Press on

Thomas Kleinert

Philippi was a Macedonian city in north-eastern Greece that became a Roman colony under Octavian, on his rise to becoming Emperor Augustus. Philippi was also the first city in Europe where followers of Jesus gathered to worship God and break bread in remembrance of the risen Lord. Paul and his missionary team played a significant role in the initial formation of the community of believers, and the brothers and sisters in Philippi held a special place in the Apostle’s heart.

“I thank my God every time I remember you,” he writes in the opening of his letter, “constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.”[1] Joy and gratitude infuse his writing from beginning to end. In the brief passage we heard this morning, he tells them how he longs for them, calling them beloved twice, in addition to referring to them as my joy and my crown—and all in a single sentence. That’s remarkable, and even more so when you consider that Paul was in prison when he wrote the letter.

Joy and gratitude and love—clearly Paul won’t let circumstances drive his mental and emotional state. He may not be able to see past the prison walls, but his vision extends far beyond them, far beyond any circumstance: Paul has his eyes on Jesus, wants to be found in him, seeks the righteousness that comes through faith in him, desires to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings—Not that I have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.

Paul has his eyes on the finish line, the ultimate horizon beyond every horizon: “Beloved,” he writes, “I do not consider that I have made it my own; but … I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”[2]

Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, he sings from his prison cell. Press on, don’t let circumstances distract you from the heavenly call. Oh I know, beloved, the world can be a cold and hostile place, but press on. And I know, sometimes, beloved, your rage and your fear feel like they’re at least twice the size of your faith and hope, but press on. Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on.

Things were difficult in Philippi for followers of Jesus, as they’re bound to be whenever and wherever the church stays true to our heavenly call. And while we don’t know what pressures exactly the church in Philippi was facing, Paul’s teaching points beyond the circumstances anyway: “Live your life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, in no way intimidated by your opponents.”[3] Press on.

Paul tells his readers, “join in imitating me”—and at first that didn’t sound right to me: Is he presenting himself as a model of discipleship here, or perhaps even the model? Does he want to see a community built on the pattern of Paul? I don’t think so, and part of my reaction may be due to the rise of personality cults around the globe, and my deep aversion to their disturbing popularity.

Paul, I believe, has something else altogether on his mind. He invites his readers to take a good look at him and notice where his life and ministry rhyme with the life and ministry of Christ. Those rhymes are not mere illustrations, but manifestations, of the power of the gospel to transform lives. And lives renewed and fulfilled in Christlikeness are the sole point of anything Paul says, writes, does, or suffers. Christ is the pattern. Paul wants his readers to imitate him imitating Christ and press on, so they too begin living lives that rhyme with the life of Christ.

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,” Paul urges—and it’s not just a matter of a new set of ideas, it’s a matter of lived life, new commitments, new priorities, new habits. All of it inspired and empowered by the way of Christ who did not cling to divine privilege, however we might define that, but humbled himself, choosing a life in service to the kingdom of God. Anything we might consider divine privilege disappeared in the public humiliation of his crucifixion, when divine presence could only be perceived as utter absence, and the body of the Messiah became indistinguishable from any human body destroyed in the name of proper power, proper religion, proper order, you name it. Over generations, our deep rejection of God’s reign of love has found countless expressions, many of them brutal and violent, culminating in the crucifixion of the Son of God, but that didn’t stop God from raising Jesus from the dead and highly exalting him and giving him the name that is above every name.[4] Chasing privilege, chasing advantage, chasing supremacy and domination are all too common, but God went the other way. God chose the way of the cross. God chose the way of Jesus. God chose the humble, obedient, compassionate, wounded life of Jesus.

Philippi was a Roman colony and many of its residents were citizens of Rome. I imagine that Paul’s little church included at least some of them, men and women proud of their connection to the most powerful dominion in the known world. No doubt, the church in Philippi also included men and women with no status whatsoever, enslaved persons whose names had been taken away by their human masters who owned and controlled their bodies. And now Paul tells them, all of them, writes it down in his joy-infused letter from prison, because kingdom work got him in trouble yet again: Our citizenship is in heaven.

Our citizenship—that explosive, yet inclusive, little pronoun speaks volumes of the power of belonging to the reign of one greater than Caesar. Our citizenship is elsewhere. We are a colony of heaven, he tells us, and so we’re not surprised when at times we feel like resident aliens in a very foreign land. We are here to proclaim with our whole lives that love is stronger than sin and death, and certainly stronger than fear. We are here to affirm that we are each and all made in the image of God, and while that innate dignity can be denied and violated, it cannot be taken. Christ has made us his own. Everyone belongs.

Screenshot from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html#

I read about a group of journalists who combed through government memos and other documents providing guidance to federal agencies, and created a list of hundreds of flagged words and terms that were to be limited or avoided. In some cases, federal agency managers advised caution in the terms’ usage without instituting an outright ban, but many of the phrases were removed from public-facing websites. Additionally, the presence of some terms was used to automatically flag for review some grant proposals and contracts that could conflict with [recent] executive orders.[5] Not surprisingly, the list contains diversity, equity, and inclusion, racial justice, climate science, and transsexual. I read through the whole list, trying to imagine its human impact, but I couldn’t—it’s too much, too terrifying, painful and ridiculous. The word women is listed, the word men is not, except for men who have sex with men. I found myself returning several times to word #18 in the first column, between barriers and bias: belong.

Belong. That may well be the keyword for the entire project. The compilers in charge of this list of unmentionables don’t just want to be able to say, “We belong. They don’t.” The new inquisitors want to use the power of government to decree by super-size marker signature who belongs—and who needs to be subsumed, deported, declared non-existent, or otherwise disappeared. It’s terrifying and it’s painful and, yes, it’s too much, from all directions, all at once.

