Second Sunday after Epiphany

1 Samuel 3:1-20

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

John 1:43-51​

There’s a scene in “It’s a Wonderful Life” after George and the angel Clarence have dried out from their icy plunge into the river, when they go to local watering hole, a place George remembers as Martini’s. The bartender Nick owns the place now and it’s a seedier and more raucous place than George remembers. And a belligerent Nick asks George, “And that’s another thing. Where do you come off calling me Nick?”

In today’s gospel, the question Nathanael asks Jesus is, “How do you know me?” but I imagine he has that same sneer and aggravated tone as he questions Jesus. Irritated. Cynical. Skeptical. After all, he was already halfway there when Philip told him Jesus came from Nazareth. Nathanael and Philip were from Bethsaida and Nazareth would have been their hometown rival, like Shelby and Kings Mountain. Eugene Peterson, in the Message, paraphrases Nathanael’s question, saying, “Where did you get that idea? You don’t know me.”

Psalm 139’s assures us that contrary to what Nathanael, or we, may think, God does know us. The psalmist declares “You are acquainted with all my ways…Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you know it completely.” (v. 3-4) Returning to The Message, Peterson says it this way:

You know when I leave and when I get back; I’m never out of your sight. You know everything I’m going to say before I start the first sentence. I look behind me and you’re there, then up ahead and you’re there, too— your reassuring presence, coming and going. (v. 3-5)

John Ylvisaker’s hymn “Borning Cry” echoes the psalmist:

I was there to hear your borning cry, I’ll be there when you are old. I rejoiced the day you were baptized, to see your life unfold.

God formed our inward parts and knit us together in our mothers’ wombs, so, yes! God knows each one of us. (v. 13)

Despite being known by God, we can probably all recall times in our lives when we were incapable of hearing or seeing God.

When like Samuel we didn’t yet know God. The text says “visions of God were not widespread.” Whatever ministry he was engaged in, it didn’t include hearing God speak or seeing God move. It took Eli telling Samuel that the Lord was speaking for him to respond.

Or like Nathanael our own biases keep us from seeing God. When Philip first told him where Jesus was from, Nathanael was dismissive, asking, “Can anything good come out Nazareth?” Nathanael’s prejudice against Nazareth becomes an obstacle, obscuring his vision, so that he could not see God’s own Son standing right in front of him.

Or even like Eli who must have seen clearly once, serving the Lord as the temple priest, but could no longer see. While his eyes may have been clouded by cataracts or his vision may have deteriorated because of old age (2:22), the text can be read less literally. We know that Eli had allowed his sons to abuse the power of the priesthood, seizing the best offerings and laying with the women who came to present sacrifices. Perhaps his failure to hold them accountable for their selfishness and exploitation affected his ability to see the Lord clearly.

It is one thing to be known by God, and another to see or hear God. But, then, when we do hear God speak or see God’s work happening in the world around us, each of us must decide how we will respond.

Samuel, for one, is tentative. Eli tells him to answer the Lord saying, “Speak, Lord, for Your servant is listening” and Samuel responds to voice calling out to him saying, “Speak, for Your servant is listening.” Hebrew professor Robert Alter cites a sixteenth century scholar when he wonders whether Samuel drops “Lord” from his response deliberately. Was Samuel feeling skeptical or dismissive, uncertain about who he is addressing?

However, he feels initially, he listens to the Lord and then, reluctantly he delivers to Eli the dismal but unsurprising news that the Lord intends to remove Eli’s priestly authority. (Alter, 188)

Nathanael responds more immediately with adoration and praise. He is transformed when he realizes Jesus wasn’t playing games. The recognition that Jesus had seen him and knew him prompts his reply, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” (v. 49)

How will we answer God’s call to us?

This weekend we commemorate The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who would have been 92 if he had had not been assassinated in 1968 when he was only 39 years old. An Atlanta preacher, King grounded his calls for racial justice in Scripture and theology. On Friday, April 12, 1963 - Good Friday that year - King was arrested during protests in Alabama, and a few days later he wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”, addressing white moderate Christians who, he charged, were “more devoted to order than to justice; who [preferred] a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

King wrote critically, naming his disappointment that the very same people who he believed would be coworkers with God “have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.”

And he urged his audience to “repent not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

King’s words challenge me. I’m uncomfortable. After all, I want to be one of the “good” Christians.

