Come and See

(Scriptures: Scripture:  I Samuel 3:1-20; Psalm 139:1-18;  John 1:43-51)

Our readings today invite us, in a variety of ways, to come and see – to come and see the world around us, to come and see ourselves and one another, to come and see what God is doing.  They also invite us, in a sense, to look at ourselves and our surroundings, not only through our own eyes, but through God’s eyes.

In our reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus has just begun his ministry in Galilee.  He called Philip, and after hearing the call, Philip called his friend Nathanael, saying, “We have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth.”  And Nathanael responded, “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth.”   And with good reason: Nazareth, in the far north of Israel, was in Jesus’ day a small, nothing village, with maybe as few as 500 people.   You wouldn’t expect to see the Savior of the world hanging out in a Podunk place like Nazareth.   When he considered Nazareth, Nathanael saw no possibilities, but only impossibilities.   But Philip insists:  “Come and see”.  When Nathanael comes to see Jesus – probably grumbling under his breath the whole way – Jesus says, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit” – in other words, here’s a stand-up guy, no BS.  Nathanael probably thought Jesus was just trying to flatter him, and asked, “Ok, Mr. Savior of the World from Podunk Nazareth, how do you know anything about me.”  And Jesus responds that he saw Philip under a fig tree before Philip called him.  Nathanael does a 180, going from skepticism to exclaiming “Rabbi, you’re the Son of God! You’re the King of Israel!”  And Jesus basically says, “Is that all it took to get you to believe, that I saw you under the fig tree?  Fasten your seat belts, Nathanael, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Our reading from I Samuel also gives us a lesson about keeping our eyes open for the unexpected ways of God.  Young Samuel, just a boy, was ministering at Shiloh, which was an ancient worship center – Scripture tells us that Samuel’s mom would make a little robe for him each year – he was a growing boy, after all – and bring it to Shiloh for Samuel.  Samuel was being mentored by Eli, the longtime priest at Shiloh, who was very old and, one would think, very wise.  But in our reading today, it is to the boy Samuel, not to the aged Eli, that God speaks.  Now, to be fair, God had previously spoke to Eli, specifically about his sons, who were abusing their positions as priests, taking the best cuts of the sacrifices for themselves, attacking any God-fearing worshippers who tried to stop them, and even sleeping with the women who served at the entrance to the sanctuary.  God told Eli to rein his sons in, and Eli did speak to them.  But Eli was unsuccessful – and, as we’re also told Eli was very fat, we can surmise that Eli himself was eating from the portion of the sacrifices stolen by his sons.  Eli could have removed his wicked sons from serving at the Temple, and he didn’t.  So God was done with Eli and his family, and it was through the boy Samuel that God’s message came, so that the beginning of Samuel’s story coincided with the end of Eli’s line.

For, as we read in Psalm 139, the Lord has searched us and known us – each of us.  God knows our going out and coming in, our sitting down and standing up.  God in Jesus knew Nathanael as a man of integrity, and God knew Eli’s sons as corrupt and Eli himself as complicit.  And God knows each of us, inside and out, the good and the not so good. 

We are not only known, but loved.  As the saying goes, God loves us, just as we are – and God loves us too much to let us stay that way.  God loves us despite the brokenness in our lives - and God loves us enough to try to repair the brokenness, so that we, like a fractured bone that has healed, can become strong in the broken places.

God sees, not only us, but our church, and our society.  And God’s vision is different from ours.  The things our society strives for – wealth, security – are not what God values.  Conversely, aspects of our society that we blithely accept as “just the way things are” grieve God – when the poor go hungry and homeless, when the rich enjoy their wealth – however honestly or dishonestly come by – without caring for the poor.   At the same time, God rejoices at the smallest act of kindness – a cup of cold water given to one who is thirsty – when done from a desire to please God, especially when done for the poor and destitute whom Christ called his sisters and brothers.  In one of his letters, St. Paul spoke of seeing things “through a glass, darkly”, but perhaps at times, it’s more like we see life in a funhouse mirror, where insignificant things are blown up to huge proportion and vital, crucial things are shrunk down to the point of being nearly invisible.