But I can hear Paul singing from prison: Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on. Our citizenship is in heaven. Christ has made us his own, and as he shared with us the body of our humiliation under sin’s dominion, he will also conform us to the body of his glory. Trust the promise of God. Trust the humble way of Jesus. Trust the power of empathy and compassion, and the streams of kindness poured daily into the world by ordinary people waiting and working for God’s reign to come in fullness.

I don’t know if Paul knew the old adage, “They’re so heavenly minded, they’re no earthly good.” He probably didn’t know it, but I’m certain he would push back emphatically if he heard it, and insist that we must indeed be heavenly minded if we are to be any earthly good at all.[6] We are citizens of heaven. Christ has made us his own and sent us as ambassadors in service to God’s reign, with humility and courage. Therefore, stand firm in the Lord in this way, my beloved.

[1] Philippians 1:3-5

[2] See Philippians 3:7-16

[3] Philippians 1:27-28

[4] See Philippians 2:6-11

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/03/07/us/trump-federal-agencies-websites-words-dei.html#

[6] With thanks to Elizabeth Shively https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-in-lent-3/commentary-on-philippians-317-41

Led by the Spirit

Thomas Kleinert

We use ash to mark the beginning of Lent. Ash has long been used as a symbol of grief and repentance. Ash is all that is left when the fire has burned out. The ash we use on Ash Wednesday is what is left of the palm fronds we spread on the ground or waved with joy when we welcomed Jesus and his reign to the city. That bonfire of glad expectation burned out fast, and it’s humbling to realize how short-lived our commitments can be.

We use ash to leave a visible mark on our skin, but the words we hear during the ritual remind us that we are dust, and to dust we shall return. We let ourselves be reminded that we are earthlings—creatures of God, made in the image of God, made from dust. “Being human means acknowledging that we’re made from the earth and will return to the earth,” wrote Richard Rohr. “We are earth that has come to consciousness. … And then we return to where we started—in the heart of God. Everything in between is a school of love.”[1] It is fitting that the words human, humus, and humble all come from the same Latin root, meaning soil. In the second creation account in Genesis, God forms the human being, adam in Hebrew, from adamah—dust of the ground, dirt, soil—and breathes into the earthling’s nostrils the breath of life. We belong to God and to the ground from which God has made us. We belong to creation and to the Creator, and we are to live in ways that honor our deep belongingness to both. With ashes on our foreheads, we humbly remember our humanity. When we forget our deep belongingness to God and to creation, the opposites of humble emerge: we become arrogant, haughty, imperious, pretentious.

According to the story in Genesis, God planted a garden in Eden, and put us in it to keep it. God said, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” Our story doesn’t begin with ashes; it begins with a garden and the human vocation to work and keep this marvel of lush life. One tree God has declared off limits.

You know there’s another voice in the garden, the serpent, more crafty than any other wild animal that God had made. And the crafty serpent doesn’t say much, it only asks a question, “Did God say, you shall not eat from any tree in the garden?” It’s not what God said, but like some crafty podcaster, the serpent is “just asking questions,” sowing seeds of suspicion: “You will not die, for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” God did not tell the whole truth, the voice insinuates, and the relationship between humans and God begins to unravel. We’re meant to be gardeners in Eden, but we wonder if perhaps the other voice has a point… and we eat. When questioned by God, the man blames the woman, the woman blames the serpent, and the serpent is silent. Guilt and fear, shame and blame have entered the scene, and jealousy and violence soon follow. We look around, and nothing, it seems, is the way it’s supposed to be.

There’s that arrogant little man with his dreams of empire who invaded a neighboring country, shelling its cities and killing its citizens, sending hundreds of thousands to die for the dream of greatness. He’s a violent little man, ruling over a house of greed and lies, in alliance with violent little men in Pyongyang and Teheran, and greatly admired by the pretentious little man with the red hat—yes, they are dangerous, but they’re just little men who can think of power only in terms of domination, because they have forgotten that life is a school of love.

The story of the earthling in the garden invites us to consider that the most consequential crack in our very fractured world is the rift in our relationship with God. And with that, we’re also invited to consider that the wholeness of life we all long for begins with the healing of that rift. Haughty little men with dreams of empire will continue to rise, their souls, their imaginations, and their actions utterly out of tune with the humility that goes with being human—they will continue to rise, and perhaps we can learn to recognize them sooner, before they convince so many of us that their violent pomposity is strength.

But the greater task for us is to remember our deep belongingness. We must know and strengthen what connects us. We must nurture what helps us work together. We must seek to live with the courage to love God with our whole and broken selves.

Our faith teaches us to say, “We have sinned. We have not trusted you. Guilt and fear have built their walls around us, and shame has locked the door. Forgive us. Set us free. Take us home.” We learn to say, “I have sinned.” We learn to trust God’s word, “You are forgiven.” And we begin again to live out our belonging to God, to each other, and to creation.

When Jesus was baptized, a voice came from heaven, “You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased.” In the next scene, Jesus is led by the Spirit in the wilderness. Jesus is alone, and he is not. He is filled with the Spirit. And he knows who he is. The voice he heard by the river didn’t mumble. “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”

Jesus enters the wilderness to fast and pray. Forty days of sleeping in caves during the heat of the day. Forty nights of praying under a blanket of stars—just he and his questions and the spirit-companion. Until the hunger pangs come upon him with ferocious need. That’s when he hears that other voice—a friendly voice, concerned, almost caring. “Why are you doing this to yourself? You are the Son of God, why are you sitting on your hands?” This is not the voice from the river. Who or what then is this?

