Lent 5B, "Sir, We Wish to See Jesus," John 12: 20-33, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, March 21, 2021

Lent 5B Wishing to See Jesus, Greeks, Phillip, Andrew. John 12:20-33, St. Mark’s March 21, 2021

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

No two people encounter Jesus in precisely the same way, writes the late Rachel Held Evans.1(p. 151 Inspired) Nicodemus comes under cover of night. Zacchaeus seeks Jesus from the top of a tree. A 12-year-old girl sees Jesus as he brings her back to life and tells her to get something to eat.  A hemorrhaging woman follows him and touches Jesus’ garment.  A woman without a name comes into a Pharisee’s dinner party from off the street, washes Jesus’ feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, and anoints his feet with an alabaster jar of costly oil (Luke 7:37). A Samaritan woman at the well gives Jesus a drink of water at noon and becomes the first person he tells that he is the Messiah. Next week on Palm Sunday, we will hear a centurion at the foot of Jesus’ cross look up and declare him indeed as God’s Son immediately as Jesus draws his last breath. There is no formula, no blueprint.1

The good news becomes good because it will vary from person to person and community to community. Today we learn that a relationship with Jesus has a different impact on Andrew, Phillip, and now the Greeks. This is what the New Testament is about; the story of encounters with  Jesus as told from multiple perspectives.

Today we once again meet Phillip, a disciple from the Greek-Jewish town of Bethsaida, and Andrew, a disciple who also has a Greek name. We first come-upon Phillip in John’s gospel when Jesus simply sees him and says, “Follow me” (John 1:43). Phillip then invites his friend, Nathanael, from the village of Cana to come to meet Jesus. John Claypool calls Phillip the careful realist.2  Earlier, when Jesus asks Phillip to feed a large group of people, Phillip tells Jesus there is not enough money to buy even a tiny amount of bread for each person. Next week we will hear Phillip still tell Jesus at the last supper the night before Jesus dies to “Show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.” Why is Phillip never called “doubting” Phillip? Today we get a glimpse of another side of Phillip.  Herbert  O’Driscoll tells us that perhaps the Greeks first come to Phillip because he has a welcoming face.3 Maybe that is why when Jesus first sees Phillip, he only needs to say, “Follow me.”

So, why does Phillip go to Andrew to decide what to do about this Greek situation? Does Phillip have difficulty making decisions, or more likely he is someone who is not too proud to seek help when he  encounters an unusual or difficult situation,/ unlike Peter, who just barges right in.2 /

Andrew is the next disciple in our story today and is the first disciple called in John’s gospel. He is once a disciple of John the Baptist and is with John around four in the afternoon when the Baptist sees Jesus and says, “Look, here is the Lamb of God.”/  Andrew follows Jesus. Then Jesus asks him, “What are you looking for?” (John 1:35-39).  Practical Andrew responds, “Where are you staying? Jesus answers, “Come and see” (John 1:39). Andrew then has a similar impulse as Phillip to share the good news of Jesus with his brother, Simon Peter. “We have found the Messiah.” Later on, when Jesus is with a crowd and asks Andrew to help feed them, Andrew looks for a solution and goes through the crowd to find a young boy with five barley loaves and two fish”(John 6:9) and brings him to Jesus. A little different from Phillip’s “half empty” response at the hungry gathering crowd.  Today we meet Andrew, who affirms that his ministry has become bringing people to Jesus. He brought his brother, the young boy, with fish and bread, and now the Greeks.4/

“No two people encounter Jesus in exactly the same way.”1//

So, who are “some” Greeks asking politely to get a first-hand view of Jesus with their request, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Why are they in this story? Rachael Held Evans again tells us, “The gospel means that every small story is part of a sweeping story, every ordinary life part of an extraordinary movement” (Inspired 157).  Are these Greek Jews coming to the festival of the Passover/ or are they pagan Greeks who are seeking to learn more about Jesus?4  

I know you remember last Sunday when we heard the famous John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.” Note the word, the world again.  Jesus came to us for the world, not just to Jews, Methodists, Baptists, Catholics, or even Episcopalians!  That message is now emphasized again today as Greeks come to learn about Jesus. Jesus hints at this earlier as he intermittently goes back and forth across the Sea of Galilee from the land of the Jews to the home of the Gentiles. Remember also how he goes through Samaria to the “unclean” Jews and meets that fascinating woman at the well.  

