Preaching on marriage is hard, in no small part because marriage is hard; marriage is very hard—and this is something that each of us, in one way or another, knows very well. We know that there is a major and pervasive cultural crisis going on around marriage; and that about half the marriages out there end in divorce. Also, and more alarmingly, there is, statistically, absolutely no difference in the divorce rate between Christians (no matter how many times they have been born) and non-Christians. That’s a real bother, or it should be.

Preaching on marriage is also hard because it’s always personal, and it’s always taken personally. We are all effected in one way or another. I think I’ve mentioned before that, of the six kids in my family, we’ve had at least 12 weddings among us; and we’re still counting. So I guess that, sadly, we’re above average. There is a lot of pain there.

At the same time, I have also learned over the years that some of the divorces that happen make sense. People really do make awful mistakes, some folks truly are victims, and some marriages are simply made a very long way from heaven. The realities and consequences of sin are surely as real and as evident in the most intimate of human relationships as they are anywhere else—but so are the realities of grace, forgiveness, and holy transformation. So, as usual, the human situation is ambiguous, messy, complex. It is impossible to make grand, sweeping, and absolute judgments.

So, instead of that, I want to try to get at this theologically, to talk about just one of the many things we mean when we insist that Christian marriage, the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony, is a unique and special thing, something very different from what is so often going on in the world out there when folks get married. After all, a Christian marriage is not just a marriage that is done in a Church with a minister, although that’s a good start—still, you can’t just bless a duck and turn it into a swan; it’s still a duck. And a Christian marriage is not just a marriage that includes churchgoing and even family prayers (although these are good and valuable things). Again, you can take a duck to church over and over, and pray the heck out of it, and it’s still a duck.

And it’s those ducks out there that are dying all over the place.

Three good places to start looking at what makes a marriage a Christian marriage (and not a duck) are with what Jesus has to say, with who we are, and with real love. On those few occasions when Jesus talked about marriage, he always talked about creation, about the nature of human beings, and he always said that marriage was about this—and not about happiness or convenience or not being lonely or meeting our perceived needs or anything like that (those are all duck things). Instead, Jesus says that marriage is about being created by God.

Now, one of the things it means to be created by God is to be incomplete all by ourselves, in isolation. (Remember, "it is not good for the man to be alone.") Our humanity in its fullness, the way God wants us to be, this humanity is not automatic. It is drawn out of us by others, by relationships and by community. It’s a little like the way a child learns to walk. The idea of walking is sort of built into a child, but it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t become real, all by itself. Instead, you stand the kid up, and step back, and hold out your arms and the child, well, falls down a few times, but sooner or late, the child walks towards you.

Walking is something you draw out of child, by loving it and inviting it to do something it hasn’t done before, and might not think it can do, but is in there all along.

The connection is that Christian marriage is intended to be one of what the desert mystics called a school of love, a relationship where each one helps to draw out the fullness of the other’s humanity, the fullness of the other’s life. Marriage is intended to be a place where each one exists for the sake of the wholeness of the life of the other, in order to help the other to become more; to become who the other was created to be.

Now, to be sure, marriage is not the only school of love—after all, marriage is a vocation, and not everyone is called to that vocation. Families, parishes, religious communities, things like that—these are also intended to be schools of love, relationships that exist for the sake of the other, relationships that are also, at their best, holy and sacred things. (And there is a whole other sermon about how your marriage is also about us, about the Christian community, and our common ministry, but I’ll save that one for another time.)

None the less, to begin to see that what you are about as a husband or a wife has to do, not with you, but with the other, and with what is truly best for the other, and to be willing to allow that other to be so for you—this is the real beginning of Christian marriage. And this is so wildly different from what our culture says about marriage—from all those ducks out there—that it can be a powerful alternative vision—a new way to see and understand yourself and your marriage, that can be both transforming and energizing.

It can also be scary. If marriage isn’t about you, but is instead about the other (which is what all of those richer and poorer, sickness and health promises are about—your commitment is to a person, not to any circumstances) then it means that you are newly vulnerable, and newly responsible. It’s a big deal; and it is possible only with the security that comes from a life-long commitment, with constant reliance on the real grace and presence of God, and with the help and support of everyone here, and everyone who shares our faith and our vision.

Which is where love comes in. We Christians need to be careful when we talk about love, because, unlike everybody else, we know what love really looks like. It looks like a cross. So to promise to love the other is not to promise to feel any particular way, it is to promise to act a particular way—it is a promise to act always for the sake of what is best for the other; to act always for the true good of the other. That’s what we mean by love—and, sure, it’s something we always end up doing humanly, not perfectly; but that’s the idea, and that’s the ideal.

This love is why marriage is a sign of Christ’s love for his Church, and why it is a very special thing. As for most of those duck things—being happy and having a good time, and getting your perceived needs met, and things like that, there is no need to worry about those—your heavenly father knows those desires better than you do. Seek first the heart of the matter, and these, too, will be give as well, and in abundance. God bless you both.

What I want to talk about is triggered by a sentence in Friedman’s discussion of failed states and doomed economies—it’s where he talks about many of the Middle Eastern nations. He says that, of all the economic and political indicators that can be used to evaluate a system, the most important, and the hardest to measure, is the question "Does your society have more memories than dreams, or more dreams than memories?" "More memories than dreams, or more dreams than memories?" Isn’t that a wonderful question? It can reveal so much, and not just about other folks way over there—it also has a special sharpness for us here in Big Spring as well. If the time and energy spent looking backward, or spent trying to re-create a past that is simply gone, if that takes away from fresh dreams and from new possibilities that may be very different from that past, no matter how hallowed it may be, then nothing much is going to happen, and things are just going to get worse—very revealing, and a bit scary.

But what really struck me about this question is how it speaks to All Saints’ day, and to who we are as Christian people, and as the Christian Church. That’s because, even though this question may be useful for looking at any particular congregation (even our own), it really overlooks a something basic about us. You see, for us, our memories drive our dreams—what has come before us, who we have been, not just as a local congregation, but as the whole church, this is what gives our dreams shape, and content, and energy.

All Saints’ Day is about the Communion of Saints, something we say we believe in every time we say the Apostles’ Creed. The Communion of Saints is part of the Baptismal mystery, it is real, and it is really big. It is the mystical union of all the Baptized, past, present and future. It includes the famous, and not so famous, folks we just heard about in the first reading; it includes those who share the final victory with God in the reading from the Revelation; it includes all who have ever looked to those virtually absurd words of Jesus in the beatitudes as the true vision of human life; it includes all of those people whose names we will read from the Altar in just a few minutes. And it includes us.

This ‘glorious company’ is our past, our memories. It is to them we look to discover what it has looked like in the past to be who we are now, the church of Jesus Christ. And they are a mixed lot, just like we are. They include the good, the bad, and the not quite either one. Our history as Christians boasts a multitude of true heroes of the faith, men and women who can and do continue to inspire us and give us hope—people whose labors and witness, both public ally and privately, loudly and quietly, on a large scale and in humble, quiet ways, have lived the faith of Jesus and have carried the light of Jesus in a world which, by the power of that light, is always revealed to be dark, and needy.

