During his Charge to Convention last month, Bishop Ohl used an interesting and somewhat uncommon word. The world was ‘penultimate’. Most of you know it. It’s a fine old Latin word that means ‘next to the last’. Not the last, not the ultimate, but next to that, before that. The penultimate things are not the ultimate things, but the things that come before them. Now, penultimate is a great word to hear and ponder as we listen to these wonderful Biblical stories about the end of all things, about “dreadful portents and great signs from heaven” and the day of the Lord burning like an oven, and how not one stone will be left upon another. Such saying are really all about the Bishop’s word.

I’ll start with the temple in Jerusalem. In the first century, the temple was absolutely the center of Jewish religion, history, culture, civilization and civic pride. It was a whiz-bang temple, one of the finest in the region. Solomon himself had designed it, and King Herod had recently completely renovated it. Herod had made it quite a bit bigger and a whole lot more elaborate. In it’s thousand-year history, the Temple had never been as glorious, as extensive, or as popular as it was when Jesus and his disciples visited. It was certainly seen as the ultimate thing in Israel; and as central, indeed indispensable, to the plan of God and the fate of the nation.

Now, when Jesus and his disciples visited the temple for the first time, the disciples were like a bunch of hicks in the big city, staring around with their jaws kinda hanging loose, pointing at everything and saying “wow” a lot. Jesus isn’t quite as impressed; and he says two things about the Temple. First, he predicts, quite correctly, that the Temple would soon be completely destroyed—that not one stone would be left upon another—somebody was going to stomp that sucker flat—which is exactly that happened about 35 years later, after an unsuccessful rebellion against Rome.
That’s the first thing Jesus says. The second is more subtle. As he predicts the destruction of the temple, and the chaos that goes with it, Jesus also says, (again quite correctly) “the end will not follow immediately”. The temple will crumble, but otherwise things will go on pretty much as before. There will still be much to do. There will be testimony to give, and evil to resist, and prayers to say—just like before the Temple was destroyed. So, the temple falls, but “the end will not follow immediately”. Now, that must have been a hard thing to hear. It was almost impossible for anyone in Israel to imagine the destruction of the temple. What would be even harder to imagine was the destruction of the temple and the rest of the whole world not coming to an end right then. After all, the Temple was the ultimate thing, the final thing: if it went, everything else was sure to go, too. ||But that was wrong. The Temple was not the ultimate thing after all, it was only one of the penultimate things, something that was next to ultimate, maybe, but that’s all. All of creation does not hang on it. The main thing, the one truly important and indispensable thing, is God, and what God is up to. Everything else is penultimate.

Everything else takes a back seat. Everything else can—and will—crumble to dust. Anything else can, and will, crumble to dust. The fate of creation hangs on none of them. Who God is and what God is up to, that is what abides, that is the main thing. That alone is ultimate.

It can be very hard to remember this. It was very hard for the Christian Church in Jerusalem when the temple actually fell and the world did not end. Lots of people then simply could not separate what was most important and most valuable and most immediate to them from what was most important and most valuable and most immediate to God. For many, the Temple’s fall was devastating, and seemed to prove God false. They confused the ultimate with the penultimate.

And something very much like that is still with us. we all have our temples, our penultimates. We all have our own ideas of what is indispensable to creation—these may be personal things, religious things, social or cultural things, things we cannot conceive being otherwise, or doing differently, or losing; things we cannot imagine that either we or God could ever live without. So, every now and then, we need to be reminded that these things are not quite ultimate.

It is very important to be able to make that distinction—to be able to realize that our special concern, our pet project, our current passion, is not really the same thing as the kingdom of God, or the will of God. This whole business of the last things, the end of the world, all of that is here to remind us that our stuff, no matter how important it may be, our stuff is not ultimate. It will all pass away. Remember the word...penultimate.

Instead, it is who God is and what God is doing, right now among us, that is of ultimate importance. Nothing else matters nearly as much, nothing else will matter for so long. The point is not to hang on real tight to what we have. The point is to keep our eyes and hearts open, and our hands busy at what we need to be about.

