Andy James

wandering the web since 1997

Presbyterian minister in Atlanta.
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Found beer in seminary.

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Politics, Religion, and Jesus

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a sermon on Psalm 27 and Luke 13:31-35
preached on February 21, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Jesus, Donald Trump, and Pope Francis walked into a bar, and a huge fight broke out. The bartender said, “When I saw them coming I thought this was a joke, but it sure seems to be real!”

With the events of the last week on the national stage, with Pope Francis suggesting that some of the policy ideas of Donald Trump are not consistent with Christian values and then Donald Trump suggesting that the pope ought not to question his Christianity and would wish that he was president when the Vatican gets attacked by ISIS, the collision of religion and politics seems to be more real than ever before—except than in the story of Jesus himself.

Our reading this morning from the gospel of Luke shows us one of the great examples of how Jesus got involved in both religion and politics in his own life and ministry. As he was teaching and healing in the villages of Judea and making his way to Jerusalem to proclaim his message there, Jesus was confronted by some Pharisees. The Pharisees had caused plenty of trouble for Jesus before, but this time they came to him with something of a warning about what Herod was up to: “Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.”

Now Herod was not a particularly powerful ruler—Rome ultimately exercised full authority over Judea and Palestine in those days, and they used puppets like Herod to give a false sense of some local control and influence in government. This Herod actually had even less power and authority than his father, that familiar figure from Matthew’s story of the birth of Jesus, who received the magi upon their arrival to celebrate the birth of the king of the Jews and then was so desperate to find and kill this newborn child that he killed all the boys under age two in the entire town of Bethlehem. While the Herod of Luke’s story certainly shared his father’s murderous disposition, the Romans did not allow him to use the title “king,” and he was clearly subordinate at every turn to the Roman authorities who were really in charge and didn’t seem quite so interested in getting rid of Jesus.

Still, the Pharisees bore this message from Herod to Jesus, but Jesus wanted nothing of it. He responded by inviting them to go back to “that fox” Herod and tell him that he would not get in the way of Jesus’ work. Herod’s threats would not pull Jesus away from “casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow.” And their plotting and planning would not distract him from his journey to Jerusalem, for even if he was to suffer and die there, he would stand in a long line of prophets and others who had done exactly that.

In this brief encounter with the Pharisees, Jesus made it clear that he had not come to appease the religious leaders, prop up the political establishment, or even promote independence from Rome. His mission in the world was not to blindly identify with others’ agendas or support earthly governments—and in fact his actions along the way would quite likely challenge the powers that be at every turn. Instead, Jesus insisted that his was a mission of transformation and care, grounded in his work of healing and continued in his “gathering [Jerusalem’s] children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” Amid all the foxes of the world like Herod who sought to preserve their own power and position at the expense of the poor and outcast, Jesus set out to protect this brood who may have struggled from time to time but who were ultimately deeply loved by God and so deserved real and true protection from those who were out to exploit them, both spiritually and politically.

This incredible commitment of Jesus to stand against the powers that be and protect those who were left to fend for themselves was grounded in far more than just his own chutzpah. Navigating the journey that was ahead for him required far more than just an internal sense of doing what was right—it required a deep relationship with God that recognized how God would go with him along this difficult way. So I imagine Jesus carrying the words of Psalm 27 with him along this journey, grounding him in the tradition of his ancestors and supporting him as he faced the difficulties of the journey to the cross:

The LORD is my light and my salvation;
whom then shall I fear?

The LORD is the strength of my life;
of whom then shall I be afraid?

In these words, the psalmist offers assurance to Jesus and to us that there is nothing to fear when we place our confidence and trust in the Lord. The trust and fearlessness that the psalmist proclaims here stands behind Jesus’ response to the Pharisees—and his journey to Jerusalem to face the powers of death.

Even as the words of Psalm 27 gave him confidence for his own journey, Jesus embodied the words of the psalmist in his mission of teaching, healing, and protecting God’s people from harm. So in the same way, we are called not just to enjoy this protection but to protect others along this way as well, embodying the kind of love and justice that Jesus offered in his ministry in our daily lives, caring for the people that Jesus set out to protect—the poor and outcast, those typically neglected—joining in what God is doing to stand up to the work of the powers that be in our world and make it clear that our human politics and institutional religion are no match for God’s great transformation.