At the same time, this communion that surrounds us also includes eighteen centuries of slave owners, the Inquisition, and a legacy of misogyny, anti-Semitism, simplistic jingoism, and a host of other horrors that can curl your hair in a second. These, too, as well as the ‘good’ ones, the ones we like to think about, are part of the "great cloud of witnesses" that are our past, and our memories. Much of the time, bits of all of this are found in one and same of the saints from our past.

We haven’t always got it right, and any real appreciation of what it means to be a part of our living and dynamic community that extend through time and space needs to include this part, too. All of these folks gather with us round this Altar; they are all a part of who we are; they are all in communion with us, now and forever. They are among our memories, our legacy. And to all of them we extend the same hope, and the same charity, that we pray the next several centuries of Christians will extend to us. (Among other things, this can remind us both that our memories and our dreams must be rich with humility, and that perfection is not a human category).

Now, can you begin to see how our dreams, our hopes, as Christian people, and as part of this community at this time, are given shape, content and energy by the living presence of this Communion? After all, at the center of this mixed multitude that is our memories, our brothers and sisters in the faith, is the constant, but constantly new, presence and person of Jesus—and Jesus is eternally, in always the same way and in always new ways, calling us to exactly the same thing to which he called all of those who have come before us—to faithfully living his life, and to courageously being his witness in our time, and in our place, and in our generation.

Our dreams cannot be about somehow trying to duplicate somebody else’s time, or place, or generation—our own memories tell us better than that. Instead, our dreams must be at the same time as new as this day and as ancient as our Lord’s description of who, in fact, is blessed, and who is not.

Our dreams, our vision of who we are and where we are going, these must be ours, they cannot belong to any other generation. And they must be as wildly hopeful as were the dreams of those we remember with pride and awe. Our memories force our dreams to be as new, and as bold, and as fresh and as dangerous as were the dreams of those whom we revere, the dreams that have roused the very best angels of our nature, and of our faith.

And we are not alone. We have our living memories, the Communion of Saints, with us, sharing our prayers, offering us all the complexities and ambiguities of their particular witness to our continuing faith, and offering us the promise that, right or wrong, we are part of an ongoing and ever-changing divine reality which simply will not let us go, and, in the long haul, will not let us go astray.

Always remember, we are more than we think we are; and we can do and be more than we can imagine. We are Christ’s Church in this place—far from perfect, sometimes a source of pride to those who come after us, sometimes not—but always charged to hold faithfully to the best of what we have received, and to dream the big dreams that will carry forward the light of this holy legacy—in ways large and small—to a world that still desperately needs the light we have been handed.

Renewal of Baptismal Covenant

Now, all of this judgment stuff can be so intimidating, or so irritating, that we don’t pay careful attention to it. After all, it can start to sound like God is against us—that He is really after us, and that the best we can hope for is to squeeze by with lots of hard work and a little luck. That old image of ‘sinners in the hand of an angry God’, where we are held by a thin thread over the fires of hell, is a familiar one. It’s sometimes tempting to buy into that, but it’s always bad religion.

Instead, look again at the beginning of Matthew’s parable. The whole thing begins when the master gives each of the slaves a real treasure—anywhere from one to five talents. Now, the parable isn’t about money—but a talent was a measure of money, and it was a huge sum. Most commentators say that it was around fifteen years’ wages. When you get to those kinds of numbers, the exact amounts don’t matter all that much. The guy with one talent wasn’t short changed; he was wealthy beyond the imagining of anyone who might have heard Jesus tell this story.

So, the point is not that some got a lot and others got a little. The point is that this story, like all stories of God’s judgment, begins with a gift, with a great and a generous and a very important gift. That’s how it always begins. Judgment is about what it looks like to reject, to despise, the gifts of God, and to choose other things, lesser things, instead.

While this parable was probably told originally against the scribes and Pharisees, and the way they handled the gift of the law; it is also about us, about our lives—the whole of our lives, the conduct of our lives. It begins with the simple reality that who we are, and what is possible for us, is pure gift. God just gives us to ourselves. God does that. God loves us and so God gives us many, many things—and central to that is the gift of self—of who we are and of who we can be.

In the parable, different people are give different amounts. Now, I’m not real sure what it means, from God’s point of view, to say some of us are given more that others—one or two or five or whatever.

I know what it means from my point of view for some to be given more, (some people are tall) but not from God’s. I suspect the point here is that every gift of self that God gives is unique. We are all different; and we can’t point to who someone else is as a measure for ourselves. In any event, what comes first in this parable is God’s goodness, God’s generosity, God’s abundant giving. Indeed, the judgment part would not make any sense apart from that generosity.

Now in the Biblical story, gifts always include, they always carry with them, some form of vocation. Vocation is God’s call to us, God’s word or direction for a purpose or end that God has in mind for us. Vocation isn’t separate from God’s gifts—it’s not a price we pay for them. Instead, vocation is an essential part of every gift we receive. They come together, as a set.

[This is especially clear in the first lesson. From the beginning, Israel had been given the gift of being God’s special people. This included a multitude of things—from the land itself, to victory over its enemies, to the moral precepts of the law of Moses. All of that was gift.

Part of that gift was the vocation, to live in such a way that the character of God could be seen by anyone who looked at Israel. Zephaniah talks about what happens when Israel ignores this vocation, and so despises the gifts of God. Israel has chosen greed over righteousness, possessions over witness, and the gods of their neighbors over the God they have sworn to worship. That when judgment starts to show up.

Still, the story of Israel does not begin with God looking for reasons to destroy his people; it begins with God’s great generosity. Judgment only happens as the gift is despised.]

Back to the parable: The gift of self—the gift to us of who we are—carries with it (among other things) the vocation to Christian character—the call intentionally to shape our lives, our regular and habitual ways of behaving, around the image of humanity we receive from Jesus.

This vocation involves taking who we are and, by constant, active, and disciplined choices, becoming more and more a person whose life reveals the mind of Christ. This vocation includes the daily business of making choices that increase in us the virtues of the Christian life—virtues such as faith, hope, love, justice, temperance, and more. The vocation to Christian character means taking the gift of who we are and growing that gift, and deepening that gift, so that by the end we have indeed increased what the Master’s gave us, and so can offer back to Him something greater than we received.

Judgment is about despising the gift of who we are—about ignoring our vocation to Christian character. The poor fool with the one talent really ignored what he had. He left it alone, he was anxious and he refused to move past his own anxieties. The result is no change, no growth, and finally, no more gift.

You use it or you lose it. That’s just the way it is.