Staying clear on what really matters, learning what has eternal significance and what does not, this is one of the great arts of the Christian life. It can be very difficult—after all, most of the things in our lives that demand our attention and our energy and our anxiety are not evil things. They tend to be good things, worthwhile things, important things—just like the temple was a good thing. But they are penultimate things; and it is good for us not to lose sight of this. It is important to keep the main thing the main thing. Especially these days.

This week we begin what is for many of us the most hectic, intense stressful and anxious six weeks of the year. It is always a time of complicated and conflicting demands on our time, our energy and our spirits. These weeks can be a wonderful time, or they can be a not so wonderful time. They are a time when it is very easy to forget what is ultimate and what is not.

With all of that in mind, it is rather refreshing to hear about the end of the world. There is certainly no better time to be reminded that so much of what we get so wrapped up in during Advent is like that temple in Jerusalem—it may seem pretty big and pretty important; indeed, it may be pretty big and pretty important, but it will pass away; and the end is not yet.

What is ultimate will abide and triumph, in God’s good time and in God’s surprising ways. We need to pay attention to that, both in the depth of our souls and in the details of our behavior. The rest we can relax about a bit, the rest will come and go. The rest we have a word for.

       The Lessons for today:  Malachi 3.13--4.2a, 5-6; Psalm 95; II Thessalonians 3.6-13; Luke 21.15-19

Isn't John the Baptist something? Every year during Advent and Epiphany we listen to John, and we have to deal with the power and the focused intensity of his message. He is one of those preachers you can’t help but take personally. He talks about moral values.

I want to get at John the Baptist today by way of one of my favorite topics, which is the notion of identity. After all, while life is lived by looking forward, it is only fully understood by knowing who we are, by knowing our story, and that comes from looking backwards.

I am pretty much convinced that if we really know who we are, we will most likely stay out of trouble—or we will at least know what we’re doing when we get into trouble. If we really know who we are, we will pretty much know what to do. If we know what our story is, or, better, if we know what story we are a part of—life will have much clearer direction and purpose. We sin, we violate our moral values, when we act like are someone else, or when we act like it doesn’t really matter who we are, when we act as if we have no family, no story.

Now, who we are is Christian people, that story is our first story, our defining story. It’s a story that goes back to creation, and to the dawn of history. It includes Abraham, and his journey in response to God’s word. Our story has within it the story of Israel, and so those wonderful promises we just heard from Isaiah are promises to us, as well.

From there our story continues until it includes that birth in that manger we anticipate so sharply in Advent. It includes the Apostle Paul, with his promises that God’s new thing of love and power in Jesus will ultimately embrace and redeem all of creation. Our story insists that, first of all, before we are anything else, we are people who have been named by God as God’s own beloved children, and called into special relationship with him. This is who we are. If we listen to this, it can give context and meaning to everything we do.

It should also give us special ears for hearing the preaching of John the Baptist. Now think about this: John did not go to Babylon or to Egypt or some other pagan center of a mostly pagan world in order to preach to the worst pagans there were—the way Jonah did. Instead, John preached to the people in and around Jerusalem, and to the Pharisees and Sadducees. He preached to the chosen and special people of God, to people like us.

He still does. I suspect that this is why, no matter how many times we hear John the Baptist’s message, it is impossible to avoid the feeling that he speaking directly to us; that he is getting really personal, and that he means every single word that he says. If we listen, we squirm.|| Here is John’s first word to us: Moral values are never first or primarily about them— about someone else. First and primarily, they are about us.

You see, the whole point of John’s preaching is to get the people of Israel to take their identity seriously, to live as the person each already is; and to live together as the community they are already called to be. The folks listening to John are the children of Abraham, heirs of his promise, just as we are. Their problem is that they seemed to think that is the place to stop—that such a gift meant they were off the hook; that morality was mainly for others who were not children of Abraham. Wrong, John bellows; such identity is the place to begin.

