Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

Last Sunday in confirmation we were talking about beginnings and endings, creation and evolution and then about the Book of Revelation and how that last book in our biblical canon is identified with predictions of the end times. Several times we could have framed our conversation the way Jesus does as he continues preaching the Sermon on the Mount:

“You have heard it said that God created the heavens and the earth and everything that creeps on it in six days, but I say to you…” or

“You have heard it said that in heaven there will be seven angels carrying the seven plagues and when the seventh has been released, that will signify the end of the wrath of God, but I say to you…”

Throughout this sermon Jesus interprets what has been said by the prophets and the teachers of the law, and in some places, what is popularly know among the people listening to him, and he uses his teaching to reorient people toward God.

One of the observations the students and I made last week is that when we read or hear Scripture, it’s important to remember what we know about the character of God. As we reconcile the biblical accounts of creation with scientific evidence of dinosaurs and fossils, we remember that God isn’t a class clown, targeting us to be duped or ticked.

In Leviticus and again as we listen to Jesus, when we hear the commandments God has given us to govern our lives with God and with each other, we shouldn’t dismiss the ones that are challenging or seem improbable. God does not set us up to fail or put us in impossible circumstances to test us.

Therefore, when we hear Jesus’ command to be perfect, or complete, as our heavenly father is perfect, or complete, we can recognize that his command is not an indictment of how we have failed. And Jesus isn’t merely giving us a motivational speech, urging us to be better.

No, instead, what we should hear in Jesus’ words is
an affirmation of our identity as children of God;
and a promise that God is working out something new in each of us.

Jesus is casting a vision for the future as God imagines it.

Going back to the beginning, in Genesis, Scripture says God created humankind in the image of God. This idea that we are the imago Dei [imagō day] – that we are made in the image of God – becomes the foundation or ground of our being.

When we forget who we are, or whose we are, when we turn away from God, we are called to confess our brokenness, and live, freed as sons and daughters of God.

In the text from Leviticus, the Lord tells Moses, “Speak to all the congregation of people of Israel and say to them: You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy.” Again, this isn’t an indictment of our poor behavior or a motivational speech to encourage us to be better people. A half-dozen times, the Lord ends a command with the reminder “I am the Lord.” because it reminds us whose authority we live under.

As Luther writes in the explanation of the third article of the Creed, we must acknowledge that we can not by our own power or merit come to Christ or believe in Him, but the Holy Spirit enlightens us and empowers us to do what we cannot. [i]

God empowers us to live in God’s image, holy and perfect, as God is.

In the Matthew text, the Greek word for “perfect” is τέλειος

Its meaning better describes our relationship or orientation toward a goal than the goal itself. The goal is to live each day in the Imago Dei, the image of God.

Too often we live out of our brokenness, but as in the beatitudes, this image of who we are as God’s children is not a future state. It is who we are today, as God’s children. As Luther writes in his Large Catechism, “the work is finished and completed; Christ has acquired and won the treasure for us by his sufferings, death and resurrection.”[ii]

“[The Gospel] teaches about the right relation of the heart to God”[iii] because God imagines a world where we can live in right relationship with God and with each other.

But if holiness and righteousness, or perfection,
doesn’t look like never making a mistake;
if it doesn’t mean aging without wrinkles or scars;
if it doesn’t sound like always having the right answer, the quick reply or the comforting words,
what does it look like or sound like?

The easy answer, of course, like it so often is in church, is that it looks like Jesus. But as each one of us knows, living in the imago Dei, in the image of God and imitating Jesus, is anything but easy.

Still, I think we catch glimpses of what living in God’s image, and into God’s vision or creation, looks like

• when a group of women gather, as women across our synod did a week ago Saturday, to proclaim the power of the Holy Spirit to encourage us and our sisters and brothers in faith;
• when churches and temples opened their doors to shelter and feed people who had been evacuated because of problems with the Oroville Dam in northern California;
• when prophetic voices, like those of Martin Luther and the other reformers, took a stand five hundred years ago against the abuses they were witnessing

As daughters and sons, as communities of faith, we are called to live as God makes us, holy and perfect in an imperfect and broken world, and to reflect the God in whose image we are made in our actions and our words.

