Sunday, January 31, 2010

Great Expectations

sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 61:1-4, 7-9 Luke 4:21-30

I’d like to invite you all to take a moment to go back and think about the story we just heard read so well by Dave.

Jesus sat down after reading from the scroll of Isaiah and proclaiming that the prophet’s words were fulfilled in him. His words brought on an understandable wave of whispering among those gathered … generally good things, I’d say, since Luke reports that “all spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.” Eventually, Jesus cut through the chatter in order to continue teaching, and after he finished speaking, the people drove him out of town in order to throw him off a cliff.


Interesting story, isn’t it? It’s one of the ones that we hear so often that we sort of skip over it. We recognize the beginning and our minds wander just a bit since we know what’s coming next. But if you listen more carefully and stop to think about what you’re hearing, you might find it more than a little strange.

After all, when Jesus takes the real risk- when he claims to be he fulfillment of prophesy, everyone welcomes his words. Yet, Jesus responds to their warm acceptance with what seems like a hostile diatribe. But, to me at least, the words he spoke don’t seem to be terribly offensive even if they might have been misplaced. So, how is it that the people have such a strong reaction to them? Even allowing for a liberal dose of cultural difference, I wonder at the extreme shift in the crowd. I mean, these people go from affectionate – even glowing – praise for the boy they know and love as Joseph’s son – to murderous rage in a matter of moments. It’s almost inconceivable.

So many things in this story raises questions for me. What was it that prompted Jesus’ confrontational words? Where did the people’s rage come from? And most of all, why did they try to kill Jesus? Why not just kick the upstart out of town? Well, maybe it will help if we come at those questions from a new perspective.


Last week the Supreme Court gave a controversial ruling on independently funded campaign ads. Citing the First Amendment right of free speech, the justices decided that it was unconstitutional to limit the amount of money spent by corporations and labor unions as they voice their opinions. While the decision does not change limits on direct contributions to candidates, there has been a lot of talk about how it will affect campaigns in the future. Many people are even expressing fears that it will lead to a congress filled with politicians who are in the pocket of those wealthy special interests.

Now, regardless of where you stand on the particular issue of political speech by corporations and unions, I suspect that we would all acknowledge to some degree that politicians do seem to respond to the concerns of those who support their campaigns and that they probably tend to pay more attention to those who give more money. It’s a no-brainer, right? You get what you pay for. The quid pro quo system seems to be inevitable.

It’s not just politics and money that work that way, though. We all assume our relationships (however they came about) will get us special treatment. We count on it just about every day. When it’s time for your organization to hold a silent auction fund raiser, you go to the people you know and ask them for a donation. It’s easier. There’s less embarrassment, and it’s less scary than asking someone you’ve never met. And, let’s face it, it’s more likely to get results because of the special relationship you share. When you need a babysitter or a dog-sitter or someone to help you get your computer system re-configured, you go to your friends or your family members first because they are more likely to do you a favor (they may even owe you one)… and they probably won’t charge you. We all do it all the time, and it’s not really very surprising because it works. Nor is it necessarily “wrong,” unless it becomes abusive or the system starts to hurt someone else or deprive them of something they need.

So, what if the confusion in the story has nothing to do with cultural differences? What if the people of Nazareth were not that different than we are and we just need to look at the situation from that perspective? R. Alan Culpepper does just that in his commentary on Luke[1], and he finds that the people’s behavior is not so surprising – at least their welcoming attitude. If Jesus was the healer the rumors claimed, if he’d done so much in Capernaum, then surely his friends and family could expect great things to be done in their town. They were connected, after all, by a lifetime lived together – relationships built by daily contact, by neighborly affection, and by favors traded along the way. It would make sense for him to do more for them than he had for others. Maybe they even felt like he owed them. If I were in their position, I might well have felt the same way because that’s the way it works, … right?

Apparently not.