Living out this sort of thing has never been easy, but I suspect it is about as difficult as it has ever been right now. We do not have to look very far or listen all that carefully to discover places where politics and religion are getting all mixed up in ways that make it clear that the kingdom of God is the last thing on our minds. Too many political candidates use religion as a tool to build support and momentum without recognizing that Jesus came to inaugurate a different way entirely, setting aside such confidence in human institutions and instead affirming the power of God to make all things new. Too many churches put their confidence in political solutions to the problems that we face, ignoring the real and important steps that we must take to bring about change and the ways that our religious institutions are themselves complicit in oppression and injustice. And too often politics and religion become those things that we refuse to discuss in polite company like the church, assuming that they will inevitably result in conflict when in fact they really do matter as we figure out how we will participate in God’s new creation that is taking hold in our world.

In this day and age, I completely understand the dual temptations that Christians have faced in politics and religion over the centuries. Too often our ancestors have thought that we could just fix everything if we made it all Christian, if everyone shared the same creed and everyone lived out their spirituality in the same way. And plenty of other ancestors in the faith have suggested that the better way would be to step out of the political world entirely, to let this world crumble to its inevitable end sooner rather than later so that we can take up the glorious perfection of the kingdom of God.

But neither of these temptations were good enough for Jesus. These were the easy way out, for they refused to engage the world as it really is, with all its religious and political complexity, for these are very much part of who we are as human beings created in the image of God. So when the world threatened to do him in, Jesus did not ignore these challenges but instead kept his focus on his mission, staying the course in his interactions with the religious and political authorities of his time, engaging the people in his prophetic teaching, touching them with healing for physical, emotional, and spiritual ills, doing his best to protect them from the evils that threatened them, and finally even offering his life so that the whole world could live in the new kingdom that he had announced even from the beginning of his ministry.

So when we are tempted to depart from joining in God’s new way, when we are afraid of the Herods and Pharisees of our world who threaten us with their sham authority, when we wonder how we can keep the faith amid the rocky world around us, when we get lost trying to sort out all the challenges of politics and religion in these days, when we lose sight of the call to participate in God’s new creation, may the witness of Christ give us confidence, and may the words of the psalmist give us hope, for the Lord is our light and our salvation and the strength of our life, and we have no reason to fear as we join in God’s work in Christ to make all things new. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Light on the Mountaintop

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a sermon on Exodus 34:29-35 and Luke 9:28-36
preached on February 7, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Transfiguration Sunday is one of my favorite days of the church year. It is one of those church holidays that will almost certainly never get taken over by commercialism, in part because different parts of the church celebrate it at different times! It brings us to a story that seems to be incredibly important in the three synoptic gospels and that carried over into the celebrations of the church for many centuries in art and life. And it takes us to a mountaintop to see incredible and amazing light, helping us to see our faith and our world more clearly as we enter the season of Lent.

Our two readings this morning offer us two visions of this very clarity of sight because of God’s light on the mountaintop. First we hear of Moses’ strange shining face after encountering God on the mountaintop. After receiving the law from God on top of the mountain, Moses came down to meet with the people. The people were taken aback when they saw Moses. His face was shining with great light as it reflected the glory of God after his encounter on the mountaintop, and they were surprised and afraid. They knew their God as a fearful and vengeful God, as one whose glory they could not glimpse, as one who knew them and their foibles and flaws all too well, and when they saw Moses’ face aglow with even the reflection of that glory, they wondered and worried what might be coming next for them.

But this was not what Moses intended. He came down from the mountain hoping to engage the people in what God had shared with him. He wanted them to get a glimpse of the glory he had seen so that they might understand God’s presence better in the everyday. In sharing the light of his face, he hoped that they would join him in reflecting the incredible glory of God that had led them out of Egypt and would guide them into the Promised Land. But Moses’ shining face after his encounter with God on the mountain ended up being an incredible distraction for the people, so he covered his face with a veil when he was speaking with the people because they just weren’t ready to experience this light from the mountaintop quite yet.

