Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

While we would like to relegate evil, demons and spirits to the silver screen and bad television, when we take a look around us, we have to acknowledge that they aren’t just the stuff of fiction.

Earlier this week, a Kentucky community suffered the eleventh school shooting that has happened since the new year.[i]

Closer to home, a man randomly shot and killed a nineteen-year-old in York County, South Carolina, and even before that happened, not one, but four, of the county’s sheriff officers were shot in a separate incident that wounded three and killed Detective Mike Doty.

And a different kind of violence kept the spotlight on USA Gymnastics this week. When I was thirteen, I wanted to be an Olympic gymnast, and when Casey was thirteen, we even went to Philadelphia to watch the Olympic team trials in person.  But the attention this week wasn’t about girls realizing dreams; instead they were re-living nightmares. Dozens of young women who had been involved in women’s gymnastics addressed their abuser after he was convicted of his crimes against them. Altogether, more than one hundred sixty women were assaulted by a person whom they had been taught to trust.

And before we join the refrain, “What is this world is coming to?”, let’s confess just how short our memories are.

Kyrie eleison. Lord, have mercy.

Thankfully we have truth tellers who will hold us accountable to our promises to “never forget.”

A project in Montgomery, Alabama is memorializing the four thousand lynchings of African-Americans that took place between 1877 and 1950. 

And just yesterday the world marked the international remembrance of the holocaust - 73 years after the liberation. Six million Jews, 200,000 Romas and 200,000 disabled Germans were exterminated by the Nazis.[ii]

This litany has a point.

The death of schoolchildren and innocents, violence against a community and its first responders, the abuse of trust and the corruption of power — these examples remind us that evil and brokenness in the world are not new. They are part of our human condition that separates us from the good God wants for all creation.

So, when we hear the Mark text this morning, while we may not know exactly what kind of demon or unclean spirit is being described, we certainly recognize that we too face un-godly things we cannot understand in our lives today.

In our text, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue. In Mark’s gospel, this is really where we see Jesus’ first act of public ministry after calling the disciples. Teaching in the synagogue, already, his listeners are commenting on his teaching because they recognize a difference between him and the scribes, the knowledgeable religious experts who had taught before him. And then the text turns to the man with the unclean spirit.

And the very first thing Jesus does is confront the evil that inhabits the man.[iii]

I think there are at least two reasons why it is important that Jesus confronts the un-godly in a synagogue.  First, it’s a reminder that our religious structures and institutions don’t protect us against evil and the ungodly.

Faith is neither a talisman nor a charm that wards off demons.

And, second, in keeping with the popular quote that “the church is a hospital for sinners, not a museum for saints” no one told the man he couldn’t come in or he had to leave. God works in us in spite of our brokenness. We cannot wait and only come before God when we have it all together. That day will never come, and, besides, when we think that way, the only one we are really hiding from is ourselves! God already knows and loves us!

But God doesn’t leave us to struggle alone. In his book Night, writing about the holocaust in World War II, Elie Wiesel tells the story of a man facing the gallows and asking, "For God's sake, where is God?"

Wiesel writes, “And from within me, I heard a voice answer: " This is where--hanging here from this gallows..."

Facing the man with the unclean spirit, Jesus doesn’t look away uncomfortably, look past him or ignore him. He doesn’t avoid the man or the spirit’s presence, wrapping up his teaching and calling it a day. He doesn’t employ euphemisms or niceties to talk around what he sees happening right before him.

No, unequivocally, with unwavering confidence in his authority, Jesus renounces the power of the unclean spirit, silencing it and freeing the man from its clutches and restoring him to life.

In our affirmation of baptism, we claim that same authority – God’s authority – and we renounce sin, the devil and all the forces that defy God. That is what it means to be children of God.  

So, why is it so easy to forget God’s promises and desires for us in the face of evil?

This morning, the Gospel reminds us that this is the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. (Mark 1:1) As we go back out into the world, we may be bold like Jesus and confront those things that would rob us of abundant life in Christ.

Let’s name the people, the conditions, and the behaviors that tell us — you or I or any other child of God — does not have God’s love and mercy.

And empowered by God’s authority, let’s renounce all that threatens to diminish the good that God desires for each of God’s children.

Let us pray…[iv]

Holy God, Thank you for the gift of your Son Jesus. You put your holy words in His mouth, and at His word even the demons fall silent. When he was killed, you raised him to life, and now it is through Him that we exist, and in Him, that the crippling grip of death is broken forever. Empower us by your Holy Spirit to live free in faith and the knowledge of your abundant love and mercy.

Amen.