Jesus grew up the same way everyone else did, and he had been part of the system. He understood what was going on. He knew, or at least suspected, the reason behind the warm welcome his words received as we can see in the first words he spoke to quiet the people: “Doubtless … you will say do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did in Capernaum.” He understood, and he reminded the people that his claim put him in the line of prophets like Elijah and Elisha who preached hope to all – Israelites and Gentiles equally. He put them on notice that it would not be business as usual – that God’s grace and mercy shows no favoritism, and they would not be getting special treatment.

That explains Jesus’ response, and it goes a little way toward giving us a motivation for the sudden change in the people’s attitudes. How would you feel if you received the same kind of rebuke from someone you had watched grow up from the time he was three years old. No, I think I can understand their anger as a way to protect themselves from the embarrassment of being rebuked in public. What I still struggle with, though, is their desire to kill Jesus. A little hurt pride is no justification for murder. But before I pass judgment on them, I have to ask the question, are Christians today any different?
In a recent article from Geez magazine I came across an article about students taking a New Testament class in Tennessee. Part of it reads:

On day five we travel to a Southern Baptist mega-church … and meet the senior pastor. Beaten as a boy by an alcoholic dad, he plotted his own suicide, yet just before jumping in front of a midnight train, the voice of Jesus spoke to him and saved his life. “He told me He’d be my father now,” [said the pastor.] One student asked the pastor, “Do you think believers of other religions go to hell?” “Most certainly,” he says. “How can Muslims – millions of whom want to slit your throats – make it to heaven?” … Another student asks, “How does your church view gay and lesbian Christians?” “Gay men were abused as children,” he replies. “Gay people choose to be gay they will be punished for it.”
A few days later, a student brings in a photo she took the night before of a street preacher in the city. The man holds a sign which boldly lists those of us bound for hellfire: Democrats, rock-n-rollers, potheads, adulterers, yuppies, liars, liberals, Catholics, bad cops, and used-car salesmen. One student, sadness in her voice, says, “I feel like I understand how religious wars start.”[2]


When I read those words, they nearly brought me to tears, but I quickly started to feel angry. I couldn’t believe … I can’t believe that there are people out there preaching such words of hatred in the name of Christianity. How can they come up with that (insert word of your own choice) when they claim to believe in the Christ who reached out across religious lines to offer acceptance and healing – the Christ who died on the cross for everyone. At least they weren’t Brethren or Mennonite. It’s bad enough that they claim to be Christian.

Then a little voice spoke up in the back of my head, cutting through all my self-righteousness. “Yes, but are you so much better?” And, of course, I have to admit that I’m not so much better. To say that I’m so much better would sound prideful, God forbid, but I do still want to say that Jesus is at least a little more pleased with me – with all of us because we don’t say such things. We don’t carry signs condemning people to hell. We don’t condemn millions of Muslims because of the actions of a few of them. We are part of a church that preaches the love of Christ and has always believed that war is wrong, and we would rather die for those beliefs than respond in ways that tear down the value of other people.

Despite all that – or maybe because of it – there is a part of me that still holds onto the idea that I’ve got a pretty good grasp on the mind of Christ, that I tend to understand Jesus’ teachings better than most, and that there are some people out there who don’t deserve the grace and mercy God offers. They’ll get it because God’s love is wide enough to include them, but they don’t deserve it.

So, I too, am guilty of putting a box around God. I too want to play favorites with Christ’s love – to put myself and people who believe like me in the “in group” (that would probably include most of you) and to exclude all those people from the family of God. And the irony is that this story teaches us that our tendency to understand grace and mercy as a closed system – our tendency to see salvation in terms of “in” and “out” is precisely what puts us in the group that’s “out.”

Throughout history, the good news of the gospel of Christ has always been more inclusive than any group, denomination, or church has been. God’s love really does reach out to include everyone. And though we struggle to broaden our own sense of love and acceptance to match it, we are so put off by the absolute nature of grace – it’s so hard for us to grasp – that we continually try to limit it, to force it to obey the rules that our other relationships due. But remember that line from the Lord’s prayer, “forgive me my sins as I forgive those who sin against me” and Jesus’ warning to judge not? The more we limit grace for others the more those limits hamper our ability to accept its fullness ourselves.