Let us pray:
Holy God,
Help us hear again that you love us very much.
Help us remember your faithfulness and trust in your promises, Lord,
that we might live in right relationship with you and our neighbors.
Ground us in Your Word and form us each into a reflection of your image, Lord.
Amen.

[i] “Small Catechism, Book of Concord, 355-56.
[ii] “Large Catechism,” Book of Concord. 436.
[iii] Luther’s Works, Vol 21., p. 108.

Fifth Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

In today’s gospel, Jesus continues preaching his Sermon on the Mount. He was preaching “to a people divided and confused by anxious questions” about how to be faithful and how to live together with the Romans.”[i] Some people wanted to collaborate and find middle ground, others wanted to fight, and still others wanted to retreat into the safety of private religious study and practice.

He is preaching to teach “what it means to be disciples in this setting” of discord and explosive dialog. [ii]

Jesus uses the word “righteousness here in verse 20, saying, that a person’s righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees. The religious leaders held a traditionally Jewish understanding of righteousness as our standing before God, or our individual morality. But for Jesus, righteousness is not about how you, Judy, or you, Calvin, act but about “all of you”, or maybe, “all y’all.” All of us.

Righteousness in Matthew is about how we live in relationship with each other.

It is how we live into “God’s reordering of human life.”[iii] Creating us for relationship, God covenants with us, promising to sustain us in this life together as we participate in God’s work in the world all around us.

In his voluminous commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, Martin Luther accuses us of reading Christ’s words as though they were being said by a common tradesman instead of our Lord Jesus.

Martin Luther wrote that this righteousness that Christ commands requires yearning and longing, earnestness and diligence, and eagerness. He writes,
“You should run out and offer your hands and your feet and your whole body, and wager everything you have and can do.”

So, what does this urgent and wholehearted righteousness looks like?

According to Jesus, it means “being salt of the earth and light of the world.”[iv]

“Salt of the earth” can describe a person who is simply decent. Unpretentious. Unaffected. But its meaning is expanded in the gospel as we reflect on what salt does. It preserves. It flavors.

And what about light? Light shines into the darkness, it illuminates the closets where we hide in fear, and helps us see the true nature of things.

During this epiphany season, we describe Jesus as “the light of the world” but in the sermon on the Mount, Jesus turns that back on us, commissioning us to go into the world bearing the light of the gospel.

As in first century Galilee, our nation is divided and contentious.

A little over a week ago, the president signed an executive order restricting the entry of refugees and visitors from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

A few days later, our presiding bishop joined the bishops of the Episcopal and Methodist churches and other faith leaders in addressing the executive order. In her statement, Bishop Eaton affirmed the ELCA’s social statement on immigration adopted nearly twenty years ago, standing with those who have fled persecution and sought refuge in the United States.

Since then, and throughout this week, as I reflected on what it means to hunger and thirst for righteousness, and to be the “salt of the earth” and “light of the world”, I have been listening.

First, to a synod colleague, widow and mother of two who pastors a congregation in High Point. She described the heartache and fear in her congregation because she pastors people with green cards and visas, people who were born in Sudan and lived in refugee camps in Egypt while they were screened and vetted to become part of the small percentage of refugees chosen for resettlement. Her imperative to welcome the stranger comes from Matthew, Chapter 25 when Jesus said, “I was a stranger and you welcomed me.”

I also listened to a seminary classmate of mine, a deeply faithful cradle Lutheran who now pastors a two-point parish halfway across the country, in Kansas. He was wrestling aloud with our denomination’s response and trying to discern the wisdom in it. Recalling when, also in Matthew, Jesus tells the disciples, “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves,” this pastor saw prudence and caution in the president’s policy.[v]

I am telling you their stories because I realize hungering and thirsting for righteousness — figuring out what it means to live together as God’s people and finding ways to participate in God’s work in the world — is hard work.