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[i] https://www.npr.org/2018/01/24/580433745/a-look-at-all-11-school-shootings-that-took-place-in-the-first-23-days-of-2018

[ii] http://www.un.org/en/holocaustremembrance/PDF/Introduction%20to%20the%20Holocaust.pdf

[iii] David Lose. “In the Meantime.”

[iv] Adapted from Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources

Third Sunday after Epiphany

When the Gospel of Mark was written in the second half of the first century, early Christians living in the kingdom of Rome had witnessed the persecution of Nero and the deaths of Peter and Paul, and may have been hearing about the siege of Jerusalem. [i] “Good news” didn’t come to people casting nets from the shoreline or mending their nets so they could be ready for the next catch. In ancient Rome, “good news” was brought to the emperor by messengers arriving with news of victory from military battles.

It is into that world that, here at the beginning of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus arrives.  

But instead of proclaiming that Rome has won and the pax romana was being restored by the emperor’s might, Jesus is “proclaiming the good news of God.” (Mar 1:14)  And in this Good News – this εὐαγγέλιον —God, not Rome, is victorious, and, in God’s victory, peace is restored to the least of these, and not just to the mighty.  

Immediately we know Jesus has turned the tables on the world’s powers and principalities and upended their ways of seeing life around them.

Next, we hear Jesus tell the people, “Repent and Believe.”The good news continues: repentance isn’t about naming our failures and trying to do better. It isn’t the result of self-directed soul searching, but of the Word of God active in us.

Martin Luther described the function of the law in Scripture as “[teaching us] to know [ourselves], that through [the Word] we may recognize [our] inability to do good and may despair of [our] ability.”[ii] In Scripture God is always the actor, and we respond to what God is doing. Repentance, then, is “inviting God to do what we can’t do ourselves.”[iii] It is inviting God to lead us in changing not only how we act and what we believe, but who we are.

Jesus tells Simon and Andrew, “Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.” Now these men might not have been old salts, but they weren’t young children either. They knew the sea and their trade and were skilled at mending their nets. But Mark says they dropped their nets and followed Jesus who invites them to not only look at the world differently, but to be in the world differently. 

In the film “Dead Poets Society” Robin Williams plays an alumnus turned teacher at an all boys’ boarding school, where as an English teacher he’s expected to teach the high school boys to understand poetry. Insisting the importance of poetry is not measured by studying “its meter, rhyme and figures of speech” Williams’ character teaches the boys instead that poetry springs out of their humanity, out of their identity. He teaches them, “just when you think you know something, you have to look at it in another way.” And, telling them, “the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse,” he asks, “What will your verse be?” The boys don’t simply learn poetry but become poets, discovering the power their words and ideas carry.

Just as Simon, Andrew, James and John were fishermen who didn’t know how to fish for people, we can read the Bible, learn its stories about Jesus and even memorize his words, without being his disciples. In Mark’s Gospel, discipleship is about believing and following. It is about responding to what God is doing. 

Importantly, discipleship isn’t only for those twelve who knew Jesus first. And it’s not only for religious leaders. That’s Good News! In a world that celebrates power, position and wealth, our victorious God invites everyone in, counts everyone and counts on everyone participating.

Reflecting on this week’s gospel text, Bishop Mike Rinehart of the Texas-Louisiana Gulf Coast Synod affirmed, “In baptism every single person is called to a vocation of following Christ and fishing for people, each in our own way.”[iv]

When I was in seminary, I spent a semester of Saturday mornings at AHOPE, an Asheville day shelter that provided people on the streets with a permanent mailing address, access to washing machines and showers and storage for belongings they couldn’t carry every day. I still follow news from Homeward Bound, the nonprofit that works to end homelessness in that city and runs the day shelter, and recently I saw where a woman who had been homeless for more than thirty years was moved into housing just before Christmas. She’s been in Asheville three years, working as a flagger during the construction season and sleeping on a riverbank at night, and now she is warm and safe. AHOPE and Homeward Bound aren’t churches or even explicitly Christian organizations and the social workers who ran intake for the shelter probably wouldn’t describe their work as ministry, but, through them, visible signs of hope and mercy are revealed to a hurting world.

Jesus’ invitation today is

to change how you look at the world and see the people who haven’t heard the Good News of God;

discover where the things that give you joy are also what the world needs;

and live out of the freedom each of us is given in faith to respond to those needs.

Let us pray…[v]

Holy God, Bearer of Good News,

We give you thanks that you cast your nets wide

so that you might draw everyone into the shelter of your strength, love and mercy;

By the wisdom of your Holy Spirit, teach us to respond to your call to repentance, to change who and how we are and follow you. 