“How about one small miracle for yourself?” the voice whispers. “Come on, help yourself to some bread. Nobody’s watching. It’s just you and me here. Touch that stone and turn it into bread, and eat.” But Jesus doesn’t. He is famished, weak, and vulnerable, but he won’t act in self-serving ways.

He has a vision. He sees all the kingdoms of the world, east and west, north and south, great and small, rich and poor, the ones with just rulers and the ones with self-serving kleptocrats in charge. And he hears that voice again. “I can give all this to anyone I please. Take it. Think of all the good you could do as ruler of the world: end hunger and war, or whatever it is you want. You’ll be in charge. Just show me a little respect.” But Jesus continues to be led by the Spirit.

Then he finds himself in Jerusalem, way up on top of the temple, and there’s that voice again. “You are the son of God, are you not? Show them. Show Jerusalem and the world who you are. Just throw yourself down. It is written, is it not, ‘God will command the angels concerning you to protect you… On their hands they will bear you up so that you won’t dash your foot against a stone…’ Go ahead, jump and let them see you glide down on angels’ wings.”

But Jesus says no. He won’t serve his own interests first. He won’t take advantage of any opportunity to rise to the top by any means. And we won’t manipulate people with publicity stunts. Instead, he chooses to love God with all his heart, soul, strength, and mind. He chooses to honor his deep belongingness to God and to us.

The most consequential crack in our very fractured world is the rift in our relationship with God, and in Jesus’ life the rift has been healed. The final clash of God’s reign and the demonic dominion of the power whisperer happened on the cross. Again Jesus heard the voice suggesting that he use his power for himself. “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one,” some scoffed. Others said, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” And one kept deriding him, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!”[2] He didn’t save himself. He trusted in the faithfulness of God. And raising him from the dead, God affirmed his friendship with sinners, his subversive eating habits, and all his teachings.

The story of Jesus is the story of humanity and God. It is a retelling of our story that begins in Eden, and its healing. Jesus heard the whispers of the other voice as we all do, but he didn’t allow it to sow its seeds of suspicion. He humbly lived out our deep belongingness to God, to each other, and to the earth. In the power of the Spirit, he followed the path of love and obedience, and he bore the full weight of sin: the betrayals, the lies, the torture, the arrogance of the empire builders—all of it. He bore it and trusted God to forgive, redeem, and heal—all of it. Jesus didn’t turn stones into bread, but in the end his entire life was bread—blessed, broken, and shared for the life of the world.

[1] Douglas Kindschi https://www.gvsu.edu/cms4/asset/843249C9-B1E5-BD47-A25EDBC68363B726/grandrapidspress_2017-sep_14_from_the_earth_-_humus_humanity_humility.pdf

[2] Luke 23:35, 37, 39

At the Base of the Mountain

Margie Quinn

Back in my early twenties, I quit my job in Seattle and planned a road trip that I called the “Pilgrimarge.” I spent four months sitting at the feet of pastors, farmers, writers and prophets, asking them how they became who they are, and what holiness means to them. I was in search of Holy People, but I was also in search of Holy Places. I started in Seattle, making my way down the coast of California. I marveled at the holiness of the giant Redwoods tree in Sequoia National Park. I gasped at the gaping majesty of the Grand Canyon. I stood in awe surveying the other-wordly landscape of Badlands National Park. I took in the glory of Niagara Falls in Canada. I ended my trip at Holden Village, a Lutheran Retreat Center in the North Cascades National Park in Washington. Holden is a remote mountain community. In order to get there, you have to drive to a dock at Lucerne, take a boat across Lake Chelan, get on a school bus and drive 11 miles up 9 switchbacks until you start to see chalets dotting a snowy valley. It is about as remote as it gets: no cars, no phones, no noise. 

I got to Holden in February, when the dazzling mountains were capped with snow. I had never seen anything like it. I was supposed to stay for three months, but I ended up extending my time in the village, staying for six months. I loved living in an intentional community, attending nightly chapel, backpacking on the weekends and working as a staff member in the village during the week. That time in my life was, quite literally, a mountaintop experience. I wanted to stay even longer, to defer my acceptance to Duke Divinity and live in the mountains as long as I could get away with, away from the noise. But, a friend sat me down about five months into my time there and told me this: “Margie, there is a phrase we say around here—Holden is a place you leave.” No villager is allowed to live there longer than two years. You can’t stay there, tucked away in the majestic wilderness. Eventually, you have to ride the school bus back down the mountain and enter the real world again. 

I thought about Holden a lot this week as I read our passage, the transfiguration of Jesus. In this story, Jesus heads up the mountain to pray with three of his most trusted disciples, his “inner circle,” if you will. These are the same three disciples who had been with him when he healed the bleeding woman and the daughter of Jairus: Peter, John and James. While Jesus is praying, the appearance of his face changes, just like Moses on Mt. Sinai, and his clothes start to dazzle. Imagine being Peter, James or John, who we find out are really sleepy, weary from all of the travel and ministry they’ve been up to, who look up and see Jesus, an ordinary person who has transfigured into angelic glory. I wonder if they were terrified. 

Jesus meets them in their sleepiness and dazzles them in his glory. Not only does Jesus start dazzling, but two prophets, Moses and Elijah, appear “in glory,” talking to Jesus. The text says that even though the disciples were “weighed down with sleep,” they stayed awake and got to witness this mountaintop experience. 