Rightly, we look to Scripture, but while we like to say “the Bible says,” a more accurate statement is that “The Bible reads…” Because it is a compilation of texts by many different authors, written over centuries, what the Bible “says” is a matter of how we interpret it. So, in divided and contentious times, while God’s Word guides us, we cannot read the Bible as a step-by-step instruction manual; we have to pay attention to the context in which it was written, and to our current circumstances, confident that God is still speaking to us.

In our gospel text today, it’s important to note that the verbs are in the present tense – that Jesus isn’t making future oriented, or conditional, promises when he declares:

“You are the salt of the world; you are the light of the world.”

Martin Luther wrote that being salt of the earth and light of the world means that all of us, “all y’all,” are anointed by Jesus to a public ministry where we stand before the world.

That description was enlivened for me when I opened this letter on Monday. I am sharing it with you, with the author’s permission:

Dear Pastor Christina, 

I am a grandniece of Velta Ilsters Langins, who was (I believe) your church's organist for 43 years (she passed away in 2000).

My great aunt was born in Latvia, but she, my grandmother and great grandmother were forced to flee the country during WWII. They lived for 5 years in Displaced Persons camps in Germany. Thanks to your church, my great aunt was sponsored to come to the United States. After her arrival, my grandmother was able to bring her family as well. This included her infant daughter, my mother.

It is important to remember that there was anti-immigrant and anti-refugee sentiment at the time as well. Thank you for providing my family with a safe haven and a space to rebuild our lives. My mother's family moved to Chicago, but my great aunt spent the rest of her life in Shelby, NC.

We continue to be a family of musicians and art lovers. Among my great aunt's relatives in the US are at least three pianists/piano teachers (!), a professor, and a nurse.

Thank you for your generosity and on-going commitment to supporting refugees. I literally owe my existence to welcoming institutions like yours.

Peace,
Renata

Renata’s letter reminded me that while support for and opposition toward immigrants has ebbed and swelled at different points in our country’s history and our collective memory, the Lutheran church has had a consistent practice of providing hospitality for refugees.

Luther Immigration and Refugee Service notes that,
“following World War II, when one out of every six Lutherans in the world was a refugee or displaced person, Lutherans …resettled some 57,000 refugees in the United States.”[vi]

Living as the salt of the earth and the light of the world, our very own congregation here at Ascension was one of 6,000 congregations that participated in those efforts.[vii]

I know Latvia isn’t Sudan, and 2017 isn’t 1947, but Christ’s call to us to be the salt of the earth and light of the world persists today,
in a world that is perhaps even more unsettled and divided.

I believe the Church is still one of the places in the world where we can come together to bridge our differences. Reading Scripture and talking about what we hear God saying, we can pray with our voices raised or through our tears, and sometimes we can pray with our feet. We can name each other blessed, because we are beloved children of our Creator God, and then, we can go out, determined, in faith, to live in ways that the Kingdom of heaven shines through us.

Let us pray:[viii]
Lord Jesus Christ, you name us your own and call us to reflect your love into the world. Help us to do so.
Illuminate our lives, and give us hands to reach out in love and action that we may bring your light to dark places.
We pray in your holy name.
Amen.

[i] Commentary on Matthew 5:13-20. Feasting on the Word: Year A, Volume 1.
[ii] ibid
[iii] ibid
[iv] ibid
[v] Matthew10:16
[vi] Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service (LIRS) is a national agency of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod, and the Latvian Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to carry out ministry with uprooted people. LIRS traces its history back to 1939 and to this major resettlement effort following World War II. References to LIRS in this message include its 27 affiliates and other organizations in its network. Lutheran social ministry organizations are integral affiliates in this network. LIRS’s address is 390 Park Avenue South, New York, NY 10016-8803. Its phone number is 212/532-6350; its fax, 212/683-1329, and its e-mail, lirs@lirs.org. Its Web page is found at .
[vii] ibid
[viii] Adapted from Faith Lens, http://blogs.elca.org/faithlens/

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

In Matthew, Jesus is the new Moses, teaching and interpreting God’s law and proclaiming the good news of God’s kingdom. Just as the Old Testament stories tell how Moses led the twelve tribes of Israel, Matthew emphasizes the twelve disciples, naming the people who were closest to Jesus, and reminding us that faith is formed through relationships.