At the Music and Worship Leaders conference this month, Brian McLaren shared an interesting piece of insight. He said, “You know that Muslims revere Christ as a prophet. They don’t accept him as the Son of God. But that means they have to follow his teachings. Christians just have to believe in him.”


The teachings of Christ lead us toward a life of openness and acceptance, a life of serving all others regardless of who they are or what they believe, despite what they smell like or how they treat us. What more could we accomplish if we really walked that path? What more might God do with us if we were ready and able to go beyond the boundaries of community and the limits that we, ourselves, put on our love? I don’t know what that would look like, but I might be willing to find out.


[1] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, pg 108.
[2] David Jackson Clark, “Geez: holy mischief in an age of fast faith.” Issue 16, 64-5.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

What is the Word?

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
Luke 4:14-21
Epiphany 3
sermon by Carrie Eikler

Twelfth century, feudal England, and the building of a gothic cathedral in a sleepy monastic village. This is the book I’m currently reading. The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. It’s just shy of one thousand pages, and even though I started it shortly before New Years Day, I still have 200 pages to read. It is, in literary language…a pageturner. It has been around for little over twenty years now and has had its fair share of glory on the bestseller lists. It is also coming out as a miniseries this year.

Aside from all the adrenaline pumping intrigue, fast-paced action, and passionate romance (all those things that make for a great page-turner) Follett creates for his readers the reality that building a cathedral--building a church—is much more than stone, and mortar, and wood. He brings to life the beauty of a vision, and the sorrow in the setbacks. The building of this cathedral—this church—reveals the talent, artistry, and the politics involved; the faith, the love, and the pride…of building a church; the wealth and the poverty that comes from such building endeavors.

Our Hebrew Scripture today has similar themes. It’s about rebuilding a place of worship, a temple. Now, Nehemiah is not one of the more familiar books in our tradition, and the prophet Ezra is like a forgotten cousin among the “big” prophets like Isaiah and Jeremiah. Our scripture comes in turbulent times, and let’s face, when are there not “turbulent times” in the Bible? Not feudal England but 6th Century BCE, in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem had been sacked, the Israelites were forced to live in Babylon, and with the help of Persia, they are finally able to come home. The exiles return. But the life they knew in their spiritual home, Jerusalem, was destroyed. The temple, the center of their faith, had crumbled. So they set to the task of rebuilding their temple, their “church” and with it comes all the intrigue and action, faith and pride, wealth and poverty, politics and artistry of a real page-turner.

Now the ritual and instruction can begin again. Now the teaching of the law and temple worship could once again flourish. But as Ezra also reminded the Jewish people, this temple is not just about stone and mortar—or whatever building materials they used. It’s not even all about ritual and the law. It’s about spirit. It’s about a summons to joy. It’s about looking beyond the scroll to the God who knows our sins. And when we’re weeping because we are so ashamed, or embarrassed about what we’ve done, it’s the God we celebrate who celebrates us. It’s the God whose word sends us out to eat, drink, give to those who have none, and to not be troubled. This is the word that re-builds God’s people.

It’s hard not to think about people suffering, buildings falling down, exiles in strange lands waiting to return home, and not think about the devastation in Haiti: the massive earthquake, the terrifying aftershocks, the indiscriminate nature of such force leveling shacks as well as the presidential palace. Haiti: the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere, half of its population lives on less than a dollar a day. Haiti: 98 percent of its forests destroyed, leaving it vulnerable to flooding from hurricanes, which left a million homeless in 2008. Haiti: with an infant-mortality rate worse than many frican nations, and its people plagued by diseases from hepatitis to typhoid. Haiti: with a disastrous political history, most notably the reign of Francois Duvalier, who assassinated and tortured more than 30,000 in the 1960s.

Now Haiti has as many as 100,000 people dead from last week’s earthquake.[1] I’m sure each one of us in the last week and a half have looked around the walls of our homes, looked at the faces of our children or parents, looked at the relative calm of our lives, and have felt, in some way, a frustrating mixture of gratitude…and guilt. And when our hearts feel like they can’t take anymore, when we’ve put together the hygiene kits, and hugged our children a little longer than we usually do…when we wonder if we can take the images and the tears anymore, we hear words--words from the prominent Christian evangelist, Pat Robertson, somehow try to patch it all together, connect the dots, and find a certain causal relationship.