Of course, Moses and Elijah weren’t planning to stay on the mountaintop with Jesus for very long. They knew that the mountaintop is a place you leave. But while they talked, their subject matter wasn’t of dazzling glory, it was about Jesus’ departure, his crucifixion, as he would soon go down the mountain and start his journey toward Jerusalem. 

Just as Moses and Elijah are leaving, Peter, like many of us probably would, tries to find a way to stay in this moment, to capture the holiness of it. “Hey, wait a minute,” he says, “I packed some tents…what if I go ahead and pitch those and you all stay?” “It’s good for us to be here!” Peter says. “Jesus, no one is grabbing your cloak for healing or begging for food. Our boat isn’t being rocked by a storm, you’re not crawling in tombs to exorcise demons from outcasts, no one is trying to kill you up here, we’re far away from the suffering of the world. Please, Jesus, it is good for us to be here.” 

While Peter proposes his plan, a cloud comes and overshadows them. And, of course, the disciples are terrified as they enter this cloud. Relatable. Then, they hear a voice, “This is my son, my Chosen, (or Beloved), listen to him!” The same voice that speaks during Jesus’ baptism, that calls him beloved at the beginning of his ministry still calls him beloved as he braces himself to come down the mountain and walk toward the cross. “Listen to him,” our God says. That’s the last part of this awe-filled, hard-to-believe, near- to-God, mountaintop experience that we get. Then the cloud passes, the prophets are gone, and Jesus is found alone. In the blink of an eye, we go from dazzling prophets and the booming voice of God to a man standing alone, preparing for the arduous walk to the cross. 

Most people think that this is the end of the transfiguration story. A lot of sermons will stop here this morning. But, this story loses its power if it does not include the moment when Jesus and the three disciples come down from the mountain. This story loses its power if we do not understand the way in which the glory of the mountain is connected to the grit of the valley. As Heidi Neumark writes, “...living high up in the rarified air isn’t the point of transfiguration…It was never meant as a private experience of spirituality removed from the public square. It was a vision to carry us down, a glimpse of unimagined possibility at ground level.” In other words, our God is not one whose glory is reserved for mountaintops and grand canyons and sweeping views and unreachable places. Our God is one who comes down the mountain and gets back to business. 

Back at ground level, Jesus meets a man in a crowd whose only son is sick from an unclean spirit. His son is foaming at the mouth, shrieking and convulsing. “Please, look at him,” the father begs. “Your disciples couldn’t heal him.” Jesus responds, "You faithless and perverse generation, how much longer must I be with you and bear with you?” Pretty harsh words from Jesus. Not so shiny anymore. But, his frustration makes sense to me. He gave his disciples the power to heal the helpless and they failed. Maybe they were too uncomfortable by the state of the boy to heal him. There’s a reason we look away from the sick, the homeless, the ones shrieking and convulsing. That magnitude of suffering can overwhelm us. But Jesus doesn’t look away. He heals the boy. 

And then, (did you catch this?), “All were astounded at the greatness of God.” 

All were astounded at the greatness of God. 

Not because Jesus was shiny and shimmering, no. What’s astounding is that the glory of God’s presence and the pain of a broken world cannot be separated. Grit and glory go hand in hand. God’s greatness didn’t remain on the mountaintop. It wasn’t reserved for just a few men. No, God’s holiness known in Jesus walks down the mountain again and again to be with us in the midst of our suffering, to hold our hand and say, “You are not alone. I will not stay up there forever. I see your pain and I will push through the crowd and remind you that I will never leave you.” 

Church, God reminds us that wonder doesn’t just happen at Niagara Falls or in the North Cascades. Wonder, the greatness of God, can happen in the muck and mire at the base of the mountain, too. We just have to be open to seeing it, to trusting that it’s there. We need no longer climb up to some grand mountain to achieve holiness –it is too busy already reaching into the troubled dirt of our humanity to find us. 

I have been dreaming about Holden Village a lot lately. Wouldn’t it be so nice to escape to the mountains at a time like this, when our marginalized siblings face deportation, joblessness, abandonment from places that swore to protect diversity, equity and inclusion? When my weariness at this broken world threatens to consume me? When nothing feels particularly dazzling or glorious down here in the gray, cold of winter? But, in this season, God reminds me to listen to the one who meets us in our pain and stands in glory. Listen to his hurried footsteps as he heads back down the mountain to meet us where we are. Listen, as he calls us out for turning away from those most in need of healing and presence. 

We worship a God of dazzling glory, yes, and we worship a God who brings that glory to us, meeting us in our suffering and pain, and doesn’t look away. Our God is ready to roll up his sleeves in the dusty valleys of our lives and fulfill the words of the prophet Isaiah: 

Every valley shall be lifted up,

 and every mountain and hill be made low;
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed,    

and all people shall see it together

Amen. 

Mercy now

Thomas Kleinert

Mary sings a tender song with a rough voice.

My father could use a little mercy now
The fruits of his labor fall and rot slowly on the ground
His work is almost over, it won’t be long, he won’t be around
I love my father, he could use some mercy now

Mercy Now, written by Mary Gauthier, was released twenty years ago, almost to the day. “[The song] came to me as a prayer in a time when loved ones and the world around me were sinking into darkness,” she wrote in her autobiography.