They said, “I am a child of Abraham, I am one of God’s chosen, I have nothing to worry about”. John the Baptist said that it was because they were children of Abraham that they had better start worrying. To have Abraham as their father did not guarantee that God would always like what they did. Instead, having Abraham as their father meant that they were called to a special mission, a mission that included both service and holiness—a mission that had no room for privilege, or for self-righteousness. It has always meant that; it still does. That’s why the Pharisees got such a rough going over; that why the Baptist can still get to us.

The folks John preached to were not the worst of the lot by any means. Quite the contrary. It was their identity as leaders, as models, as good Church-going, God-fearing, decent folks that made their situation especially serious, and their sin, their forgetfulness, especially dangerous. More was expected of them because they were the chosen people of God.

So, here we are, good Church-going, pledge-making, God-fearing, clean-living, daily-bathing, bill-paying, decent folks who publicly profess to be Christians. We do things like come here, and send our children to Sunday School, wear jewelry that says the cross is important, and put bumper stickers that say we are Episcopalians on our cars. We are all, by choice, daily, walking advertisement for the Christian faith. We have been baptized, and we come forward week in and week out to receive the sacrament of the body and blood of Jesus Christ. These are all good things; they are all very good things.

The reason we are called to repent and to prepare is not because we are rotten to the core and have never been worth much and so we had better change that. We are called to repent because we are just the opposite. We are called to repent because we are chosen, loved, cherished by God, held in his hand. We are called to repent because much is expected of us; because we are chosen for special ministry and mission. Identity and judgment go hand in hand. There is no group of folks, anywhere, that should be more conscious of its sins, (rather than the sins of others) and more sharply aware of the need to repent than we. The point is not that we are among the worst of sinners, the point is exactly that we are not.


It is to us that God’s promises have first been given, in order that, through us, all creation may know the depth of God’s love. It is to us that the prophets spoke, and the hope of humanity was revealed, so all humanity may be delivered from despair.

And it is to us that the child in the manger first comes—not because we are best, but because we, with all who have gone before us, are called to be light that reflect and reveal the light that is coming into the world. So, of course, it is to us that John the Baptist preached repentance, that we may remember who we are, and act like it.

 "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another.” Quite a different John the Baptist from the one we heard last week. John is in prison, and he hears reports of what Jesus is doing, so he sends a few of his remaining disciples to ask this of Jesus.

There have been centuries of speculation about what is going on with this question. Many have theorized that John was worried because thousands had not flocked to Jesus and either repented and restored Israel to purity or started a revolution (or both). Others suspect that John was troubled because God’s fiery judgment had not descended upon (at least) the Romans. After all, the axe was supposed to be laid to the root of the tree; and John didn’t see any chopping going on. Still others have other ideas.

Without prejudging any of these alternatives, today I want to look at John’s question from a more personal perspective—by looking at what was happening to him when he sent that question to Jesus.

Chosen by God from his birth, John had literally exchanged his life for his mission. He had been faithful to his destiny. His total being was invested in proclaiming the imminent triumph of God’s Kingdom. He had preached his heart out, and he thought he had been right both in what he said and in pointing to Jesus as the promised one. So how does God repay such a lifetime of sacrifice and faithfulness? John is in prison, powerless, miserable, and well aware that he shouldn’t buy any green bananas. He knew his life was almost over. At the hands of an immoral and perverse King Herod whom John had rightly condemned.
Besides all of that, not only were John’s disciples vanishing into the night, but also, and worse, not one single thing that John had prophesied had happened. Not one. His world and his hopes were in ruins.

Meanwhile, Jesus seems to be out there somewhere else, having a ball, eating stuff and drinking stuff John had never been allowed to eat and drink, sharing his table with the very sinners John had condemned, and not at all looking like he is about to swing John’s axe. Is Jesus the one?