God loves the whole world, China, England, Russia, all of Africa. Today  Jesus also says, “When I am lifted up (on the cross) I will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32). Not some, but all.

William Willimon tells us this is the Sunday we remember God gives his life for all humanity.  Jesus Christ stretches out his arms on the cross to reach ALL of us, especially those who may seem like a pain in the neck, those on the other side of the aisle, on the other side of the ocean.5 Hopefully, this story teaches us to see those different from ourselves still as children of God./

Let us remember this as we say the prayers of the people that we are praying for all the different people of the world who, like all the characters in the gospels, will each have a unique encounter with Jesus, just as you and I do.   Every one of us has life and world experiences that only we have had. Jesus meets us exactly where we are and where we have been. Treasure that. Treasure this unique gift from Andrew and Phillip, who bring the Greeks to Jesus// and now, in turn, to us. //

Barbara Brown Taylor imagines that when Jesus hears that the Greeks have come to be with him, he knows it is time. It is finished. The future has arrived. The foreigners have come to take the gospel from Judea and plant it everywhere else in their own language. Jesus is now assured that God’s message of love will be heard throughout the universe.6 /

 Do you see yourself in this story?/ This story is about us./ We are in the story./ Imagine Jesus looks with wonder at his Greek visitors and sees beyond them/ to the host of those far from Judea and Galilee/ to all over the world,/ who will now be drawn to the Father/ for centuries to come./ Among them are you and me,/ coming to worship at St. Mark’s today, who “wish to see Jesus.3”

1Rachael Held Evans in Inspired (Nelson Books 2018).

2 John Claypool in The First to Follow, “Phillip” Morehouse 2008).

3Herbert O’Driscoll, The Word Today, Year B Volume 2 (Anglican Book Center 2001)pp. 37-38.

4 John Claypool in The First to Follow, “Andrew,” (Morehouse 2008).

5 William Willimon in “5th Sunday in Lent, Drawing All to Himself,” Pulpit Resources (March 22, 2015) pp. 50-52.

6Barbara Brown Taylor in Always a Guest (Westminster John Knox Press 2020) p. 216.

 Joanna Seibert joannaseibert@me.com

Lent 1B And Angels Waited on Him. St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkansas, February 21, 2021

Lent 1B And Angels waited on Him

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, February 21, 2021

“At once, the same Spirit pushed Jesus out into the wild. For forty  wilderness days and nights, he was tested by Satan; Wild animals were his companions and angels took care of him.”1

They hid behind several desert shrubs, but their overpowering presence cannot be contained so easily. They are still overwhelmed by this recent assignment by the Spirit to reveal to Jesus the slightest hint of their presence. The dust of the wilderness is now holy ground in his presence. The awe of his holiness fills the slightest breeze that passes by his stilled body.

The angels feel like intruders in the presence of their God known as the Word, now an exhausted person who has been tempted by all the evil the world can muster. This holy one had taught the angels that Love is the way,/ the unconditional love that enfolds and reaches out from God the Father, God, the Spirit, and God, the Word.

The Angels attempt to whisper a plan among themselves but cannot utter a word. They are motionless with their wings folded as close to their bodies as possible. This is their God, but they have never seen the God of Love so up close in this form. They instinctively take off their white sandals and  kneel as their white robes and bare feet dust the ground. He lies motionless with an occasional shallow breath, raising the thin woven garment over his chest ever so slightly. His unkept black hair is matted and wringing wet with sweat. His head rests on a nearby flat rock, and his body lies lifeless, extended on the cold ground.  He is not yet aware of their presence.

 The Angels have observed his forty day fast from afar. They remember other spiritual leaders, Elijah, Moses, Esther, who fast before great struggles. The Angels hold their breath each time the devil tempts him, to turn stone into bread, jump from a pinnacle and rely on them to catch him, and finally to worship Satan so that the whole world would be his realm.  They hang on his every answer. “It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady nourishment of God’s love. God’s Love is the way;” “What good does it do to keep testing the love of  God. We know love is the way;”/ and finally “Leave me, Satan! We are called to worship only the God of love.  God’s unconditional love moves us to serve God.  Love is the Way.” 3 The Angels also hear his inner voice echoing, “Bread is necessary, but the word and love of God is more basic to our lives. There is nothing wrong with  miracles, but we must not make them into spectacular events, and forget the real presence of God in them. Serving the God of love is why we are born. Love is the way.”/

The angels’ proximity to the physical presence of the holy in human form continues to render them paralyzed.  They have served  this God of love since time began. Now their God is in great distress after an unbelievable ordeal carrying all humanity to his appointment with all the world’s evil, not just their personal temptations of the flesh but a  confrontation with the collective economic, religious and political realities who claim godlike powers.4 Their holy one, now human, has collapsed after this physical, mental, and spiritual ordeal. The animals, the lion, the leopard, the foxes are still beside him, keeping him warm as the desert temperature dramatically drops as night approaches.