Our second unique encounter with God and light on a mountaintop comes in our reading from the gospel according to Luke, where we hear of the transfiguration of Jesus that gives this Sunday in our liturgical calendar its name. As he prepared to begin the journey toward Jerusalem that would result in his trial and execution, Jesus took three of his disciples with him up on the mountain to pray, and suddenly “the appearance of his face changed, and his clothes became dazzling white.” In the midst of this strange moment, Jesus was joined by two men, immediately recognizable as Moses and Elijah, and together these three “were speaking of [Jesus’] departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem.”

As this light broke on this mountaintop, though, Peter, James, and John were barely able to keep their eyes open. Even amid their exhaustion, their glimpse of this glorious sight led Peter to utter one of the most bumbled lines of the New Testament: “Master, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”

As Peter was fumbling for words and actions to hold onto this moment of glory rather than to share it, a cloud overshadowed them, leaving the disciples filled with fear and trembling all the more, especially as a voice came from the cloud: “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” After this voice, the visitors disappeared, leaving Jesus alone with the disciples on the mountain, the strange radiance of the moment quickly dissipating as they all returned to the plain, recognizing all the more clearly that Jesus would soon be turning his face toward Jerusalem.

These two moments of light on the mountaintop give us glimpses of God’s glory shining into our world in incredible and surprising ways, but they also give us insight into the ways that we respond to this glory breaking into our midst. In both of these stories, the witnesses to this transfiguring light are taken aback. With Moses, the people shrink back when they see his face aglow and demand that he keep it covered up, and with Jesus, the disciples just want to find a way to hold on to the moment so that they do not lose it.

It seems that whenever we come close to the light of God, whether it be on the mountaintop or in the valley, we end up cowering in fear, seeking to avoid it and run away or to capture it and control it to limit its real effect on our lives. I suspect that this fear and anxiety around this light of God on the mountaintop probably comes less from it blinding us or showing us too much of God’s glory. Instead, it may be that this light illuminates us for who we are, showing that we are not the people God has made us to be, that we are not the people we claim to be, that we are unwilling and therefore unable to reflect the light of God’s glory into our dark and weary world.

All this may be what makes the story of the transfiguration so difficult for us. As much as we want God to change things in our world, we are so very deeply hesitant to change ourselves. As much as we want light to shine into the darkness, the glimpse of glory that comes from this light on the mountaintop leaves us speechless and fearful as it illumines our lives more than we might like. And as much as we want God’s glory to shine in us, we see in these stories that the reflections of God’s glory that can come in us might also require us to recognize the glory of God in others around us, to set aside our assumptions, stereotypes, and fears, to see our fellow humans as equal bearers of God’s image, regardless of the color of their skin, the understanding they carry of their gender, the form of their religious practice, the identity of those they love, or any other human characteristic.

Yet in spite of our fear, God’s glory still breaks into our midst, beginning with these encounters of light on the mountaintop, slowly but surely extending even into the dark valleys where things seem to be hidden but light slowly breaks in. The light of God’s glory shines upon our world in ways beyond our understanding, peeking through the clouds of hatred and anger that seem to overshadow the hopeful and joyous light of our lives, sending hope and life even into places where these seem to be so far away. And by God’s mercy, the wondrous light of God reflected in Moses’ shining face and Jesus’ changed appearance is reflected in us, for even when we resist God’s call to bear this light into our lives and our world, God guides us to overcome our fears and break through our uncertainty so that we can reflect the wonder and hope of this glory into our world.

The light on the mountaintop shines far and wide. This light begins in these incredible and beautiful places, illuminating faces with tremendous glory, glowing with wonder and hope for our weary world. This light shines on us and reflects through us into our broken and fearful world, giving us hope for all the difficult journeys of our lives and guiding us through the challenges of the Lent that lies ahead. And this light opens the pathway for us, showing us that even the darkest pathways will lead us to light, for even Jesus’ journey through death ended with an empty tomb.

So may God shine this light on us on this mountaintop, at this table where we gain another glimpse of this glory, and in every place on our journey, so that we might reflect the wonder and hope of God’s new life each and every day of the coming Lenten journey and beyond, until the joy of the resurrection is real for all as the whole creation is made new in Christ Jesus our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

A Body with a Purpose

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a sermon on 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a and Luke 4:14-21
preached on January 31, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Since we didn’t have worship together here, what did you do last Sunday? Did you sleep in and enjoy the beautiful snowscape from the warmth of your bed or couch? Did you get up and start clearing your sidewalk or digging out your car, trying to get at least a few of those 26 inches of snow cleared away before having to venture out on Monday morning? Did you find an online devotional or streaming service where you could set aside even a little of the day for worship?