God’s vision is different from ours.  I’m reminded of the short movie that Shawn, our resident film-maker, filmed here at Emanuel in the spring of last year – for those who ordered DVD’s, they’re available after worship if you didn’t get one already.  Shawn’s movie says a lot in nine short minutes about the contrast between our way of seeing and God’s way of seeing. For those who didn’t see Shawn’s film, it begins with a new pastor coming to a church on the verge of closing, an old, weathered-looking church located next to a factory with billowing smokestacks – and as this new pastor approaches the church, he doesn’t look or sound any too thrilled to be there.   There are two angels who have been assigned to watch over this church.  One angel just wants to go back to heaven, insisting that the church is beyond hope.  But the other angel insists that God is not done with the church, and that this pastor is the one chosen to bring the church back from the brink.  On the pastor’s first Sunday, his awful guitar playing drives the small handful of remaining worshipers out the door, and in another scene the pastor is shown preaching to an empty sanctuary – empty except for the one angel who still holds out hope for the church, who of course is invisible to the pastor.  In a later scene, a longtime deacon tries to hold out hope – “Seven people today, pastor! You’re bringing them back” – and senses that music is the one thing the church needs, but doesn’t realize or remember that there’s an organ hidden behind the altar.  The pastor alternates between crazy ideas to bring people back – a bigger steeple, so that the church building will outclass the nearby factory, to be funded by bake sales – and despair over empty offering envelopes and mounting bills.  Finally, the pastor is about to throw in the towel, on the church and on his calling, but by the intervention of the two angels the church is saved.  The pastor in the movie can see only impossibilities – an empty sanctuary, empty offering envelopes, empty hopes of saving the church by making the building more impressive.  Chuck the deacon correctly sees the possibility of music as a way of reviving the church, but doesn’t see the means of making the music happen – he mistakes the organ pipes for water pipes.  It is the angel who can see the possibility that, despite his many shortcomings, this pastor is the one to keep the church going.  And while the movie is of course fiction, it does speak to our tendency to pin our hopes on things that in the long run won’t save us, while missing opportunities to experience God’s grace that are right in front of us.

God’s vision is different from our vision.  There are several ways in which we can perhaps begin to see and understand ourselves and our world as God does.  In Scripture, we have a faithful record of how God’s people over many centuries have experienced God in their lives and circumstances.  In particular, the life of Jesus, as recorded in the Gospels, gives us a lens through which to read both the rest of Scripture and our own society, as we approach the persons and circumstances in our lives with the question, “What would Jesus do?”  (Granted, I’m not Jesus, and neither are any of us, but Jesus lives in each of us, and so “What would Jesus do?” is a valid question.)  In prayer and meditation, we can not only speak to God, but listen….prayer is not meant to be a one-way conversation, with us presenting God with our daily “honey-do list”, but rather a two-way conversation, with times of silence for us to listen and reflect.

It’s also helpful, in dealing with others who are very different from us, to try to see and understand the world through their eyes.  If we struggle to welcome people from other countries who speak languages other than English, perhaps we can ask what it would be like to be in their shoes, living in a strange land among unfamiliar people, struggling to speak in a language we only half-understand, to people who don’t want to take the time to listen.  If we’re healthy and are impatient dealing with persons with disabilities, perhaps fuming as the SEPTA bus ever so slowly lets down its wheelchair lift to take on board a passenger with limited mobility, perhaps we can try to understand what it is to live with a body that doesn’t do what we ask it to – and in this case, I’m preaching to myself.  As the saying goes, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.”   As Christians, we’re called to stand with one another in our struggles, and in order to do that, we need eyes to see, ears to her, hearts to understand.

“Nathanael said to Philip, ‘Can any good thing come out of Nazareth.’  Philip said to him, ‘Come and see.’”   Philip invited Nathanael – and Philip invites us – to see Jesus, and Jesus invites us to see God and neighbor, to see our society, our world, in a whole new way.  Most of all, as God looks on us with eyes of love, may we at Emanuel Church look at our lives and our world with eyes of love.  May we offer hands folded in prayers of devotion, arms outstretched in love and feet moved by compassion in serving God and our neighbors here in Bridesburg, where God has planted us.  Amen.