My brother could use a little mercy now
He’s a stranger to freedom, he’s shackled to his fear and his doubt
The pain that he lives in, it’s almost more than living will allow
I love my brother, he could use some mercy now

My church and my country could use a little mercy now
As they sink into a poisoned pit, it’s going to take forever to climb out
They carry the weight of the faithful who follow them down
I love my church and country, they could use some mercy now

She sings of people in power who’ll do anything to keep their crown, and I’ve been listening to her a lot through these twenty years. “The song brought catharsis,” she wrote, “and then, unexpectedly, it brought something else. The desperation I’d felt, laced with anger and fear, began to give way to a new calm. I began to feel connected.” She sings, “Every little thing could use a little mercy now, …and life itself could use a little mercy now, …yea, we all could use a little mercy now—I know we don’t deserve it, but we need it anyhow… And every single one of us could use some mercy now.”[1]

In her book, she recalls how ten years ago, Rolling Stone called Mercy Now one of the “Top 20 saddest songs of all time.”

I’m honored to have one of my songs in a Rolling Stone top-twenty-of-all-time poll, but “Mercy Now” is not sad, it’s real. People sometimes cry when they hear it, but if tears come, I think they are tears of resonance; the words provide listeners a witness to their struggle. “Mercy Now” started as a personal song, then it deepened. It became universal.[2]

Tears of resonance. Something utterly real touches your real self, and for a moment you’re no longer shackled to fear, doubt, pain, anger, and desperation—and you get a full taste of sweet mercy and release.

I know many of you are struggling these days. It’s like you’re living inside this surreal fever dream that loudly insists on being all kinds of great and very smart, when all you can see are emotionally and morally stunted men moving fast and breaking things—commitments, norms, laws, and entire institutions, without a care in the world.

Breathe. Pray. Look up. Know who you are. Know whose promise you trust. Know whose life and whose vision for the life of all you want to live. Breathe. Pray. Hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.[3]

In the midst of this chaotic moment we hear Jesus say, “Love your enemies.” He says it twice in today’s passage. And because he knows that we immediately ask, most of us quietly, “What do you mean… LOVE our enemies?”, he adds three more brief statements to help us unwrap the meaning: Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. Keep in mind that “you” in today’s passage, in just about every instance, is plural. Y’all do good to those who hate y’all. These are commands for the whole community of disciples to put into practice, and not just various individuals at the receiving end of hate, violence and abuse. The point is not to create more accommodating victims—meek, silent, and conveniently invisible—but to create a community that cultivates kindness and stands up against hate, violence and abuse with the relentless power of mercy.

When Jesus says, “Do good to those who hate you” he’s not addressing individual black and brown people, queer folk and trans people to figure out  ways to do good to those who hate them—he’s addressing the whole community of believers. He’s telling us to stand together against the reign of hate, and to remind one another that we belong to each other. And then we can talk and strategize about how to remind the haters that they too are beloved.

When Jesus says, “Pray for those who abuse or mistreat you,” he’s not telling individual survivors of sexual abuse or domestic violence to pray for those who have shown no regard for their dignity as persons—he’s addressing the whole community believers. He’s telling us to stand together against lovelessness and against any disrespect for each person’s dignity and sanctity. He’s telling us to be in prayer about how best to protect each other from the trauma of abuse.

Pray for those who abuse you. Bless those who curse you. Do good to those who hate you. The sayings are short and memorable, and they easily take on a life of their own. They float around in the mind and in the culture, and without the ballast of Jesus’ proclamation of good news to the poor, release to the captives, and freedom for the oppressed—without that critical ballast, these sayings turn into destructive pills that only perpetuate piously white-washed systems of domination.

Listen to your mother. Brush your teeth. Wash your hands. Love your enemies. They sound deceptively similar, but the last one doesn’t pretend to be just another bit of parental wisdom. Love your enemies isn’t a bit of memorable advice, passed down from parents to their children, for how to deal with bullies, batterers, and abusers.

Also, cruel advice hardly qualifies as good news. And telling the bullied, the battered, and the abused, “Love your enemy,” that is cruel advice. Saying it may well be the least merciful act imaginable.

Love your enemies. The only one who can say that is the One who did say it. The rest of us need to listen. The only one who can say, Love your enemies, is the One who’s done it. The One who embodied God’s compassion and mercy like no other.  The One who revealed the unfathomable depth of God’s mercy in his whole life and in his death by execution. As Paul reminds us, “Christ died for the ungodly… While we still were sinners Christ died for us… While we were enemies, we were reconciled to God.”[4] Love your enemies is not some pithy adage, short, memorable, made for sharing. Love your enemies is the life of Jesus in three words. It is the revelation of the heart of God.

Miroslav Volf is a theologian from Croatia who has lived and taught in the U.S. for much of his life. In his book, Exclusion and Embrace, he recounts an experience from the winter of 1993. It was at the height of the fighting between Serbians and Croatians in the former Yugoslavia, and Volf delivered a lecture arguing that disciples of Jesus ought to embrace our enemies just as Christ embraced us. After the lecture, a member of the audience asked him if he could embrace a četnik. Četniks were notoriously wicked Serbian fighters infamous for destroying Croatian cities, and rounding up, murdering and raping civilians. For Volf, a četnik stood as the epitome of a real and concrete enemy. Could he embrace a četnik?

“No, I cannot,” he answered after some hesitation, “but as a follower of Christ I think I should be able to.”[5]

“I think I should be able to” describes the direction of his life and his life’s work—toward that impossible embrace. Volf struggles, and how could he not, to fully imagine and live what Jesus and the first Christian witnesses teach: Like me, my enemy is the recipient of God’s love and stands with me at the cross of Christ, both of us together in the embrace of the love that will not let us go.

Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you.  Pray for those who abuse you. These words were not spoken for easy repetition, to be passed on as pious personal advice. The place to hear and ponder them is in the embrace of God’s love. That may be the only place to hear and ponder them. And it is only there that we can even begin to think about living them.