Then suddenly a synapse, a whisper, a sticky note on one side of their brains uniformly brings them back to the reality of why they are now in this wild desert. They are to minister to him, revive his body,/ heart,/ and soul. For a last moment, however, they remember the holiness of their God of love becoming human and tested almost to the point of death. Also, they remember the privilege of being called by the Spirit to care for him./

Jesus slowly turns his head in the direction of  the Angels, and they intuitively rush with fluttering wings to his side carrying all the nourishment and herbs and spices and balms known to heaven. They surround his body with their wings, protecting him from any more harm. But the greatest healing power comes in the  unconditional love from the multitude of  these Angels who take turns caring for Jesus./ The more usual circumstance is his ministering to them. Love is the way. ///  

On the first Sunday in Lent, we always take an outward-bound wilderness excursion like a national guard preparedness weekend. We are called to honor the God who created us and remember the unbelievable depth of God’s reckless love where God becomes one of us so that God might know all our trials and temptations.  How else can God relate to us unless God walks in our shoes. Our creator loves us beyond our comprehension and is reckless with the generosity of his love even when we treat that love with rejection.

 The Angels ministering to Jesus in the wilderness are icons showing us the holiness of this event. They also are messengers reminding us that the Spirit will likewise send angels to minister to us whenever we encounter suffering./

Martin Luther King Jr. preaches that Jesus in this Lenten story also gives us a new norm of greatness. Jesus models what it is like to be a servant minister, keeping a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love.5  Servant leaders differ from the smartest, the  greatest, or those needing to control or looking for admiration from others. Servant leaders build up others, not polish the system or the leader’s self-importance.6//

We will learn more during Lent about this love and servant leadership and Angels’ presence in our suffering in the forum as we study Bishop Michael Curry’s book, Love is the Way7. Bishop Curry teaches us about God’s love in his journey from childhood to becoming the presiding bishop.   He, like Jesus and dare say all of us, struggles and suffers but is always ministered by angels whose nourishment is God’s love. There is Josie Robbins, who stops by his father’s church to drop off a neighbor’s children before she goes to her own Baptist church. (12-13).  When Bishop Curry’s mother has a stroke and his father is overwhelmed as an Episcopal priest, Josie steps in and becomes Michael’s surrogate mother. Cousin Bill takes a teaching job in Buffalo to help care for Bishop Curry and his sister.(31) A local dentist and his wife care for the children during the week whenever Bishop Curry’s  maternal grandmother from Yonkers cannot come. (32) Erna Clark, the Sunday School superintendent, picks the children up from school every day and later helps Bishop Curry decide on colleges.(32) Curry’s seminary encourages him to preach in the style of his grandfathers’ instead of teaching him that emotional preaching is a sign of inferior intelligence.(107-108). Others teach Curry how to receive anger without giving it back. (181).

The book goes on and on about better angels in Curry’s life deeply rooted in his church community. Perhaps this can explain why our presiding bishop knows so much about God’s love is the way. 

Bishop Curry teaches us a Jewish proverb, “before every person, there marches an angel proclaiming, ‘behold the image of God.’”(95-96).

I dare say each of us can remember more angels who drop or march into our lives at difficult times. Give thanks for these angels this Lent./ If they are still alive, call or write./

Always remember how Curry becomes an Episcopalian. His father comes from a long line of Baptist ministers. His mother becomes a devout Episcopalian when she is at the University of Chicago. When the couple becomes engaged in the 1940s, she takes his father to an Episcopal church outside racially segregated Dayton, Ohio. When Curry’s black parents are offered the common communion cup along with the whites in the congregation at the Eucharist, his father knows this is where angels live. (34). Imagine the difference in our lives if his parents had gone to an Episcopal church where the cup was segregated!/

At his mother’s funeral when he is 14, Michael Curry is surrounded by all these angels who wipe the tears from his eyes and remind him of St. Paul’s words, “Love never dies.”8 Love builds,/ hate destroys. (89) “Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”9

Bishop Curry writes about that day. “Community is love…… And so, at fourteen years old, I did not conclude that the world is a broken, bitter, and ruthless place. I am not abandoned—I am loved.” (43).