I myself actually did all three of these things, but beforehand I took advantage of our snow Sunday by watching soccer. Watching soccer is something of a surprising hobby for me—I only played one season of it as a child, and I spent about half of that season sidelined at home with chicken pox!—and I only picked up interest in it as an adult three or four years ago. But now I am a season ticket holder for the New York Red Bulls and I spend far too many hours sitting on my couch watching soccer, mostly from the United States and England. Before these last few years, I’ve not been much of a sports fan in general, only watching the major championships here and there and not really taking up support of any particular team along the way. But now I watch three or four games a week on average, and I’ve started to learn more about the different strategies that get played out along the way.

I’m particularly interested in how teams get put together, especially in the American Major League Soccer. Some of these teams are built around highly-paid star players, with supporting casts made up of those who can fill in the gaps without breaking the salary cap. Other teams bring in stars who have made a name for themselves in other parts of the world but are now a little—or a lot—past their prime, hoping that the wise presence of these veterans will rub off on the young guys who fill in the other nine or ten positions on the field. And other teams put together a roster of young unknowns who may not play quite so wisely or quite so perfectly but who come together as a team to build on one another’s strengths and fill in one another’s weaknesses.

The body of Christ, the church, operates in similar ways. While we are not quite a team in the traditional competitive sense, we are certainly a group of people with different gifts who come together for a common purpose, and each little corner of the body approaches its form in a different way. The apostle Paul makes this abundantly clear in our reading from 1 Corinthians this morning. Paul insists that we are one body—one body with many members who come together to be something more than we would be on our own; one body that belongs together, even when we think that we could do things better on our own; one body that benefits from the gifts that each one of us offers; one body that treats one another with honor and respect; and one body that goes wherever we may go together.

Paul’s image of the body of Christ is incredibly helpful for most people to understand how different people come together to be the church, as it invites us all to think about how we fit into the body of Christ. We are part of something larger than ourselves, and we can see this so clearly when this approach is before us. And we all have a part to play in the life of the church, whether it be as an arm, a toe, an eye, a stomach, or even a hangnail! Today is a great day to remember these things, for as we gather after worship today to do the work of our congregation in our annual meeting, as we elect officers and hear reports looking back and looking forward, we are reminded very, very well of the ways in which we all contribute to the life and work of this part of the body of Christ.

But when we our focus is on how the body of Christ comes together, as it is here, it is easy to miss the deeper call of what we do together. When we spend most of our time wondering how we fit into the body of Christ, we are thinking about the parts, not the whole. When we are focused on the very helpful and generous gifts of the individual arms and legs and hands that make up the body, we can easily miss the need for all these parts to work together for a common purpose. And when we miss the ways in which the different parts of the body are united into one, we forget that the gifts of the Spirit come upon us all—the hands, the feet, the arms, the eyes, and even the hangnails—to guide us as we join in God’s work in the world.

The words of Jesus himself in our reading from Luke this morning point us toward our common purpose as the body of Christ. As his continuing body on earth, we the church are called to fulfill the scripture once again, just as he did:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon [us],
because [God] has anointed [us]
to bring good news to the poor.
[God] has sent [us] to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

This week at our presbytery meeting, I think I got a better understanding of all these things than I have had in quite a while. On Tuesday, the presbytery approved the service of a ruling elder from the Church of Gethsemane in Brooklyn to broaden his ministry and perform the sacraments in this congregation and in their ministry in prison. This congregation does incredible ministry and mission among the incarcerated, and this elder who we commissioned on Tuesday began his connection with this church when he himself was in prison. Now there is a strong gospel command to share good news with those in prison, to visit those who are in jail, to care for those who are held captive in whatever way, but for a variety of reasons, this has not been a part of my own personal ministry. Yet on Tuesday, the body of Christ honored and supported one of its parts who is very much called to do this work. We laid hands on Chibueze and affirmed his call to be a part of our body, to witness to God’s presence in a place where it is all too often invisible. We recognized that not all of us have the gifts we need to do the kind of work that he does, and so we commissioned him to proclaim release to the captives, trusting that God would use our gifts in the body to support his gifts in the body, too. And we charged him to be the body of Christ in his work in ways that others of us are not gifted and called to do.