Today’s Gospel is the first of the five major discourses Jesus leads in Matthew’s gospel. His preaching and teaching helps his followers can make sense of the gospel in the context of their background and beliefs. They are first-century Jews living in a society that was imperial and patriarchal where leaders were respected for their power and authority, and households were modeled similarly. Like us, they probably had relationships with the people immediately around them, people with whom they probably shared similar social or economic status.

Now, think about your relationships and the people who shape your faith, your beliefs and practices. Who are they and how do you know them?

One of the obvious places where we find people who influence our faith is in church because it remains one of the rare places where we can find a half-dozen or more different generations all in the same room. This is one of the reasons we have intergenerational Sunday School: our faith is enriched by listening to people from different generations, whether they are older or younger than us.

But church isn’t the only place where we find these relationships that crisscross generations. We can find them in face to face or digital community outside of church – places like work and school, the gym or the American Legion.

All of these different relationships form a “faith web” around me, connecting me to someone who is my parents’ generation, and maybe a generation older than them, and, also to a college student or a 20-something, teenager and even a younger child.

But, in this sermon, Jesus challenges his followers to rethink who their community includes.

We call this sermon the Beatitudes, and often what we hear in that description is the word “attitude” as though Jesus is an advice columnist, giving us pointers. But Jesus isn’t interested in only changing our attitudes; the cross is about transforming our lives.

Faith begins with our relationship to God as sons and daughters, but it is never just about Jesus and me.

Incarnational faith, love with skin on it, depends on relationships with each other as brothers and sisters, and with our neighbors.

Jesus doesn’t want us to see others differently so that we will express pity, charity, or even compassion. He is inviting, no, commanding, us to rethink how we measure a person’s worth and respond — act and live — differently with each other.

He invites us to recognize blessedness in people and circumstances where it may be obscured or hidden,
covered by scars or bruises,
soaked by tears or the elements,
or silenced by fear.

He invites us to see each person we meet as a gift, from the God who created us and loves us, looking past the ways they annoy us, disappoint, or even anger us. 

I know what Jesus is asking us to do is hard. But I want us to try it here this morning. 

Take the bulletin insert for today. It has eight circles on it.

Start in the center and write your name there. Then, add the names who are the same people that Jesus names in the beatitudes.

Maybe you don’t know them by name, but as a group.

That’s ok. For example, we can all probably name someone who is mourning, but who are the poor?

Who are the peacemakers? Who are the merciful?

Your answers are your own; when you have put a person’s name or the name of a group in each circle, you’ll have another kind of faith web, built around the beatitudes.

So take a few minutes now to fill out your faith web.

When we pray together later in worship, lift up the names of the people you have included, naming them blessed by God and praying for them.

This is what it means to be Kingdom people, united in faith and following Jesus. It’s not about living for some distant or far away future. It’s about recognizing God’s presence all around us, in the beautiful and in the broken, and remembering that God sees us all as blessed, both saint and sinner, loved and forgiven and given new life to follow Jesus as we live in response to God’s forgiveness, mercy and grace.

Let us pray:
Lord Jesus, giver of every blessing, help us come to you and welcome your word just as your followers did before us.
Send us out into the world to proclaim your Good News, with eyes wide open to see You in the world.
Amen.

Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A

When we hear about fishermen in the Bible, I think many of us hear this playing in our heads:

As for Andy and Opie, for many of us, going fishing means sitting on a riverbank or a dock with a line dangling in the water, waiting for the fish to bite. There’s no urgency; in fact, it’s one of those things that you do to escape from everyday work and routine.

But, fishing in biblical times, as it is now for commercial fishermen, was backbreaking, smelly and risky work. And, as any boat owner knows, the best days of your life are the day you buy a boat and the day you sell it.