John’s question, John’s cry, is ancient and universal. It is his and it is ours. It is the cry of everyone lost with little or no prospect of being found. It is the cry of everyone locked up in prisons of fear, grief, pain, guilt, loneliness, illness, anger, resentment, despair, or iron bars. It is a cry that we may well hear, or feel, with special poignancy during these holiday times. It is simply the cry of why me, why this, why now, why not somebody else who really deserves it more? Is Jesus the best there is, or is there someone or something more useful out there?

Jesus doesn’t help much, either, at least not at first glace. Jesus tells John to look around at other people and other events; he suggests that maybe John is expecting the wrong things; he hints that it really isn’t all about John; he offers both a mild rebuke and some rather mixed praise of John, ||and that’s about it. Even worse, Jesus doesn’t do one single thing to get John out of prison, or to give him his life back. Jesus seems to leave John locked up, and to move on with his own agenda. “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another.”

The question of “Why me, why this, and where are you?” is a very good question. It’s a question we ask, a question we need to address. I wish it were a question that had a clear and simple answer. It doesn’t. John deserved better and he didn’t get it. So with many others. And vice-versa. Herod happens. Prisons happen. While it is certainly true that prayers are answered, and that wonderful, unexpected and impossible things go on, it is also true that Jesus does not always show up with a convenient miracle to make everything all right. That is just how it is, that is the way of an ambiguous and sometimes vicious world; and no one is exempt or protected. John the Baptist was living that; and he asked our question about it. Again, it is a question with no clear and simple answer.

The closest thing we get to an answer is the one John got. It is Jesus’ promise of hope. Real hope, the only kind of hope there honestly is. Jesus does not try to play Santa Clause with John the Baptist, saying that since he has been really good he will get everything on his list. None of that.

Instead of being Santa, Jesus quotes Isaiah, and Jesus tells John that God is doing a new thing to all creation. God is doing something that might seem to be apart from John and might seem to ignore John; but it is something that includes John none the less. It is a new thing of God’s love and power that will so transform creation that every bit of John’s defeat and pain will somehow be swallowed up by it, and destroyed by it, and all that will be left of it is God’s victory.
The EFM material offers simple but potent definition of hope. It says simply that “hope is knowing that, in the end, there is God, that nothing can separate us from the fullness of life that God has prepared for us.” In the end, there is God.

You see, to be real, hope must be a vast thing, a huge thing. Real hope embraces all of creation, and it includes us because we are a part of that. It is not about us, we are caught up in it, as if in a tornado; and the bits of God’s victory we can see now (as John could see when he looked beyond his own self) are but hints of the real thing in its fullness. Real hope insists that, as loud and as powerful and as real as the prisons and pains of this world are, they are not the last word that creation has to say to us. They are not all there is; indeed, they are not the most powerful or the most abiding of all there is.

The point is not that we should struggle joyously through this veil of tears hoping for pie in the sky by and by. The point is that we can choose to live hopefully and expectantly, looking for the signs of God’s victory that are around us even now (whether they have to do with us or not) and living with the certainly that the Holy Way God is building in every wilderness is for all of God’s people and (thanks be to God) “no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.”

No, John didn’t get out of prison, or see his greatest dreams come true. And yes, Jesus is the one—there is no other. It is Jesus alone who brings real hope and deep healing to the world’s pain, and to ours; and it is to he, and he alone, who shall have the last word about us, and about all of creation. And that last word begins with the cry in the manger.

 The Lessons for today:  Isaiah 35.1-10; Psalm 146.4-9; James 5.1-10; Matthew 11.2-11             

The Lessons for today:  Isaiah 9.2-4, 6-7; Psalm 96; Titus 2.11-14; Matthew 11.2-11              

 That story of Jesus in the Temple is the only account of the Lord’s growing up that has been preserved in Scripture. However, there were hundreds of other stories about the boy Jesus that were making the rounds about the time the New Testament was finally put together, and some of them are really fascinating. These stories had Jesus doing all sorts of interesting things like making clay birds and bringing them to life, getting mad at his teachers and giving them leprosy, having fights with his playmates and killing them dead, (but bringing them back to life when Mary told him to), really bizarre stuff. But the Church judged all these stories as pious frauds, as somehow missing the truth, both historically and theologically.