As we go into our annual meeting today, I invite you not just to think about the gifts that you bring to this little corner of the body of Christ on the corner of 149th Street and 15th Drive but also to wonder together about how the Spirit is upon us. How are we being anointed, together, to do the work that Jesus began and called us to continue? How is the Spirit leading us to proclaim release to the captives of our own time, to help people see in new ways where they have been blinded for so long and open the pathway of life to the oppressed? How is God working in our midst to help us to show that this is a season of the Lord’s favor, not of God’s condemnation? Thankfully we don’t have to do all these things ourselves—as the commissioning service at presbytery reminded me, not all of us are called to every important work of the church, and we as a congregation may not be called to do all of these things that are before us from Jesus’ proclamation—but we are most certainly called to use our individual gifts for the good of the whole body.

As we enter the second month of 2016, I feel that we are probably closer to this work than we have been in a long time, for in 2015 I saw a new sense of mission and outreach in our life together, with our focus on the Orange Campaign and Presbyterian mission in Madagascar taking center stage, and I am hopeful that this new year will see this work continue to grow. But as we do these things, how will each of us get involved? What will be your role in the body of Christ in this time? Will you be the legs that do the walking,  the arms and hands that do the writing or typing, the eyes that keep looking for other ways to get involved, the ears that listen to the voices of those who need help, the hangnail that keeps on reminding us that there is more to be done, or some other part of the body? It is much like the decision we each faced last Sunday: how will we spend the time that is before us? How will we worship and praise and serve God, each in our own way, yet joining together as best we can to do God’s work in this time and place?

So may God give us wisdom for our worship and work, so that together we may truly be the body of Christ, individually members of it, proclaiming the good news of God in word and in deed until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

Speaking Up

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a sermon on Isaiah 62:1-5
preached on January 17, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent…”

These days, it feels like there are lots of people who are taking this word from the Lord very seriously! As we approach the presidential primaries this spring and the national elections this fall, candidates and pundits and regular people are speaking up constantly! But even beyond this moment, people are raising their voices more than ever before. Sometimes reading on Facebook or Twitter or other social media makes me wonder if some people ever have a thought that they do not say out loud! The comments section of many online news articles is even worse, as hate and vitriol pour forth unchecked. And the constant call all around us to speak up about one thing or another by posting on Facebook, signing a petition, writing a representative or senator, or even sending smoke signals just leaves me wondering if any words I choose to offer will ever be heard above the din of the world in these days.

The biggest issue about all this noise for me, though, is that it is so often about the wrong things. Who are those who refuse to keep silent speaking for? Are they raising their voices for themselves or for others? Are the issues being lifted up for the benefit of a few or the many? Are these people speaking up on behalf of the well-off or of the poor and downtrodden? So often in these days, those who refuse to keep silent are concerned only about themselves and not others. They so often seek the well-being of a few at the expense of the many. So many who speak up in these days seem to be working for the safety of those who are quite safe already while endangering those who have no way of protecting themselves.

While so many loud voices around us today are focused on self-preservation and permitting injustice, the prophet Isaiah here declares that God will raise God’s voice on behalf of those who might not otherwise be heard, of the people of Israel and Judah who were struggling to find their voice—and a way to raise it up—following their exile to Babylon. While many of the exiles had returned to their homeland, they could not forget the trauma that they had experienced. Their story was deeply and directly marked by the experience of their exiled refugee ancestors, and they were still suffering the effects of this experience. They may have been back home, with reconstruction of the buildings and institutions of their homeland taking place all around them, but they were still filled with the signs and markers of deep brokenness, of long-term defeat, and of a feeling of abandonment by God. And God may have offered them deep promises of comfort and hope for generations, but they still bore the scars of a people violated by siege and invasion that divided them from one another and from their God who had seemingly left them alone to suffer.

