Living word by word

Transfiguration

I'm actually taking this Transfiguration Sunday off, in order to participate in the City of Lakes Loppet on Sunday. For me it's an annual glimpse of the kingdom, being able to SKI from the suburbs into Uptown! This year we might have a kid skiing with us instead of being hauled behind us. . .another milestone.

Those of you looking for a preaching image or two, I'll refer you back to my essay from last year  at Journey with Jesus. Matthew's account is a little different, yes, but the larger image of the lights going on still holds true.

At ECLC, we're going to have a surprise transfiguration of a different kind. You'll just have to show up to see what it is.

Second Sunday after Epiphany - lectionary 2

“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.” Isaiah 49:6

There’s a nice moment in Rob Gifford’s China Road where he recounts a moment “in the first flush of youth and the first flush of faith” when he read the biography of James Hudson Taylor, one of the first western missionaries in China to promote respect for the indigenous culture. Taylor encouraged his associates to adopt Chinese dress and elements of Chinese lifestyle as they preached the Gospel, started schools and hospitals. Gifford, inspired by Taylor’s faith as well as his progressive views, considered entering mission work himself, but his priest in his home church in England advised him, “that sort of canvas might prove a little small for you.”  Gifford’s journalism, in its compassion, insight and accessibility, is evidence, I think, that his priest was right.

How often do we church professionals paint our own work as the true “big canvas” of the Gospel, while dismissing the large ways the laity in their own vocations spread God’s light? How often do we work within our own “tribe” as if that is all there is to God’s work, while in fact our members are being lights to the nations; perhaps they are not preaching from their cubicles, but they are feeding the hungry, educating the young, healing the sick, cleaning the environment, defending the weak. OK, maybe they are also using precious creativity and resources to name a new low-fat snack or advertise the latest techno-gizmo. . .but even in the midst of that they are talking to people with whom most clergy can never dream of having a candid conversation.

God’s healing, God’s salvation, is promised to reach the ends of the earth. Maybe we who work within the tribe have the lightest of all loads; we just give the rest of God’s servants some really great colors to paint on that big canvas of God’s creation.

Epiphany 2A-- Matthew's take

"Let it be so now," Jesus says, "for it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness" (Matthew 3:15)

It comes as no surprise that Jesus in Matthew's Gospel wants to "fulfill all righteousness." Matthew, of all the gospels, is very interested in righteousness, that sense of a life fitting in with the will of God. I fear, however, that in interpreting the debate between John the Baptist and Jesus about who should be baptizing whom, we read it with the ears of American individualism. We can too easily hear it as an argument about Jesus' personal need for baptism, just as we so often assume that baptism is an individual act of repentance and commitment.

But Jesus clearly sees this as more than an individual act: "it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." John's baptism of repentance is ultimately about the whole people of Israel needing a new start, a re-entry into the Jordan waters that marked the beginning of their life in the promised land. Jesus is affirming John's public ministry in this act, and so affirming that the kingdom of God is more than a dwelling somewhere deep in our individual souls. It is a new beginning for all, one in which Jesus as God-with-us stands at our side, dripping wet.

Epiphany 2A-- Baptism of our Lord

This Sunday's second lesson from Acts chapter 10 is a classic example of what drives me crazy about the lectionary. Here is a key moment from the book of Acts -- Peter's encounter with the Gentile Cornelius, and the subsequent baptism of the whole household -- and all the lectionary designates for the day is Peter's speech -- sermon really -- excerpted from the larger narrative. I can't think of any preacher's sermon that would hold up well over centuries, with only one paragraph and no context whatsoever. Peter's, I'm sorry to say, is no exception.

The rationale, I suppose, is that we get a mention of the relationship between John the Baptist's ministry and that of Jesus. But the really remarkable thing about baptism in Acts 10 comes in the narrative, in the fact that Peter, having never entered a Gentile's house before, finds himself baptizing Cornelius and all his household.

A key word for the book of Acts is several variations on the word un/hindered. Acts ends with the news that, even under house arrest, Paul is preaching the Gospel unhindered. In Acts 10, the same word appears in verse 47, but is translated withhold. "Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" (10: 47) Later, when Peter has to justify his actions to elders in Jerusalem, he asks "who was I that I could hinder God?" (11:17)

Baptism, we learn in Acts, is a gift of the Holy Spirit. Our job is not to be gatekeepers, but simply to get out of the Spirit's way, and be witnesses to what God is doing.