But not this one. The one about the Temple was seen as different, as special. The Church saw that this story tells the truth. It tells the truth theologically—it tells the truth about who Jesus is, and about how Lord is present among us now.

Look at the story; The Blessed Virgin Mary, our Patron, the greatest of the Saints and the Queen of heaven, was just about ready to throttle the kid. Part of growing up in a pious middle-class Jewish family was the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. This trip was probably no different from about a dozen other such trips; a least not until they started home. Suddenly Jesus comes up missing.

(By the way, this was not a case of parental carelessness. Mary and Joseph had every reason to believe that Jesus was with the caravan. This sort of shared responsibility for children is as much a part of near-eastern life now as it was then. Jesus knew the drill; and at 12 he had for years been old enough to be responsible for getting where he belonged when he was supposed to be there.)
But he wasn’t where he was supposed to be; he wasn’t where he was expected to be, he wasn’t, it seemed, anywhere to be found. They looked in all of the usual places, no Jesus. Now, I imagine it was at this point in the story that the early Church began to suspect that this one was a keeper, that it was not just some pious attempt to make up something about Jesus at twelve that matched all the stories going around about the precocious things other famous people like Alexander the Great, Cyrus, Epicurus, Daniel and David when they were twelve.

Jesus could not be found; he was not in the usual places, he was not where he was supposed to be. The early Church knew from their own lives and from their own prayers and from the witness of the Apostles that it was often like that with the Jesus they knew, with the grown-up and the risen Jesus. The early Church knew that once you let this baby out of the manger, he would be a hard dog to keep on the porch. There was just no telling what would happen. Their Jesus, the Jesus they knew, and remembered, and met as Lord, this Jesus acted very much like the boy Jesus in this story; and the Church knew that.

So they said ‘yes’, and they read on. ||You know what happens next: Mary and Joseph, that sweet couple in all the nativity scenes, finally track Jesus down in the Temple courtyard where he is being a very bright little student.

Now, anyone who has ever had a child get lost and then be found knows the mixed feeling that come when you finally find the kid. You want to hug them and you want to scream at them and you are so happy and so mad all at once that you stand there for a while glaring and grinning at the same time. Mary no doubt did that. Afterwards, Mary chews Jesus out pretty good for acting like an inconsiderate jerk, for not caring enough for the people who should be the most important to him, and for making her and Joseph feel bad. After all, it was Jesus’ job to be a good person and to make them feel good. And he didn’t. Sound familiar? Ever wanted to say to Jesus, “why have you treated me this way?” Ever been exasperated at him because he doesn’t seem to be considerate enough or thoughtful enough or available enough? Ever been looking for him anxiously? The early Church knew all about that, just like we know all about that. There is something in Mary’s little lecture to Jesus that rang true to their experience, and to ours. Everyone who has seriously engaged the spiritual journey with Jesus knows this; we have all said to Jesus what Mary said to him, and with exactly the same feelings. We know about this.

Back to the story: After this great lecture, Mary and Joseph no doubt expect Jesus to be contrite and humble, apologizing and promising never to do anything like that ever again. You know how that goes. Even if you don’t really expect the kid never to do it again, you expect them to promise—with bowed head and an especially sincere voice—never to do it again.

Once more, Jesus doesn’t come through. Instead of apologizing, he tells his parents that they are thick-headed and not thinking clearly. If they had realized who he was, and if they had understood who his father was, they would know that it was their job to follow him, and not his job to be where they expected him to be. If they had only stopped for a minute and thought about it, they would have realized what was going on. But Mary and Joseph had their expectations, they had their habits, and they had figured that Jesus would stay put, or at least stay available. So they lost him for a while, and he didn’t seem a bit sorry about it.

