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.

The Lord's Prayer for Baptism of the Lord Sunday

Great Spirit who hovered over primal waters,

you are beginning and ending,

all in all:

Return your creation to unity with you,

not with devastating flood,

but with the patience of the stream

that smooths rocks and cleanses wounds.

Nourish us today

with all that grows from your living water:

food for the body

and grace for the soul.

Cleanse us of all that defiles

until the swimming hole we share

runs sparkling clear,

so all your children

may play together in joy and safety.

For we trust you,

whose power we hear in the thunder

and whose mercy falls like rain

until in your temple all cry, “Glory!”

and your praise echoes through eternity.

Amen.

Your Light Has Come: a sermon for Epiphany Sunday

Matthew 2:1-12 (CEB)

After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in the territory of Judea during the rule of King Herod, magi came from the east to Jerusalem. 2 They asked, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We’ve seen his star in the east, and we’ve come to honor him.”

3 When King Herod heard this, he was troubled, and everyone in Jerusalem was troubled with him. 4 He gathered all the chief priests and the legal experts and asked them where the Christ was to be born. 5 They said, “In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what the prophet wrote:

6 You, Bethlehem, land of Judah,

        by no means are you least among the rulers of Judah,

            because from you will come one who governs,

            who will shepherd my people Israel.”

7 Then Herod secretly called for the magi and found out from them the time when the star had first appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem, saying, “Go and search carefully for the child. When you’ve found him, report to me so that I too may go and honor him.” 9 When they heard the king, they went; and look, the star they had seen in the east went ahead of them until it stood over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were filled with joy. 11 They entered the house and saw the child with Mary his mother. Falling to their knees, they honored him. Then they opened their treasure chests and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 Because they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod, they went back to their own country by another route.

Let the words of my mouth

    and the meditations of my heart

    be pleasing to you,

    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Y’all, I am generally a morning person. I am pretty nonfunctional by the end of the day, but in the morning I can generally get up and moving and — fueled by a good double shot of espresso — be a fully functioning human being. Generally. I have my mornings when that’s a bit more difficult.

So when Isaiah says,

Arise! Shine!

I’m generally pretty good to go.

Some of y’all are morning people, too. I’d invite you to read Isaiah’s song from that kind of perspective. We could approach it metaphorically, but let’s live into the scene instead. I feel like it’s informative.

Especially in this season, when we’re just beginning to pull away from the longest night, and the sun is still pinking the clouds at half past seven, early risers like me find ourselves in the darkness for a while.

Though darkness covers the earth

    and gloom the nations,

    the Lord will shine upon you;

    God’s glory will appear over you.

When it’s early and dark, I do what I can to make sure I’m being quiet so the rest of the house can sleep. I turn off the alarm quickly, tread softly to the bathroom — I’ve made a point, the night before, to mark where things are I might kick and make a ruckus. I shut the door and turn on a gentle light. When I go down the hallway, it’s in silence. Every noise in the night, when you’re sleeping in the quiet, sounds ten times louder than it does during the day. I don’t want to startle anyone. I want to let them sleep.

When I dress to run, I barely crack the bathroom door enough to make out which way my socks fit. All I need is the light around me. I don’t need to illuminate the room.

Darkness covers the house.

Nations will come to your light

    and kings to your dawning radiance.

It doesn’t really take much light to make out what we need to. We have, I think, grown accustomed to being flooded with electric light all the time. Most of us, I’m sure, grew up with the convenience of having a light switch in every doorway that worked around the clock. It’s a convenience that we depend on so much that we view it as a right.

That troubles me.

At Buffalo Mountain Camp and at Camp Wesley Woods, one of our regularly programmed activities was a night hike. Campers left their flashlights in their bunks, and we led them on a single-file hike silently up a trail. We helped them discover how much more of the world they could experience when they opened up their range of vision beyond what a flashlight can illuminate. It is astounding how much you can see by the light of stars and moon. It is also inspiring to realize how much more you can experience when your other senses are sharpened.

It is also necessary to rid ourselves of our more redundant and distracting lights in order to find the light we’re looking for.

The magi were students of the stars and what wisdom their movements could impart upon observant people. It was an early science, one that we find laughable today. I wonder how much of our science will be laughable in fifty or five hundred years. We do our best with the tools and the collected knowledge we have available to us, just as the magi did two millennia ago. And it would seem that, regardless of the primitiveness of our science, the Holy Spirit is able to use our science to gift us with revelation.

By the way, isn’t it amazing that God is willing to self-reveal to us in our foolishness? God doesn’t make fun of our foolishness or dismiss it for the bungling effort that it is. God uses it. In fact, I’m going to be so bold as to say that the presence of God that we observe in our foolish attempts at comprehending the world around us validates and affirms our those attempts that we do make.