Soggy

Scripture:  Genesis 1:1-5; Acts 19:1-7;  Mark 1:4-11

When’s the last time you got really, really drenched?  Maybe it was intentional – a swim at the shore or a backyard swimming pool.  Or maybe accidental – maybe you got caught in the rain.  Or were fishing, and fell off the boat.  But I’d like us to think of what it feels like to be drenched, soaked, soggy, dripping wet.  Water has a way of getting into everything – into our clothes, into our hair, our ears, our eyes – which, if the water is chlorinated, can sting a bit – if we’re in deep water, up our nose, down our throats.  Water isn’t necessarily polite or well-behaved, doesn’t ask permission to insert itself…if water can find a crack or a crevice, it’ll find a way in.      

Today  we read Mark’s account of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist.  Characteristically, Mark doesn’t give us a lot of detail.  But it was at his baptism that Jesus was proclaimed by God as his beloved son.

I think that, in our rush to get to Jesus, we tend to pass John the Baptist by perhaps without giving him the attention he deserves.  We think of John as the fore-runner of Jesus, but John was leading a movement in his own right, a renewal movement within Judaism.  While Luke’s Gospel tells us that John’s father, Zechariah, was a priest who served at the Temple in Jerusalem, John evidently broke away from his father’s associates and led a religious movement in the wilderness.  He drew many who wanted a more powerful sense of connection to the divine than the rituals of the Temple could provide them.   When people came to John, he pointed out that the peoples’ own attitudes and behavior kept them separated from experiencing  God’s presence … and so the key to joining John’s movement was to repent and be baptized.   To repent:  to turn away from one’s old way of living, to turn away from anything that got in the way of loving God and neighbor.  And to be baptized, as a sign of being cleansed of sin, in preparation for beginning anew as part of John’s renewal movement.  Now, baptism, a form of ritual bath, was already a part of Judaism, used as part of the process of conversion to Judaism, and also as a process of purification for entering the Temple.  But those coming to John were already members of the Jewish faith, and were nowhere near the Temple. To join John’s movement was to begin to live in a new way, and in order to live in a new way, old thoughts and habits had to be left behind.  For John, baptism was not only a sign of conversion, but an act of initiation into the movement, sort of like signing one’s name on the dotted line, in blood.  In the book of Acts, the apostles encounter people who had been baptized by John; one of these was Apollos, about whom we read today and who also pops up from time to time in Paul’s letters.   To this day, in Iraq, there is a small religious community, called the Mandeans, who follow the teachings of John the Baptist as preserved in the writings of their community.

So the crowds came to John, and one day in the crowd, along came Jesus to be baptized.  Jesus came, and was baptized, and we’re told that as Jesus was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart, ripped open, and the Spirit descending on him like a dove – and heard a voice saying, “you are my Son, the Beloved, in you I am well pleased. “  I can almost imagine the visuals – Jesus’ face is breaking up through the water and into the fresh air, and as his face emerges from the water, at the same instant, Jesus sees something breaking down through the heavens and into Jesus’ field of vision, and he sees the dove, and hears the voice.  Mark tells us that immediately after seeing this vision, Jesus was led by the spirit into the wilderness, where he was tempted for 40 days.  And so Jesus’ baptism was not only a kind of initiation, but also a preparation for the rigors of the wilderness, and for his life of ministry.

For those of Jesus’ time – and for us as well, though we’re not as close to it – water was a blessing, but a dangerous blessing.  Water was and is needed for life, and indeed half or more of the human body consists of water.  Water was needed for crops and animals, but too much water can be as bad as not enough.  Water as a means of transportation was especially hazardous; the Gospels and the book of Acts tells us of times when Jesus’ disciples and when Paul were out on boats and got caught in storms, and indeed Paul was shipwrecked at least once.  So water is a blessing, but not always a well-behaved blessing.

As we remember the baptism of Jesus’, I think we’re invited to, in words I spoke earlier in the service, “remember our baptism, and be grateful.”  Now, I’m not unhappy that, unlike the baptism of Jesus, our baptisms take place indoors.  To baptize outdoors would pretty much eliminate baptisms at this time of year – in the words of the old song, “baby, it’s cold outside”, and while I’ve seen kids fishing off Bridge Street going into Bridesburg, I’d be uneasy asking anyone to take a dunk in that water….a little too close to the chemical plants for my ease of mind.  At the same time, by sprinkling water indoors, I think we lose a sense of the wild, untamed nature of the grace that God offers in baptism.  The first letter of Peter compares the grace of baptism to God’s grace is saving Noah and his family from drowning in the great flood – and it’s easier to get a sense of being saved from drowning when you’re being dunked in a river than when you’re being sprinkled at the font.