I’ve learned a lot about white supremacy, systemic racism and my own biases in the last twelve years.

But I confess that when the Capitol was attacked on January 6, I knew it was wrong, evil, and sinful, but I was ignorant of the ways in which our brown and black siblings in Christ were brutalized, watching such a very different response to the non-violent protesters, and even to the violent rioters, than we have seen before.

I know I’ve quoted The Rev. Dr. Yvonne Delk before; she is the one who taught me, “What you see depends largely on where you sit.” From where I sit, I could not see what Bishop Yehiel Curry of the Metro Chicago Synod of the ELCA, saw and shared later: that, if the rioters had been brown or black, they would have been shot. I have since heard that echoed by the voices of other black and brown siblings here in North Carolina.

During the summer, after George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, as our synod and denomination engaged in conversations about racial justice, The Rev. Dr. Shanitria Cuthbertson, who pastors Emmaus in West Charlotte, described conviction as “being convinced and confident that something is true.” The work of the Holy Spirit, conviction leads us to acknowledgment, admission, sight and Godly sorrow –a cycle of restoration.

What I experience when I hear Dr. King’s words is Holy Spirit driven conviction that helps me see how I perpetuate injustice and the sin of racism by my own appalling silence.

And this conviction leads me to Godly sorrow that our black and brown siblings whose inward parts were formed by God and who were knit together in their mothers’ wombs  ̶ siblings created in the image of God and imbued with dignity from God  ̶ have daily experiences where they are told that they have less worth or dignity than another person whose skin is fairer.

And that Godly sorrow leads me to want to love fiercely and out loud. King wrote in this same letter:

Was not Jesus an extremist in love? – “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you?” Was not Amos an extremist for justice? – “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ? – “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist? – “Here I stand; I can do no other so help me God.”… So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice?

My prayer is that, being known by God, we will hear and see God at work around us, and respond by being extremists for love and justice.

Amen.

Third Sunday of Advent

Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11 

Did Isaiah’s words sound familiar when you hear them today? Jesus uses these words as his topic sentence for his first public sermon in Luke Chapter 4. There he is speaking to the assembly in the synagogue and when he finishes, the people try to throw him off a cliff.

His words were good news to the ones named in these verses – the oppressed, the brokenhearted, the captives and prisoners and those who are mourning. But they meant that things would not be the same. People would not be able to do the things they have always done. In Jesus, God was breaking into the world, turning things upside down and doing something new.

When Isaiah speaks these words for the first time, in Third Isaiah, he wants the people to know that whatever they are facing – unfairness, sorrow, grief, or the loss of freedom – their suffering has not gone unnoticed. The Lord has anointed him and sent him to initiate a new beginning for God’s people.

When we have faced defeat or are suffering or grieving, and we are laid low, it can be difficult to expect anything good, to recognize kindness or find hope.

But into the uncertainty that surrounds God’s people upon their return from exile, the prophet speaks, promising to clothe them, replacing their ashes with garland, their mourning with the oil of gladness and their faint spirits with a mantle of praise.

This is God’s merciful and redeeming action for them; not the result of anything they have done or said.

The prophet then says,

3b [The people] will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory. 4 They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.” (Isaiah 61:3-4)

Isaiah was no longer calling the people grass that would wither or flowers that would fade. (Isaiah 40:7) Now they were to be oaks, mighty trees that endure centuries and withstand hurricanes, tornados, and droughts. Mighty trees that began small, insignificant and easily overlooked, as acorns.

As we hear these verses today, hopefully we can place ourselves in the text, and hear the prophet’s charge to us as God’s people. We are to stand strong and visible, as witnesses to God’s activity in the world. Our beginnings may be humble, but God is the one leading us and strengthening us.

The prophet continues to say that God’s people will be the ones who

shall build up the ancient ruins, …raise up the former devastations; …[and] repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations. (Isaiah 61:4)

The prophet isn’t the one who will pour sweat and tears into this work of restoration and renewal. It’s God’s own people who are being called.

One of the observations that has been made about this year and the pandemic is that the fissures or cracks in our systems and safety nets, our healthcare and even our economy have been exposed. It’s not that the problems we are facing originated in the last nine months, but that our vulnerabilities were unmasked.