Last week on his Christian Broadcasting Network, Robertson alluded that God had cursed Haiti because of the Haitian Revolution of 1791, one of history’s few successful slave revolts. And while 98% of Haitians are Christian he said, “ …something happened a long time ago in Haiti….They were under the heel of the French…. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, "We will serve you if you will get us free from the French." …And so, the devil said, "OK, it's a deal."… And they kicked the French out… But ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other… They need to have and we need to pray for them a great turning to God.”

How do you hear these words?
Is this the God we worship?
Is this the Word that Christians have been entrusted with?

“Then Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee…he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day…and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me 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.’…Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

How do you hear these words?
Is this the God we worship?
Is this the Word that Christians have been entrusted with?

Jesus returns to Nazareth, and in this synagogue, continues doing what he has been doing throughout Galilee, teaching the Word. He stood to read from the Torah and he reads the words of the prophet Isaiah. My question was: did Jesus chose that text or was he simply reading something given to him, like our worship leaders read what we send them! Biblical scholar R. Alan Culpepper suggests that given the role of Jesus, and Jewish worship at the time, it is likely that Luke understood Jesus chose the scripture himself.

So this was the Word Jesus chose and gave to the people. According to Luke, this is what these people needed to know about their God, and about the prophet who stood before them. He could have spoken the commandments, emphasizing “Thou Shalt Have no other God before me.” He could have spoken the Shema “Love the Lord your God…” but he chose the words of the prophet. His word was one of justice and freedom…liberation. Not simply for the Jews, not only for the Gentiles…for all: poor, oppressed, captives.

But what is also significant about Luke’s account of Jesus reading the word is not only what he reads, but what he doesn’t read. The Isaiah text speaks of the one who comes to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God.

Jesus spoke nothing about vengeance. I wonder why he chose to stop? Not only did he cut the verse off short, he cut an entire sentence short. Why didn’t Jesus choose to speak about vengeance?

This is the Jesus who is revealed to us in Luke: the Jesus who starts his ministry with a word of mercy, rather than a word of vengeance. The crowds received mercy from Jesus’ words, the crowds receive mercy from the word spoken from the Torah, as read by Ezra. What does it mean for us to receive that mercy, to build (or re-build) a church based on merciful compassion, rather than vengeful self-righteousness.

Both Luke and Nehemiah point to the power in the word. But the power isn’t in simply speaking or reading the word, but in the hearing and the being. Hearing that word of joy and celebration and being joyful and thankful; hearing that word of justice and liberation and being justice-bearers and partners in liberation.

And yet, I don’t know how that word can touch the people of Haiti today. As I sit in my comfortable home, hearing the words of Isaiah through the voice of Jesus—all the wonderful and powerful images of a savior who will turn tears into laughing, freeing the oppressed and the captive…I wonder when we will see it. Is it good enough for the Haitian people to hear that someday, that good word will reach them? That eventually, they will be set free of all of this? I bet they would prefer to have not suffered this unimaginable loss, rather than being the recipients of us practicing a bit of Christian charity. I’m sure they appreciate us being Christ’s hands and feet in the world, but I wonder if they’d rather have their sons and daughters back, their wives and husbands, mothers and fathers.

I guess that’s the heartbreaking work of building the church. To do what we can even when it’s not enough.

And in the midst of this wrestling, this is the scroll I rolled out this week: A New York Times op-ed piece. “On Oct. 17, 1989, a major earthquake with a magnitude of 7.0 struck the Bay Area in Northern California. Sixty-three people were killed. [Last] week, a major earthquake, also measuring a magnitude of 7.0, struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti. [It is estimated that 100,000 people have died]. This is not a natural disaster story. This is a poverty story.”[2]

There’s a lot of rebuilding that needs to happen. Our story is a page-turner: Twenty-first century. Haiti, America, the world. The rebuilding of this broken planet. And as we seek to rebuild, we would do well to ask ourselves: have we been building our future on the word that Jesus gives us? I pray we may have the strength and the confession and the faith to do so.

