The image is from the painting, Baptism of the Lord by Daniel Bonnell. The song is "Glory to God" featuring Jake Spinella and the FPC Chancel Choir.
Wednesday was an interesting day in the life of our nation, in fact, it was an interesting day for the world – given the impact our nation has on others. It was a historic day full of riots and wrangling, run-offs, and run-ins. I’m sure that days like that make good headlines – and I know that I’ve been taught to preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other – but I’m tired of making history.
I imagine that you are, too. I imagine that I am not alone in longing for a time when things return to normal, or at least a time when everyone isn’t angry about one thing or another. The trouble is that there are still things to be angry about, and we just can’t seem to get past the fact that there are more ways to solve our problems than to expect that might makes right.
In some ways, that’s the same worldview that many had in the days of John the Baptizer when he called all of Israel to repent and be baptized. They came and confessed their sins and promised to turn their lives around – to repent. In Greek the word we translate as repent is “metanoia” and it literally means to “go beyond one’s rational capacity.” It’s a way of describing the liberation we feel when we let go of self-centeredness in order to be oriented around God’s presence; God’s love; God’s desire for the human project.
Sounds good, yeah? Yet even in the moment of liberation, I’m betting that those who were baptized by John were immediately confronted by poverty and greed and power unchecked and they longed for a Savior who could be their Warrior King and make all those in power pay!
Who could blame them, but that’s not what John promised. He promised a Savior who would baptize them with the Holy Spirit. He did not promise an end to chaos. He promised a Savior that would claim them as God’s own and align them with the will of God.
Then, lo and behold, who walked into the waters of chaos but Jesus? He entered the water to be baptized in submission to God’s grace and to acknowledge his own metanoia – the greater reality of God of which he is a part – and the heavens ripped open in order for the voice of God to cry out, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you, I am well pleased.”
God’s Spirit descended on him like a dove, and it drove him out into the wilderness. For those who remember it in Lent, which seems like 5 yrs ago, we spent time with Jesus in the wilderness, wondering where the Spirit might lead us. Some of us feel like we’ve never made it out – and maybe we haven’t – but what matters to us today is the fact that God is with us in the midst of the chaos.
In the midst of waters that seem like they will consume us – whether they be actual storms or the pandemic or politics – this is the One whose first action in creating was to call for order in the midst of chaos. The Earth was a formless void, and the Spirit of the Lord hovered over it, some translations even say, “vibrated” over it.
Regardless of the how, I love the idea of God’s Spirit creating the capacity for resonance, creating through the energy of wave notes colliding and creating harmony and demonstrating order that all of creation could reflect.
Come to think of it, we could use a bit of that right now. In the midst of all the truth claims and the pointing fingers, we need the harmonizing resonance of God in a way that seems like we’ve never needed so badly before. The thing is, we really aren’t so unique. We’re just the ones called to God’s project of restoration right now.
Shawn Copeland says it this way in his book, Knowing Christ Crucified: The Witness of African American Experience: “Under the reign of Rome, Jesus in his body knew refugee status, occupation and colonization, social regulation and control. His life played out amid breakdowns in “the social relationships and political conditions that prevailed in Jewish Palestine under Roman and Herodian rule”: military intimidation, surveillance, and brutality; economic exploitation and taxation; and displacement from ancestral lands.
His mission cannot be understood apart from the palpable tension between resistance to empire and desire for basileia theou, the reign of God. Note how at the center of his praxis were the bodies of common people, peasants, economic and political refugees, the poor and destitute. They were the subjects of his compassionate care: children, women, and men who were materially impoverished as well as those who were socially and religiously marginalized or were physically disabled (those who were blind, paralyzed, palsied, deaf, lepers); those who had lost land through debt peonage, who were displaced through military occupation or religious corruption; those who were possessed and broken in spirit from ostracism and persecution.
Jesus did not shun or despise these women and men; he put his body where they were. He handled, touched, and embraced their marked bodies. He befriended them, not “to show his compassion in a detached, old-fashioned teaching mode,” as Marcella Althaus-Reid observes, but in recognition that they were human beings like anyone else, at times with great troubles. Through exorcisms and healings, women and men, shunned and isolated by demon possession or leprosy, hemorrhage or blindness, were restored to synagogue and family, kin and friends. Those lost to human conversation and interaction, physical and affective intimacy, were found; those abandoned or hidden because of deformity were restored to family life.”