  “The way of Love will show us the right thing to do every time.” (27).

Love is the way.

Joanna Seibert

1 Eugene Peterson in  The Message Study Bible, Mark 1: 12-13.

2 Stephen Mitchell in Parables and Portraits,  p. 34.

3 Eugene Peterson in The Message study Bible,  Matthew 4:1-11.

4 Kris, Rocke and Joel Van Dyke in Geography of Grace in InwardOutward February 2, 2021.

5 Martin Luther King Jr in “Drum Major Instinct,” sermon, Atlanta, February 4, 1968.

6 Bennett Sims in Servanthood, Leadership for the Third Millennium.

7 Bishop Curry in Love is the Way (Avery 2020).

8 I Corinthians 13:8.

9 Martin Luther King in A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from Great sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

Epiphany 3B How God Calls, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, AR, January 24, 2021

Epiphany 3B Call of the Disciples

Mark 1:14-20, January 24, 2021 St. Mark’s Episcopal Church

The Call

All our minds are most likely called to the happenings on January 20th of this week at the swearing in of a man and a woman who believe we called them to lead this country. How did they hear this call? One says he heard the call after he saw the violence in Charlottesville, where one race was speaking out violently against another in our country. The other says her upbringing in a minority and immigrant family gave her a voice and ears to hear the call.

We also hear today about the call of four of Jesus’s disciples, Simon, Andrew, James, and John. Why does Jesus pick them, and perhaps more astonishing, what prompts them to respond to that call?

We can surmise that Jesus realizes he cannot find hometown disciples in the hill country of Galilee in Nazareth. So, he journeys 20 miles down to a lakeside village of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee. Mark leaves the details to others. John tells us that Andrew and Simon are disciples of John the Baptist. John the Baptist points Andrew to Jesus, and Andrew brings Simon to Jesus.

Herbert O’Driscoll1 believes that Simon and Andrew come from a long line of fishermen. Jesus talks with the two brothers for several days about the world situation and the life they wish for, as they cast and mend their nets. They talk about living in an occupied country under a brutal foreign rule. Friends in the resistance movement called Zealots approach all three, who propose to make changes by violence. Jesus and Simon and Andrew see a common ground in their “no” response to this answer. Jesus questions the brothers closely about others who might want to make changes without violence. Andrew and Simon introduce Jesus to James and John. The five become friends. The four fishermen teach Jesus the art of fishing. Then one night on the beach around a roaring fire, Jesus tells his new friends, “Follow me, and we will fish for people.” The rest is history.

Sam Lloyd2 reminds us that most of the call stories in the Bible are pretty daunting. A voice comes out of a burning bush or down from heaven, or echoing out of the rafters of the Temple. God speaks, and a heroic prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah proclaims with authority. If those stories are models for God calling us, we may feel left out.

Thank God for Jonah, whose story we hear, in part, in the Old Testament reading today. There is nothing impressive about this back-pedaling, timid, complaining fellow. Every child at Vacation Bible School can tell you the last thing Jonah wants is to answer a call. He just wants to be left alone. But that is not the M. O. of our God. God calls Jonah to go to the city of Nineveh to demand the people repent of their evil ways and turn to God. Instead, Jonah gets on a boat headed as far in the opposite direction as he can go. Nineveh is the hated capital of the Assyrian Empire, now known as Iraq, and it was as hostile to Israel then, as it is now. Jonah has no intention of helping them escape doom.

Then a storm at sea threatens to kill everyone on the boat. The crew decides God is punishing them because Jonah is on board. They toss him into the sea, where he promptly lands inside the belly of a big fish for three days. There he composes a beautiful prayer and is finally spewed out on dry land. This story gets our attention.

In today’s part of the story, God tells Jonah a second time to go to Nineveh. Jonah delivers God’s message, and to the shock of everyone, especially Jonah, the people of Nineveh from the king on down repent, and God forgives them. The story ends with Jonah whining and unhappy because all of those terrible Assyrians have escaped the wrath of God.

