Days in the Wilderness: Drought and Flood; a sermon for the Third Sunday of Lent

John 4:5-42

He came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, which was near the land Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there. Jesus was tired from his journey, so he sat down at the well. It was about noon.

7 A Samaritan woman came to the well to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me some water to drink.” 8 His disciples had gone into the city to buy him some food.

Let the words of my mouth

    and the meditations of my heart

    be pleasing to you,

    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

“Give me some water to drink,” may come across as one of Jesus’s more rude moments. It depends on how you read this. Maybe John is editing Jesus’s politeness out. Maybe it’s not a demand, but a suggestion. Maybe it’s a clever line.

I don’t know. But there’s the setup. It’s getting into the hottest part of the day. Jesus and the crew have apparently been traveling throughout the morning. The disciples, who have been traveling as far as Jesus has, have left him to rest while they go barter in the market for some grub.

Why is Jesus apparently more tired than the disciples, by the way? Does that strike you as a little strange? Does Jesus have a body that tires out easily? Has he expended a lot of effort healing people on the way? Did he not sleep well the previous night?

Again, I don’t know. But here he is, alone by the well in the hot part of the day, when everybody who was going to come to draw water, according to people who’ve done the anthropological study and know the culture much better than I do, has already come.

Then along comes this woman who seems to be intentionally avoiding the crowds. She didn’t bargain on meeting anyone. She is coming at a time when she could come alone, but here’s this evidently Jewish guy, and now he wants to engage in… conversation.

9 The Samaritan woman asked, “Why do you, a Jewish man, ask for something to drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (Jews and Samaritans didn’t associate with each other.)

In fact, the association between Jews and Samaritans is so sparse that this woman doesn’t get a name.

Now, you could argue that it’s the first century Near East; it would be a wonder if any woman got a name. John doesn’t bother naming Mary when he introduces her at the wedding feast at Cana. The Jewish opposition name Joseph as his father but don’t name his mother when Jesus hints at who is supernatural father is. When Jesus tells a Jerusalem crowd to go ahead and be the first to pitch a stone if they’re so righteous, John can’t be bothered to name the woman caught in sin. The first time a woman is mentioned by name is when Jesus arrives late at Bethany to find Martha and Mary grieving over Lazarus’s death. Then at the cross are Mary the wife of Clopas, whoever that is, and Mary from Magdala, who has the extraordinary honor of being the first preacher of the resurrection of Christ.

Four women mentioned by name, three of whom happen to be named Mary. For an author so concerned with storytelling and vivid detail, John sure does leave out some important stuff.

It’s no wonder this foreign woman doesn’t get a name.

10 Jesus responded, “If you recognized God’s gift and who is saying to you, ‘Give me some water to drink,’ you would be asking him and he would give you living water.”

I need to pause again here for another aside. Jesus is offering something that can mean a couple things to us.

1. Living water can be water that gives life to people. We know that the body needs water to do its basic functions, to survive and thrive. Being dehydrated can make your body start to malfunction pretty quickly. But
2. water is also living in the sense that things live in it. We have gotten so physically accustomed to purified water with chlorine and flouride in it that our immune systems are unequipped to handle the typical microorganisms that reside in water all around the world. Thus if you travel to places where the water is treated differently than it is here, you don’t drink it. You don’t even drink stuff cooled with ice made from tap water. You could end up with e-coli or giardia, which won’t kill you, but could make you so sick you feel like you’re going to die.

So people in this culture don’t depend on water so much for hydration. The table drink is wine.

Then what is the water for?

I think that’s a question that makes this conversation even more meaningful, actually. Water isn’t primarily for nourishment. Think about the amount of water you use for drinking compared to the amount of water you use for cleaning and bathing and all sorts of other things. Now think about how that might change if you’re in a culture in which water isn’t your primary source of hydration.

For Jesus to suggest that he has water that’s good for drinking all the time and that won’t ever dry up is pretty profound.

11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you don’t have a bucket and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave this well to us, and he drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks from the water that I will give will never be thirsty again. The water that I give will become in those who drink it a spring of water that bubbles up into eternal life.”

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will never be thirsty and will never need to come here to draw water!”

Did you hear when I pointed out how this woman had come by herself? How she seemed to be specifically avoiding the crowd? Can you imagine what a relief it would be if she never had to encounter whatever judgmental stares and snickers and low-voiced comments she was avoiding?

Here’s where we get into the meat of her struggles.

