Behold: the future of homiletics.

Thank you, Woot, for making this fabulousness available. Thank you, 1000 Faces Coffee, for my forthcoming continued consciousness.

Thank you, God, for making humankind so creative that some nutter decided it'd be a great idea to roast and add water to that glorious bean.

Repentance; a sermon for the Third Sunday of Epiphany

Mark 1:14-20

14 Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, ¹⁵and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’ 

16 As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. ¹⁷And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ ¹⁸And immediately they left their nets and followed him. ¹⁹As he went a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John, who were in their boat mending the nets. ²⁰Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him.

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

When I think about what the term implies, I’m not a big fan of being called an absent-minded person. I’m forgetful; I’m easily distracted; I’d lose my head if it weren’t screwed on tightly. Does that imply that my mind gets a failing grade because it’s been absent?

I don’t know. I frequently walk into rooms or open cabinets specifically looking for something, and then have to retrace my steps to remember exactly what it was I was looking for. Does that mean my mind is absent?

It means I have to pause, evaluate where I am and where I’ve just come from, and probably turn around and start over.

I’ve made a mistake and I have to change direction. I have to repent.

That might be taking the concept of repentance too far out of its context, but I think the image is helpful. There are a thousand things we do each day that, if we were reflecting on staying in relationship with Christ, would require us to pause, re-evaluate, and change directions: to repent.

You know that already. God has gifted you with conscience. That’s part of the work of grace that has been in you since the moment God imagined you. You know when you’ve hurt someone, when you made the wrong choice, when you should have chosen your words more carefully. And when you’re listening to grace, you repent of those sins.

You know it’s not all big stuff. Lord, I killed somebody, and I repent. Lord, I busted my spouse’s lip, and I repent. Lord, I just kicked my kid out of the house, and I repent.

Our character is defined far more by our mundane, everyday choices than by the crises we encounter. The way we react to crises is important, no doubt, but the way we live each day tells people who we really are.

Of course, the world tells us not to appreciate the practice of repentance. Have you noticed that? It’s all over the news in years like this one. It’s scarring the debate between Republican presidential nominees that has, at this point, turned into a mud-slinging competition.

And the most sharply barbed accusation? Flip-flopping. As though it’s a bad thing.

(1) Even if a politician’s motivation for a change of position is purely motivated by gaining popular support, at least that person is moving toward speaking for a majority. Of course, I’m not sure that’s actually happening in today’s murderously polarized political environment, but

(2) if a politician’s motivation is a sincere change of heart, why on earth would we denigrate that choice? Why would we heap blame on someone for repenting of an earlier opinion?

(Side note: I am NOT (NOT!) endorsing, directly addressing, or cutting down any particular candidate in the arena or out; I happen to think they’re all puffed-up rich old jerks.)

(Lord, I repent of my puffed-up, self-righteous jerkiness. Remind me that even Republicans and Democrats are people, just like me. Remind me that power often goes to my head, too. In your mercy, hear my prayer. Amen.)

Repentance is what happens when I realize that what’s getting my goat about someone else is typically something I’m afraid of in myself. Repentance is what happens when I realize that I have sacrificed my witness of the unconditional love of Christ to satiate the appetite of my own desire or of my own hateful vengeance.

Repentance is what happens when I look inside myself and recognize that something is amiss. Repentance requires self-reflection, and that’s a difficult practice. Really difficult. Because I don’t want to see in myself the things that make me less desirable, less likable, less wanted, less loved. I want to believe that I’m just right just the way I am. That I’m perfect just like this.

But I have to know that I’m not. Repentance requires self-reflection, and self-reflection requires humility. I am not who I should be. I am not who God is calling me to be. I am imperfect; clumsy and self-centered and rash.

I recognize in myself the need to repent, to turn around, to have a change of mind and heart and behavior.

I also recognize, because I take the text seriously, that I’m in really good company when I allow myself to repent.

God repents of making mankind and destroys all but one family in an epic flood

; God seeks to destroy the children of Israel when they make an idol, but Moses argues God into repentance

; God repents of making Saul king

; a Samaritan woman argues Jesus into compassion

.

It is just possible that, if we humble ourselves and seek God’s goodness and mercy, that God may repent. What else is the point of asking?