Some of us may identify with Jonah more than with the four fishermen. Jonah is not interested in hearing God’s call and doesn’t like what God has in mind when he listens. Jonah’s story cuts right to the depths of our souls: the very human reality that often we really don’t want God to call us, because we’re afraid of what God might ask us to do.

We do want to have a sense of being close to God, but what if God asks us to deal with people we don’t like,/ forgive when we don’t want to,/ say hard things at work or at home when we’d rather not? What if God asks us point blank what we ourselves are doing to help people who are struggling in our city with poverty, inequality, or illness? What if God asks us to make more time to grow in our faith in our already struggling lives? //

Don’t overlook one key part of Jonah’s story. God never gives up on calling Jonah,/ even when he is running as hard as he can in the wrong direction. And God never gives up on those Assyrians either,/ the worst enemies of the Israelites, who are still precious in his sight. That’s the God we’re dealing with—one who won’t stop calling every one of us, Democrats, Republicans, black, white, brown, red, yellow, to bring about God’s kingdom.

We each have a specific gift to offer./

Being called can be elusive and mystical. It doesn’t mean we actually hear a voice, and it rarely means there was a certain moment or an earthshaking experience. For most of us, hearing a call means listening to our lives,/ and sorting through our gifts and passions,/ talking to advisors and friends,/ and trying to imagine this possibility or that,/ asking God to guide and inspire our seeking. Listening for God’s call means refusing to ask what we want for our life and focusing on what God wants from the life God gives us.

We look at our skills and abilities. We pay attention to our passions. We look backward at our life to trace a call by God from our earliest days. We see connections, hints, surprising turns where God has led us along all the way.

The issue isn’t whether we hear a clear call. It isn’t whether we are certain every day that we are doing exactly the right thing. It’s whether we sense ours is a called life,/ a life that is accountable to God and our baptismal covenant, a life that has a mission, even if we may have a hard time articulating it.//

So, what is your calling? What is the one unique, irreplaceable gift you have to give the world, whether you are 9 or 90?

Maybe you are at the place in your life where you are just starting to think about a call, or maybe you think it’s too late in life to hear a call.

I learn the answer to this truth some years ago, from another young boy in his early teens. Events in my life tell me I can only survive by intermittently becoming blind and deaf to the constant cacophony of the world by using alcohol to ease this pain. Slowly, I realize I am called to a different way of life, to answer another call to my family, to the God of my understanding and to my patients. As I tell this to my teen-aged son, John, he looks across the luncheon table at Trio’s restaurant and says, “Mom, it is never too late to change.” That has been my experience, and I offer wisdom from this young person to you./

What is your call? Frederick Beuchner3 says it is where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger./ Deep gladness. What you do that leaves you with an overwhelming sense of peace, something you do which energizes you and those around you./

The world’s deep hunger. In a world where there is so much drudgery, grief, emptiness, fear, and pain, if we keep our eyes and ears and heart open, we will soon find that place./ The phone rings and we jump, not so much out of our skin/ as into our skin. With our eyes, ears, and heart open, the right place finds us… and in that day/ we will connect,/ listen,/ care,/ “fish for men… and women.”//

Even if you didn’t realize it/ when you tuned in this morning, God is seeking you out and calling you. God wants all of us—because there are so many things to do today and tomorrow, right in the midst of our life in this pandemic and our very troubled world and country,/ things that only you can do.//

Today,/ Simon, Andrew, James, and John,/ and even Jonah, are looking over Jesus’ shoulder and saying with him, “Come/ join us./ Bring your deep gladness/ to our world’s ever-present deep hunger.”

1Herbert O’Driscoll in A Greening of Imaginations, “Forming the Circle,” (Church Publishing 2019), pp. 36-37.

2 The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, “What is Your Calling?” Sermon at the National Cathedral, Epiphany 3B, January 25, 2009.

3Frederick, Buechner, in Secrets in the Dark,“The Calling of Voices,” (HarperSanFrancisco 2006), pp. 35-41.

Christmas 1, 2020, And the Word Became Flesh, St. Mark's Episcopal Church, Little Rock, Arkansas

Christmas 1B, 2020 And the Word became Flesh

December 27 St. Mark’s, Little Rock, John 1:1-14.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him.”  / This is John’s Christmas story. Christmas is a time for stories.  Here is another lesser known Christmas story about the Word given to us by Barbara Brown Taylor.