[1] information on Haiti from “Why God Hates Haiti: The frustrating theology of suffering” by Lisa Miller. Newsweek, January 25 2010.
[2] Brooks, David. “The Underlying Tragedy” New York Times January 14, 2010

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Drowning in Mercy

sermon by Torin Eikler
Isaiah 62:1-5 John 2:1-11

When I was in high school – ages and ages yet not so long ago, my interest was sparked in a process called “cold fusion” that promised to make energy cheap and clean for the foreseeable future.

How many of you are familiar with “cold fusion?” Probably most of you have heard that phrase before, but if you haven’t, the concept crept into the relatively main stream some years ago with the experiments conducted by Dr. Octavio Octavius in the Spiderman 2 movie. So, you may know something about it after all.

Basically – and if I’m wrong about this, please let me know after worship … basically, cold fusion is a controlled nuclear fusion reaction that produces very little heat, manageable radiation, and no nuclear waste. In essence, it’s a process that seeks to harness the power of the sun without all the heat so that we could produce electricity without all the dangerous byproducts of the nuclear power we already use. (See note at bottom)

As I said, it came to my attention in 1989 when two scientists, Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, published a claim that they had succeeded in creating a cold fusion system in the lab. Right away, many people began to envision a revolution in the energy industry. No more burning messy coal or oil or even natural gas to power our society. No more dangerous nuclear reactors around melting down and producing three-eyed fish. The questions raised by the energy crisis of the 1970s had finally been answered, and we would be flooded with enough energy to do whatever we wanted.

But while some heralded the discovery as a miraculous triumph of human ingenuity, others were a bit more skeptical. In short order, the researchers were discredited. It seems that their experiments couldn’t be recreated, and others found that similar results could be easily explained by faulty wiring or other imperfections in the lab. In the end, Fleischmann and Pons dashed everyone’s hopes when they admitted that some of their evidence had been made up. So, the search for cheap, clean energy continues.


It was hopeful moment that sold a lot of papers before the truth came out, but it wasn’t really anything new. We have quite a history of trying to create something new out of the everyday stuff of our world. Remember the quest to turn lead into gold … or the attempt to create an elixir of life that would heal every ailment. Neither of those has, to my knowledge, been successful despite the claims of Harry Potter’s mentors and the many snake-oil salesmen in our country’s past. Though the results of these efforts are mostly benign and silly, some – like the miracle drug Thalidomide – have produced disastrous results. Despite warning stories from the tower of Babel to Frankenstein to Spider Man, humanity seems to have an obsession with pursuing the power of creation.

Maybe “fascination” would be a better word, but it amounts to the same thing in the end. We are all captivated by any hint that someone has been able to move beyond the normal rules of nature. … The only thing that rivals the excitement we feel when someone claims to have produced something unique and new is our dedication to the challenge of disproving their claim. Part of the fun of a magic show, as the children showed us this morning, is watching someone do the impossible …, and part of it is trying to figure out how they did it. And so every claim brings out supporters and disbelievers lining up to duke it out until the miracle is either picked apart or accepted, becoming just a part of the everyday assumptions we make about life.

But somehow miracles like the water becoming wine fall somewhere in between. Many, many people – believers included – dismiss the miracle stories in the gospels as cultural artifacts of a less sophisticated time. Healings and exorcisms become psychological phenomenon akin to hypnotism. The multiplication of the bread and fish at the Sermon on the Mount becomes a story of how one boy’s willingness to share encouraged others to do so as well. The raising of the Lazarus or Jairus’ daughter hinges on the recognition that they were not actually dead to begin with.

Still, we are hesitant to deny the power behind the signs – or at least the experiences of those who were present. We desperately want them to be real so that we know there is something special to the stories of the man called Jesus. We need to know … to believe that Jesus was the Christ so that our faith and the hope it brings us doesn’t fizzle out – so that the living water doesn’t become flat and stale … life-less. But we just can’t quite ignore the voice in the back of our minds that wonders if he actually did it all. Was he really just pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes the whole time?