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, get your husband, and come back here.”

17 The woman replied, “I don’t have a husband.”

“You are right to say, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus answered. 18 “You’ve had five husbands, and the man you are with now isn’t your husband. You’ve spoken the truth.”

I’m going to point out what neither of them says, because it’s so prevalent in so much commentary about this passage.

Jesus doesn’t call her an adulterer. He doesn’t accuse her of that.

Remember when Matthew shares Jesus’s parable about the woman whose husbands keep dying, and she gets passed from brother to brother?

This one doesn’t have to be a story about infidelity. It’s pretty ugly of us to assume that. I’d rather assume she’s been widowed five times, and she is broken and assumed cursed within the community. She’s lucky this last guy would bring her into his house at all, because with a reputation like that, she would probably be tossed out into the street to fend for herself.

I don’t know that; it’s just a back story I prefer. Either way, this is a profound moment of healing and being seen for this woman.

I just wish John could let her be both seen and named.

19 The woman said, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain, but you and your people say that it is necessary to worship in Jerusalem.”

21 Jesus said to her, “Believe me, woman, the time is coming when you and your people will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You and your people worship what you don’t know; we worship what we know because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the time is coming—and is here!—when true worshippers will worship in spirit and truth. The Father looks for those who worship him this way. 24 God is spirit, and it is necessary to worship God in spirit and truth.”

25 The woman said, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one who is called the Christ. When he comes, he will teach everything to us.”

26 Jesus said to her, “I Am—the one who speaks with you.”

27 Just then, Jesus’ disciples arrived 

…and the conversation between Jesus and the woman comes to a screeching halt. But the words Jesus has just said are hanging in the air, spinning around in her mind.

Ἐγώ εἰμι

I Am.

The one who speaks with you.

The One who speaks with you is the I Am.

That phrase doesn’t cease spinning through the minds of the worshipers of YHWH from the time it is spoken to Moses to this day. In every time and in every place where the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is worshiped, the first person singular existential verb is the fundamental identity of the Creator of the Universe.

I know that Messiah is coming…

Dear one, it’s better than that. Messiah is more than you ever dreamed.

I Am.

27 Just then, Jesus’ disciples arrived and were shocked that he was talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” 28 The woman put down her water jar and went into the city. She said to the people, 29 “Come and see a man who has told me everything I’ve done! Could this man be the Christ?” 30 They left the city and were on their way to see Jesus.

A magical moment disrupted just as the conversation reaches its explosive point. Maybe if the conversation had continued, it wouldn’t have been as powerful. Maybe the woman needed to be brought to that moment of suspense and revelation and left to digest it.

Maybe it’s just a clever narrative tool. We probably shouldn’t leave John the Evangelist and his creativity out of the equation.

But for John, this seems to be where the good news of Jesus Christ begins to stretch out to the community outside of Judea: through this unnamed, lonely woman. In much the same way, the good news of the empty tomb is first told by a woman whose loneliness and brokenness is healed by Jesus.

I can get on board with that.

But I also think there’s good news for all of us in this particular moment in this story. Jesus puts himself in this woman’s way in the middle of a dark and lonely personal time. He finds her there and offers her company and conversation and play — yeah, this is play, and probably on a couple different levels — and he breaks through the loneliness and lets her know that she is beloved.

Now, when the people are complaining to Moses in the wilderness about being thirsty and hungry, God does this great big thing and shows off by busting open a rock and making drinking water flow out. God works in big ways like that, but God also finds us in our dry and lonely personal times and offers us clean, living water.

Y’all, we are embarking on a very lonely time right now. We are about to be surrounded by some folks who get very isolated. I not only want to invite you to hear this story as a promise to you, but also as a challenge to be the hands and voice of Jesus to others who are lonely.

What can you do to reach them?

Do you have a phone in your pocket? Gas in your car? Feeling well this week?

Reach out. Find someone. Meet them at their well. Be hope and embrace to them. Be smart about it and cautious, but find them there.

With the love of Jesus, none of us ever need be lonely again.

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

Wilderness Days: Life and Death; a sermon for the First Sunday of Lent

Matthew 4:1-11 (CEB)

Then the Spirit led Jesus up into the wilderness so that the devil might tempt him. 2 After Jesus had fasted for forty days and forty nights, he was starving. 3 The tempter came to him and said, “Since you are God’s Son, command these stones to become bread.”