God’s grace is wild, untamed.  I’d like us to think again of a time when we’ve been absolutely soggy, drenched, soaked to the skin.  That’s the kind of grace God offers in baptism – a grace that, like water, wants to soak into our clothing and get in our eyes and ears and between our toes and up our nose.  Those among us who have dealt with flooded basements, either as homeowners or as contractors, know that water flowing underground will always find a way – you can’t stop the water; all you can do is re-direct it, re-channel it, so that it has somewhere to go besides your basement.   And the grace God offers in baptism is like that water, unstoppable, always trying to find a way in.  And at this time of year, when water gets into tracks on the roadway and expands when it freezes and contracts when it melts, we get potholes.  And the grace God offers in baptism is also like that – if God’s grace can find a crack, an opening, it’ll work to widen that opening to get into our lives.

And, like Jesus’ baptism, our baptism is a means of initiation and incorporation into God’s renewal movement of revitalizing, not only the church, but the world, and a preparation for ministry.  Just as Jesus was prepared by his baptism to face off against Satan in the wilderness and to carry out his earthly ministry, our baptism is preparation for us to do the same.  Baptism is not an end – not just an item to check off our “to-do” list as parents – but a beginning, the beginning of a lifetime of service to God and neighbor.

“And just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."  In our baptism, God has claimed us as beloved sons and daughters.  May we, prepared by the waters of baptism, live as beloved sons and daughters of God.  As beloved sons and daughters of God, may our thoughts, words, and actions bring glory to God and show love and mercy to neighbor.  Amen.

Presents and Presence

Scriptures:     Isaiah 60:1-6,  Ephesians 3:1-12, Matthew 2:1-23    John 1:1-18

Today is Epiphany Sunday, in which we read of the visit of the Wise Men, which symbolically represents the offering of God’s grace to the Gentiles, to those beyond the chosen people of Israel who nonetheless are greatly loved by God. 

Of course, in most Christmas pageants, we expect to see the shepherds and the wise men show up – but in the actual context of the story, Matthew’s original readers would have been scandalized, freaked out, by their arrival.  On Epiphany Sunday, for the past few years, I’ve worn this beautiful but unusual robe – a gift from Isaac and Stella – as a reminder of how out of place the wise men would have been.  Perhaps we can begin by imagining what would have happened if a contingent of mummers in full costume had walked into Herod’s palace unannounced – the initial reaction would have been, “Who are these bozos? Who invited them?” – followed by fear when Herod and his advisors understood why they had come. These wise men were not from Israel, but “from the east” – most likely from Persia, which is modern-day Iran; not Jewish, but gentile.  Scripture tells us that they were alerted to Jesus’ birth by a star, and indeed, these wise men, or magi as they were called, were not only astronomers but astrologers, trying to predict the future by the position of the stars – think of Jeanne Dixon or whoever writes the astrology column in the local newspaper.  From their title, Magi, we get our word magic, and so Matthew’s readers would have been considered sorcerers and magicians….and Matthew’s Jewish readers definitely would have looked down their nose at these strange visitors.  But while Matthew’s gospel was directed to a primarily Jewish readership, Matthew also wanted his Jewish readers to understand that God’s salvation was for all, not just for them.  For Matthew, in the coming of the magi, Isaiah’s words from our Old Testament reading come to life:  “nations shall come to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawn….. they shall bring gold and frankincense, and shall proclaim the praise of the Lord….”   Matthew and the other Gospel writers remembered that God’s promise was not only that Israel was God’s chosen people, but also that God’s chosen people were to be a light to the nations, to draw the Gentiles to God – and these Gospel writers saw Jesus as the fulfillment of that promise.  And the arrival of the magi was, for Matthew, the beginning of that promise coming to fruition. The magi bring their gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh, and the hymn “We Three Kings” describes the significance of the gifts as well as anything else I can say, proclaiming Jesus as king, as priest, and as sacrifice.