We could listen to that voice today – we may have already done so as we listened to the scripture being read. And, if we all work together and put our minds to it, I expect we could come up with several plausible explanations for Jesus’ amazing wedding gift. … Yes, We certainly could … but why? Why would we want to take the life-giving power out of the story? Why does it always seem that we want to tame the miracles and domesticate the power of God they reveal?

Let’s not do that today. Instead, let’s put aside our doubts for a time, and quiet the voice of cynicism that drowns out wonder. Let’s free our imaginations so that we can jump into the story for a time. I know this will be harder for some of you than for others, but I invite you to step into the world of the wedding at Cana.

Imagine that you’re one of the servants. The wine has run out, and you are beginning to hope that the party may be almost over when one of the guests calls her son to come and take care of the problem. (So much for an early night.) As you prepare yourself for the order to go and wake up the local wine merchant and somehow convince him to sell you a few amphora of wine, the man tells you, instead, to fill the washing jars with water. You and the others get to work carting the 150-or-so gallons of water needed, chatting about what’s going on as you work. When the last jar is finally filled to the top, you sit down for a rest, curious to see what will happen next.

But there is no big show. Nothing happens … nothing at all … until Jesus tells you to draw some of the water back out of the jars and take it to the chief steward. “What now,” you think. “The guests may be getting drunk and rude, but they’re not so far gone that they won’t notice their cups are full of water instead of wine. And, what will the chief steward think when ….

And your thoughts cut off as you dip out a deep, red liquid that nearly glows when you pour it into the cup for the steward. A few drops spill on you hand, and you lick them off just to get a taste. You stand there, dazed by the transformation you have just witnessed – though you saw nothing happen. Finally, one of the others nudges you, and you get moving, holding the cup gently so that you won’t spill any on the way.


Now, before you leave that world behind, I have a few questions for you to answer out loud or to yourselves (and there are no wrong answers so let your imagination guide you):

What did you think when you first realized that there was wine in the jars?

How did you feel when you tasted the wine?

What did you tell your friends and family the next day?


Okay, you can come back to the world where water is water and wine is wine and you pastor only has the power to make Cool Aid, but don’t forget what you felt. Hold onto your awe, your surprise, your disbelief, your wondering…. And for those of you could get to Cana, let me share my own feelings though they are no more right than anyone else’s….


You see, miracles have power when you witness them – when you believe in them. For the guests who didn’t see or hear anything that was going on, this miracle may only have been no more than a welcome surprise. They may have thought, as the steward did, that it was simply a mark of hospitality on the part of the host.[1] For us it is so much more. For us, as we sit with the knowledge of who Jesus was and what he revealed to humanity, it was a miraculous sign speaking of the transforming power of God and the promise of abundant life offered by Christ.

Jesus works an unprecedented act of hospitality and blessing – amazing even when compared to the steward’s impression of the host. One hundred and fifty gallons of water – one hundred and fifty - turned into good, rich wine. It was a miracle of abundance, of extravagance beyond anything we could need – even beyond anything we would want. It shows us the nature of God’s endless love for us and the depths of mercy and grace that we are offered. More than that, the changing of water into wine speaks of the transformation and the new possibilities awaiting all who choose to believe and follow Christ.

Here, in this passage, we catch a glimpse of the identity and character of God:
the One who created all things,
the One who seeks to transform us, making us new and whole once more, the One whose grace and mercy is as abundant and rich as the wine flowing through that gathering.

What need have we of a tame sun sitting in some power plant somewhere?
Yes, it would be lovely to have our electric bills drop.
Yes, it is important for us to find some way to live at peace with our environment – to care for the creation we have been given in the way we should. Yes, clean, cheap energy could revolutionize the world in which we live. But life is about so much more than those things.

Created in the image of God, our lives are about passing on God’s love and shaping the world with gentle compassion. And we are made so much richer – so much fuller by the abundant grace and mercy we receive so freely. It is a gift with the power to transform us – to recreate us in the image of Christ to be the presence of Christ in a world that thirsts for grace and hungers to be made new.