And be sure to notice here that the problem wasn’t that he tried and failed—that he tried to build on what he was given and somehow got it wrong. He didn’t get the wrong answers, or make lousy investments. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he took who he was and hid it, and did nothing with it, and so refused to embrace either the Master’s generosity or the possibilities of his own nature. That is a tragedy.

But most of the parable is not about tragedy. Those servants who embraced their gift, (and this was most of them), the ones who struggled to nourish and deepen what they had been given, who made something of themselves—these servants had a great surprise. They had thought the whole business was over when the time came for an accounting. ‘Here is your stuff back, my part is over.’ they said.

But they were wrong. What they were about had barely begun. Their first huge gift, the overwhelming amount they had been given—this was barely a beginning. The master dismissed those talents as just ‘a few things’. More was to follow; much more.

The joy of the Master is not in destruction. The joy of the Master is in giving still more—more than we can ask, more than we can hope for, more than we can imagine. That is what the Master longs to do. Our vocation is to accept his gifts, to build upon them, and to be ready for more.

And it’s really clear that those who are condemned are not condemned for doing bad things, or for acting cruelly. Instead, they are condemned for the good they did not do. You can’t sit out the Christian moral life. There’s no way, by avoiding engagement, to thereby avoid judgment. "Well, I never intentionally hurt anybody" cuts no mustard at the Great Throne Judgment.

All of which can tempt just about any preacher to shout, "So ya’all get out there and serve Jesus in your neighbor. Do good and save your soul from the judgment of eternal fire all at the same time." Which can make a heck of a sermon, and one I am not opposed to preaching from time to time. Can’t hurt. At the same time, the story can also temp this preacher to talk about how committed St. Mary’s is to engaging this sort of ministry, and how this is no doubt pleasing to God. Which can also make a heck of a sermon, and another one I am not opposed to preaching from time to time. But, not to be led into temptation, and since we do have deacons to help us hear those particular sermons, today I want to say something a little different.

I want to talk about what’s so sad in this story—it’s something I want you to pay special attention to. The sad part is something the saved say.

Notice that those who have been gathered up at the right hand of the Lord, those who are called blessed of the father, the ones we want to be; these folks have only one thing to say to Jesus.. They say, "Lord, when?" "When was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?" When?" That’s it, that’s all they have to say.

This is dreadfully sad because of all the loss, and all the struggle, and all the pain that question implies. These folks, the sheep, the saved, the good guys, they were right, they did all of the correct things, but they missed the greatest joy of it. They missed seeing the Lord. They overlooked the hidden presence of God in the face of those they served.

I think one of the reasons we have this parable is to help us avoid that loss, to remind us what reaching out, and caring, and serving are all about. Because it is very clear: no matter how right you are, no matter how much you serve the presence of Christ in others, if you don’t pay special attention, if you don’t look for the Lord Jesus in those you serve, then you won’t see him. And most of the joy is lost. Most of the joy of doing good and being right and saving your soul from the judgment of eternal fire all at the same time, is lost.

After all, reaching out in love to the presence of Christ is others, especially in both "the least of these" and in those closest to us, is quite often a great big pain. It takes a lot of time, and there is almost never any indication that something of lasting benefit has occurred.

What’s more, "the least of these" are usually at the very least partially responsible for whatever problems and needs they have. And most of the time they don’t look or act the way we imagine Jesus would or should.

Quite frequently, they aren’t very nice, and, worse, they seldom seem to appreciate whatever good we do try to do for them. So, doing good, reaching out to feed, clothe, visit, heal, and otherwise minister to "the least of these" tends to frustrate us, and we tend to get burned, and to get burned out. And much the same sort of thing can happen when the ones we reach out to are not some distant ‘them’, but instead are us, the people we live with and around. The close ones. One would think that actually serving Christ shouldn’t be as hard, and as disheartening as it often is.

But there we are. After all, just because we’re doing something for religious reasons doesn’t mean that, all by itself, whatever we are doing will look or feel religious, or that it will effect us in a particularity religious way.

Cleaning the kitchen in the church, or anywhere else for that matter, is still cleaning a kitchen. Being nice to a difficult person because you are convinced that Jesus wants you to is still being nice to a difficult person. Spending time, or effort, or money out of Christian conviction still means that you no longer have that time, that money or that effort.

The Lord calls us to serve him, in the face of our neighbor, and of our brother and sister, and, especially, in the face of those closest to us and in the least of these. That call is real, there are no excuses. But the Lord also calls us to see him in the face of our neighbor, and our brother and sister, and, especially, in the least of these.

There is not a secret or mysterious way to do this. First of all, in order to see the Lord we have to look. Deliberately. All of the time. We need constantly to remember what we are doing, why we are doing it, and what we hope to come from it. We need look on purpose.

Second, if we want Jesus to show himself to us, we need to ask him to. Sometimes we have to ask him a lot. That’s one reason why any reaching out to others that is not wrapped in prayer, any act of ministry that is not consciously and deliberately offered to God with the request to be shown how the Lord is in it, any of these, while certainly not wasted, is terribly incomplete.

If our prayers during the day and about the day do not beg the Lord for a look at his face, or a glimpse at his kingdom, in all that is going on around us, then we are cheating ourselves, and living barely on the surface of a much deeper reality.

To try to live the life Christ calls us to live without placing all of that in the middle of some disciplined reflection, prayer and study, this is to risk missing the best part of it all.

It is to risk missing the presence and word of Jesus that can transform a task into an opportunity for joy, that can make doing the things we are called to do the route deeper into the mystery of God’s life, and of our own.

This story of Judgment is more than a call to serve. It is more than a call to be good, to do the right thing. It is that, but it is much more. It is also a call to look, to notice, to wrap our days and our lives in the search for the face of God in all that we do. It is a call, above all, to see.

 Advent I, Year B, November 27, 2005 

Today's gospel is no different. Mark tells us that Jesus wants us to keep awake-for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn, or else he may find you asleep when he comes suddenly.

This time of year we all seem to have other things on our minds other than preparing for the next coming of Christ. We're too busy thinking about Christmas and all the trappings that come with preparing for that big day.

We'll be spending all of our time planning a fancy meal which takes all day or several days to cook and consumed in 20 minutes; or what gift to get Aunt Flossie, or what to wear to so and so's party; or the trip to grandma's house.

But what would happen if I told you that a decree had been sent that Christmas will be celebrated tomorrow? Would your plans change? Would you be ready? Knowing when something is to occur helps us stay awake, alert to what needs doing.

We have trouble staying alert when we don't have the "when" down. Even when we have roundabout time, we struggle. I remember as a child, my brother, parents and I would take to trip to one of grandparent's houses for Thanksgiving or Christmas. We knew we were to be on best behavior when we got there and were supposed to behave while en route. But being kids, we were always concerned about when we would get there. Our many questions and constant bickering (because he was always picking on me) got in the way of our staying out of trouble. We had forgotten to stay prepared for our visit.