And when the pandemic ends, we aren’t going to be able to do the things we have always done.

As Jesus’ followers, we must go into places of ruin, bear witness to God’s presence, and walk alongside people who have been hurt by the church and world, and listen to the devastation in their lives.

For us today the verbs Isaiah uses aren’t about bricks and mortar; they are about people, the very brothers and sisters who are our neighbors. Redeemed by God, we are called to build up God’s people, raise up faithful disciples and repair broken relationships.

And when any one of us feels overwhelmed by that work – because it is hard work – may we remember that the mighty trees we are called to emulate survive because they have a sprawling root system that goes deep into the ground, and when they grow in dry places, the roots grow even more deeply. Those roots are anchors, securing the trees to the ground and they are lifelines, sending up new sprouts when the tree is damaged and storing what they need to grow and endure.

In the same way, our relationships with God and with one another keep us connected in a system where we will find encouragement and strength to weather whatever comes our way.

Let us pray…

Good and gracious God,

Thank you for sending your Son Jesus into the world to bring light into darkness and hope to the weary.

Thank you for your mercy and grace that is unmerited and unearned, but ours all the same.

Nourish us in our congregation with Your Word,

and by Your spirit strengthen us to be witnesses

to your presence in the world and messengers of the good news of Your love.

We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

Amen.

Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6 and Joel 2

These verses from Matthew’s Gospel that we hear each year on Ash Wednesday are from a section of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, the first of five discourses Jesus makes in Matthew. This is the sermon that gives us the beatitudes and later the Lord’s prayer. Jesus is teaching the disciples about the promise of God's blessing and a new kind of kingdom righteousness that looks different from the Roman occupation they have known.[i] And in this part of his sermon, Jesus warns his followers against performing their faith “like the hypocrites” who were the stage actors of the day.

It’s hard to ignore the irony that here on Ash Wednesday we listen to Jesus teach about giving and praying in secret and yet, in a few minutes I will mark an ashen cross on your forehead and you will walk back out into the world with the ashes visible for all to see.

With his warnings about practicing piety in public though, Jesus was contrasting the public displays that were part of Roman patronage designed to bring special attention to those in power.

Shakespeare wrote, “All the world’s a stage and all men and women merely players.” But the kingdom of heaven is not a stage.

There is more to following Jesus than playing a part. Discipleship isn’t about wearing the right clothing, costume or mask, and it isn’t about remembering the right words or following a script. Ash Wednesday invites us to stop role playing, or pretending, and move from performance to relationship, where we find our identity as followers of Jesus.

Wearing the ashes marked into a cross on our own skin is not a prideful or vainglorious action. Instead it is an act of humility. With these ashes, we acknowledge our own human frailty and mortality. We recognize that our identity is not found in ourselves, our achievements or our abilities, but in Christ alone.

It may be the person you next see will try to wipe away the smudge on your forehead, not understanding its significance. But others will see the cross and know that it marks you as a Christian entering the season of Lent.

The trumpet that Matthew bans becomes the trumpet calling us together to worship in the prophet Joel’s words. Ushering us into Lent, Joel calls the whole community together, from the infant in arms to the elderly, and tells us what the Lord commands:

return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping and with mourning; rend your hearts and not your clothing.[ii]

Like Matthew, the prophet’s concern is not on outward appearances or performances but what is happening within us in our hearts.

The prophet’s call is communal and it is personal. It is not private.

And while often the Hebrew word in this text shuv suggests repentance — turning around and changing direction —Hebrew professor and Episcopal priest The Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney suggests on this day, in this text, it can be read as “a call to draw closer to God.”[iii]

At the beginning of this forty days we are being called to rededicate ourselves to a life following Jesus.
The prophet promises forgiveness from our tender God, who “is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and relents from punishing.”[iv]

And forgiven, we come to the Table to receive the wine and bread, to be fed and nourished with the gifts of God that will sustain us in the desert wilderness of Lent.