Let us drink deeply from the jars placed before us;
so deeply that the rubble of our worries, our distractions, and our doubts is washed away;
so deeply that the flood of new life carries us out of ourselves;
so deeply that we find compassion and caring, love and acceptance, hope and promise flowing out of us toward everyone we meet each day.

Note: I learned after worship that cold fusion actually produces a large amount of heat, which is what facilitates the production of electricity. The word “cold” refers to the search for a way to initiate the fusion reaction without using a large input of heat which is what supports the process in the heart of the sun.

[1] Gail R. O’Day in the New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Remember Your Baptism

sermon by Carrie Eikler
Isaiah 43:1-7, Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
Epiphany 1

I don’t know how you spent your New Year’s Eve, but we spent ours in a two room hotel suite outside of the Twin Cities in Minnesota. (and unless you have family you haven’t seen in a while living in Minnesota, I don’t suggest going there in the end of December). Squeezed into these two small rooms were six adults and four children under the age of six. After an hour of swimming, and a feast of pizza, we thought the kids would conk out right away. That, we found out, would not be the case.

Finally around midnight, one child on a bed, two on the floor, and one on a blow up air mattress we adults watched the clock grow towards midnight, a new year. Much to the shagrin of our less playful families members, we started in a game of charades close to midnight, quietly getting each other to call out the movies or books or people we were silently acting out…all very subdued so we wouldn’t wake the children. And then midnight arrived, we toasted and kissed, we whispered Happy New Year, sang Auld Lang Syne, and surprisingly, we went back to the charades.

Now this might not sound like an exciting new years eve, but no matter what you’re doing, it is hard not to get a bit excited at the New Year. It a new start for new hopes—a new beginning, like our gathering hymn said this morning: “a time to remember and move on.” And yet, even with all the hope we have for 2010, there’s the little voice in our heads convincing us it will be just the same as 2009. Those resolutions you make will fall away by Groundhog Day, to be halfheartedly returned to as your Lenten focus to give up ice cream or to pick up exercise.

But naysayers be quieted, let’s live in the excitement of a new year! Which makes is seem like a poignant time to enter into the season of Epiphany, after Christmas and the birth, the New Year and our hopes, Epiphany comes. In the season of epiphany the church explores the manifestation of Jesus as the Christ. Until Lent begins, we’ll study stories about Jesus revealing himself as the Messiah. Today, at the story of his baptism, next week at the wedding of Cana, calling the disciples, speaking the beatitudes.

The baptism of Jesus. Today, firm in our new years resolutions, we see a new beginning, a new thing, a new ministry. But unlike my family’s restrained calling out of New Years greetings, quiet charades with quiet movements trying to coax out an answer, God bursts onto the scene with this beginning. Jesus comes up from the water, the heavens are opened, and a voice calls from the heaven, “You are my Child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And to seal the deal, a dove lands on his shoulder. It might not have been as colorful or raucous as the ball dropping on Times Square, but it was a clear announcement. Something new is about to happen.

Martin Luther, often known as the Father of the Protestant Reformation, once spoke passionately: “Remember your baptism!” Now, most people were still baptized as babies early in the Protestant Reformation. For those of us here who were baptized as adults or youth, it is likely that we remember our baptisms. But I don’t think Luther was implying that we should remember the temperature of the water, or the dress you wore. I’d venture to guess he might not even mean for you remember that fuzzy feeling you got as you stepped out of the waters, or emerged from the font.

Luther wrote, "A truly Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism once begun and ever to be continued." Maybe we are called to remember each day who we are, and how beloved we are. To be reminded that this baptism of Jesus, is a baptism for all of us. That this is the beginning, something you are invited into.

And through the water lapping and the heavens opening and the dove descending and the Godhead speaking, I wonder if we hear the words of the Lord through Isaiah: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. 2When 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.” Are we getting it now? Is it starting to make sense?

How lucky for those who heard it, who experienced an audible word in some way. Often in our lives we may remember our baptisms, but strain to hear the word. To remember we, too, are beloved children of God.