Once upon a time, before time begins, before clocks, calendars, or churches, God makes the universe. Only two stories survive telling us how this happens because only the three selves of God, God the Creator, God the Word, The Logos, and God the Holy Spirit are present at the beginning. During this time before time, God, who loves to make things, creates a world and fills it with the most amazing things: humpback whales that sing, fish that swim upstream,/ birds with more colors than a box of Crayola crayons.  God sits back and looks at it all, and God is pleased./ But something seems missing. It dawns on God that everything God has made is interesting and gorgeous, but nothing looks exactly like God. It is as if God paints this huge masterpiece and fails to sign it. So, God makes his signature piece, two of something made in God's own image, so anyone who looks at them will know who the artist is.

Flesh is God’s medium—flesh and blood—extremely flexible, warm to the touch./ God watches his two creatures walk hand in hand, laugh and run, and God falls in love with them. God enjoys being with them better than any other creatures he has made. God especially enjoys walking with them in the garden in the cool of the evening.

It almost breaks God's heart when they do the only thing God asks them not to do and then hide. God searches the garden until way past dark, calling their names over and over again.

 Things become different after that.  God still loves the human creatures best of all, but the attraction is not mutual.  Birds are crazy about God, especially the mallards and those tiny sandpipers on the ocean's edge. Dolphins and deer can not get enough of him, but human beings have other things on their minds. They keep busy learning how to make things, grow things, buy things, sell things, / and the more they learn to do for themselves,/ the less they depend on God. Night after night God throws pebbles at their windows, inviting them to go for a walk, but they say, “So sorry. We are too busy/ or too tired.”

Soon most human beings forget all about God. They call themselves "self-made" men and women, as if that is a significant achievement. They honestly believe they have created themselves, and they like the result so much that they divide themselves into groups of people who look, think, and talk alike.  Those who still believe in God draw pictures of God that look exactly like them, making it easier to exclude people who look different.

Meanwhile, God SHOUTS to them from the sidelines with every means God can think of, miracles, messengers, manna. God gets inside people's dreams, wakes them up in the middle of the night with his whispering. No matter what God tries, however, he meets the barriers of flesh and blood. Humans are made of it and God is not, which makes translation difficult.  God says, "PLEASE!" but all they hear is THUNDER. God says, "I love you as much now as the day I made you, " but all they hear is the persistent honk of the Canadian geese majestically flying south./

BABIES are the exception to this sad state of affairs. While their parents seem deaf to God's messages, babies have no trouble hearing God. They spend all their time LAUGHING at God's jokes or CRYING with God when God cries, which goes right over their parents' heads. "COLIC" the grown-ups say, or "Isn't she cute?  She's laughing at the dust mites in the sunlight." Only she really laughs because God just whispered to her that it is cleaning day in heaven, and what she sees are fallen stars/ the angels shake from their feather dusters.

Babies do not go to war. They never make hate speeches or litter or refuse to play with each other because they belong to different political parties.  They depend on other people for everything, and a phrase like "SELF-MADE BABY" would make them LAUGH until their bellies ache. While no one asks their opinions about anything that matters,/ almost everyone seems to love them, and THAT GIVES GOD AN IDEA.

Why not become one of these delightful babies HIMSELF?

God presents the idea at his cabinet of archangels. At first, God's celestial advisors are silent. Eventually, the senior archangel, Gabriel, steps forward and tells God they would worry if God does this. God would put himself at the mercy of his creatures. If God seriously means to become one of them, there would be no escape, if things do not work out. Why not at least create himself as a magical baby with super hero powers? Maybe the ability to become invisible, or the power to hurl bolts of lightning if the need arises. The baby idea is a stroke of genius./ It really is,/ but it lacks adequate safety features.

God thanks the archangels for their concern but says, no, he will be a regular baby… 6 lbs, 11 oz, 20 inches tall, limited vocabulary, unemployed, zero net worth. A nobody. God's agent. The last, the least of all.  How else can God gain the trust of God’s creatures? How else can God persuade us that God knows our lives inside out,/ unless God lives a life like ours?  There is a risk. A HUGE risk. But this is what God wants his creatures to know: that God will risk everything to get close to us, so we might know how much God loves us.

It is a daring plan. When the angels see that God is dead set on it, they break into applause—not the hysterical kind but the steady clapping that goes on and on when you witness something you know you will never see again.