4 Jesus replied, “It’s written, People won’t live only by bread, but by every word spoken by God.”

5 After that the devil brought him into the holy city and stood him at the highest point of the temple. He said to him, 6 “Since you are God’s Son, throw yourself down; for it is written, I will command my angels concerning you, and they will take you up in their hands so that you won’t hit your foot on a stone.”

7 Jesus replied, “Again it’s written, Don’t test the Lord your God.”

8 Then the devil brought him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 He said, “I’ll give you all these if you bow down and worship me.”

10 Jesus responded, “Go away, Satan, because it’s written, You will worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” 11 The devil left him, and angels came and took care of him.

Let the words of my mouth

    and the meditations of my heart

    be pleasing to you,

    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

I used to spend a lot of days in wilderness. The scout troop I was a part of in Maryville went camping at least monthly. Not RV camping. Not glamping. I took a tent that was probably thirty years old at the time and a sleeping bag rated for something below freezing attached to a backpack that was outdated a generation before me.

Old school, y’all.

None of this high-tech, gas stove, interior-frame backpack, dome tent silliness. I went camping. I roughed it in the wilderness.

I was grunting before Tim “the Tool Man” Taylor made it cool. Back in the days when he was getting kicked out of Central Michigan University for some illicit college silliness.

The wilderness can test you. It can make you smarter. It can make you stronger. It can also break you. It can make you never want to leave the comfort of home again. You either learn to adapt or you fail to thrive.

In Christianity’s early days, quite a lot of followers of The Way chose to live lives of seclusion. They followed John the Baptist’s model of asceticism, of self-denial. They found caves in the Near Eastern deserts and waited for the impending Day of Wrath, or tested their resolve by forsaking all earthly comforts in an effort to get closer to the Creator. In the wilderness, away from the distractions of modern culture and convenience, they could find proximity to the Divine.

I’ll offer this reflection on that practice: it can be helpful. I would even recommend it occasionally. Go find a wilderness place, a place away from distraction and noise. Go let go of all the worry and stress. Work through them one item at a time until what’s left is you. Then open yourself to an awareness, an attentiveness to God. God will not fail to meet you. God is already right there with you, waiting to be rediscovered, waiting to greet you with a smile the size of an upside-down rainbow and a hug warmer than grandma’s quilt.

It can be helpful. Can be. It’s not going to work for everybody, though. Maybe you can’t handle the mosquitos and the cold and the wet and the permeating smell of campfire smoke and probably a good bit of your own body stench once you realize that it’s your deodorant that’s drawing the mosquitos in. Maybe the stillness itself is too much, and the distractions are exactly what keep the swirling paranoia and neurosis in your brain at bay.

Maybe it’s too much to go all in all at once. That’s okay. Some of us have to stick a toe in the pool before we sneak the rest of us in. Not all of us are cannonballers.

But try. I’m convinced that it’s necessary, at least from time to time. It is a vital practice to shed all the extraneous stuff and find our way to a place where we’re interacting with the Stillness, the Harmony of Creation, the Unity of the Universe that is God’s infinite imagination.

And if the paranoia and the neuroses are what you find when you quiet yourself, then they are what you need to work through to get to the stillness that they’re guarding you from. But I promise you that you can get through them, too. It’ll take some time and some cooperation with folks who know the intricate trails of the human psyche, but that is a wilderness you can navigate.

Find that still place, that quiet place. Find that place where you can still yourself enough to hear God’s voice. It’ll be easier to find the next time you come. The trails may change a bit over time, but you’ll learn them. You’ll even learn the particular ways that they tend to change, where the erosion is frequent, where the nettles want to creep in, where the twilight transforms a grove into a place you never want to leave.

Find that place. Find that stillness.

You’ll find that what once was a wilderness is actually a garden.

(It’s funny to discover that everything God creates is good.)

In that garden is an opportunity to discover the difference between life and death, between good and evil. It’s a choice. It is always a choice. It might even be that what happens in the garden has less to do with a mystical (mythical) tree and more to do with a conscious choice contrary to what God has in mind for us.

Life and death.

Every evil choice that we make kills us just a little more. Every day we eat of that tree, we bring death to ourselves and to the creation around us. With every bite, we the world gets a little darker. The cross gets a little closer.

But there’s a world beyond that cross.

We’re not there yet. We know it’s coming, but we have to get through the wilderness first. Jesus knew there wasn’t an easy way out. He couldn’t turn the rocks into bread or dive off the pinnacle of the temple or take the world by storm. He had to face the wilderness, to take the hard road.