There’s someone else who wants to bring Jesus a present, or at least, so he says.  In trying to find Jesus, the Magi bumbled into the court of Herod, asking “Where is the child born king of the Jews?”  Only one minor problem – as far as Herod was concerned, Herod was the king of the Jews, and no others need apply.  The Magi – not so wise men in this case – tipped off Herod that he had a rival to power.  And as it turns out, Herod was one nasty piece of work.  He instituted many large building projects; what is now the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall date were part of Herod’s great rebuilding of the Temple.  On one hand, the building projects provided employment for some; on the other, the heavy taxes to pay for them were a burden to all his subjects – the buildings were nice to look at, but Herod’s subjects would much rather have spent their money on food and provisions for their own families rather than on monuments to Herod’s imperial ego.  And more to the point, Herod was paranoid.  Herod was so ruthless that he had his wife and two of his own sons killed without batting an eye – a joke of the day said that it was better to be Herod’s pig than Herod’s son, because as a nominally observant Jew, Herod wouldn’t kill a pig in order to eat it – but he had no such scruples about killing his own sons.  He knew he was unpopular among his people, so much so that he ordered a number of prominent Jews to be held captive and to be killed when he died, so that people would cry at his funeral.  It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to realize that when Herod heard he had a rival, Herod was going to be on the warpath.  When the Wise Men did not return to Herod to provide him with directions to the birthplace of Jesus, Herod took matters into his own hands and had all the male babies in Bethlehem around Jesus’ age killed.

We’ve heard about the Wise Men, and about Herod, but there was one other man who is key to Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth – Joseph.  Joseph gets only brief mention in Luke’s gospel and none in Mark’s and John’s – and even in Matthew’s gospel, Joseph fades out of the picture after Jesus’ birth.  Joseph had no presents for Jesus – no gold, no frankincense, no myrrh.  All Joseph had was his own presence, being present for Jesus, even being willing to risk rumors and ridicule by taking the pregnant Mary as his wife, though he knew he was not the father of Mary’s baby.  And Joseph was present for Jesus not only at the birth, but for some time afterward.  Today’s reading from Matthew’s gospel reads almost like a sort of chess match between Herod, who wants to kill Jesus, and the divinely-guided Joseph, who is willing to turn his own life upside down to protect Jesus – ultimately a chess match between the worldly powers of empire, which bring death, and God’s power, which brings life.   Herod’s first move is to send the Wise Men so they come back with directions for Herod.  Warned by an angel, Joseph counters by fleeing to Egypt.    After Herod dies, Joseph makes a move by returning from Egypt, but though Herod is dead, his son Archelaus, ruling in Jerusalem, is still a threat – and so Joseph counters the threat by retreating far away from Jerusalem, to a little village way up in the north and out in the middle of nowhere, called Nazareth.

Of course, gold, frankincense, and myrrh are not the only presents given in the Christmas story.  At Christmas, God gave us a present, the greatest present, Jesus.  Jesus, this gift from God, is not like the gifts of the wise men, which were gone when they were sold or traded or used up.  Jesus is a present from God who is always present with us, even right here, right now, and also when we leave this place.  Jesus is the proverbial gift that keeps on giving, giving to us, and giving through us to one another and to our neighbors.  It was Joseph who was present for Jesus, keeping him safe, and in the same way, Jesus is present for us, our good shepherd.

Jesus is present for us, so that we can be present for one another and for our neighbors.  And we need the presence of Jesus, and we need to be present for others so that they can feel Christ’s presence.  King Herod of Jerusalem died long ago, but we live in a world overrun by Herods, those in power, in other countries and in our own, who have no scruples about harming or killing others in order to protect their wealth and power - nothing personal – just business.   Joseph is no longer fleeing from Herod in Egypt, but around the world millions of refugee Marys and Josephs along with their children are on the run from those who seek their lives.   Innocents are still being slaughtered, and Rachel is still weeping for her children.  Will we listen?  Will we protect?  Will we be present?   

And we should be prepared to expect the unexpected, to welcome those we wouldn’t expect.  The birth of Jesus drew exotic, unexpected visitors – visitors who upset Herod, and all Jerusalem with him, but who were welcomed by Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus.  Likewise, as Jesus is alive in this congregation, we should likewise be prepared to welcome people we wouldn’t expect, especially those who might not be welcome elsewhere.  They likely won’t be bringing gold or frankincense – though if they do, we’ll take it, and even send ‘em a nice receipt – but everyone who comes our way comes bearing gifts.

May we at Emanuel Church be present, for one another, and for our neighbors.  May we welcome those wise men and women who seek Him.  Blessed by the gift of Jesus, may we share that gift with all we meet.  Amen.