Amen.

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[i] Philip A. Cuningham. “The Gospel of Mark.”

[ii] Martin Luther, “Freedom of a Christian.”

[iii] Brian Stoffregen, “Exegetical Notes for Epiphany 3B.”

[iv] “Epiphany 3B” Bishop Mike Rinehart’s Podcast.

[v] Adapted from Laughing Bird Liturgical Resources.

Second Sunday after Epiphany

In the very first verse of our Old Testament reading this morning, the writer of First Samuel tells us “The word of the LORD was rare in those days; visions were not widespread.” And with those words, suddenly this story is placed in a context we can understand. Vanished are the burning bush that Moses encountered and the pillars of fire and smoke that accompanied Israel during their exodus. The time of Samuel, between 1250 and 1000 BCE, was a time when, as one scholar wrote, “God seems to be sleeping.”[i]

When the young boy Samuel, whose name means “God has heard” is called by God to be a prophet, he reacts with confusion and disbelief. Even though he had spent his whole childhood in the temple with Eli the priest, Samuel is startled and disoriented when he hears God’s Word for himself. On the third time that God calls, Samuel fully awakens and responds, “Speak, Lord, for you servant is listening.”  (v. 10)

God tells Samuel then that God is “about to do something in Israel that will make both ears of anyone who hears of it tingle.” (v. 11) The phrase shows up in the words of later prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah usually carrying a sense of omen and threat of destruction, and here they precede a word of judgment against Eli and his sons who were stealing from the temple offerings. But God’s word also carries a word of promise to Samuel and Israel that God had, in fact, been awake and had witnessed the unfaithful actions of their leaders.

With these words, God reveals to Samuel that God still remembered the covenantal words of promise that had been given first to Noah and then to Abram all the way back in the genesis of Israel.[ii]

Reflecting on Samuel’s story of awakening, I want to recall other stories of awakenings. One took place in Los Angeles back in 1906:

A few years before the city would boom and become synonymous with the glamour of Hollywood, an African-American preacher named William J. Seymour from Kansas traveled to L.A. to preach at a small holiness church. Afterward, he stayed, teaching and preaching to larger and larger curious and interested crowds. Some weeks later a building on Azusa Street was found by his followers, and worship gatherings began happening nearly around the clock. The religious meetings, collectively called the Azusa Street Revival, continued for several years, attracting thousands of people and birthing the Pentecostal movement.

Another awakening happened in 1977 after Bishop Óscar Romero was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador, the capital city of El Salvador in central America. While Romero doubted his qualifications, his appointment was applauded by the military government because they saw him as bookish, weak and compliant; he wouldn’t make waves. However, as he met the people who filled the cathedral and asked for his prayers and assistance, visited places like Aguilares where the occupying army used a church as a barracks, and witnessed the torture and assassinations of both priests and residents, Romero awakened to the suffering of the people there. And in the face of criticism, turmoil and increasing violence, the Archbishop responded obediently to God’s call “to preach God’s Word, to administer the sacraments, to conduct public worship, to witness to the kingdom of God in the community, to speak publicly in solidarity with the poor and oppressed, calling for justice and proclaiming God’s love for the world.”[iii] In 1980, minutes after preaching,  "One must not love oneself so much, as to avoid getting involved in the risks of life that history demands of us….” Romero was martyred, assassinated as he led mass.[iv]

In this Epiphany season when we pay special attention to how Jesus is being revealed, it is important to see that, in each of these awakenings, “human speaking and hearing …become one of the main means by which the light of God’s revelation breaks into the affairs of this world.”[v]

God remembers. God sees. God speaks and calls us to live out the gospel.

None of these leaders was perfect and none of them responded to God in a vacuum. Samuel, who did not yet know the Lord, needed Eli, Seymour needed the local neighbors, and Romero relied on the people who were living and dying in San Salvador. They identified where God was calling them to be by listening together.

Hearing God speak and responding to God’s call to public ministry becomes a communal activity where discernment happens as the community listens and takes action, investing in ministry with our neighbors. Just as Eli exhibited obedience after hearing what the Lord had told Samuel, we too are called to obedience to God’s Word.

Earlier today we dedicated spaces for ministry that welcome people who are grieving or hurting, or just need to listen for God’s voice in silence, remembering the words of the psalmist who said his soul waited in silence for God, from his hope was in God.”[vi]

And we dedicated the Little Free Pantry, remembering God’s command in Deuteronomy to "Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land."[vii] Both of these ministries help us fulfill our congregation’s mission to be an extension of Christ in our community.