He had to go to the cross.

But thank God he does that for us, because death has no victory and hell has no power.

That’s the already and it’s the not yet.

It’s the promise that is already true but still coming.

Now we journey with him. Don’t rush through it. Let these days in the wilderness strip you of all the excess. Let them put to death all that is slowly killing you.

What God wants for you is life, and life abundantly. It’s coming, but you have to face the quiet and the wilderness first.

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

It Is Good to Be Here; a sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

Matthew 17:1-9 (CEB)

Six days later Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and brought them to the top of a very high mountain. 2 He was transformed in front of them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as light.

3 Moses and Elijah appeared to them, talking with Jesus. 4 Peter reacted to all of this by saying to Jesus, “Lord, it’s good that we’re here. If you want, I’ll make three shrines: one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

5 While he was still speaking, look, a bright cloud overshadowed them. A voice from the cloud said, “This is my Son whom I dearly love. I am very pleased with him. Listen to him!” 6 Hearing this, the disciples fell on their faces, filled with awe.

7 But Jesus came and touched them. “Get up,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” 8 When they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus.

9 As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, “Don’t tell anybody about the vision until the Human One is raised from the dead.”

Let the words of my mouth

    and the meditations of my heart

    be pleasing to you,

    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

I don’t have any idea what I’d do if I were PJ&J. This is a bonkers thing to happen. I’ve been to hospitals and through weird relationship stuff enough to recognize the miraculous as God’s usual MO, but this thing is just bizarro.

It’s so weird that the best comparison we can find prior to it is way back in Exodus:

12 The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and wait there. I’ll give you the stone tablets with the instructions and the commandments that I’ve written in order to teach them.”

13 So Moses and his assistant Joshua got up, and Moses went up God’s mountain. 14 Moses had said to the elders, “Wait for us here until we come back to you. Aaron and Hur will be here with you. Whoever has a legal dispute may go to them.”

15 Then Moses went up the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. 16 The Lord’s glorious presence settled on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it for six days. On the seventh day the Lord called to Moses from the cloud. 17 To the Israelites, the Lord’s glorious presence looked like a blazing fire on top of the mountain. 18 Moses entered the cloud and went up the mountain. Moses stayed on the mountain for forty days and forty nights.

Six days of glory and cloud and creativity. Six days: see the connection? Six days for God to inscribe the Word that would set the children of Israel apart from all the other peoples around. Six days of crafting and creating, and then God calls Moses.

And on the seventh day, Moses joined God on the mountain.

I might have happily handed that job off to somebody else, except when God calls your name, there’s only so much hemming and hawing and avoiding you can realistically do.

Moses!

um. ok.

Can you even imagine?

That’s the flavor of extraordinary happening atop the mountain with Jesus and PJ&J. It’s no wonder they don’t have any idea what to make of it. It’s just another day, as far as they’re concerned. I mean, some pretty wild stuff had just happened: Peter had his inspired confession of Christ, was promised the keys of the kingdom, and promptly scolded Jesus for saying he was going to die. They sat on that for six days…

six days…

and then they went for a hike and this happened.

At least they had a little time for it something to sink in. Or maybe Jesus was spending six days reconnecting to that written Word he had come to fulfill. My favorite recent take is from a colleague I haven’t met yet.

That’s when Peter busts in.

And, y’all, I wonder a little if he’s just being impetuous, knee-jerking, speak-before-you-think Peter; or if he and James and John are elbowing each other: “say something!” “No, you say something!” “What am I supposed to say?” “How should I know?”

“Wow, Jesus. This is… wow. We should… do a thing… a booth! We can build a booth, a tabernacle… er… pile up some rocks…”

Do y’all ever just smile and shake your head at Peter? Poor Peter. He tries so hard. He has such a good heart.

Oh, wait, that’s where we use that phrase:

Bless his heart.

That, I’m convinced, is exactly what goes through the Divine One’s mind when the heavens send a glowing cloud and a voice mercifully interrupts Peter:

This is my Son whom I dearly love. I am very pleased with him. Listen to him!

And they fall on their faces and the whole thing ends, quickly as it came.

This probably would have gone a lot better if Peter had just stopped at, “It is good to be here.”

He didn’t have to react. He didn’t have to fumble through ideas, looking for something in their tradition, in his experience for this one-off extraordinary moment to connect with.

This was never going to connect with anything in his experience.