Ancient fisherman fought with broken nets and decaying wood. They were at the mercy of the wind and tide. And in first-century Capernaum on the northwest shore of the sea of Galilee, under the control of Herod Antipas, the fishermen were subject to quotas and taxes and tolls.

It is out of this kind of experience and livelihood that Jesus calls Simon Peter and Andrew, and then John and James, to follow him and be fishers of men.

He invited the disciples to do something new, but it didn’t mean it wouldn’t be hard work.

But even if you anticipate the hardship of the task, today’s gospel text sounds a lot like a big fish story. You know how big fish stories go; they are the stories of “the one that got away” like the one Mark Twain tells in the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Huck is telling the story and says:

“the first thing we done was to bait one of the big hooks with a skinned rabbit and set it and catch a cat-fish that was as big as a man, being six foot two inches long, and weighed over two hundred pounds.

We couldn't handle him, of course; he would a flung us into Illinois.”

Big fish stories are unlikely — hard to believe — especially because we don’t see what happened with our own eyes, and today’s Gospel gives us a whopper! Matthew says that Jesus invited the disciples to follow him and become fishers of men, and immediately they did!

Just like that. They didn’t talk back or ask for details. They didn’t even ask to say goodbye to their families. They just dropped their nets and followed him. Immediately.

“Discipleship is hearing God’s call and obeying it, even if it means radical changes of direction in life.” [i] It is our response to what God has already done, and is doing, in our midst.

Sometimes we get mixed up and think it’s up to us to declare a vision and mission, and it’s up to us to build the church, so we try big audacious programs –flashy big fish stories – to hook people.

But today’s Gospel reminds us that what God invites us to do is follow Jesus,
to listen to God’s Word and build relationships with other followers, for the sake of the world.

God doesn’t care about big fish stories. God cares about people.

A couple of years ago, at synod assembly, which is the annual meeting of our congregations, everyone was sent out into the community for service projects. There were about five hundred of us wearing t-shirts like this one that said, “Out To Serve -The Church Has Left The Building.” Maybe we should have hung a sign on the darkened auditorium doors that said, “Gone Fishing!” We were doing the hard work of living out the gospel in the world.

The call that Jesus makes to each of us doesn’t require a theology degree or a stole. It requires obedience:

eyes to see how the skills or knowledge and gifts you already possess can be used to show others the love and mercy of God; and, a heart to know that, while “routine rarely feels holy…the routine, everyday ways in which we follow Jesus are crucially important.”[ii]

When we get distracted by big fish stories – stories of saints like Mother Teresa or Francis of Assissi, or even Martin Luther –
it’s easy to discount our faithfulness.

Maybe you’ve heard the story about an old man who walking on the beach at low tide one day. 

The sand was littered with thousands of stranded starfish that the water had carried in and then left behind. 

The man began walking very carefully so as not to step on any of the beautiful creatures. Since the animals still seemed to be alive, he considered picking some of them up and putting them back in the water, where they could resume their lives. 

The man knew the starfish would die if left on the beach's dry sand but he reasoned that he could not possibly help them all, so he chose to do nothing and continued walking.
Soon afterward, the man came upon a small child on the beach who was frantically throwing one starfish after another back into the sea. 

The old man stopped and asked the child, "What are you doing?" 

"I'm saving the starfish," the child replied. 

"Why waste your time?... There are so many you can't save them all so what does is matter?" argued the man.

Without hesitation, the child picked up another starfish and tossed the starfish back into the water... "It matters to this one," the child explained.

Our ordinary faithfulness matters. Throughout this season of Epiphany, we discover that “every moment matters, because life is holy. God speaks to us in the ordinary and the routine.”[iii]

Let us pray…
Holy God,
Guided by your Spirit, help us respond faithfully when you call us;
Send us out united in purpose and unafraid to follow Jesus,
even when it means doing a new thing,
that the world would know your mercy and love.
Amen.

[i] Feasting on the Gospels.
[ii] ibid
[iii] Pastor and preaching professor Brett Younger

Second Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A

“What are you looking for?” is the question Jesus asks John’s disciples when they follow him.