God then meets privately with his three selves, the Creator, the Word and the Spirit. They do not record this intimate conversation. This is the rumor of what occurs./ God says, “I’d go there myself, but how?” After much loving and respectful dialogue, the Creator kindly says, “I think the Word, the Wisdom, is hearing this as a calling.” “I agree,” says the Spirit, “and I will do everything I can to help.” The Word says, “Let it be with me/ according to your word.”

The Word leaves the cabinet chamber and sheds his majestic robes.  The angels follow him and watch his midnight blue mantle fall to the floor as all the stars on it collapse in a heap. Then a strange thing happens./ Where the robes fall, the floor of heaven evaporates/ and opens up to reveal a scruffy brown pasture speckled with sheep and several shepherds sitting around a campfire drinking wine out of a skin. Who knows who is more surprised, the shepherds/ or the angels. As the shepherds look up at them, the angels push their senior member to the edge of the hole. Looking down at the human beings who are trying to hide behind each other, the angel says in as gentle a voice as she can muster, “Do not be afraid; for I bring you good news of great joy/ for all people: to you is born this day in the city of David/ a savior who is Christ, the Lord.”/

And away up the hill, in the direction of the town/ comes the sound of a newborn baby’s cry. /

“And the Word becomes flesh and lives among us.”

Merry Christmas.

Barbara Brown Taylor, "God's Daring Plan," Bread of Angels, pp. 31-35.

Cloth for the Cradle, Iona Community Wild Goose Worship group, pp. 86-90.

Advent 1B Wake Up Sunday

Advent 1B Wake Up Sunday

Mark 13:24-37, November 29, 2020 St. Mark’s

This first Sunday in Advent is always “wake up Sunday,” but we are already awake. We can’t sleep. Friends are sick or dying. Leaving home takes us into a dangerous world. Our planet is heating up to dangerous levels. Storms and fires destroy our country. We live in scary times that could sound like Mark’s prediction of the second coming.

How do we survive with this high anxiety? Some turn off the news. Others are drinking more. Online shopping is at a new high.  One of the most benign answers has been the Hallmark explosion.1  The continuous stories with a happy ending on Hallmark have moved its ratings beyond CNN. It soon may surpass ESPN and Fox news./ But in our tradition on the first Sunday in Advent, we are accustomed not to escape reality but to expect something, and Mark’s story tells us who and where.“

Summer is near.. He is near.” 

Barbara Brown Taylor2 tells us that Christ has been coming back for so long that many have given up on him. Before he dies, Jesus tells his followers, “I’ll be right back.” People make no long-range plans. A decade passes, then another. Those who knew Jesus die off. We have Mark’s gospel because someone wakes up and says, “There are almost no eyewitnesses left. We must record what they know.”

 Scholars’ best guess is that Mark’s gospel is written at least 30 years after Jesus’ death.3 The stars are still in the sky, but that is about all. Mary is probably dead. Peter and Paul are martyred in Rome. Jerusalem and the temple are destroyed. The emperor keeps inventing ways to kill Christians. There is fighting among the Christians themselves with entire families torn apart. Things are going to pieces, and Mark has a lot to explain.

“Summer is near... He is near.”

Jesus’ wake up message today doesn’t leave Mark’s audience or us still in this chaos. Jesus tells us to be alert, wait for him. Then he gives clues where and when we will see his coming, his presence, his light amid what seems like darkness.

Edgar Allan Poe also wrote a story about similar clues.

In the story of the “Purloined Letter,” a famous amateur detective C. Auguste Dupin attempts to find a letter stolen from a woman’s boudoir by an unscrupulous minister who blackmails his victim. Other police and detectives thoroughly search the hotel where the minister lives, behind the wallpaper, under the carpets, examining tables and chairs with microscopes, probing cushions with needles, and have found no sign of the letter. Dupin gets a detailed description of the letter, visits the minister at his hotel, complaining of weak eyes, wearing green spectacles, so he can disguise his eyes as he searches for the letter. There it is, hiding in plain sight/ in a cheap card rack hanging from a dirty ribbon! He leaves a snuff box behind as an excuse to return the next day and switches out the letter for a duplicate.

 Like Inspector Dupin, we are called to put on a new pair of glasses to see the depth of the world around us. We are to observe carefully, not just to be awake,/  but to be alert.  