But in order to ask, I have to, myself, repent of my pride, of my idea that I can help myself, thank You very much. I have to recognize that I’m not enough to get me through, to forgive myself, to do whatever in the world is necessary to correct the situation I’m in. I have to have a change of mind about who I think I am so that I can recognize how God sees me.

The Hebrew Bible often speaks of repentance as returning to God. Sometimes we still use that language today. We co-opt the words of 2 Chronicles:

if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land.

The Chronicler recognizes the need of Israel to return to Torah, to return to the Lord who brought them out of Egypt.

What we pray for when we say those words here and now, today in America, is that God might return us to some imagined era half a century ago when the post-war economy was booming, when rock and roll was being born, when people came to church because it was the thing to do. But God doesn’t seek that we return to the good ol’ days. God seeks that we live today, where we are. This is where God has placed us, and God has gifted us with exactly what we need to share the good news of Jesus Christ in 2012, not in 1952.

The good ol’ days are gone, and they weren’t as good as you remember or as you’ve heard, anyway. Hindsight is not, it turns out, 20/20.

When Jonah went to Nineveh, God surprised him by inspiring the people to repentance. They didn’t return to some former long-lost glory. They sought to be holy where they were. The whole city turned and heard the word of the Lord.

When Jesus comes through Galilee, he doesn’t tell people to return to the golden age of David, even though that’s what most people really wanted. He tells them something new is about to happen, something unimaginable:

the kingdom of God has come near

And he tells people to turn from what they’re doing and check out the new thing that’s about to happen. Forget the fishing, forget all the other stuff you’re doing. Something amazing is going on right beside you. Come check it out!

Jesus is still calling people to repentance today. Jesus is still calling us to drop the junk that’s distracting us and turn and follow today.

I am not who I am called to be. You are not who you are called to be. Together, let us humble ourselves and repent, so that we might be all that God’s Spirit would inspire us to today.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Come, Follow Me; A Sermon for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany

John 1:43-51

43 The next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee. He found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ ⁴⁴Now Philip was from Bethsaida, the city of Andrew and Peter. ⁴⁵Philip found Nathanael and said to him, ‘We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.’ ⁴⁶Nathanael said to him, ‘Can anything good come out of Nazareth?’ Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’ ⁴⁷When Jesus saw Nathanael coming towards him, he said of him, ‘Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!’ ⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, ‘Where did you come to know me?’ Jesus answered, ‘I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.’ ⁴⁹Nathanael replied, ‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’ ⁵⁰Jesus answered, ‘Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.’ ⁵¹And he said to him, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.’

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

It was late in high school, on a Fall retreat with my youth group, that I first had the sense that God was calling me. I didn’t know what that meant at the time, and the only thing I was really interested in was music, so when I didn’t get a lot of support or encouragement regarding that call, I just pursued the one thing I knew.

I assumed that being called meant that God was asking me to stand where I stand now, barking at you or boring you to sleep from behind the pulpit.

But I think that from our readings from 1 Samuel and the Gospel of John today, we might gain a slightly broader sense of the nature of God’s calling to us.

Samuel is a young boy serving under a very old Eli. What kind of training in the Temple he has had, I don’t know. But the hour is getting late, and he is lying down in the Temple, near but probably not in the Holy of Holies, when he hears a voice:

Samuel! Samuel!

He jumps up and runs to Eli. “Here I am!” He thinks he’s caught snoozing, or he knows that he’d better come immediately when Eli calls. “Here I am! You called me.”

Yes, here you are. And no, I didn’t. Go lie down again.

Oh. Um.

That’s weird. He heard somebody. He knows it. Somebody called his name. So Samuel lies down again, his attention piqued just a bit. He’s probably wondering if he imagined that voice, but it sounded so real, just like,

Samuel!

Oh.

So he gets up again. And our history doesn’t mention him running this time. He is becoming more cautious, more suspicious that something extraordinary is happening. He comes to Eli again, and says in his most collected young tone:

Here I am, because you called me.

No, I did not, my son. Go lie down again.

And the voice calls Samuel a third time. And Samuel is becoming aware that something odd is happening, but he doesn’t know what. But Eli, who has a few decades on the boy, and has spent his life in close proximity to the Holy One, discerns exactly what’s happening.