God isn’t asking us to get our science and art and study absolutely perfect. God doesn’t even seem to care that what we’re finding isn’t necessarily wholly true or factual or sound. It would appear that what God is concerned with is that we’re making an effort.

Which, by the way, is not the same as either not making an effort or obfuscating a genuine effort at finding truth. God is not going to bless or affirm our attempts to promote falsehood and deceit. That is chaff that God is going to burn with the rest of the garbage.

But our genuine, well-intentioned efforts God will affirm.

So if revelation is what we’re after; if truth is what we’re after; if seeing God is what we’re after, then maybe what we need to be doing is spending more time and effort eliminating all the distractions around us and opening ourselves to the possibility that God is already present. Maybe it’s time to take a night hike, leave the flashlight and the phone and the pager behind, out of sight and out of sound, and open our eyes and ears and heart and mind to the wider world of God’s presence everywhere in our natural and social environment.

Arise! Shine! Your light has come;

    the Lord’s glory has shone upon you.

A lot of our images of the magi show them heavy with rich fabrics and bejeweled headgear, grasping at the silly old idea that they were kings of some sort. We would do well to make our scientists kings, I think. But I want to invite you to focus not on the magi themselves, but rather on the light they were pursuing.

Find a way to let go of all the distraction and rediscover that light. It is all around you and it is within you. It is leading you to the only one truly worth finding.

Your light has come.

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

It Is Good: a Great Thanksgiving for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Lord is here.

Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

Open yourself wide to God’s presence.

With open spirits we feast on Christ’s goodness!

Let’s proclaim our thankfulness together.

Yes! Thankfulness is a good thing to do.

It is good and joyful to give you thanks,

Loving God, who kneaded primordial waters

and called your creation good.

It is good to remember

that your hand created us out of the dry land

and your Spirit inspired our spirits to start singing.

It is good and loving of you

to seek us out in our darkest times

and giving us the good word of your prophets

whose word from ages ago

still proclaims

    good news to the poor, 

    release to the prisoners 

    and recovery of sight to the blind, 

    liberation of the oppressed, 

     and the arrival of the year of the Lord’s favor.

It is good of us, then, to join our voices

with the prophets and all the company of heaven

who forever praise your name and sing their endless hymn:

Holy! Holy! Holy are you, God of goodness and power!

All creation is full of your glory;

Let hosannas ring everywhere!

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

Let hosannas ring out into all the ages!

Holy are you, and blessed is your son, Jesus Christ,

who comes to us as your age breaks in,

showing us himself in the children on the margins:

the poor, the widow, the orphan, the immigrant,

the anathematized of every community.

It is good that you sit us with them

to feast on your goodness together.

It is so good that he told us to do it

every time we gather:

To take the good gift of the grain,

to thank you for it,

to break it and share it,

and to hear his words again:

“This is my body, living bread, broken for you.

Take it in. Eat it up. Remember me.”

To take the good gift of the cup,

thank you for it,

share it with each other,

and hear the shocking proclamation:

“This is my blood.

It’s a brand-new promise.

It’ll give you real life.

Take it in. Drink it up. Remember me.”

So we remember, and as you offer yourself

wholly, completely,

we pour ourselves out to you,

and proclaim the mystery that is faith:

Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.

In your goodness, Lord,

you pour yourself out on us, gathered here,

and on these table gifts we bring.

Make them be your goodness for us;

your body, your blood,

and make us what we eat:

the body of Christ, sanctified by his blood.

It is good that you’ve drawn us together;

now bind us together, and draw us to you,

to love your world as you do

until all the world, all creation, shares your love.

Your love is good.

It is good.

Amen.

Philippians 4:1-9

Loved ones, I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to come to an agreement in the Lord. Yes, and I’m also asking you, loyal friend, to help these women who have struggled together with me in the ministry of the gospel, along with Clement and the rest of my coworkers whose names are in the scroll of life.

We Wesleyan Christians have a long history of finding ways to live together even in the midst of disagreement. Finding middle ground and developing intentional space to converse civilly is a point of pride for us as a denomination.

That, of course, doesn’t mean that healthy dialogue occurs in every local context. I don’t know how many conversations I’ve had to sit through surrounded by colleagues or parishioners whose ideology is entirely opposite mine but who agree on all their own points. Those conversations turn quickly vitriolic, and it is painfully clear that no argument will convince anyone that there is another point of view worth considering.

I realize that I’ve compelled people to sit through the same thing when I find an ally and begin venting off pent-up frustration.

I realize now, and I typically realize at the time, that my own vitriol completely fails to win hearts and minds, and only serves to make the atmosphere more toxic.