Now that’s a vision for the resonance of God, and it's a pretty high bar for the church today, don’t you think? I mean, what can we do during a pandemic? We aren’t even worshiping in our sanctuary. We’re a small church with a passionate tech crew, but our resources are so scarce sometimes we have trouble even worshiping online!
Well, I’ll tell you what else we’ve done. Through our partnership with NECHAMA Jewish Disaster Recovery and International Orthodox Christian Charities, we housed around 40 AmeriCorps volunteers (10 at a time in isolated working groups with full COVID protocols) for a portion of their year of service work! They assessed as many as 74 homes, completed at least 36, and served a combined total of 3500 service hours.
Last week we helped a group from Ohio get connected with other friends in Lake Charles. They were a group of Mennonites who also observed strict safety protocols, and they sent us this word of thanks:
"Clay & Josh (cousins) worked all day Thursday & helped a single mom named Janae. They tore out water damaged ceilings and put in insulation
Apart from that, our grand total was spreading tarps on 5 houses, complete gut (muck out) of 2 houses, partial gut of two more houses, complete gut of one church (back to God) minus their kitchen area, and partial gut of some rooms in a second church. And we helped move a washer and dryer & hook up to help future volunteers. We also helped train a crew of 12 city kids from New York. They were a little shell shocked at the situation. It was their field trip for a character-building class they were taking.
Thank you for your heart of service. You found us the connections we needed. We all had feelings of futility and inadequacy but also times of pride in the mountains of rubble we moved by working together. We met lovely people in Louisiana and we will be praying for all of you.
Everyone in our group is now home safely and we are looking forward to sharing our experiences at church tomorrow. It was a faith-building trip for us and we really want to thank you again for connecting us with needs."
We’ve also held Blood Drives and COVID Testing and litter clean up projects with Parish Proud and food drives for students with the Wesly and Campus Cupboard and oh, by the way, there is a church in Cuba that has a full-time pastor for possibly the first time in 30 years because we partnered with them to purify the water that they already had that they can now give to their neighbors!
That’s all stuff that happened because of God’s grace and your generosity. All of it happened because the same one who waded into the waters of chaos in a time before their was time did it again two thousand years ago and does it over and over and over and sometimes it includes us. I say "sometimes" because God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do. Sometimes we participate in what God is doing. Sometimes we don’t.
Now, there are a lot of people that claimed to be participating in God’s will on Wednesday as the capital was breached for the first time since the War of 1812 – and maybe they truly believed that they were – but there two people that I believe truly were, and not just because they are Presbyterian followers of Jesus.
One was Rear Adm. (and Rev. Dr.) Margaret Grun Kibben, the chaplain to the U.S. House of Representatives who had been sworn in just days before. One article stated that “As the work of lawmakers ground to a halt...a House clerk looked over at the chaplain and asked if she could offer a prayer. She said, “I thought: ‘Well, I’ve been praying all along,’” and she then prayed for a hedge of God’s protection for them.
As events unfolded, she said, “There were people of varying abilities, health conditions and emotional states...My concern was to keep an eye on who was frightened, who was struggling, so that I could come alongside them — and there were a few under duress.” and she bore their duress with them.
The other person is New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim, who stayed after the session ended to help pick up the trash left by those who would oppose an orderly democratic process with violence. Kim alone joined National Guardsmen to clean up trash on his hands and knees at 1 a.m. When asked, he said, “When you see something you love that’s broken you want to fix it. I love the Capitol. I‘m honored to be there...This building is extraordinary and the rotunda in particular is just awe-inspiring. How many countless generations have been inspired in that room? It really broke my heart and I just felt compelled to do something… What else could I do?”
What else can we do indeed? Well, I’ll tell you. Through Christ, we can go beyond our rational expectations. We can become reoriented around the resonating force of God’s love, and then yeah – we’ll get to be a part of what God is doing, even in the midst of chaos and maybe especially then.
We’re going to do our best to align ourselves with God’s will today when we ordain and install leaders in the church, but I need you to know that they aren’t the ones who are set aside to participate in what God is doing. They are the ones being set aside to empower all of us to be a part of what God is doing in and through us together.
I’m sure that you will be called to respond to brokenness in other ways, too. Unfortunately, there’s a lot to go around, but I want to encourage you to know that in our coming together online and in-person in ways that are safe, and even in our staying apart, we are still participating in the resonating and restoring love of Jesus – even here, even now – and to God be the glory. Amen!