The world says, do to others as they do to you. Jesus teaches, do to others as you would have them do to you. And then he points to the reality in which we already live, in the embrace of God’s love, and he says, do as God does to you: be merciful. And heaven knows, there’s no dearth of realities needing our best, most thoughtful mercy now.[6] Breathe. Pray. Practice mercy.

[1] https://www.marygauthier.com/mercy-now-lyrics

[2] Mary Gauthier, Saved by a Song: The Art and Healing Power of Songwriting, United States: St. Martin’s Publishing Group, 2021.

[3] Hebrews 10:23

[4] Romans 5:6-10

[5] Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 9.

[6] Thanks to Sarah Henrich for this lovely phrase; https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/seventh-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-luke-627-38-2

The Blessings and the Woes

Margie Quinn

I was in seminary when my parents got divorced. Soon after, my sister got divorced, too. And as it happens, it was around this time that I got in a bike accident and suffered a bad concussion. Sometimes, when it rains, it pours. It was just one of those “seasons of suck,” as I call it. 

At that same time, my best friend's life felt like it was receiving blessing after blessing. She got engaged to her high school sweetheart, trained for and ran a marathon, and got a promotion at work. 

When she called me, it felt like she kept sharing blessings with me. When I called her, it was mostly tearful woes. 

To borrow a metaphor from Episcopal Priest Barbara Brown Taylor, it felt like I was at the bottom of the ferris wheel, with the candy wrappers and the sawdust, and she was at the top, swaying with the wind in her hair and all the world’s light at her feet, feeling close enough to touch the stars. 

As the hits kept coming in my own life, I grew increasingly more resentful and jealous of her. Why did she receive so many blessings while I was experiencing the woes and lows of life? How could she possibly show up for me and understand what I was going through when she had never experienced a season of profound suffering? I would never intentionally want her to experience pain, but it felt unfair that she never had. 

I was reminded of this as I read about Jesus giving the “Sermon on the Plain.” That’s what this passage is called. Jesus has just done some miraculous healing, climbed up a mountain to pray, chosen his twelve disciples and in our passage this morning, he comes down the mountain to a plain or, as scriptures puts it, to “a level place” to do some teaching. Most of the people who gathered there wanted to be healed of their diseases, or cured of their mental illness. They were there to touch him and receive relief. They didn’t really come to hear him talk. 

But, Jesus has something to say. He stands on this “level place” with the disciples and the multitude, not on a mountain above them, and speaks plainly. His words are directed at the disciples, but we can imagine that everyone was eavesdropping. 

“Blessed are you who are poor,” he begins, “for yours is the kingdom of God.” “Blessed are you who are hungry, who weep, who are hated and excluded–you will be filled, you will laugh, you will leap for joy.” 

It’s difficult to convey just how radical these words were for the disciples and the crowd. This would leave people stunned, most of whom had never received a divine blessing or any attention at all. 

This is the first chat Jesus gives his crew after he picks them. He introduces them to what life looks like in the kingdom of God. They may have grown up in a world where the hungry and the hated never feel blessed. But Jesus isn’t of that world. He’s a part of a new way of life that flips the world upside down; a way of life where those on the bottom of the ferris wheel don’t stay there, but will experience the wind in their hair at some point. 

The chat doesn’t end there, though. Jesus is a truth-teller and doesn’t shy away from the hard hitting stuff, too. In the same breath that he comforts those on the bottom, he climbs in the seat next to those of us on the top and levels with us:

Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full, for you will be hungry. If you’re laughing now, you will weep. Woe to you when people speak well of you, for that’s what they said about false prophets, too.

Again, I can’t overstate how shocking his words would have been for these people. They would have expected him to offer a blessing to the rich, the well-fed, the higher ups, and woes to the poor, the hated, the hungry. But this is who our God is. Someone unafraid to offer hard truths to those in power. 

One theologian interprets these woes as more of a “yikes” or “be careful!” For those of you at the top of the ride, be careful, a life following me means you don’t stay up there. 

A life with me means you get both: the blessings and the woes. 

In God’s kingdom, there is equity of blessedness and hardship, abundance and suffering; which is honestly freeing to me. It means that in the midst of hurt, when all we can do is weep, Jesus assures us that there will come that day when, perhaps unexpectedly, something will make us laugh. And for those of us who feel an abundance of joy, he promises that we will know pain, too, pain that allows us to embody compassion for others, pain that invites us to experience the full range of human emotion. Maybe that’s why Jesus picked an even number for his disciples: for every man who felt hated one day, there was a man to speak kind words to him. 

There are those of us who hear this passage and don’t trust it. We look around and see more and more people living in poverty, who don’t seem to be getting full. We see more and more of the rich, who don’t take heed of the woes and hoard their wealth. But, “if we take these beatitudes seriously,” Howard Gregory writes, “we go against the grain of the world, and ride against the tide.” When we do our best to trust Jesus’ words, there is a life of gospel freedom waiting for us in which we take care of each other and share what blessings we have. We don’t give into total despair, and we don’t leave our siblings behind who desperately want to be fed. 

Knowing that we will receive both the blessing and the woe doesn’t mean that we get to develop a complacency in our respective seats on the ferris wheel. It means that we do our best to remember that in God’s kingdom, the call to discipleship means taking care of each other. We reach out from our seats and yell from the top, “I have wept, too. I have hungered, too. I have been excluded, too. Let me climb down there and sit with you in the sawdust.” And for those near ground level with our feet stuck in gum, we can look up, remembering that the kingdom promises seasons in our life and the life to come where we will leap for joy. 