In response to all these things, the prophet offers the people the words of God in poetry that, as commentator Kathleen O’Connor describes it,

takes historical circumstances and transposes them into the small story of a couple and their household. The poetry moves between language about an ancient city and the life of a bride. It attends to and gathers up the suffering of generations by using imagery of a women cast off and abandoned. In ancient Israel such a woman faced life-threatening peril, because she could not survive without family to support and protect her. (Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1, p. 247)

But God’s proclamation here makes it clear that such peril is not the last word for this woman—or for the people. God will speak up to make it clear to all the world that this woman—and these people—are not only protected but beloved and celebrated. God will make it clear that these whom others may deride as devoid of beauty and wonder “shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.” God will transform these who once were desolate and forsaken into a joyous, hopeful, and beloved people. Amid all their conflicts, all their fears, all their uncertainties, all their as-yet-unfulfilled promises, God’s light will break forth in their midst, making it clear that they are beautiful, beloved, and special. All the harm that they have endured, all the dishonor that has been poured upon them, all the fear that has surrounded them—all these things will be vindicated as the world is shown that this harm, this dishonor, this fear is not the last word, for the glorious transformation of new life will shine brightly as God rejoices in these new things.

In our day and age, when there are so many who will not keep silent about the wrong things, when there are plenty of people who are attacked or left without support and protection, when there are so many in our midst who struggle to find a hopeful way to interact with one another, these words still echo loudly among us. These words are not so much addressed to us for ourselves—after all, if we are truly honest with ourselves, most of us are not the kind of downtrodden people God is addressing here—but rather these words are shared with us so that we might offer God’s love and light to those who might not otherwise know it. In our world, there are plenty of people who need to know that they are chosen and singled out and gifted as God’s beloved. As Kathleen O’Connor puts it so well,

Isaiah’s passage supports divine election not to buttress the contented, to uphold the secure, the confident, or the arrogant. Isaiah’s theology of election is rhetoric of immense power because it tells the poor, the second-class nation, the excluded and cast-off women of this world, that God takes immense delight in them. (Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 1, p. 247)

As God’s people, then, we are called to share this kind of new life and light with exactly these people—these who are dismissed by the world as “illegal” because they fled across human borders seeking hope for their families and themselves; these who are caught up in the violence of systemic racism and sexism and homophobia and religious preference because they do not look or act or believe like others; these who long for a safe place to escape violence against their bodies and spirits because they have been hurt in body, mind, and spirit by those who say that they love them; even these who find themselves mixed up in anxiety and fear over an uncertain future and so lash out against others who seem to be so different from them. We are called to remember that God’s care is first and foremost for those who are not cared for by the world—and that we join in God’s work when we reach out in mercy, grace, and love to make God’s presence real.

There is no better time to remember all these things and return to this pathway of hope and justice than on this weekend when we celebrate the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. More than any other figure in our history, Dr. King embodied the fullness of these words in his life and work. He refused to keep silent and did not rest in his pursuit of the case of justice and righteousness for all of God’s people and especially for the downtrodden and excluded among us. He insisted that God’s vindication and glory would be revealed among those who had been cast down, that their lives would be “a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord.” And he made it clear that God delights in all people and will bring us all to a new day of equality, justice, and peace, fulfilling not just our national commitment to care for our people but our human responsibility to embrace the wonder of God’s love in ways beyond our immediate understanding and outside of our usual knowledge. Martin Luther King, Jr., insisted that we as a people could be more than we were and can be more than we are, carrying the potential of great wonder, hope, and restoration for ourselves and all the world, for God’s liberating glory invites us to shine God’s light into every dark and uncertain place.

So, my friends, it is time for us too to follow these prophets’ proclamation, to set aside our silence and to take up a new voice, to shine God’s vindication of the poor and outcast before all the nations to broadcast God’s salvation of the excluded and cast-off to the ends of the earth, to join the faithful saints of the ages who have shared this message of transformation and hope with our actions in solidarity with God and others so that it will be clear to us and the downtrodden and all the world that we are all God’s beloved and that we are called to celebrate all the ways that God rejoices in us and all our sisters and brothers until the whole creation is made new in the power of Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Loving and Troubling Waters

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a sermon on Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:1-21
preached on January 10, 2016, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

You’ve gotta love John the Baptist. He bucks every trend in the book. His parents had so given up on having a child that his father directly questioned the messenger of God who brought this news and ended up mute for nine months. John himself took an old Jewish tradition of ritual washing and put new meaning on it by inviting people to venture out into the wilderness to repent and find forgiveness for their sins. He offered a message compelling enough to draw people out of the villages and cities to come hear him preach in the wilderness. And he managed to amass such a large group of followers that he still had a pretty big group left after calling them all a “brood of vipers” and suggesting that they were trees who would be cut down if they did not bear good fruit.