Sometimes we can name what we’re searching for: a word, a phrase, a sign, an object.

Other times, we are searching for something less defined or known, but nonetheless, very specific. Ethan Canin’s novel A Doubter’s Almanac tells the life story of Milo Andret, a fictional mid-20th century mathematician whose work was proving complex conjectures that hadn’t been solved. Similarly, but based on historical events, the movie Hidden Figures tells the story of several brilliant, black women who worked with NASA’s Mercury 7 program during the era that put Alan Shepard and John Glenn into space; they were engineers, programmers and mathematicians seeking solutions that didn’t yet exist.

But there is a third kind of quest that is even more ambiguous:
when we are searching for trust or meaning or purpose.

Another way to translate Jesus’ question is “What do you hope to find?” or even, “What do you long for?”

Most of us don’t long for our car keys, or even for the name of that forgotten acquaintance.

I think we may long for answers to unanswerable questions or cures to life-limiting illnesses, but,

like world peace and an end to violent conflicts in our divisive world, those things may remain beyond our individual reach.

So, while we lift those genuine longings to God in our prayers,
what do we really need, or hope or long for, that might be found in meeting Jesus
and experiencing God’s presence in our lives, here and now?

Is it silence in a noisy world that strives to persuade you that it knows what you really need? The number of advertisements we are exposed to through televised and digital media has increased exponentially in our lifetimes. Marketers promise we will be healthier, smarter, better-looking and safer if we just make the “right” choice.

“What are you seeking?”

Is it a place of belonging in a world that, more than fifty years after Dr. King preached in Washington, D.C., still labels people first by something other than the content of their character? Whether it’s for race, gender, sexual orientation, level of education, gender identity, or even the bumper sticker on your car or the yard sign on your lawn; we are masters of putting people in boxes or categories, and discarding or discrediting them.

“What are you seeking?”

Is it a community centered on relationships, in a world where, tacitly at least, we have been taught that asking for help, or expressing concern for someone else’s welfare, risks “bothering someone” or “imposing” on them? Are we seeking relationships where we can have difficult, caring conversations in a world where we find it easier to walk away isolated and alone rather than tell someone, “You hurt me” or “I’m mad.”

“What are you seeking?”

Maybe, as my seminary preaching professor David Lose writes, it is “a chance to serve and be connected to others in a world that encourages putting yourself first.”[i] The very best antidote I can take for a bad day is to go visit someone, listening to their story, and focusing on them. It gets me out of my own head, and my own worries or anxieties.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus invites the disciples, and us, to “come and see” how a life of discipleship might provide us with what we are seeking.

Belonging, relationship and service are three dimensions of this life of discipleship that we begin in our own baptisms.

Discipleship defines our lives as
who we are as God’s children, where we are given all that Christ has as he takes on all that is ours;
as brothers and sisters in Christ, where, created for relationship, we learn how to live life together;
and in the world where we are called to imitate his Son,
the incarnation of God in the flesh,
divine love with skin on it.

As we each discern what it is we come here seeking,
and what our deepest longing or hope is in this world,
may we “come and see” how living as disciples of Jesus might reveal a deeper understanding of the God who loves us.

Let us pray…
Holy God,
Send your Holy Spirit upon us to open our eyes and hearts to you and your love and grace that we would discover what we are seeking in a life of discipleship. Assure us that because You created us, we have a place in your family; give us courage to risk building relationships with others; and inspire us to service, for the sake of the world that you love.
Amen.

[i] “A Question, Invitation and Promise”, In the Meantime. Dr. David Lose. http://www.davidlose.net/

Epiphany of the Lord, Year A

On Epiphany in 2017, snow canceled services at the church, but worship carried on in our homes with Snow Worship:

The Name of Jesus, Year A

On Friday morning, I caught part of the final broadcast of the Diane Rehm show on National Public Radio. Before she signed off for the last time, Rehm shared a rebroadcast of an interview with Maya Angelou, the late award-winning poet and author of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and poems like “On the Pulse of Morning” and “Still I Rise.” Telling a story from her childhood with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, Angelou remembered how her grandmother wouldn’t let Maya or her brother say “By the Way” because “The Way” was another name for Jesus, and Grandmother didn’t want those children cussing in her house.