This idea of being children of God…I don’t think I understand the magnitude of it. I don’t know if I can comprehend the blessing in that. But given what Christ calls his beloved children to, I don’t think it is all supposed to be a blessing like we think. I was torn from my reflecting on the scriptures this week with a phone call from Matt Crum. He had a prayer request regarding information he received, particularly relevant to his social justice work with World Vision. There is suspicion that as many as two hundred children have been forced into the child pornography industry, here in Monongalia County. This is human trafficking. This is modern day slavery. And it is likely happening in our own communities.

Now we can’t say for sure that this is happening to the suggested degree in our county, but we can say with confidence human trafficking is happening in communities close to us. Our own denominations have taken steps to bring about awareness of this issue, advocating faithful responses to this modern day slavery.Research shows that between 14,000 and 18,000 human beings are brought to the US to work. Lured by the promise of work or safety they are forced into slavery. It’s not just in far away lands.

So here is the question I’ve been dwelling on, and maybe you can help me think about it. Does Jesus’ baptism have anything to say about modern day slavery? Does being called a blessed child of God and human trafficking connect in any way? What do we do when we dwell with God’s word and the reality of this World crash together like this? Oh, and I should mention the additional bit of providence, that as I wrestled with the connections I found out that tomorrow is, in fact, Human Trafficking Awareness Day.

Initially it may seem like a stretch to connect the two. Or maybe it seems too obvious and easy to say that we are all children of God and God’s children shouldn’t be treated this way. And that’s true. But when we remember our baptism and remember Christ’s baptism at the beginning of his ministry--the beginning of him revealing himself to the world--I come back to that double edged blessing. When we claim the title of disciples, we claim not only our promise, but also our responsibility.

But the reality is that many of us here already feel that responsibility acutely. In fact, we feel it so much that we wear ourselves thin thinking of how to address every ill we come across. We struggle with this broken world and instead of walking into the waters of our baptism we want to plunge into the water to keep out the noise, and drown in our sorrows that we can’t do it all.

I think that’s where hearing God’s word for us, each of us, is important. If something comes to you and it feels like the heavens ripping open, booming voices rattling within you- when you feel you aren’t gingerly stepping out of the waters of our baptism, but bursting out, then I think that’s a pretty good sign that this is God’s word for you. But I also think that word can come more gradually, like a crack in our hearts slowly opening as our baptismal waters rush through. I think it's the constant awareness and discernment and prayerfulness to hear that word that follows us in our baptism that makes us faithful and attentive disciples

We each have something to do in this world, I’m convinced. Maybe remembering our baptisms means committing ourselves to that search.

If the issue of human trafficking causes the waters of your baptism to shake you up, hear that word and claim your responsibility. If it troubles you, but for whatever reason you aren’t able to face it head on, then face it with your prayers. Either way, we are called to remember our baptism; This is no New Year’s resolution, when we think in terms of changing into what you want to be-the new you. It’s about growing in our realization of who we are—a child of God, beloved. Instead of a once a year promise, I think remembering our baptism is daily acknowledgement of our oneness with God, our answer to Christ’s call to discipleship.

I’ve invited Matt to come share with you a bit of his experience with the issue of human trafficking, and his response to hearing how this may be a reality in our own backyards.

[Matt]

During our time of waiting worship, bowls of water will be passed through. You are invited to dip your finger into the bowl, or simple gaze at the water before passing it on, as a remember of your baptism, the daily calling to discipleship. If you have not yet been baptized, you may do the same and reflect on the invitation Christ gives to all to come and join him and Christ's community in through this powerful sacrament.

Benediction -
Leave today with these words, a Fransiscan prayer, ringing in your ear

God, bless me with discomfort at easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that You will live deep in my heart.God, bless me with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people and the earthso that I will work for justice, equity and peaceGod, bless me with tearsto shed for those who suffer so that I will reach out my handto comfort them and change their pain into joy.God bless me with the foolishnessto think that I can make a difference in the world, so that I will do the things which others say cannot be done.

Go in peace...