Our trouble with not knowing when is we find it hard to stay alert, to be prepared. And when we think we know, but seems forever in coming, we forget our well-intentioned preparations. This advent season is about preparation, preparation for Christ's coming. We focus on this during Advent, but really we should be focusing all year long. December 25 is the day we look toward as the day we are preparing for, but in reality we don't have a clue as to which day the Lord will return. So, how well are we staying alert to Christ's coming again?

I wish I could tell you when Christ is coming again; even Father Liggett nor the bishop can tell you, and certainly not the pope! We just have to be patient and diligent in our preparations.

God crated us to do for him a definite service—service he has given us which he has not given to anyone else. We all have a mission and that mission is to serve Christ through others. Christ calls us to live out our lives daily, open to feeling God's presence and hearing his call. We can't let ourselves be distracted by what seems to be the pressing issues of life or by the expectations we put on ourselves this time of year—something I find very difficult to do. Doesn’t it seem unfair that the people during Christ's time had seem to have had fewer distractions to worry about? I'm thinking, no wonder they had time to pray and plan for the next coming of Christ. Maybe that's our test-being able to stay open to God's presence and calling in the midst of all this chaos.

Jesus tells us we have to be alert with our eyes, alert with our ears, alert with our minds, and alert with our hearts. There is no way we can fix the entire world and all of its problems; Heck, we can't even think about fixing all the wrongs in Big Spring. What we can do is look where we're walking, and what we are doing; about not letting the opportunities for service in God's kingdom pass us by, unseen and left undone. Life can be full of regrets, but the worst regrets are not the ones we wish we could have done, but of the things we should have done. Much like the old song by Ray Price where he sings I'd rather be sorry for something I've done than to be sorry for something I didn't do.

Staying alert for an event that the time is unknown to us is very arduous. But the best way to keep alert is by living faithfully. We live faithfully by being good stewards of the time, talent and treasures given to us. We serve the universal cause of God's kingdom by doing the particular work we've been given to do in our tiny corner of that kingdom. We serve globally by serving locally. Every time we share a smile, lend a helping hand, ease the tension in the grocery store line, every time we allow another's car into traffic, every time we risk ourselves in an act of kindness, every time we encourage one another's creative impulses, we're being vigilant and mindful of our duty as Christians.

The words Advent and adventure come from the same root. Christian life is an adventure, a pilgrimage, a trip we take with little certainty about where we are going, or how to get there, or what will happen to us along the way (much like the wise men following a star). It's not only important to put our faith and trust in God for this trip, but it's important to prepare ourselves. We don't know the actual date of Jesus' birth, and that's probably good because it makes every day his birthday. The adventure of Advent is to travel hand in hand with God, not knowing but trusting, and being ready at all times, to arrive where we are going.

Jesus says, "Keep awake, for you do not know when the master of the house will come."

Amen.

The Lessons for today:  Isaiah 64.1-9a; Ps.80; I Corinthians 1.1-9; Mark 13.24-37
 

A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:

Advent

Christmas

Epiphany
 

Holy Week Preaching, 2005


Archive of St. Mary's Sermons from August 15, 2004

 

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Fr. Jim Liggett
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This page last updated on November 18, 2006

It seems that every year I hear more and people talking with real pain about how hard this time is. Every year I become more and more convinced that the happiness and good feelings that the world out there tries to offer us during this season, ring false. If there is to be any good news at Christmas, it has to come from somewhere other than from the ‘holiday season’ that is going on so powerfully all around us.

That’s where John the Baptist comes in—preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. (by the way, we get John the Baptist twice in a row this Advent, so we get to the see the two faces of John. This week, we hear from Mark’s Gospel; then, next week, we get another perspective from the Gospel according to John.) anyway, the more we realize that we need something different from what the TV specials and the sales have to offer, the more we realize that it’s time to listen to John.

John says that what we need is repentance for the forgiveness of sins. John says that, before we can recognize, before we can know, the one who comes after John, the one who is mightier than John, the one who baptizes with fire, before we can do that, we need to repent, for the forgiveness of sins. He’s right. That’s how the good news of Christmas begins. You won’t hear this out there, the only place in the world you will hear it is in here.

And we need to hear it. It is important to listen deeply to the call to repent, to turn around. John is saying that the Lord, the one who baptizes with fire, is coming because we, by ourselves, are not enough. The world, by itself, is not enough. All of the world’s promises and goodies are not enough. Even if they are on sale. So, someone is coming to show us how life should be lived, because we do not know how life should be lived. When we try to live our lives based on what we know, and on what we think is right, and on what we think is good, on our own best judgments, on our own deepest passions, on our own fondest desires—when we try to live based on who we are and what we can do, we mess it up; and people we know, and love, and care about, mess it up.

And we know the truth of that and the tragedy of that, and the pain of that. In one way or another we look at that pain, and we live with that pain, every time we read the newspaper, and every time we look around us, and every time we look in the mirror.

And John the Baptist says that someone is coming, someone who knows what it means to be a human being, someone who knows what matters and what doesn’t, what works and what doesn’t, what is O.K. and what isn’t. Someone is coming who can offer us a vision of what human life can be.

Because this is true, because someone greater than he is coming, because of this, John appeared preaching repentance, for the forgiveness of sins.

Look at so much of life these days, look at the lives of those around us, look what so often happens to people, to good people with the best of intentions, who are trying hard. Look what so often happens to them, to us, and to the kids. Look, and you see such stumbling, such confusion; so many don’t know what to do, or what is right, or how to begin. Look, and you so often see a hopeless sense of being lost and bewildered in the face of all the hurt, all the confusion, all the heartbreak.

Everybody seems to struggle so hard, and yet, and yet... We don’t want it to be like this, and we don’t intend it to be like this, and we are not happy when it is like this, but the harder people keep trying to do what they think best, to do what doesn’t work, the worse and the worse it becomes.

John the Baptist came saying that someone is coming who offers a different way. So we need to stop doing what we have been doing, and we need to start doing something different. We need to stop looking where we have been looking, and look in a new direction. We need to stop following what we have been following, and we need to start following someone different.

We need to stop putting our hopes and our dreams where we have been putting them, and we need to put them somewhere else. We need to stop looking for solutions, and for insight, and for happiness, and for programs, and we need to start looking for forgiveness—and for the one who is to come. That is what John the Baptist is saying.

And this is the first part of the real good news of Christmas. Christmas offers what we need. It offers a savior. That is what we need, because we cannot save ourselves—indeed, we cannot even manage ourselves. And God loves us. God loves us very, very much. So God sends us a savior—this Christmas, and every Christmas.

But this great gift isn’t automatically good news, because we need to stop and recollect and remember what we need. Otherwise we will continue to run around after our own best ideas; and, worse, we will try to find ways to make the coming of both John the Baptist and the Lord himself useful to us for getting what we want. The gift of a savior becomes good news only as we hear the call to repent. The call to repent puts responsibility and failure right where they belong.