On this first day of 2017, the Church celebrates the Holy Name given to Jesus at his circumcision. Following the glittering ball drop in New York’s Time Square or the epic fireworks that filled the sky at midnight at Sydney’s Opera House, and certainly in comparison to the greater festival of the Nativity of our Lord, today’s festival may seem esoteric or obscure. After all, apart from following the second commandment instructing us not to take the Lord’s name in vain, what significance does the name have for us today?

It’s fair to say that I don’t think William Shakespeare’s adage that “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” applies here.

The names we give God, and the name Jesus is given, matter because they reveal who God is.

When we sang the psalm earlier, praising God for all creation, we used two different names for God — Adonai or Lord and Master and Sovereign [One]. Descriptive names like these appear throughout Scripture, revealing different dimensions of God’s character to us.

In the Small Catechism, Martin Luther teaches that the Holy Name matters, writing,

“We should fear and love God that we may not curse, swear, use witchcraft, lie, or deceive by His name, but call upon it in every trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks.”

The story of Jesus being named recalls the angel’s instructions to Joseph, as well as the obedience Joseph and Mary demonstrated and their faithfulness to Jewish tradition that would have had their son circumcised on the eighth day after his birth.

Through Jesus we are connected to our ancestors in faith going back generations to David and Ruth and Rahab, to Tamar and Jacob and Abraham.

In baptism, we are adopted as God’s sons and daughters, co-heirs to God’s Kingdom with Jesus. Today’s Gospel and epistle remind us that no identity matters more than the one we are given as God’s children and Jesus’ own brothers and sisters.

But, identifying ourselves as a “family” in church can be problematic. From “The Waltons” to “The Simpsons,” or “The Sound of Music” to “Shrek”, television and movies offer a lot of different ideas about what it means to be family.

“Family gatherings” can be awkward for “distant cousins” who we only see once or twice a year, or the “brothers from another mother” whose traditions might be different from our own.

But, bearing the name Christian, or “little Christ,” we are called to imitate and follow Jesus, who worked at dismantling barriers and reaching across boundaries that tried to shut people out and keep them at a “safe distance.” So in this Holy family, we have to make the effort to invite people, as brothers and sisters in Christ, to join us, and to welcome strangers into our lives.

Families have other challenges, too. I heard several people describing how, this year, their holiday gatherings included “ground rules” that banned any discussion of politics. It’s hard to disagree with the people we love, and it’s harder still to address the conflicts without hurting each other. I’m sure those temporary truces preserved the peace and let families proceed with their celebrations and feasts, and that is valuable.

But, bearing the name Christian, or “little Christ,” we are called to imitate and follow Jesus, who wasn’t afraid to address divisions as he championed the least and the lost. So in this Holy family, we have to make the effort to speak truthfully in the Light of the Gospel.

And, following Martin Luther’s counsel on the eighth commandment,
we are to defend each other, speak well of each other and make the effort to take each other’s words and actions in the kindest possible way.

Although today’s festival recognizing Jesus’ Holy Name may not make any list of the ten most popular New Year’s Day celebrations, it has endured for centuries longer than fireworks and the ball drop in Times Square reminding us that, while human families can exclude others or be broken by divisions, when we are adopted into this Holy family, we receive God’s promise of everlasting presence and His reconciling and healing love.

And when we gather as a family of faith, we celebrate that in the sacraments, God’s promises are joined with the water of Baptism and the bread and wine that we receive in Holy Communion, and remember that, nothing can separate us from God.

Let us pray…
Holy God,
Help us remember you have adopted us as sons and daughters, co-heirs with Your Son Jesus.
Send your Spirit to lead us that our lives would imitate His,
and we would extend Your Love, mercy and grace to all whom we meet.
Amen.