Todays Readings: Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-11
Wednesday was an interesting day in the life of our nation, in fact, it was an interesting day for the world – given the impact our nation has on others. It was a historic day full of riots and wrangling, run-offs, and run-ins. I’m sure that days like that make good headlines – and I know that I’ve been taught to preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other – but I’m tired of making history.
I imagine that you are, too. I imagine that I am not alone in longing for a time when things return to normal, or at least a time when everyone isn’t angry about one thing or another. The trouble is that there are still things to be angry about, and we just can’t seem to get past the fact that there are more ways to solve our problems than to expect that might makes right.
In some ways, that’s the same worldview that many had in the days of John the Baptizer when he called all of Israel to repent and be baptized. They came and confessed their sins and promised to turn their lives around – to repent. In Greek the word we translate as repent is “metanoia” and it literally means to “go beyond one’s rational capacity.” It’s a way of describing the liberation we feel when we let go of self-centeredness in order to be oriented around God’s presence; God’s love; God’s desire for the human project.
Sounds good, yeah? Yet even in the moment of liberation, I’m betting that those who were baptized by John were immediately confronted by poverty and greed and power unchecked and they longed for a Savior who could be their Warrior King and make all those in power pay!
Who could blame them, but that’s not what John promised. He promised a Savior who would baptize them with the Holy Spirit. He did not promise an end to chaos. He promised a Savior that would claim them as God’s own and align them with the will of God.
Then, lo and behold, who walked into the waters of chaos but Jesus? He entered the water to be baptized in submission to God’s grace and to acknowledge his own metanoia – the greater reality of God of which he is a part – and the heavens ripped open in order for the voice of God to cry out, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you, I am well pleased.”
God’s Spirit descended on him like a dove, and it drove him out into the wilderness. For those who remember it in Lent, which seems like 5 yrs ago, we spent time with Jesus in the wilderness, wondering where the Spirit might lead us. Some of us feel like we’ve never made it out – and maybe we haven’t – but what matters to us today is the fact that God is with us in the midst of the chaos.
In the midst of waters that seem like they will consume us – whether they be actual storms or the pandemic or politics – this is the One whose first action in creating was to call for order in the midst of chaos. The Earth was a formless void, and the Spirit of the Lord hovered over it, some translations even say, “vibrated” over it.
Regardless of the how, I love the idea of God’s Spirit creating the capacity for resonance, creating through the energy of wave notes colliding and creating harmony and demonstrating order that all of creation could reflect.
Come to think of it, we could use a bit of that right now. In the midst of all the truth claims and the pointing fingers, we need the harmonizing resonance of God in a way that seems like we’ve never needed so badly before. The thing is, we really aren’t so unique. We’re just the ones called to God’s project of restoration right now.
Shawn Copeland says it this way in his book, Knowing Christ Crucified: The Witness of African American Experience: “Under the reign of Rome, Jesus in his body knew refugee status, occupation and colonization, social regulation and control. His life played out amid breakdowns in “the social relationships and political conditions that prevailed in Jewish Palestine under Roman and Herodian rule”: military intimidation, surveillance, and brutality; economic exploitation and taxation; and displacement from ancestral lands.
His mission cannot be understood apart from the palpable tension between resistance to empire and desire for basileia theou, the reign of God. Note how at the center of his praxis were the bodies of common people, peasants, economic and political refugees, the poor and destitute. They were the subjects of his compassionate care: children, women, and men who were materially impoverished as well as those who were socially and religiously marginalized or were physically disabled (those who were blind, paralyzed, palsied, deaf, lepers); those who had lost land through debt peonage, who were displaced through military occupation or religious corruption; those who were possessed and broken in spirit from ostracism and persecution.
Jesus did not shun or despise these women and men; he put his body where they were. He handled, touched, and embraced their marked bodies. He befriended them, not “to show his compassion in a detached, old-fashioned teaching mode,” as Marcella Althaus-Reid observes, but in recognition that they were human beings like anyone else, at times with great troubles. Through exorcisms and healings, women and men, shunned and isolated by demon possession or leprosy, hemorrhage or blindness, were restored to synagogue and family, kin and friends. Those lost to human conversation and interaction, physical and affective intimacy, were found; those abandoned or hidden because of deformity were restored to family life.”