I realize that when I do that, I’m only feeding the fire that’s burning out of control in today’s polarizing culture.

What I wonder, then, is how to read what Paul suggests to the church in Phillipi. Are we to aim for complete agreement, which is probably an impossible task today, or are we to learn to live in disagreement and focus on those points on which we find common ground?

What is the healthy way for the Body of Christ to live?

Along for the Ride; a sermon for the Second Sunday of Lent

John 3:1-17

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a Jewish leader. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could do these miraculous signs that you do unless God is with him.”

3 Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born anew, it’s not possible to see God’s kingdom.”

4 Nicodemus asked, “How is it possible for an adult to be born? It’s impossible to enter the mother’s womb for a second time and be born, isn’t it?”

5 Jesus answered, “I assure you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, it’s not possible to enter God’s kingdom. 6 Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Don’t be surprised that I said to you, ‘You must be born anew.’ 8 God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

9 Nicodemus said, “How are these things possible?”

10 “Jesus answered, “You are a teacher of Israel and you don’t know these things? 11 I assure you that we speak about what we know and testify about what we have seen, but you don’t receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? 13 No one has gone up to heaven except the one who came down from heaven, the Human One. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so must the Human One be lifted up 15 so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life. 16 God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life. 17 God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him.

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

If there is one verse that Christians seem to know today, that everyone can reference, whose numbering has been seen far and wide…

Maybe it used to be Psalm 23.

Not anymore.

John 3:16.

I’ve even heard people say, “I’m a John 3:16 Christian!”

Really? I’m a Jesus-following kind of Christian.

Godsolovedtheworldthathegavehisonlybegottensonthatwhosoeverbelievethinhimshouldnotperishbuthaveeverlastinglife.

Over it.

Mostly, I’m over it because it’s been handled so completely out of context for so long.

It’s like an overplayed song on the radio.

You know it’s true: everything I do, I do it for you.

Baby, baby, baby, oh baby.

Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s my number…

You know what’s even prettier than John 3:16? The poetry, specifically the imagery, eight verses earlier:

God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes.

Of course, it helps to remember other passages of God-Wind, like:

When God began to create the heavens and the earth— the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters

Or:

As I looked at the creatures, suddenly there was a wheel on the earth corresponding to all four faces of the creatures… There was one shape for all four of them, as if one wheel were inside another. When they moved in any of the four directions, they moved without swerving…  Wherever the wind would appear to go, the wind would make them go there too. The wheels rose up beside them, because the spirit of the creatures was in the wheels.

Or:

Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. 

God loves the world so much that God’s Spirit just blows around everywhere, blowing love into all the world, everywhere, wherever, with about as much reason or predictability as the wind over the surface of the Earth.

And when we enter into the renewal of who we are, the re-creating of ourselves into the Image of God that our Creator intends for us, the born-again person, then we submit ourselves also to the whim of the Spirit. Ours is not to determine where and when God will call us. Ours is to hear and to follow. That’s all.

If we do, God promises us a wild ride. Not a safe ride. Not a comfortable ride. A ride like Ezekiel’s creatures enjoy: unpredictable, uncontrollable, unencumbered by all the baggage that we use every day to define ourselves.

A wild ride.

We think of being born again as securing an eternal future. Sure, there’s a piece of that, but that, frankly, isn’t what’s important. If that were the important bit, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to be human. God could have done this salvation thing any way God wanted to, but God chose Emmanuel. God chose to be with us. And by choosing humanity, by choosing to take on mortality, God shows us just how important this creation is.

If we choose to follow, God will gift us with that Spirit. It is an act of empowerment. Selfish, fearful, and broken as we are, we hope in the promise that God’s Spirit is our Comforter. While that’s true, and fundamentally important, God’s Comfort also Encourages us. God’s Encouragement Empowers us. God’s Empowerment Enlivens us, Revitalizes us to go out and breathe God’s Spirit into creation.

We who are empowered have no business sheltering ourselves against the world. We have no business being afraid of - what?

Think you’re getting beat down? Oppressed? Are you suffering the way Paul suffered? He didn’t gripe about it:

Instead, we commend ourselves as ministers of God in every way. We did this with our great endurance through problems, disasters, and stressful situations. We went through beatings, imprisonments, and riots. We experienced hard work, sleepless nights, and hunger.

Instead, Paul says:

We displayed purity, knowledge, patience, and generosity. We served with the Holy Spirit, genuine love, telling the truth, and God’s power.

If you are a born-again Christian, then act like one! Get off your duff, stop complaining, stop being so threatened by all the fear-mongering all around you.