The people left behind took his words seriously and asked him what this repentance would look like in their lives. First, the told the general crowds that they should share from their abundance with those who are in need. Then, he instructed the tax collectors to be fair in their collections. Finally, when soldiers came, John told them to end extortion, treat people fairly, and be satisfied with their wages. People clearly thought that John was something important—they were “filled with expectation” and “questioning in their hearts concerning John”—but they couldn’t tell what he was really up to. Had he come to offer a new prophecy for their new time and their new challenges as a people under Roman rule? Had he come to lead a political rebellion against these strange overlords? Or had he come to be the Messiah, blending these political and religious roles to guide them out of this terrible morass and save them from all the difficulty that was before them?

According to Luke, John did not see himself as the Messiah. In his view, his baptism and his message were surely important, but there was something more coming up ahead:

I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

John’s message was unmistakable—the old way of doing things that benefited only a few had to be set aside, and a new way of living had to emerge. Some would find hope in this new day, especially those who had little hope in the present, but others would find this new path far more challenging, with their power and privilege drawn into question along the way. This message had immediate and real consequences for John. There were some who were truly threatened by this way of life, and so the puppet king Herod threw John into prison because he had condemned several of Herod’s actions.

But somewhere along the way, it seems that John the Baptist had encountered Jesus. While all four gospels record an encounter between these two figures of renewal, our reading from Luke this morning is very vague about exactly what happened. “When all the people were baptized,” Jesus also “had been baptized.” Somehow Jesus was brought into John’s tradition, following in the footsteps of this one who had come “crying out in the wilderness” preparing the way of the Lord, offering himself to receive this baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, and claiming this connection with John and his troubling words at the beginning of his own ministry.

But we don’t usually think of baptism as in any way troubling. The brutal honesty of John the Baptist at the Jordan River in this reading is usually eclipsed at our modern-day baptismal font by a beautiful baby and smiling parents. These are generally not people that we would think of as a brood of vipers! Based on my conversations with them over the years, parents presenting their children for baptism are usually not concerned that their child needs to flee from any wrath ahead. And when approach baptism, we generally do not worry that we must bear good fruit or face the threat of being thrown into the fire. The troubling words of John the Baptist at the Jordan are likely replaced with something more like the gentle and hopeful words of the prophet Isaiah when we gather at the font:

Thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name,
you are mine.

When you pass through the waters,
I will be with you;

and through the rivers,
they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire
you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.

Surprisingly, in this case it is the Old Testament that gives us comfort and the New Testament that strikes fear into our bones!

But this strange mix of loving and troubling words is probably the most faithful thing we can carry when we come to the waters of baptism. There is great love revealed to us in these waters, the love of one who welcomes us no matter who we are, the love of one who stays with us when we feel like we are being overwhelmed, the love of one who gathers us in to show us the pathway to new life. But this great love also shows us that we have responsibility, too—responsibility to set aside the things that might get in the way of us embracing the fullness of this love, responsibility to care for those others who journey with us on this way, even if they do not venture into these waters themselves, even responsibility to examine ourselves to find ways that we can bear greater fruit as we follow the example of Jesus through these waters into new life.

Every time we approach these waters, we must carry all these words with us. Whether we come to the font to be baptized or to reaffirm the promises of the baptismal covenant, we are asked to reject sin, profess our faith in Christ Jesus, and confess the faith of the church, to honor John’s challenging words as we embrace his call to repentance and new life. But then we are even more reminded that these waters are a gift to us, a place that shows us how we are created for God’s glory, an opportunity to experience everything that we need to go forth in justice, love, and peace. These loving and troubling waters remind us of the depth and breadth of God’s care for us and presence with us and the real call and challenge that God gives us as we respond to all that we have received. And these loving and troubling waters express the deep wonder of God’s gifts to us, gifts that remind us that God loves us so much that God is not satisfied with the way things are now, gifts that invite us to respond to God’s love in our lives by joining in the transformation of our troubled world.

So as we reaffirm the promises of the baptismal covenant and remember our baptism today, may we experience God’s grace and mercy in these loving and troubling waters as we are assured of God’s love for us and empowered to join in God’s transformation of our broken and fearful world until Christ comes to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.