And, you know, Jesus didn’t have to invite them along, either. He doesn’t need the company. He doesn’t need their approval. Bringing them isn’t for him. It’s for them. He isn’t looking for an appropriately religious reaction. He is giving them a gift.

I suppose we’re not very good at recognizing that.

What we’re doing now is a gift. This community surrounding us is a gift. But the temptation we face is not just to take it for granted, but to go so far as to curse it.

These stubborn and rebellious people… these argumentative people… these mean people… these people who don’t understand what scripture clearly says… I wish they’d just go away, leave me alone, find somebody else to bother…

Do you recognize that as the language of cursing? All that we do that divides us from each other is cursing. God’s blessing always brings healing and community. Harm and division are always curses.

I’m aware that we’re reeling from division. I’m aware that we’re reeling from harm. I’m aware of what I’ve done and said that has added to that, and I’m trying to be aware of what has been out of my control. We each have to live with the consequences of our actions. That guilt weighs heavily. But we each have to realize that we can’t control each other. Other people make choices, too. To best respect each other, we have to let each other make our own choices. It is rarely ever a good choice to try to control someone else’s actions.

Control of others is not ours to take. Control of every situation is never ours to take.

Peter is lucky when he tries to take control of the situation atop the mountain. It was so far out of his league that what he suggests goes essentially unheard and unnoticed.

We aren’t always so lucky when we try to wrest control out of others’ hands. Sometimes God will actually let us, and that rarely, if ever, goes well.

We need to learn to let go. We need to learn to recognize the gift that God is giving us. Even in the midst of division and decline and strife, there is blessing to be recognized. There is transformation being revealed to us. Even in the midst of everything going wrong, the kinship of God is shining through the cracks in our walls.

And in every place and time and relationship in which that is happening, which is everywhere and with everyone, it is good to be here.

Pay attention. Something glorious is happening right near you. I guarantee you want to be a part of it.

It is good to be here.

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

Great Thanksgiving for the Fifth Sunday of Epiphany, Year A

The Lord be with you.

And also with you.

Lift up your hearts.

We lift them up to the Lord.

Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God.

It is right to give our thanks and praise.

Chemist of Creation, you separate water from water

and leave vast beds of salt

that your creatures might taste and see your goodness.

Light of the World, you separate day from night

and promise to be light to us

no matter how dark our souls.

Throughout time, you have been our goodness and our light,

but we prefer the dark and bitterness

of our misguidance and anger.

So, generation after generation,

you have chosen a remnant

to remind us the value of true fasting,

the freedom of our siblings,

fasting from want and danger,

that all may be safe and whole.

When still we glutted ourselves

and ignored our neighbors,

you sent us the true Light

to remind us how to shine.

And so, with your people across creation

and all the host of the heavens,

we join in their ceaseless song of praise:

Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might!

All creation rings with your praise:

Hosanna in the highest!

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!

Hosanna in the highest!

We acclaim you, Holy One,

and we bow to your Light, the Word fulfilling all words.

He offered to us more wisdom

than anyone could possibly remember,

more healing

than anyone could possibly recount.

His goodness nourishes and keeps us

and his truth is our light.

Everything he is, he gives to us;

a practice so hard to palate

that we quarreled and fought

   and struck him with wicked fists

until the Light went dim on a tree

and the Word became silent.

But still, your mystery whispered to us,

and we hear and join today:

Christ died, and the cosmos turned dark;

Christ has risen at the break of the day;

Christ will come again, a delicious healing balm for all.

On the eve of the darkest hour of creation,

he sat with his friends

to share a meal they all knew,

all of history bound up

in one hurried moment.

He took the ancient loaf,

gave thanks to you,

shared it with his disciples,

and renamed it:

“Take this and take it in.

This is my body I give for you.

Do this. Remember me.”

At the end of the meal he took the old cup,

gave thanks to you,

shared it with his disciples,

and gave it a new name:

“Drink from this, each of you.

This is my blood, emptied for you.

Every time you do this, remember me.”

Pour out your Spirit on us here,

and on these gifts we have brought:

yeasty, salty bread

and sweet, simple juice.

Make them be all we need:

your body and your life-giving blood,

that we may be for all

the body of the Savior, made perfect by his blood.

Make us one, as you are One,

so we may together shine your light,

refracting through us.

Make us together the seasoning of your world,

until the world is complete

and all everywhere and together

sing your praise,

our Light, our Joy, our Peace,

holy in One.