Turn off your Faux News, take your hands out of your pockets, and start using them the way that Jesus does. Go be healing! Go be mercy! Go be forgiveness to all those broken people around you!

Get out and let God’s Spirit blow you around! The best possible thing you can do is be along for the ride. You’ll be amazed at just how God will bless your stinky socks off.

Think you can handle that today? Then come let God feed you this morning, meet your Creator at this table, and then get out that door and let God’s Spirit do something with you.

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

God with Skin on: a sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

Matthew 17:1-9

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.

When you tell someone a secret, what do you expect them to do?

Sometimes that depends on the person. Usually, that depends on your relationship with the person.

If that person respects you, and if the secret is not dangerous, they’ll keep your secret, won’t they?

But if that person is perfectly willing to write you off, if you’re not important to them, is it fair to expect them to keep your secret?

Do you confide in someone you don’t trust?

Can someone confide something in you if you don’t have a relationship with you?

Jesus is trusting P, J, & J with a really big secret. They’ve never seen anything like this in their lives. Sure, Jesus did some really nifty miracles, healed people, brought somebody back from the dead once or twice, but this is huge! This is impossible! This is beyond their imagination! This is inconceivable!

But what did they see?

We sing:

Open our eyes Lord
We want to see Jesus
To reach out and touch Him
And say that we love Him
Open our ears Lord
And help us to listen
Open our eyes Lord
We want to see Jesus

or

Open my eyes, that I may see glimpses of truth thou hast for me;

place in my hands the wonderful key that shall unclasp and set me free.

Silently now I wait for thee, ready, my God, thy will to see.

Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine!

And that’s nifty. But what are we asking for?

Are we asking for an experience like Moses?

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.

Do we want to see what the people saw from afar? Do we want to be on the mountain like Moses, beholding the glory of God with our own eyes?

That’s one of the things I don’t get about our tradition, by the way. There are times when our witness tells us that no one can see God and live, and then there are stories like Moses’s about someone who does exactly that.

And then there’s Jesus.

How many people saw Jesus? A bunch. Thousands, tens of thousands. Who knows?

I’m just… I’m stuck trying to figure out the difference between seeing Jesus and seeing God. I don’t understand, if Jesus says, “I and the Father are One,” what the actual difference is.

Just confused.

Maybe Jesus is like God with a mask on. Like Moses with a towel on his head when he comes back down from the mountain:

29 Moses came down from Mount Sinai. As he came down from the mountain with the two covenant tablets in his hand, Moses didn’t realize that the skin of his face shone brightly because he had been talking with God. 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw the skin of Moses’ face shining brightly, they were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called them closer. So Aaron and all the leaders of the community came back to him, and Moses spoke with them. 32 After that, all the Israelites came near as well, and Moses commanded them everything that the Lord had spoken with him on Mount Sinai. 33 When Moses finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. 34 Whenever Moses went into the Lord’s presence to speak with him, Moses would take the veil off until he came out again. When Moses came out and told the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 the Israelites would see that the skin of Moses’ face was shining brightly. So Moses would put the veil on his face again until the next time he went in to speak with the Lord.

Do you know what a habit is?

Today, we refer to a habit as something we do over and over, usually a behavior that is so deeply ingrained that it is nearly impossible to stop.

The older sense of the word refers to the plain dress of a member of a monastic order. Habits are worn by nuns and monks. They put them on and the robe reminds them of the simplicity of their calling, their covenant to a life of poverty and reflection.

As monastics put on their habits, they begin to associate certain behavior with the certain dress. So a couple centuries after the term developed to describe monastic robes, the term evolved to describe the kind of repeated behavior that the habit inspired.

You put on a habit to develop holy habits.

Let me offer this observation, then: Jesus is God’s holy habit.

Jesus is the mask of God, the costume of God, the behavior God puts on to show us what God is really like.

God walking around in skin. God with skin on.

But under that habit you can still see the motion of the Almighty. Under that towel, you can watch the motivation of the Maker.

God’s love beams out through Jesus’s eyes.

And P, J, & J caught a glimpse.

The good news is that we can, too.

I was hungry and you gave me food to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you gave me clothes to wear. I was sick and you took care of me. I was in prison and you visited me.

I assure you that when you have done [this] for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you have done it for me.

Do you want to catch a glimpse of Christ? Look around you. Here he is.

That’s the big secret for us today. God is within every single one of us. Maybe that’s a little creepy, because plenty of us aren’t actually interested in inviting God into our lives, into our selves, into our private moments.

But Christ is here among us.

And even more importantly, Jesus is outside these walls waiting, just waiting for you to meet him and offer him bread, shelter, comfort, healing, peace.

And if you’ll offer your meager self to God with Skin on, just imagine what God will offer to you.

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