It also puts hope right where it belongs. The call to repent makes it possible for us to realize that what we need the most is not a therapist or a helper or an enabler or a facilitator, or a coach, or a counselor or anything like that—sure, we may from time to time need any or all of those, but none is what we need most. What we need most is a savior.

There are all sorts of things we need to do to get ready for Christmas, which is only about 18 shopping days away. This year, let’s also do what the Church calls us to do.

In Advent, the Church calls the faithful to hear the word of John the Baptist, who came preaching repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

The leaders of the nation sent Priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask John, "Who are you?" Now, that’s one of the most important questions around, and what we believe—and what we say—about who we are is fundamental. (More on that next Sunday.) So, when the leaders ask this of John the Baptist, they’re asking a good question.

And there are all sorts of things, all sorts of interesting and significant things, that John could have said in reply. First of all, John was a Priest, just like his father Zechariah. He wasn’t one of those rich, snobbish, and completely-sold-out-to-the-Romans Jerusalem priests, like the ones who were checking up on him. As pious rural Priests, John and his father were part of an older and more faithful tradition; and theirs was a position of respect and honor throughout Israel. John could have said that.

Also, John was a monk, a wilderness ascetic whose personal righteousness and rigor in matters of discipline and conduct were extraordinary, even for a time marked by religious extremism. He could have said that.

Finally, of course, John was a prophet and a preacher. He was the first real prophet in a long time. He dressed like Elijah on a budget and preached like Jeremiah in a bad mood. He would take on absolutely anybody, including the King; and he made up in thunder and passion what he laced in political acumen or social skills.

He had built up a following that was both impressive and scary; and the people hung on his every word. There was nobody like him in all of Israel, and the folks from Jerusalem knew that, and John knew that.

So, when the leaders sent flunkies to ask of John, "who are you?", he could have mentioned, that, too. There were a lot of things that John was, and any one of them, or any combination of them, would have made a good and impressive answer to that very important question—"who are you?"

But John the Baptist was the first to recognize Jesus, the first to know who Jesus was and what Jesus was about. Luke’s gospel makes this point in the lovely little story of Mary’s visit to Elizabeth, where John, a babe yet unborn, leapt with joy in his mother’s womb when Mary approached. John’s Gospel says it differently, but the point is the same. The Baptist knows Jesus, and he knows what Jesus is about.

Now, when you know Jesus, and when you know what Jesus is about, then the first thing you have to say when someone asks you who you are is exactly what John the Baptist said. John said, "I am not...". "I am not the messiah", "I am not the one", "I am not the center of attention or the center of the universe; I am not even the center of my own little world. I am not."

That’s the first thing to say, and John got it right. In fact, John’s entire ministry, and his entire life, were about saying this. They were about saying, "I am not" and then pointing to Jesus and saying "he is".

That’s where we need to begin, too; and it is generous of the Baptist to remind us of it. If we are to recognize Jesus, if we are to know who he is and what he is about, then the first thing we need to say is what John said—"I am not". I am not the messiah, I am not the center, I am not what is most important. It isn’t about me.

This is hard for us. Our whole culture, even (maybe especially) at this time of year, seems dedicated to telling us that whatever is going on is really about us. It’s about our needs, or our desires, or our plans, or our hopes. The assumption is that in order to interest us in anything, we must first be shown what we will get out of it. The assumption is that our wants, our needs (including our ‘religious needs’—whatever that means), these are what give value, these are what come first, these are what it is really all about.

In fact, this attitude might be the clearest picture we have what original sin, the fundamental brokenness of the human situation, really looks like. It looks like saying "I am". I am the center. While it’s as natural and as automatic to us as breathing, this claim to be the center is also the source of most of our sin, and much of our pain. (Think about it, the more intensely we look at ourselves; the less reality we can see.)

Jesus comes to change this, to heal this. Jesus comes to heal the most fundamental orientation of our hearts, the core distortion of our nature. He comes to shift our center, our focus, from ourselves—to Him; and through Him, to others.

This is good news, this is what is best for us, and this is where our hope and our future lie. But we have to struggle with it. John the Baptist saw all of this first. He was the first to recognize Jesus, and to proclaim him.

So, John said what we need to say. He said what anyone has to say if there is to be room in their life for the reality of Jesus, for the babe to be born, for the one who comes to be our Lord. "I am not the one", "He is the one". This is not about me. It is about Him.

I want to start with Mary and the Annunciation story we just heard, because, in a way, everything starts with that story, or with a story just like it. It’s a story about who Mary is, and what she thinks about that. The angel comes to Mary and says all sorts of incredible and unimaginable things to her about herself. Gabriel says that Mary is God’s favored one, that the Lord is with her; that she is special. Hardly the self-image she had been carrying around up to now. And, along with that new description of who she is, Mary is also given a promise, a promise that she will do things that cannot be done, and that these impossible things that she will do will do are going to make a huge difference for all of creation. And Mary was perplexed. Which makes a lot of sense, especially if you’re pretty sure you know who you are, and you know very well that it doesn’t include any of this new, special, stuff.

So what do you do? Do you keep the old, familiar story about yourself, or do you buy into the new, impossible, vision of life that you have been offered? Who are you; what’s your whole story going to be? That is really the question Gabriel is asking Mary. And it has been ever thus.

Abraham—remember Abraham, we always keep coming back to him—Abraham too was also offered a new and different story about himself.

As an old man he was told to leave everything that he had ever known and counted on, and become a sort of holy pilgrim. And with that new identity came the promise that in doing this, he would become someone special, someone who would begin the great saga of God’s redeeming acts in history. So what do you do, what story of yourself do you tell? Do you stay or leave?

Of course, it was the same with Moses, with Nathan and David, with Simon Peter, Paul, and all of the biggies. They were all given the chance at, the gift of, an impossible new story, a new way to be—and with that came the promise that, as special people, something wonderful would come from them, something that would build upon the great story of the people of God that began with Abraham.

But remember, these folks, the great ones, the ones that always keep coming up in the Bible stories, they are not really there for us to admire, or to look at as alien specimens, like odd animals in a zoo who are so completely different from us that we can stand at a safe distance and stare through the bars of history with interest and even respect, and then turn round and resume normal life—better informed, perhaps, but in no way changed.

The Annunciation, and all of these other offers of impossible new identities and visions of life—we don’t hear them over and over to remember how things were then. We hear them so we can begin to discover how things are now, and what our lives really are, and what our story really says.

St. Mary is our Patron, our parish is named after her—what’s more, a couple of years back the Vestry, with the consent of the Bishop, officially changed the name of our chapel from "The Chapel" (not a whole lot of pizzazz there), to The Chapel of the Annunciation, after this story about Mary. And Advent is about waiting for Christ to be born—to be born in Bethlehem, and, in order for that old history to matter, to be born in our hearts and in our world.

Now, for that birth to happen, first of all, we need to be like Mary, to hear the word that offers us impossible new identities, and vastly greater stories about ourselves than we usually tell, and, second, we need to be Mary, to be the one who bears Jesus, who carries him within ourselves, and so brings him to the very world he has come to save.