Let us pray…
Almighty and everlasting God, you hate nothing you have made and forgive the sins of all who are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of you, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.[v]

[i] “Matthew.” Enterthebible.org, Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/newtestament.aspx?rid=2, accessed 2/25/2020.
[ii] Joel 2:12-13a
[iii] The Rev. Dr. Wil Gafney. “Commentary on Joel 2:1-2, 12-17.” Workingpreacher.org, Luther Seminary. https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3564, , accessed 2/25/2020.
[iv] Joel 2:13b
[v] Book of Common Prayer. The Episcopal Church.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Luke 1:39-55

This Advent, as we have accompanied Jesus’ mother Mary through the season, our Advent reflection has had us questioning,
“How do we participate in bringing about the Kingdom of God here on earth?”
“How do we bear God into the world?”
and, “Who else is the Church beyond those of us who gather here this morning, whose names are already known to us?”

Responding to John’s call for repentance we remember that when we turn away from ourselves, we can see new ways to serve others.

So having spent time with Mary and with John, now we meet Mary’s relative Elizabeth, a woman who is married to a priest named Zechariah and lives in a village in the hill country of Judea, about ninety miles south of Nazareth.

Earlier in his gospel, Luke tells us that Elizabeth already is “in her old age.” She has lived her life childless in a time and place where a woman’s role was to bear children and barrenness was mis-understood as failure.[i] Perhaps there would have been whispers behind her back or she might have been openly scorned and excluded by other women in her village.

But now, like Mary, Elizabeth has conceived a child, and Luke says that she is in the sixth month of her pregnancy when we hear her respond to the surprise arrival of her relative Mary with joy and with celebration.

Luke says Elizabeth “exclaimed with a loud cry” when she heard Mary’s greeting.  We don’t know why Elizbeth cries out; she could have been reacting to her sudden awareness of the Holy Spirit or to the baby’s kick in her womb. The Rev. Dr. Judith Jones, a religion professor at Wartburg College, suggests Elizabeth’s speech is prophetic; she proclaims what hasn’t been announced to anyone but Mary. She alone sees what others can’t or won’t; she recognizes that the child Mary carries is the promised Messiah and Lord.

Listening to the Holy Spirit, Elizabeth uses her prophetic voice to stand against social conventions that would have shunned an unwed pregnant woman when she declares that Mary is blessed. Welcoming Mary instead of shaming her, Elizabeth embodies the radical love that we receive first from God, embracing Mary instead of rejecting her.

Elizabeth’s story prompts more questions this Advent:
“How do we listen to the Spirit’s prompting in our lives?”
And, “How do we receive those who arrive on our doorstep unexpectedly?”

After Hurricane Florence crawled through the Carolinas in September, dumping feet of rain in places, one Myrtle Beach business owner who owns a motel in the resort town gave away one thousand hotel stays to provide shelter to neighbors and residents who were now homeless.  CBS News updated the story just after Thanksgiving to share how his generosity has now been multiplied through donations from others that are providing assistance to people who are just beginning to get back on their feet. [ii]

Here in Shelby, at Aldersgate United Methodist volunteers work with the social workers in the schools to organize a “Christmas Store.” Similar to an angel tree where you can take a tag that lists several items for a child, the volunteers collect the wish lists and then they buy and sort items and invite families to come in and pick up their Christmas bags, but there are also books to go home with each child and parents have an opportunity both to shop for extra items that have been donated or collected, and they are invited to make a small donation that then helps another family. Last week when there was still snow on the ground a young mother arrived at the church without a coat and after some conversation with her, the volunteers learned the extent of the family’s needs. Our larger Shelby community, united in our faith in Jesus Christ, was able to help that family.

Elizabeth and Mary remind us that we do not journey through this life alone.

Maybe you are like Mary, frightened and astonished at the events in your life, and searching out a person you can trust. Or perhaps you are someone’s Elizabeth, the person to whom they can turn when the world has been upended, and you speak words of blessing and assurance to them, reminding them that God is still present.

Listening to the Holy Spirit, this Advent, may we be bound together by the love God has first given us and respond with joy and celebration to each person we meet.

Let us pray…[iii]
Merciful God, Thank you for embracing the faithful,
one generation to the next;
Thank you for the promise of Your Son coming as the light of the world at Christmas,
The incarnation of Your presence that restores us and saves us.
By Your Holy Spirit, strengthen us in our journey of faith that we will walk in the ways of peace, and be ready to greet the coming Lord with joy and celebration.
Amen.