By now the early church knew that this was a real story about the real Jesus, and not a work of someone’s overactive imagination. The story tells the truth about what it is like to live with the Lord, and to live around him. Once that cute baby Jesus in the manger starts to grow up, once we begin dealing with who he really is, then things will change.

That’s because Jesus has his own agenda, his own plans for where he will be, and for where he wants us to be. And that still drives people crazy, just like it did to Mary and Joseph so long ago.

Jesus has his own mission, his own goals, his own priorities, his own way of doing things. He is single-minded about this. He will be found where he chooses to be, and not somewhere we think he should be, or somewhere that makes us the most comfortable. And sometimes he won’t even be where he was last year.

Like Mary and Joseph, we may find ourselves wondering where Jesus went, and how to find him again. That’s the way it is. That’s a part of realizing that Jesus is Lord and we are not. That’s part of the frustration and the anxiety and the excitement of the Christian life. And that’s all right. Because wherever that search leads us, and however frustrating and infuriating and difficult that search may be, the Lord is, in fact, always closer to us than we are to ourselves, calling us to a different place, to a new place, to wherever he knows we need to be next. The search is well worth the trouble; and each step of the journey will lead us deeper into the mystery of His life, and of our own.

                The Lessons for today:  Jeremiah 31.7-17, Ephesians 1.3-6, 15-19a; Luke 2.41-52

This page last updated on November 18, 2006

The story is told of Martin Luther that every morning, when he woke up, the very first thing he did was make the sign of the cross and say, “Remember, Martin, that you are baptized.” That’s a smart way to start a day, very smart.

That’s also what today, the First Sunday after Epiphany, the story of the Baptism of Jesus, is always about. It is about making the sign of the cross, and remembering that we are baptized. When we can, we do baptisms on this day; one way or another, we renew our Baptismal covenant. We remember.

Today, I want to talk about this in a very basis way, I want to remind us of three truths about ourselves that come to us by and through our baptism, three things that our readings today make especially clear.

We have to keep coming back to this—to the issue of identity. Remember, we are going to get our identity, our sense of who we are and of what is important to and about us, from somewhere; and if we do not consciously and deliberately discover it from our faith, we will find it from the world—we will understand ourselves in terms of the world’s categories and values. That happens whenever we think that the most important things about us have to do with stuff like what we do for a living or what we have or don’t have, or how we look, or how old we are, or how healthy we are, or anything like that. That’s getting our identity from the world.

Sure, things like this are important. But who we are, first and primarily, is not given to us by the world. Who we are, first and primarily, we learn at our Baptism. That is a big part of what it means to live as a Christian: It means to discover the heart of our identity from our faith—and from nowhere else. So, here are three parts of this: Nothing new: These are ancient truths which we need always to keep in front of us; I’ve said them all before. The first is that we, at our Baptism, like Jesus at His Baptism, are named beloved of God. What God said to Jesus at Jesus' Baptism, he says to us at ours. “You are my child, my beloved.” God said this to us; God continues to say this to us. We have to hear it. In the words of Isaiah, we are taken by the hand of God, and kept as God’s own. That’s who we are. That’s where we begin. Now, we can deny this, we can act like it isn’t true, we can betray it, we can ignore it. But we can never change it. This is the living heart of the identity that God gives us.

I am convinced that if we allow this reality to sink deeply into us, if we take it as seriously as we can, if we try to discover what it means; then our lives will be transformed, our lives will be different. We are beloved of God; God has taken us by the hand and kept us. That’s first.

The second is like unto it—and is also neatly stated in Isaiah, where God says of His beloved not only “I have taken you by the hand”, but also, “I have given you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the nations.” “I have given you”, that’s the second part. We do not exist for ourselves, or for our own sake. God has made us to be servants, to be, in whatever way—and that’s going to be real individual among us—but to be a gift, to be a person and a community that helps, that builds up, and strengthens, and enriches whatever place and people we are around. God has embraced us, God has called us, and that means he has called us, not for privilege, not for our own conclusions or our own ends, but for service, for the sake of others.

