According to the storyteller Luke, this happens toward the end of his second year of ministry.

Before we move further into the story, here are a few extras that might enrich your understanding of what we read in this section of Luke.

Biblical scholarship tells us that Nazareth was Jesus’ hometown and that he did indeed visit Nazareth several times during his ministry.  It is also clear that Jesus made Capernaum, a fishing village on the edge of the Sea of Galilee, his operational base.  Capernaum has been characterized as a “not sought after spot, but a good place to get away from” – not unlike some places here in Kern County.  One rather interesting error to Luke’s story is his description of Nazareth as a place built on a hill – allowing for a cliff that Jesus could be thrown from.  If Nazareth was on a hill, it has since been moved.  What probably confused Luke who obviously was never in Nazareth is that many ancient cities had a significant escarpment as a feature of their natural defenses.  But Nazareth did not.  It was a tiny village clinging to the edge of its one small spring.  No cliffs.

So like any good story-teller we have a bit of fiction mixed in to heighten the plot’s conflict – important elements to a good story.  This is not journalistic reporting, it is not history nor is it a lesson in Palestinian geography;  it is story-telling with a much larger purpose – speaking the prophetic word of God; speaking of God’s thinking for a much larger audience.

Jesus reads from Isaiah.  Sits and speaks - , "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."  While this is hometown crowd who make predictable comments about their hometown returned son, they are a serious people who have been waiting for a Messiah, the restoration, the day of Jubilee, a day of justice when the powerful outsiders are overthrown.  Jesus’ words are gasoline on a smoldering fire.  But the folks at Nazareth wanted far more than restoration talk even; they looked for a day of vengeance as well – a phrase that Jesus curiously leaves out of his reading of Isaiah, a day when the enemies of the people like those of Nazareth will get what’s coming to them.

The enemies, those outside the circle of God’s grace – were of course the Gentiles, aliens to God’s people – the Roman presence, the oppressors of the chosen ones.  And here is where Jesus causes a great sucking sound to be heard from those gathered.  Outsiders, Gentiles, are the very ones Jesus talks about as the ones who received God’s favor and attention – right there in their own scriptures.  The widow Elijah helped – Gentile, enemy.  The commander, Naaman – Gentile, enemy.  What kind of Messiah shows up and announces "the day of the Lord's favor" without also bringing "the day of vengeance" that was promised so long ago?  How can this be justice and the restoration of God’s rule when the enemy is treated without judgment, treated as equal receivers of God’s grace?  Can you imagine talk radio covering this scene?

Worse yet, Nazareth’s anger at their circumstances and to what Jesus has said is fuelled by a further complication which contains something of an ironic twist.  These people of Galilee from Nazareth, including Jesus himself, were looked down upon even by other Jews.  Judeans considered the Galileans as “peasants,” “common people,” “unwashed people of the land”, with a dialect betraying a mix of cultures and races.  We often miss this in the story of the Bethlehem inn where Luke says that there was “no room” for Mary and Joseph there.  Have you ever considered that it does not say the inn was full?  Could it be that there was no room for their kind?

The politics of Nazareth was driven by smouldering rage, the anger of exclusion, of marginalization and the anticipation of a time for revenge when true justice would have what is rightfully theirs returned to them.  A new balance would be established even among Jews.  The Kingdom of God is Getting Even Time. 

Raised voices of today’s anger driven politics echo loudly in concert across time with the voices of those shouting to throw Jesus over the cliff.   One commentator today writes  - “People are feeling so powerless against forces that seemingly cannot be controlled. Confused by the culture of change, no longer able to recognise the world they once knew, people are turning in anger against their politicians, against their leaders.” And I would add, against their own values. 

This anger of Nazareth continues to manifest itself in so many ways today as people circle their wagons seeking control and justice through vengeance.  Appearing in our weekly paper at the lake was this brief OpEd note on aid for Haiti – words driven by bewilderment and fear. . .

Have we as Americans forgotten about New Orleans. . .Four years after Katrina New Orleans is only a little over one half rebuilt. . .  I didn’t see any concerts for the city nor any countries sending firemen, medical airplanes, nor hospital ships to New Orleans.  Yes what happened in Haiti is awful.  But as Americans, America should be number one.  Donate money to rebuild America, then worry about others.  God bless America.

The distinctive feature to the politics of Jesus is that there is no either, or; there is no outsider and insider, no us and them.  Jesus’ vision of the coming Kingdom which was nurtured in the soil of the prophetic traditions of Isaiah and Jeremiah seems to have been to discern the Holy within all, Imam or archbishop.  Redemption is driven by this Godly choice.  The prophetic words of inclusion by Isaiah and Jeremiah, speaking to the nations of the earth and the words of God spoken at the baptism of Jesus – “you are my beloved child” represents how God chooses to see all of humanity.  God’s circle of grace is without a rim – consider that:  the circle of grace is without a rim. 

Julie Polter, associate editor of Sojourners, a magazine that explores the connections of faith, politics and cultures, speaks of this rimless circle when she writes – “this is the truth of God:  all creation is one holy web of relationships, and gifts meant for all;. . . creation vibrates with the pain of all its parts because its true destiny is joy”. 

 Jesus invites the good people of Nazareth and their descendents today to – and here I borrow from Paul’s vision of this same truth - to give up their childish ways, to give up their speaking and thinking and reasoning as children.  Jesus invites us into an adulthood of the Kingdom, of divine driven community, to rebuild the garden earth and the family of its people.  Amen.