And I think that helps us understand a certain misconception of calling. The popular way that calling is discussed is very personal, very intimate. In fact, I even began today by using that language. “God called me.”

What we tend to ignore or forget is that not everyone is open enough to discern God calling them. Sometimes the community of those closest to us, or even our expanded community, is much better able to see the ways that God is gifting us for ministry.

I was spending my Summers working at Buffalo Mountain Camp while I was working on my undergraduate degree in music, and a few years into my time there, one of our Ministers in Residence approached me and observed that God was gifting me for pulpit ministry.

Now, by that time, I had put away any thought of doing any such thing. I knew I didn’t have the patience to deal with school administrations’ degrading of music programs, so I couldn’t teach. I thought I’d pursue performance because I really enjoyed it, but I knew that the field was extremely tight and cutthroat, so I was giving serious thought to working in church music as my fallback.

What I wasn’t doing was pursuing pulpit ministry. And to hear someone else point me in that direction rather threw me off balance.

And that wasn’t the last time it happened.

Glen Phillips puts it this way: Sometimes, when you get so close to something that big, you can’t see anything at all.

Samuel went back, a young boy who did not yet know God, and answered the voice when it called again. And God gave him a word that only someone who has not yet learned to fear would be willing to repeat.

So God gifted Samuel with courage.

That is why many of our more biting prophets are young, I think: they haven’t developed the fear of recompense that we learn as we age. Learning to hold your tongue in the face of injustice and hatred isn’t wisdom; it’s just fear.

We celebrate tomorrow a man who wasn’t afraid, a man who was called of God as many other people were, but unlike the many, chose to hear and respond boldly. Martin Luther King, Jr., heard the voice that Samuel heard and shared that voice with all the world.

He heard the voice that Philip heard in Galilee, and like Philip, he knew exactly who was calling, and he gathered those around him, and his enthusiasm and his spirit were infectious. Philip found Nathanael, who was hesitant and doubtful, but who came anyway and was convinced.

King shared his enthusiasm and still calls people today to justice, to mercy, to understanding, to courage, to love.

God called Martin Luther King, Jr., to the pulpit and beyond. King reminds us that we are all, like Philip and Nathanael, called to follow.

What we know, as Christians, is that each of us is called. That is the sign of our baptism: we are called to follow, to use the gifts God has given us. Not just to live good lives, but to live lives that reach out to each other, with courage, with boldness; knowing, confident in the fact that God will pour out the Holy Spirit through us.

We are a priesthood of all believers. Each one of us is called in every single moment of our lives, and in every single moment we choose to listen or not to, to say, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening,” or to ignore that voice that will never stop speaking to us.

The calling is incessant. The choice to listen and respond is yours. What will you do?

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

New Beginning: A Sermon for the Feast of the Baptism of Christ

Mark 1:4-11

⁴John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. ⁵And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. ⁶Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. ⁷He proclaimed, ‘The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. ⁸I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.’

9 In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. ¹⁰And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. ¹¹And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
   be acceptable to you,
   O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Most of the conversations I have with Noah that are of a theological nature have to do with what God does and does not do. I was tucking him into bed recently and we were talking about the glow-in-the-dark stars over his bed, and the little projector nightlight that shines our eight planets onto his ceiling (we miss you, Pluto). He noted that God didn’t make the planets; stars made the planets.

Now, for a kindergartener, that’s a pretty doggone astute revelation.

But it misses the point.

So we read the first creation story, which we remembered this morning in its first five verses. And we asked the question: Who creates planets? God does.

That doesn’t negate the wonder of black holes and nebulae as cosmos-changers and solar-system generators. It just reminds us who’s behind all of it.

God is.

Every new beginning is a work of God. Every maintaining thing in creation is a work of God. Every changing thing is a work of God. And every ending, which is nothing more than a changing, is a work of God.

We are works of God. Everything we experience and know and observe is a work of God. There is, in fact, no such thing as a self-made man. There is no such thing as pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps. Everything you think you’ve done for yourself, God has actually done for you.

Recognizing that fact is how we understand that the grace of God is so important to our development in faith. In fact, God’s grace is everything in the development of our faith.

Upon the work of God in our lives depends all our salvation and sanctification. Only God’s grace grabbing ahold of us and saying, “You are mine”, can save us from darkness and sin.