Jesus’ illustration of what is in plain sight is the parable about a sprouting fig tree.  “From the fig tree, learn its lesson. Summer is near…. he is near.” If you want to learn what God is up to, we must pay attention to the world immediately near, the world right around us.

Let’s read it again from Eugene Peterson’s The Message Study Bible (28-31). “Take a lesson from the fig tree. From the moment you notice its buds form, the merest hint of green, you know summer is just around the corner. And so it is with us. When we see all these things, you know he is at the door. Don’t take this lightly. This is not just for some future generation, but for this one, for us.”

 Mark and Peterson are telling us, “Look closely. Pay attention.” Parables are happening on every street corner in the most ordinary events of our lives with clues to the presence of the kingdom in every square foot of earth, but many of us have forgotten to look for them. God constantly speaks to us, but we often are not present to the present, present to the present moment, the now./

One significant barrier is the CNN Complex. We become glued to our televisions and smart phones, watching the same political battles over and over again. The CNN Complex is the postmodern addiction to breaking news. It is an addiction to information. Whether we understand or comprehend the information is immaterial. We are pathologically addicted simply to the information itself, which puts us into an addiction black out spell to the world immediately around us. We INGEST information, but rarely DIGEST it. We take in information without comprehending or conceptualizing it and crave for more.

We take for granted and ignore the immediate world around us as we carry the syndrome over to seeing and hearing/ but not really seeing and hearing what is immediately around us. We are like people living near train tracks who are so accustomed to hearing the train they no longer hear its approaching clickety-clack across the tracks.4

We live close to Interstate 430, but our minds block out the loud rumbling of 18 wheelers crossing the Arkansas River bridge. On my desk are icons to call me to God, but I look right past them as I obsess about my daily trials and the condition of the world./

 This is Jesus’ early morning Advent wake up call to become aware of our everyday lives. Take a break from news, shopping and listen to the people and the world around us./

Pay special attention to the world outside where fig trees and the evergreens surround us. Let their majestic beauty transform us, photosynthesize us to live into the moment. Sit outside, take a walk, engage in the outside world rather than television or iPhone screens./

“Summer is near.. He is near.”

Pay special attention to the interruptions from our multi-tasked agendas. They cause the squirrels running around in the cage in our minds to come to a screeching halt and open us to the present moment, the now.

Pay attention to children. They live in the present. I recall one afternoon when our young daughter comes running in shouting. “Mom, Mom, come see the rainbows!” Only by God’s Grace do I stop/ and go outside to see a sprinkler in our yard, where sunlight is producing multiple rainbows in and out of the water streams. This was a personal God moment, sharing joy and beauty with my young daughter in the present moment. This was a small taste of the second coming. The stars did not fall, and I was surrounded only by a tiny angel, but I saw the love and joy of Christ in the joy and love of a small child./

 Jesus comes to us in the present moment, not the past or the future. The precious present is where God meets us./

Apocalypse means “revelation,” where we look at something in our life and suddenly see it for the first time,/ whether it is the sunlight changing water into rainbows, or the love we see in our neighbor’s eyes, or the trees outside our window. Revelation is the moment we see through, see into, see beyond what is going on, to what is really going on—not because of our intellectual knowledge but because God opens our eyes, and we pay attention to what is nearby us, and the word that never dies comes in.5 //

 We have been promised in the resurrection to live in the realm of God where there is no sorrow, no pain, but until that time we also can experience a taste of what that life is like today.6 Advent calls us to that life.

 Today Jesus asks us to wake up, be alert, to be fully alive,  so we will recognize very near beside us, the one who was born, who has died, who is risen, and who comes again--- and again, and again, and again. /

“Summer is near… He is near.”

1Barbara Brown Taylor, “How to live with High Anxiety,  Always a Guest, (Westminster 2020) pp. 1-8.

2Barbara Brown Taylor, “God’s Beloved Thief,” Home by Another Way,  pp. 3-9.

3Barbara Brown Taylor, “With Power and Great Glory,”   Gospel Medicine, pp 133-137.

4Lillian Daniel, Feasting on the Word, year B volume 1, pp. 20-24

5Barbara Brown Taylor, “Apocalyptic Figs,”  Bread of Angels, pp. 156-160.

6Martin Copenhaver, Feasting on the Word, year B volume 1, pp. 21-25.

 Joanna joannaseibert.com