[i] The Rev. Dr. Judith Jones, “Commentary on Luke 1:39-45 (46-55).” Luther Seminary WorkingPreacher.com, accessed 12/22/2018.
[ii] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jaret-hucks-midtown-inn-myrtle-beach-south-carolina-update/, accessed 12/22/2018
[iii] Adapted from Laughing Bird liturgical resources

Second Sunday of Advent

Luke 3:1-6

Last week on the first Sunday of Advent I invited you to listen to the voice of Mary this season. In Luke’s Gospel, the lowly servant girl is the first person on earth to use her voice to tell about God coming on earth — the first one to name and praise the great things that God has done. The pregnant young woman who physically carries Jesus into the world as a newborn also bears God into the world with her words.

And now, in today’s gospel reading, we hear another voice –John the Baptizer who is crying in the wilderness; quoting the prophet Isaiah; he, too, is a God-bearer, bringing the living God into the world

Both Mary and John use their voices to name who they know God to be and declaring the truth of the promises God makes and fulfills in our lives. We talk about this same pattern in the psalms where the songwriters first say who God is and then appeal to God to act in ways that reflect what they already know about God. These appeals testify to the steadfastness of God, “who was and who is and who is to come.” (Rev. 1:8)

Importantly, the emperors, governors and high priests — the politically and socially powerful people — who Luke names in the beginning of this passage are not the ones who are given the news of God’s coming reign; instead it is entrusted to Mary and now to John to proclaim the good news to those around them, at great cost.

Mary could have faced stoning for being pregnant with someone else’s child, and as Methodist pastor William Lamar IV (the 4th) wrote in a recent essay about John’s proclamation, “[Spiritual leaders who] leave the social order uninterrupted don’t get beheaded by the state.”

The disruptive gospel that Mary delivers is that God “has scattered the proud …; He has brought down the powerful…, and lifted up the lowly; He has filled the hungry with good things.” (Luke 1:51-53)

And while we will hear John’s message of repentance in more detail next Sunday, in verses 4 and 5, he declares that when the Lord comes, “every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth….”

Advent puts us on alert that changes are coming — that God’s kingdom coming on earth will look different!

Like Mary and John, as people of faith, we know God as One who listens to and responds to us. We are confident that God is steadfast and present with us. We believe that God’s kingdom coming on earth will mean the world is reconciled, not divided; peaceful not warring; and hope-filled, not despairing — changed from what we are experiencing now. We carry this vision for God’s kingdom into the world by our actions and with our words, not just because we want to be “nice” but because, just like Mary and John, as Christians we too are messengers for God, entrusted with a responsibility to bear God’s love and mercy into the world around us.

Surely, one of the ways we prepare for the Lord is in worship. Worship isn’t a spectator sport or a performance given for our entertainment; we are participants, active and invited to use all our senses to praise God through the music and the liturgy, taking in the colors of the seasons that we see on paraments and banners and remembering the light of God with candles. Surrounded by elements of God’s story, we are reminded that God’s story connects to our own story. Worship is also where we clear our minds of all the chatter and noise of the world and stop to listen to God. Sometimes we talk to God in prayer, but the silence we offer God is where we can hear God speak to us. Worship is where we are reconciled with each other in the sharing of the peace, which isn’t a casual greeting, but sharing the restorative gift of God’s own peace with one another. And, worship is where we lay down our burdens before God and receive the bread and the wine that nourishes us for the journey of discipleship. And then we are sent out into the world, as messengers and God-bearers.

Earlier in the week, I shared with our congregation council one question that has been on my mind since I was with the Synod Council last weekend, and that is, “How do we bear God to the people who aren’t in worship?” Another way to ask that is “Where do we show up and reveal God to others?” Or “How can we be the capital-C Church in the world, unafraid to love and live like Jesus?” Whether with our words or with our presence, we bear God into the world when we show up.

Before the weekend snowstorm, there was a meme, or picture, on Facebook that showed one of those electronic, programmable  highway signs over a road; the sign read, “LIZZARD WARNING Saturday to Sunday” and it was captioned, “You had one job…” 

In this life of faith, we have one job, and that is to carry the Good News into the world, even when it costly or disruptive.

Let us pray…
Holy and disruptive God,
Thank you for Your promised Son Jesus coming as our Savior and Lord;
Awaken us to the world’s deep need;
By Your Spirit help us use our voices to carry Your love, mercy and forgiveness into the world
Amen.