My best friend was let go from her job last year. Then, she suffered a miscarriage. She is still dealing with infertility complications and she probably will not carry a baby again. She is at the bottom of the ferris wheel. Someone hit the button on the ferris wheel and we’ve switched places. While she grieves what her life could have been, I celebrate what my life has become. 

So, it can be tempting when I see her in so much pain to reframe her situation, offer empty advice or ignore a phone call because I don’t want to hear her hurt. Then I remember: I worship a God who doesn’t leave anyone behind, but takes the time to meet us in a level place and speak plainly. God rides the ferris wheel with us, in all of our blessings and woes, sawdust and stars. May we do the same for each other. 

Amen. 

Mercy and release

Thomas Kleinert

Could the good bishop have said anything at all even remotely related to the gospel of Jesus Christ without offending the great leader? Clearly, at the solemnities in the magnificent cathedral, her plea for mercy was considered out of place by the perpetually aggrieved man. Will he wait for his third term to assert by executive order his right to install America’s bishops?

“It is astonishing,” James Baldwin wrote, “it is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror.”[1] Truthful mirror is an apt description of the living word of God, and we’re here to remember that no shouts on Truth Social will dim, let alone break, that mirror.

Cole Riley got my attention this past week when she shared her wise observations — on Instagram, of all places.

If you’re feeling a kind of bone-deep, soul-body exhaustion today, please remember that is by design. However futile resistance and goodness and beauty feel today, do not surrender your appetite for them.

She urges me to understand that the overwhelming exhaustion I feel, this deep hunger for goodness and beauty, is at least in part an intentional deprivation, and she insists that I don’t surrender this hunger by numbing it with the endless offerings of the distraction economy. “Do what you need in order to retain possession over your own imagination,” she writes.[2] What I hear her say, is, Be careful whose clips you watch. Be careful whose language you borrow for your thinking and speaking. Be careful whose words and attitudes you allow to enter your inner space — they will shape your world.

Waves of ugliness and lies can be overwhelming, and you may feel like you’re drowning. But remember: beauty and truth can overwhelm you as well, too much to fully take in — so big the waves can be, they bear you up and carry you in the power of the Spirit.

“The heavens are telling the glory of God, and the firmament proclaims his handiwork,” the psalmist declares.

Day to day pours forth speech,

and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth

and their words to the end of the world.

The psalmist knows what it is like when we behold more than we can say, when we run out of words to give voice to wonder and awe.  And so we’re invited to watch the sun rise like a groom coming out of the honeymoon suite and taking a run around the world.

Kathleen Norris used to teach poetry in elementary schools for a few years.

Whenever I gave the kids an assignment — such as, “Write something and compare it to this or that” — they would pour out their heart and soul. I got back some incredible revelations of who these kids were and what their lives were like. Sometimes it was painful. And sometimes it was just glorious. My favorite paper was by one little girl. I have no idea what the assignment was. … It may have been to write about color or nature, I don’t know — I tended to give very open-ended assignments. Well, she wrote down, “The sky is full of blue and full of the mind of God.”

Norris thinks the girl was in fourth grade, and her family was stationed at Minot Air Force Base, “transferred fairly recently from a base in someplace like Louisiana.”[3] A little girl in awe of the North Dakota sky; a young psalmist, practicing the art of praise. Soon, I hope, she discovered, like the psalmists of old, the beauty and truth of God’s torah, divine words that revive the soul, make wise, and gladden the heart, Spirit-breathing words that are enlightening, enduring, true and righteous altogether. Words that tune our hearts to sing God’s praise and be fearless. More desirable than gold they are, sweeter than honey, and in keeping them there is great reward.

Jesus clung to that promise, and with his whole being he lived it for us and our salvation. Luke tells us Jesus was back in Nazareth where they’d known him all his life. They’d heard stories, bits and pieces about his teachings and the wondrous things he’d been doing down in Capernaum and other places by the lake. It was the  Sabbath, and he was in the synagogue as was his custom. He was invited to do one of the readings and teach, and they handed him the scroll of Isaiah. And now all of the Spirit-driven movement of the opening chapters — the back and forth from Nazareth to Bethlehem, back to Nazareth and down to Jerusalem, over to the Jordan and into the wilderness and back to Galilee — all the movement slows down to this moment.

He opens the scroll.

He finds the passage he wants to read.

He begins:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.

He sits down.

The eyes of all in the synagogue are fixed on him, Luke tells us. Everybody wants to know what he has to say. They are eager to hear his teaching. They long for a word to assure them that the ancient promise is still firm, still theirs. They hunger for a word encouraging them not to surrender their hope: that the day of release would come; that captivity and oppression would come to an end one blessed day, and God’s people would live in freedom.

And when Jesus speaks, the first word out of his mouth is “today” — not some day soon, not one fine day, but today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing. Jesus, it turns out, wasn’t merely reading, he was giving his inaugural address. This is who I am. This is what I’m about. This is my mission: Good news for the poor. Release for the captives. Sight for the blind. Freedom for the oppressed. His Sabbath talk was short because his whole life was the teaching and the fulfillment.

Jesus read his kingdom manifesto from Isaiah, but he skipped a line. What’s written in Isaiah is, “to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God” — but Jesus didn’t read that part, and I don’t think he dropped that half-verse by accident, do you? I believe he dropped it because the good news he lives and proclaims is not about vengeance; the good news of Jesus and his church is about mercy and release, it is about our liberation from all that has kept humans from living in the fullness of God’s love.