As we continue through the Epiphany season, may we continue listening to God’s Word in Scripture and may we pay attention to the ways that God is breaking into our world now; may we hear how God is calling us to participate and respond obediently saying, “Speak, Lord, for you servant is listening.”

Let us pray…

We give you all thanks and praise, O God, for what we know of you is overwhelming, more wonderful than we can ever understand.

Awaken us to your presence in all circumstances.

May Your Holy Spirit guide our discernment that we would listen for Your voice and follow wherever it leads.

Amen.

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[i] Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration (Feasting on the Word: Year B volume) (Kindle Locations 8914-8915). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

[ii] Genesis 9 and 12

[iii] Responsibilities of a Minister of Word and Sacrament, Manual of Policies and Procedures for Management of the Rosters of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, p. 6.

[iv] http://www.uscatholic.org/culture/social-justice/2009/02/oscar-romero-bishop-poor, accessed January 13, 2018.

[v] Feasting on the Word: Year B, Volume 1: Advent through Transfiguration (Feasting on the Word: Year B volume) (Kindle Locations 8894-8895). Presbyterian Publishing Corporation. Kindle Edition.

[vi] Psalm 62

[vii] Deut. 15:11

Epiphany of our Lord

Today we are celebrating the Epiphany of our Lord, a feast that follows the twelve days of Christmas and remembers that the Christ child came for all people and nations. These verses from Matthew are the Epiphany gospel no matter where we are in the three-year lectionary cycle of readings, but whenever we encounter a familiar story, we are invited to hear something new in it. Sometimes we are drawn to the star that led the magi to Bethlehem, to ponder what reveals Christ in our lives, or we look at the visitors themselves and the gifts they brought to the infant Jesus, and ask ourselves what worship is, but this year what caught my attention was how the magi responded after they met the infant King.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is the fulfillment of prophecy, and his story mirrors the history of Israel. In the opening chapters of the book of Exodus, Pharaoh ordered that all the male children of the Hebrews, or Israelites, be killed by the midwives; the child who escapes death in Egypt is Moses who goes on to lead God’s people through the wilderness and into freedom. In the verses that follow the magi’s visit here, the emperor Herod similarly orders the slaughter of all the children under two years old after learning about the birth of the Christ child. Warned by an angel, the holy family takes the infant Jesus and flees to escape the tyrant, only to return later in safety.

But the magi did not seek out Jesus because they had learned the prophets’ words about the long-awaited Messiah or the branch of David. They were responding to the revelation of something they did not yet understand, to a foreign phenomenon that was, nonetheless, clearly sacred and holy. And after their visit, the magi chose to “return to their own country by another road.”  The revelation of Jesus that they experienced caused them to choose a different course or route through life.

The magi knew the way back home, and they could have retraced their steps, following their previous route back to their country, but they chose differently. We, too, can follow the familiar worn ways that we have followed before, or we can choose to live differently, in response to the holy gift God has given us in Jesus. That is what discipleship – knowing God and being in relationship with God – is. It’s not an intellectual exercise, but it is about changing course, repenting from the ways that we turn inward and focus on ourselves, and choosing a different course that follows Jesus into the world.

A few years ago, a Benedictine abbot named Father Christopher Jamison invited five volunteers to explore silence with him. His belief is that silence is a wellspring for the soul, providing much-needed respite from a world infected by busy-ness. BBC filmed the participants as they experienced silence first on a weekend retreat at Worth Abbey in Sussex and then over eight days at a Jesuit retreat center in Wales. Like the magi in the gospel, these were not priests or people with formal religious training or even people who had spent their lifetimes in churches or synagogues. They weren’t familiar with the language or traditions of faith; all of that was foreign and strange to them. And yet, they discovered sacred spaces and ways to connect with the holy as they entered and stayed in the silence. And preparing to return home, they committed to choosing to live differently in the world to preserve those sacred spaces and practices.

On Epiphany we celebrate the manifestation of the glory of God — the holy — in the infant Jesus, recognizing, gratefully, that God sent his Son not only for the high priests and Pharisees, the Sadducees and religious leaders, but for every one of us, too. As we marvel at this child and offer our gifts, I wonder if we can offer ourselves, like the magi and those volunteers at the abbey, by choosing to live differently in response to sacred and wondrous miracle that God chooses to love us more than righteousness and judgment and enter into our lives in the Incarnation.

Let us pray…

Holy God of mystery,

Thank you for revealing your love in your infant Son Jesus

And for the faithful witness of the magi who recognized the sacred wonder of his birth.

Draw us to you and teach us to bear your light into the world.

Amen.