Amen.

My Child, the Beloved; a sermon for Baptism of the Lord Sunday

Matthew 3:13-17 (NRSV)

13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. ¹⁴John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ ¹⁵But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfil all righteousness.’ Then he consented. ¹⁶And when Jesus had been baptized, just as he came up from the water, suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. ¹⁷And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’

Let the words of my mouth

    and the meditations of my heart

    be pleasing to you,

    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Here, my friends, is another story about Jesus that’s chock full of weirdness that we’ve normalized over the passing millennia. Set aside the geographic unfamiliarity we encounter hearing locations like Galilee and the Jordan. It gets odder as we dive in.

We already know the Jesus guy and the John guy. They’ve been introduced, but maybe not as fully by Matthew as by Luke. We know who they are. Via Luke we know they’re cousins. They’re very close in age. So we’ve got all that.

But look at the other stuff in the story.

Imagine being in the crowd (because John apparently drew crowds) and having everyday conversations, or trying to make small talk to folks from some other town who’ve traveled to find John out here in the wilderness. People are going down toward John one at a time. No way does anybody hear the interaction between the cousins. There’s too much else going on. But suddenly:

• the heavens were opened (what does that even mean?)
• a ghostly dove thing falls from the sky and lands on the dude who just came out of the water
• a voice booms from heaven

And if that’s all normalized for you and doesn’t feel weird enough, or if you have grown to expect that what the gospels offer are the extraordinary and the miraculous, let me offer this one:

• Jesus is concerned with what’s proper.

We don’t find out until later on in the gospel how bizarre that is. We don’t learn about Jesus turning things on their heads as a matter of practice until farther in.

I am convinced that we don’t spend enough effort understanding how weird these stories are, and how weird are some of the things we claim and practice.

I believe in the resurrection of the dead.

How foolish are we if we think that our bodies will last until Jesus comes? How foolish are we to think we don’t revert back into the global carbon cycle? The dust of our ancestors is the nourishment of the tomatoes we eat.

By your Spirit make us one with Christ,

one with each other, and one in ministry to all the world

One with each other… fat chance.

Make them be, for us, the body and blood of Christ

This is the claim that had the Roman world convinced that the followers of the way were cannibals eating the flesh of their leader. Also, the Latin for “this is the body,” hoc est corpus is the locus of “hocus pocus.”

Maybe if it’s weird, you’re on the right track, baby; you’re reborn this way.

Hey.

It’s no wonder Nicodemus had such a hard time with Jesus’s “born again” language. He’s totally right: it doesn’t make sense. It’s bizarre. It’s absurd.

And still we trust in it.

Wait. Strike that. Revise it.

We trust in the One whose power works through it.

And we don’t have to understand everything that One is doing through the sacrament, either. Nicodemus didn’t get it. John didn’t get it. I think we’d be lucky to grasp one of the Spirit’s miracles in baptism in any given moment. Bath and resurrection and forgiveness and initiation and adoption and remembrance…

Sometimes the best thing to do is just to open up and let God.

You are not in control here. The more you try to be in control, the more the power of God’s Spirit is going to slip through your grip. You lack the imagination and the power and the perspective to have control here.

Let go.

John thought he knew what he was doing. He held on to an idea of righteousness that got him absolutely furious at the Temple hierarchy. And I think there’s room for that righteous anger. And I think we have a prophetic duty to speak and act and maybe shout truth to human power and its structures.

But John seems to forget the nature of the Servant that Isaiah speaks centuries earlier:

He won’t cry out or shout aloud

    or make his voice heard in public.

He won’t break a bruised reed;

    he won’t extinguish a faint wick,

    but he will surely bring justice.

When Jesus came along to show John and his followers that this was appropriate for the Human One, too; that Jesus, the son of a woman, needed this sacrament, too; John’s mind went boom.

It’s okay that we don’t get it. But there’s one part of the sacrament, one part of the story that echoes to each one of us today.

a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’

That’s not just a proclamation about Jesus, y’all. That is the proclamation of the Creator of the Cosmos to every single one of us. As each of us comes up out of the water of our baptism, whether our clothes are sopping wet or there’s just a faint trickle tickling its way down toward our forehead, that same booming voice from heaven is grinning from nebula to supernova and whispering to each of us:

You are my child, the beloved.

If you can’t hold on to anything else, hold on to that. It’s essential. It’s central. It’s everything.

You are my child, the beloved.

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