That’s why baptism is so widely misunderstood. What we want to believe is that in our baptism, we are choosing to follow Christ, to be washed clean of our sin, to join the family of God. We still want to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. We want self-made salvation.

I’m really sorry. You’re just not good enough.

Only One is good enough. Only One can save us.

Only Christ. Only the Son of God. Only God-Made-Flesh, Emmanuel.

Only because God is with Us can we be saved.

That’s good enough for the person who is fully aware of what the commitment to follow Christ means, and it’s good enough for the person who can never be aware what it means to be claimed by the Creator.

God can claim a grown and intelligent adult as well as God can claim a newborn infant. It’s up to God.

And the good news is that God claims all of us. No, you’re not good enough. But God claims you anyway. And if you’re anything at all like me, God loves you even while you are busy doing stupid, violent, hateful, sinful stuff.

And God forgives you. And God welcomes you.

All this God does even before we know to ask, because God creates us in love and never stops loving us. God never forsakes us and never leaves us.

And in baptism, we recognize the fact that God is working, that God is calling us, that God desires that we follow. So is the timing of baptism important? Is the method important?

Probably not in the long run. But to us, it is important. Because we are a people who need to commemorate things. Is there something magical about the moment a couple share their vows? No. They’re affirming something that they’re already covenanting to each other and to God. We need to recognize that commitment. We need to commemorate it.

Baptism works in the same way. We could go our whole lives with an understanding, just between us and God, that we’re committed to follow the Way of Christ. But baptism is the sign of that covenant.

Now, those of us who were baptized as infants probably don’t remember it. That’s why it’s important to be confirmed in our faith, to have a time set aside when we say, Yes, I recognize that God is claiming me, and I commit myself to be faithful in my prayers, my presence, my gifts, my service, and my witness.

Our whole lives are spent in remembering and living into that covenant. And I want to allow us an opportunity to remember this morning, to renew that covenant. So this morning we are making space and time to remember our baptism.

This is not a re-baptism. We don’t need that. God’s work in our lives is singular. God does not re-claim us. God claims us once and for all time. This is a time to remember and to embrace that call that God has already placed on our hearts, and so I invite you to join me in a Congregational Reaffirmation of the Baptismal Covenant, which is in your UMH on p.50.

Mid-Morning French Press: Political Correctness

I used to deride the idea of political correctness. What was it but a way to make people feel better about being outcasts, ridiculous, foolish? What was the purpose of being politically correct but to assure socially unacceptable people that their problems weren't problems at all; that they were okay however they were?

After all, I am aware of my own faults and failings. I'm sure that I'm working to correct them and am perfectly willing to make fun of myself for them. If I can be that strong, so can anybody.

Add to that the fact that the Church, in many places, condemns people who are not of the same ilk as her membership. We have often condemned political correctness as a systemized means of condoning sin and errant behavior.

And all this we do in the name of hating a sin but loving the sinner.

The trouble with that practice is that we prove ourselves repeatedly unable to separate sin from sinner. In fact, in most situations, we condemn a sin without even knowing a sinner.

What Christ does, on the other hand, is dramatically different.

Jesus did most of his ministry outside of the structure of the Temple and synagogue. He walked the streets and visited folk in their homes. Not the pious and religious folk, mostly, but rather the outcast and the sinner.

His words of condemnation are nearly all aimed at the powerful and the wealthy. His words for the folk who would today be the object of political correctness are loving and welcoming.

What I have come to understand is that political correctness is a term used by people who want to practice rejection and need to excuse themselves from welcoming people who are not like they. I forsake the term, and I encourage you to do the same. Stop being politically correct. Stop trying to make new rules to divide people into groups and separate yourself out. Make it much easier on yourself and do this simple thing that Jesus teaches us:

Love one another.

First Shot of Espresso: Morning Prayer

A Collect for Families (BCP)

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who places solitary persons in families: We commend to your continual care the homes in which your people dwell. Put far from them, we beseech you, every root of bitterness, the desire of vainglory, and the pride of life. Fill them with faith, virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, and godliness. Knit together in constant affection those who, in marriage, have been made one flesh. Turn the hearts of the parents to the children, and the hearts of the children to the parents; and so enkindle fervent charity among us all, that we may evermore be kindly one to another; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.