Archbishop William Temple once described the Church as “The only institution that exists primarily for the benefit of people who are not members.” In the same way, Christian people are those people who exist primarily for the benefit, for the good, of others. This, too, is who we are. Taking this seriously can also transform us. First, we are beloved of God. Second, and at the same time, we are given to the world. The third thing I want to remind us that is part of our identity as Christians is the presence of the Holy Spirit—God’s own gift of power and direction. The Holy Spirit is given in Baptism. It was given to Jesus, and it is given to us. We have within ourselves the very stuff of God’s activity, the very power and direction of God. That gift is real, that gift is ours.

Now, this is not always the sort of power and direction we want. We usually want power as the world counts power: the power to coerce, the power to change what we want changed, and to fix what we call broken. That’s not usually how the Holy Spirit works in people’s lives.

Remember, the very first thing the Holy Spirit did with Jesus was to drive Him into the wilderness, into a very uncomfortable place, and there force Him to deal with some very difficult questions. (Next time you find yourself in an uncomfortable place or being faced with some very difficult questions, it might be helpful to wonder who sent you there. Such a situation is not always a bad thing.)

And while the presence and the power of the spirit is sometimes clear and unmistakable, it often isn’t; it can often be ignored or denied. Finally, and this is important, the power and presence of the Spirit is generally something that we will discover fully only by needing it; only by reaching beyond ourselves and seeking God’s help to do that. We discover the Spirit as we try to take seriously this business of being named as beloved of God, and of being given to the world as his servant. ||The Holy Spirit is with us, not to make any of this easy or automatic, but to make it possible, and so to make us all we can be. We will discover it more and more as we rely on it more and more. All of this is a bit of who we are, a bit of what we remember when we remember that we are baptized. We are, each and every one of us, God’s beloved child; we are, individually and together, given to the world as servants, and we have received God’s Holy Spirit, which is the power to make that all possible.

This is a lot. It’s enough to keep us busy. And this identity is primary, it comes before all else. The world did not give it to us; nothing can take it away. As long as we remember who we are, we will know where to begin, an where we are headed.

This is what we do today, on the first Sunday after the Epiphany, we remember that we are baptized.

Continue with the Baptismal Covenant, on Page 292.

Last Sunday I talked about baptism and identity, and I began with that wonderful sentence from Isaiah, where God says three things to Israel, to Israel’s servant, and to us: God says “I have called you in righteousness, I have taken you by the hand and kept you; I have given you as a covenant to the people”. I talked then about being held in God’s hand, and about being given as a gift to people. These two can be very helpful ways of understanding the Christian life, both for individuals and for a parish.

Today I want to look at the first of those things God says to us. God says, “I have called you...”. That fits right in with today’s section of John’s Gospel, where we hear his account of the call of the first few disciples. John the Baptist points to Jesus and says of him “Behold the Lamb of God.” Two of the Baptist’s disciples hear this, stop following John, are called by Jesus to follow him—and off they go.

Now this business of being called is a tricky and an important thing. It is easy to get confused about it, especially the way we use it these days. We tend to equate being called with doing some specific thing—usually a pretty major thing. We talk of being called to be ordained, or being called to a special—usually a full-time and professional—form of service.

And that’s about all we do with being called. This way, most of us can listen to the call of these disciples and neatly separate what happened to them from what is going on with us. “After all, they were called—we’re just ordinary people.” So we’re safe from that.

I have seen this from an interesting perspective over the last 20 years or so I have spent on Commissions on Ministry in three Dioceses. One of the things we do is interview people who want to be ordained;
and these folks really struggle with this idea of call. A few of them have had very powerful experiences of the presence of God, and they think that means they have to do something new and different; for Episcopalians, that usually means get ordained. Most of them, though have come, through pretty circuitous paths, to suspect that it might be a good idea to get ordained; but they aren’t sure if they are called, whatever that might mean. So they all just dread talking to us because they know we are going to ask them about it; and they all think they ought to have a better answer tha