Think about this: We come here, week in and week out, to St. Mary’s. And what we hear, if we can but hear it, is what Mary heard from Gabriel. We hear that we are loved and chosen by God—we are given the gifts of God for the people of God. We are told that, as baptized Christians, we are called by God to be his witnesses and his servants—in every part of our lives, in every piece of the world we touch. We don’t usually think of ourselves like that. In here we are given an impossible identity; we are named as beloved of the Father, as special people, just like Mary and David and the rest. And, like them, we are given a promise, we are given the promise that God the Holy Spirit has come upon us in our Baptism and our Confirmation, and that God will be with us to guide, direct, support, and strengthen us as we make this identity our own.

It takes a huge effort, a stretch of the imagination and of the will, in order to think of ourselves this way, no matter how often hear it told to us. But this is the reality that is laid before us, right here, over and over. And we, like Mary standing before Gabriel, like every Christian person—great or not so great, known and remembered or in the vast majority—like every Christian person, we are asked to choose whether we will keep to the old, familiar story about ourselves, or, instead, buy into this new, impossible, vision of life we have been offered. Who are we; what’s our whole story going to be?

For it is the will of God that we become who we are named to be, and that we come to understand our own personal stories, as well as our corporate, collective, story, as part of the vast story, the story of God’s constant, saving activity in history, the story of God’s people hearing, and believing, and knowing, and willing to take the wonderful risk that is all summed up in the simple sentence, "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word."

It’s been a long time since Christmas came on a Sunday, which means it’s been a long time since January 1^st, the Feast of the Holy name, also came on a Sunday and we had a chance to pay special attention to it. So we’re about due.

The little insert by Canon Veal gives a nice background to January 1^st, and how it was the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus (or the Feast of the Circumcision) long before it became New Year’s day. But finding some significance in the little cultic ceremony by which every Jewish male was formally given his name eight days after he was born is a bit trickier. It’s tempting to see the whole thing as just odd, and to ask, with Romeo, "What’s in a name?" The answer, as Romeo himself found out none too happily, is that there is a great deal in a name, and that names are pretty special things.

I suspect this is easier to get at when we start with ourselves, and our own names, and the names of people around us. After all, we not only have a name, we have quite a few of them—we have first names and last names and titles; most of us have married names, maiden names, nicknames, pet names, and those other names we would really like to forget. And which of those names we, and other people, use, and the way we (and they) use them, says a lot.

When I was first ordained (back when dirt was young) my family had a ball talking about ‘my brother the father’, or, as one sister still sometimes calls me, ‘father brother’. Which is all good fun; but imagine what it would mean if I actually insisted that my brothers and sisters only address me as "Father". It would be not only weird, but also hurtful, for a couple of reasons.

First, I would be saying something harsh about my relationship to them, since the names we use acknowledge and express our relationships; and, second, since my name is a sort of key to who I am, insisting on a title instead of a name would be a way of hiding the real me, the personal me, from my family.

The same thing is going on in the other direction when some smart-aleck 14 year-old kid in a fast food restaurant insists on calling me "Jim", or (a little more prissy, perhaps) when someone I don’t know and who would never set foot in St. Mary’s or care to learn our traditions, calls me ‘Preacher’. (Also, and I know this can really vary among families and may date me, but it still grates when I hear young children calling their parents by their first names.) You all know plenty of other examples of the sort of thing I’m talking about.

What’s happening in all of these cases is a sort of dishonesty. They are time when names, which turn out to matter quite a bit, are being used in ways that do not properly acknowledge and express the relationships that in fact exist; and so, an important way into who we are and what we are about is being misused—and something false is implied.

Now, with all of this in mind, we can look at another name, the name of God the Father. You probably noticed that I asked Inez to depart from the text that is in your leaflet (and in the particular translation we use) and to use ‘Yahweh’ instead of ‘the lord’. ‘Yahweh’ is probably the way that the proper name of God, which is what ‘the lord’ translates, was pronounced when it was spoken in Hebrew.

But there is still some real debate about that. There is debate because, beginning about 600 years before Jesus was born, the divine name, the name God gave Moses, was not spoken—and attempts to re-create how it sounded have had, and still have, a variety of conclusions.

The name of God was not spoken. Now, this was in part to keep it from being profaned—you couldn’t take the name of God in vain if you didn’t say it—but, on an even deeper level, it says something very important about how Israel had come to understand God, and Israel’s relationship to God. The name of God was not spoken—and at the same time Israel came more and more to understand God as distant, as apart from his people, and as confined, really, to the words on the page if Torah. A vital link between God and his people was lost; and so great was this loss that God’s personal and active presence—the Holy Spirit that guided the Kings and inspired the Prophets—was understood as having left Israel. The heavens were shut, and all of God that was left to his people was memories, and the written word.

In other words, Israel was no longer on a first name basis with God; and this lack of the use of God’s name was both a way of expressing and of constituting this new, and more distant, relationship with God, and of removing from Israel an important key to God’s immediate presence.

This is why the Feast of the Holy Name is truly important, and why it belongs right next door to Christmas. For today we celebrate—not the fact that Jesus was named ‘Jesus’ instead of, say ‘Floyd’ or ‘George’—rather we celebrate the fact that God has again spoken his name to his people, and not just as a word, but more, as the Word made flesh. God has spoken his name as a person.

Eight days after Christmas God gave us his name with a force, a potency, and a significance that overshadows Sinai, and, for us, supersedes whatever Moses was told on the mountain.

For in speaking his name as Jesus, God has changed forever his relationship to us—from studied formality to that real intimacy that is implied by being on a first name basis at its best—and more.

It’s not that the in the name ‘Jesus’ we have some kind of magic word, a sort of verbal talisman we can wave around and make things happen. That’s not it all. Instead, God has given us the fullness of what is only hinted at in our own names. We have the gift of a new relationship with God, a first-name relationship that is more intimate than casual, more immediate than informal. And we also have an invitation, an invitation to intimacy with all of the power, the love, and the inherent connection to all of creation and all of its creatures, which are parts of who God is. Remember, the name of Jesus is the name of God, and it is in the person, the whole person, of Jesus Christ that we see and know most clearly who God is, and what God is about as far as we are concerned.

So we celebrate the Holy Name of Jesus for the same reason we celebrate Christmas: the promises to Mary and Joseph have been fulfilled, a virgin did conceive and bear a son, and his name most certainly means that God is with us. It is the name that is above every other name, and—in joy and thanksgiving, at the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow.

The Lessons for today: Exodus 34.1-8; Psalm 8; Romans 1.1-7; Luke 2.15-21
 

A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:

Epiphany

Lent
 

Holy Week Preaching, 2005


Archive of St. Mary's Sermons from August 15, 2004

Back to St. Mary's Homepage
 

Fr. Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX  79721
(432) 267-8201 (phone)

Stmarys@stmarysbst.org 

The page background is courtesy  of  Windy's Page designs.