Now that’s a vision for the resonance of God, and it's a pretty high bar for the church today, don’t you think? I mean, what can we do during a pandemic? We aren’t even worshiping in our sanctuary. We’re a small church with a passionate tech crew, but our resources are so scarce sometimes we have trouble even worshiping online!
Well, I’ll tell you what else we’ve done. Through our partnership with NECHAMA Jewish Disaster Recovery and International Orthodox Christian Charities, we housed around 40 AmeriCorps volunteers (10 at a time in isolated working groups with full COVID protocols) for a portion of their year of service work! They assessed as many as 74 homes, completed at least 36, and served a combined total of 3500 service hours.
Last week we helped a group from Ohio get connected with other friends in Lake Charles. They were a group of Mennonites who also observed strict safety protocols, and they sent us this word of thanks:
"Clay & Josh (cousins) worked all day Thursday & helped a single mom named Janae. They tore out water damaged ceilings and put in insulation
Apart from that, our grand total was spreading tarps on 5 houses, complete gut (muck out) of 2 houses, partial gut of two more houses, complete gut of one church (back to God) minus their kitchen area, and partial gut of some rooms in a second church. And we helped move a washer and dryer & hook up to help future volunteers. We also helped train a crew of 12 city kids from New York. They were a little shell shocked at the situation. It was their field trip for a character-building class they were taking.
Thank you for your heart of service. You found us the connections we needed. We all had feelings of futility and inadequacy but also times of pride in the mountains of rubble we moved by working together. We met lovely people in Louisiana and we will be praying for all of you.
Everyone in our group is now home safely and we are looking forward to sharing our experiences at church tomorrow. It was a faith-building trip for us and we really want to thank you again for connecting us with needs."
We’ve also held Blood Drives and COVID Testing and litter clean up projects with Parish Proud and food drives for students with the Wesly and Campus Cupboard and oh, by the way, there is a church in Cuba that has a full-time pastor for possibly the first time in 30 years because we partnered with them to purify the water that they already had that they can now give to their neighbors!
That’s all stuff that happened because of God’s grace and your generosity. All of it happened because the same one who waded into the waters of chaos in a time before their was time did it again two thousand years ago and does it over and over and over and sometimes it includes us. I say "sometimes" because God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do. Sometimes we participate in what God is doing. Sometimes we don’t.
Now, there are a lot of people that claimed to be participating in God’s will on Wednesday as the capital was breached for the first time since the War of 1812 – and maybe they truly believed that they were – but there two people that I believe truly were, and not just because they are Presbyterian followers of Jesus.
One was Rear Adm. (and Rev. Dr.) Margaret Grun Kibben, the chaplain to the U.S. House of Representatives who had been sworn in just days before. One article stated that “As the work of lawmakers ground to a halt...a House clerk looked over at the chaplain and asked if she could offer a prayer. She said, “I thought: ‘Well, I’ve been praying all along,’” and she then prayed for a hedge of God’s protection for them.
As events unfolded, she said, “There were people of varying abilities, health conditions and emotional states...My concern was to keep an eye on who was frightened, who was struggling, so that I could come alongside them — and there were a few under duress.” and she bore their duress with them.
The other person is New Jersey Rep. Andy Kim, who stayed after the session ended to help pick up the trash left by those who would oppose an orderly democratic process with violence. Kim alone joined National Guardsmen to clean up trash on his hands and knees at 1 a.m. When asked, he said, “When you see something you love that’s broken you want to fix it. I love the Capitol. I‘m honored to be there...This building is extraordinary and the rotunda in particular is just awe-inspiring. How many countless generations have been inspired in that room? It really broke my heart and I just felt compelled to do something… What else could I do?”
What else can we do indeed? Well, I’ll tell you. Through Christ, we can go beyond our rational expectations. We can become reoriented around the resonating force of God’s love, and then yeah – we’ll get to be a part of what God is doing, even in the midst of chaos and maybe especially then.
We’re going to do our best to align ourselves with God’s will today when we ordain and install leaders in the church, but I need you to know that they aren’t the ones who are set aside to participate in what God is doing. They are the ones being set aside to empower all of us to be a part of what God is doing in and through us together.
I’m sure that you will be called to respond to brokenness in other ways, too. Unfortunately, there’s a lot to go around, but I want to encourage you to know that in our coming together online and in-person in ways that are safe, and even in our staying apart, we are still participating in the resonating and restoring love of Jesus – even here, even now – and to God be the glory. Amen!
Comments