This page last updated on November 18, 2006

The Baptism of the Lord, January 8, 2006

"Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights. I have put my Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations." Isaiah says to look at the one whom the Lord has chosen, to pay attention, to notice how he acts. Keep those words in mind—let them drift through your mind during this sermon.

I want Isaiah playing in the background because I’m going to talk about the baptism of Jesus—about what it says about Jesus and about us—and I am convinced that the baptism of Jesus is how this prophesy of Isaiah begins to take flesh.

Imagine the scene. Mark just gives the bare bones; but we have all seen imaginative pictures of what John’s baptizing might have looked like. It was not the good or the heroic who filled the river Jordan and waited their turn for baptism. It was people who were quite ordinary, and generally quite poor, and not particularly good. Many, if not most, were there for fire insurance. They feared the wrath to come, and wanted a way out. John’s preaching was about sin and repentance and the coming day of the Lord. The word was that you were bad; and God was mad; and there was a mighty judgment coming. John towered over this scene like a mountain, and made the call to baptism with passion, force, and a terrible immediacy.

By the way, the baptism part was new. Never before had Jews been baptized. Gentile men who were proselytes—converts to the Jewish faith—they were sometimes baptized. Gentile women proselytes were always baptized. But never Jews.

And John was saying that sin was so deep, and God was so just, and judgment was so near, that it was time for Jews, even Jews, to be baptized for the forgiveness of sins—to be treated as if they were as unclean as the gentiles.

And the people heard, and the people came; Lord, did they come. The ordinary, unremarkable, sinful, people of the land flocked to John and to this baptism, to this forgiveness, to this way of being ready for the mighty acts of God that, everyone was sure, were just around the corner. They came and the river was packed with a sea of frightened, repentant, uneducated folks—many of whom may very well have been doing the first sincere, or almost sincere, religious act of their lives. The Jordan ran black with sin that day.

Meanwhile, there were some other folks, standing on the bank and watching—with amusement, and with interest. These included some Pharisees and some folks from the Temple—priests, Sadducees, other functionaries. This bunch was a little concerned about the social and political fall-out from scenes like this. Still, as far as they were concerned, John was just another religious nut—dry roasted in the desert, lightly salted, and hardly a snack for the authorities if he stepped out of line. Folks like John were a dime a dozen, not to be too taken seriously, but occasionally fun to watch.

Of course, as far as this repentance stuff went, all of the folks on the bank knew that they, personally, were all right. After all, they were not only religious, they were professionals at it. They were well educated, observant, and faithful. They knew what God wanted and they did it. That was the second group there that day, the group on the bank, listening to John’s preaching, and watching from a safe distance.

Then there was Jesus. I picture him off to the side somewhere, standing by himself—also listening, also watching. The Pharisees and other professionally religious folks were wrong when they thought they didn’t need any of that repentance stuff. But Jesus knew that he didn’t need it; and he was right. Jesus was without sin, and he probably knew that.

Jesus really did have the advantages over everybody else that the religious leaders wrongly thought they had. He really was morally and spiritually above the common folks down there. He really was better than anyone else. He could have walked away and been perfectly justified. But he had to decide what he was going to do.

You see, Jesus knew that something new was about to begin. He knew that his hour had come and that it was time to begin his public ministry. He also knew that the way he started that ministry would substantially shape and symbolize the way that ministry would be lived out and ended.

And so, possessed of so much that was special, and so much that was distinctive, and so much that set him apart from everybody else, Jesus watched the poor of the land receiving the Baptism of John for the forgiveness of sins. And he watched the religious leaders standing on the bank, smug and secure.

Notice this: as Jesus stood there, deciding what to about a baptism he didn’t need and had every right to walk away from, the Father was silent, waiting.

Then Jesus moved to the bank and into that water, water filthy with other peoples’ sin. As he did this, Jesus forever joined himself—his life, his ministry and his fate—to the life and the fate of all those ordinary, sinful, and barely repentant people. The Lord insisted on being baptized, not because he needed to repent, but because he choose to identify himself with us, and to join himself to us—to us at our most ordinary, to us at our most common, to us at our most sinful. Of all the possible places that Jesus could be, he choose, and he chooses, to be here, with us.

This is Jesus’ first public appearance, (his first public epiphany) and he does not come forward as somebody special who stands above and apart from regular people, shining and radiant, speaking down to us poor lesser beings. Instead, his first public act is join himself to a multitude of sinners—to say, "here I stand".

In doing this, he has made a choice that will shape his ministry, he has set the direction of his life, and of his death.

And it is at this moment, and not before, that the heavens open, the spirit descends, and the Father speaks. Jesus is named as the beloved son at the moment he is acting the least special—at the moment he walks away from what sets him apart from us, at the moment he joins his fate to ours.

The Father sees all of this, and the Father rejoices in the Son. For Jesus has shown that he understands what it means to be without sin; he understands what it means to be called and to be chosen and to be special. He understands that everything special about him is given to him in order that he may have more to give. He understands that to be chosen is to be called to serve. Always.

Today we remember our own baptisms, and we reaffirm our baptismal vows. A part of this is the reality that, just as Jesus’ baptism joined him to us; so our own baptism has joined us to Jesus. Like him, we are chosen, we are special. The father has given us much. And, like Jesus, we are to remember that we are given much so that we will have more to give.

And day by day we make choices. We make decisions about what we are going to do with all that we have been given. Day by day we decide whether we will stand aloof from the fray, (on the bank, so to speak) safe in our special-ness, or whether we will leave that behind, and join our lives in service to the life of the world. As we decide, the Father watches and waits.

And remember, these days it is to us, and about us, that the Father says ...

"Behold my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights."

Renew Baptismal Vows, page 292.
 

The Lessons for today: Isaiah 42.1-9; Psalm 89; Acts10.34-38; Mark 1.7-11

A list of Sunday Scripture readings, with links to the Biblical Text:

Epiphany

Lent
 

Holy Week Preaching, 2005


Archive of St. Mary's Sermons from August 15, 2004

 

Back to St. Mary's Homepage
 

Fr. Jim Liggett
P.O. Box 2949; Big Spring, TX  79721
(432) 267-8201 (phone)

Stmarys@stmarysbst.org 

The page background is courtesy  of  Windy's Page designs.

This page last updated on November 18, 2006

Epiphany II, Year B, January 15, 2006             

This week I was really grabbed by that long story from I Samuel—the call of Samuel. I suspect that it grabbed me because it sounds a whole lot different to me these days than it ever used to.

It’s really great stuff. We usually give all our attention to Samuel. After all, he is the hero and he has quite a story. His mother, Hannah, was barren, and she prayed for a child and vowed a vow about it. The Lord heard, and Samuel was born. Then, as soon as Samuel was weaned, Hannah left him at the sanctuary at Shiloh to serve the Lord and to help Eli. (Hanna’s family lived about forty miles to the south and she would visit Shiloh once a year and bring Samuel a new set of clothes. Now, this has always seemed to me an odd way to be grateful for a child; but Hannah did have five more kids in a hurry; and she doesn’t seem to regret her vow.) Anyway, that’s how Samuel got there. He was not of a priestly family, he had no official position in the Sanctuary at Shiloh; but he was a pious young fellow, and he was the one that heard the voice of the Lord.

Then there is Eli. Bless his heart, Eli is almost a comic figure. He is an old Priest who had been at it for a long time. He did the best he could with what he had, but he didn’t have all that much. There were some real problems with his kids, and he was sort of letting things slide for the duration of his tenure. The Bible isn’t at all kind to him; it says that he was fat, and that he couldn’t see very well—which are earthy poetic ways of saying that he lacked vision, and that he personified the familiar, comfortable and affluent way of doing things. Eli pretty much was the establishment—the established religious institution, and the established social order.

Old Eli was so secure, and so comfortable, that he could snore right through two or three visits from God, the God he had served for decades, visits to the very room where he was sleeping. He could snore through that and still have less than a clue about what was going on. Not the brightest bulb in the chandelier.

On the other hand, considering what it was God had to say to Samuel, it is understandable that Eli went to great lengths to avoid noticing what was happening. God’s word is that Eli is doomed, and his family is doomed, and just about all his friends are doomed. The old order in Israel is going to pass away, and that’s the way it is.

It turns out that it was not good enough for Eli just to shown up at work every day for fifty or sixty years. It was not good enough for him to have kept things moving along the way they sort of set themselves up to move. More than that had been asked of him, more than that had been expected of him, and God was going to make a change. The Sanctuary at Shiloh was going to be under new management, and so was all of Israel.

So, the young upstart Samuel was on his way in, and poor old fat, blind Eli (and his dynasty) were on their way out. That’s what God said and, before too long, that’s exactly what happened.

Now, I used to like this story a whole lot more than I do now. For quite a while it was really easy to identify neatly and cleanly with Samuel—the young, insightful one that God liked best.

And it was equally easy to see that Eli and all his friends had it coming, the lazy bums; and it probably couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch of old whatever it was they were. That’ll teach ‘em.

But every year, Eli looks more and more familiar. Every year, that nice unambiguous good-guy—bad-guy distinction between Samuel and Eli looks less and less clear. Every year it becomes easier to understand how Eli got to thinking that the church was for him, and that he was too old to change, and that the way things are is pretty much the way they ought to be, or at least the way they will be for the duration of his watch. Every year all of that gets just a little closer to home. So every year what happened to Eli seems less delightful, and more tragic. The years will do that to you, I guess.

But it isn’t all just a matter of age; there is more to it than that. I think that most all of us have a part of ourselves that is Eli, and a part of ourselves that is Samuel. The Eli part of us is the established part, the old, familiar ways of doing things part, (which maybe isn’t the part with the most vision, or the best waistline). The Samuel part of us is more flexible, and is open to new and different things. It’s the part of us that can hear new voices and see a new way for life to be. Now, the fact is, much of the time, for much of what we do and need to do, Eli is the best bet. That’s where we find the stability, the continuity, and the direction that our lives and our society and our church need if they are going to make it for the long haul. We need Eli—maybe not quite so fat and blind as in this story—but we need him.

Still, the word to us from today’s lessons is simply that, from time to time, God still does the sort of thing he did with Samuel. Every now and then, God shows up and says, "It’s time for a change, it’s time for something different, it’s time to seek new vision, and find a new direction." God still does that. Certainly not always, and Lord knows not every change is inspired by God (far from it.) But from time to time, God does this.

That’s what happened to Nathaniel. Nathaniel was a good southerner, (they had that North and South thing in Israel, too) and as such he never expected anything of value to come from Nazareth, or any place up north. But there Jesus was, and Nathaniel either had to come and see or miss the boat. So he went, and he saw, and everything was different.

And God still does this sort of thing. God still shifts things around, and aims life in new directions, and sets us to new tasks, and lets us know that the way it was isn’t the way it’s going to be from now on. (Now, this is one of the things about God I like less and less every year. But that doesn’t seem to slow God down much; it just increases my chances of sleeping through something important.)

So, we need to listen, and we need to pay attention for that word to Samuel that happens within us. Because God just might tap us on the shoulder, or wake us up one night, with new direction for our lives, or new priorities for our families or our work, or new ministry for our parish. He just might. There’s no telling. But we do need to listen, and to be open. Because God isn’t finished with us yet, and God may well have all sorts of interesting things in store. God does that sort of thing.

The Lessons for today: I Samuel 3.1-20; Psalm 63.1-8; I Corinthians 6.11b-20; John 1.43-51
 

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This page last updated on November 18, 2006

Epiphany III, Year B, January 22, 2006

By Deacon John Marshall

I have just recently learned of a scientific experiment that was carried out right here in Big Spring by a young gentleman here in town that we all know and love. This experiment dealt with a fascinating aspect of our physical bodies. I was fortunate enough to get involved in a very small way because it had to do with an aspect of our vision.

Things are seldom as simple as they appear and this experiment helped to explore and reveal some of this complexity of our visual system. Seth Trevino can give you the full details on his experiment for it was from his creative insight that the idea to question this aspect of our being was raised. He was trying to find out why older people (over 30) (I do need to talk to you about what ‘older’ really is) were better at seeing optical illusions than younger people (less than 20 years of age). That was the question he asked me, "What was it about the eyes that would allow something such as this to take place?" I had to confess to Seth and now to you that I had to speculate as to why this might be what he was observing in his experiment. The visual system of the human animal¹ is amazing in its ability to interpret accurately the world around us. It allows us to walk down the street and see trees, flowers and the whole spectrum of colors and while we are doing that dodge kids on skate boards and not fall off curbs; it allows us to drive a car down the freeway at 70 mph, it allows us to fly aircraft at supersonic speeds and live to tell about, and it even allows us to gaze into the heavens light years away. The vision system is also wonderful in its shear complexity-there are volumes upon volumes upon volumes of research delving into the intricate workings of this sense. Part of that complexity means that vision is not an on or off type of sense.

The eyelids don’t go up in the morning flipping on a switch and turning on our vision system-because we can see things with our eyes closed through our visual memory (but that is a whole other topic). When you do open your eyes something truly phenomenal happens. These little things traveling to us called photons (which are light energy) strike receptors in the back of the eye and this triggers a series of very complex chemical reactions that in turn excites adjoining neurons within the retina and that gives rise to flood of neural activity. Some of this activity is excitatory in nature and some inhibitory. (You might be surprised to know that there is actually more inhibition going on in the retina than there is excitatory type stimulation.) This mass of nerve activity that flows from the eye is further filtered and reduced and then separated and sent to different areas of the brain with most going to the visua