Sometimes we say the good news of Jesus is about the forgiveness of sins, and it is — as long as we grasp the full scale of our release from our entanglement in sin’s dominion. When Jesus proclaims good news for the poor, he means the poor, and not just “poor sinners.” He looks at his disciples and says, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” He says to those with the means to host big dinners, “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.” He tells the story of a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table. And Jesus calls Zacchaeus down from his tree, and soon the chief tax collector tells him, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.”[4] It’s good news for the poor, because the compassion and mercy of Christ ripple out into all our sin-distorted relationships and bring about justice until we’re all fully disentangled from sin’s dominion.

Yes, compassion and mercy and justice rule — not vengeance. So be careful whose clips you watch. Be careful whose language you borrow for your thinking and speaking. And be very careful whose words and attitudes you allow to enter your inner space — they will shape not only your world, but the one we all share.

“Do what you need in order to retain possession over your own imagination,” writes Cole Riley, and I would love to talk with her about that. I don’t want my imagination colonized by liars and peddlers of fear — I want an imagination fully formed by the beauty and truth of God, an imagination schooled in the company of Jesus and continually shaped by the same Spirit that anointed him.

God’s words instruct us to perceive the beauty and wisdom in which all parts of creation are knit together in mutual belonging. Wendell Berry writes,

We are holy creatures living among other holy creatures in a world that is holy. Some people know this, and some do not. Nobody, of course, knows it all the time.[5]

No, nobody knows it all the time, but the Spirit of God who’s made her home among us knows. The Spirit that anointed Jesus will not cease to inspire and invite us to entrust ourselves to her movement.

When Jesus said, “Today” he meant that very day; and when we hear him say, “Today” he still means today. He’s addressing our hunger, our captivity, our impaired vision, our entanglement in imperial oppression, and he’s come to break our chains, open our eyes, and lead us out.

In the meantime, may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our redeemer.

[1] James Baldwin https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1960/09/this-morning-this-evening-so-soon/658022/

[2] https://www.instagram.com/blackliturgies/p/DFDZn5qOFyo/?img_index=2

[3] https://www.leaderu.com/marshill/mhr07/norris1.html

[4] See Luke 6:20; 14:13; 16:19-31; 19:8

[5] Wendell Berry, “Christianity and The Survival of Creation,” Cross Currents, Summer 1993, Vol. 43, Issue 2.

Keep the Party Going

Margie Quinn
My parents taught me from an early age the importance of dress up. I can remember walking around the backyard during my Dad’s 50th birthday, seeing adults I knew dressed as Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski, Hooters waitresses and some hillbillies. I can’t remember the theme of that particular party…

His 60th was a Casino night, with the women adorned in feather boas and flapper dresses. My Dad and brothers wore spiffy suits with fedoras and drawn-on mustaches. My Dad has dressed up as a wild cast of characters for Halloween: The Queen of Hearts, Gene Simmons from Kiss, the Tin Man and this past year, a bag of “Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.” 

I miss our old “costume closet” (maybe you had one as well), where my friends and I would dig around, putting on old Halloween costumes: a hodgepodge of plastic knight armor and hula skirts and cowboy hats. 

One last example of how much they loved dress up: When I was fifteen, my mom picked me up at school wearing a dalmatian costume. We were going to meet my niece, Gabrielle, at the airport. Gabrielle was about three years old and was obsessed with the movie, “101 Dalmatians.” Naturally, my mom rented a costume to surprise her at the airport, complete with a giant dog head. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that I walked my mom around the airport as people, assuming she had been hired by the airport as some kind of “Welcome Dog,” took pictures with her. When Gabrielle saw my mom, she was not as excited as others, but it’s a story we return to often; the joyful laughter and wild absurdity of the day. 

You could call Jesus’s first act of public ministry wild, too. We find Jesus, his mother, his brothers and disciples at a wedding in a seemingly insignificant place, Cana of Galilee. At some point during the celebration, the wine runs out; which may seem like a simple party faux-pas, but was more likely a family crisis. There was a lot of stigma around families who couldn’t provide enough for their guests. 

Who notices this first but Mary, the mother of Jesus? (Women are always so attentive to party needs, like when Melissa Freeman noticed that we were short on cups at Trunk or Treat this year, and immediately ran out to get more). Anyway, Mary finds Jesus, who seems to be hovering in the background, happy to keep his distance, and lets him know that “They have no wine.” 

In a moment not of rudeness, as one theologian points out, but more of disengagement, Jesus responds, “Woman, what concern is that to you and me?” In other words, “So?” Jesus then tells her that his hour has not yet come. Perhaps he isn’t ready to reveal himself and perform a miracle, knowing that once he does, everything will change. I like to think that Mary’s prompting after noticing a need is the very act that gets Jesus’s ministry going. 

So, for his first miracle, he doesn’t perform an exorcism or offer healing, he simply keeps a party going. In the midst of the crisis, Jesus tells the servants to fill the stone jars with water and in doing so, he provides the equivalent of about 1,000 bottles of wine; and not the boxed wine from the sale section at the grocery store, good wine. Jesus, once again reminds us that his ministry is not just about the quantity of his miracles, like thousands of loaves and fishes or a thousand bottles of wine. It’s also about the quality of them: fresh bread, tasty fish, good wine. 

This, we learn, is what grace upon grace looks like and tastes like: the best wine when you least expect it; abundant joy, when you are afraid there isn’t enough, a reminder of God’s wild, extravagant displays of plenitude and celebration. 

The chief wine steward, (let’s not forget him in this story), doesn’t even know where this wine came from. But Jesus doesn’t need the recognition. The steward tastes it and delights in how good it is. And of course, in true Jesus fashion, this goodness is not just for some of the wedding guests, it is served to everyone. 

I’ll be honest when I say that lately, I have forgotten that Jesus is the source of abundance, sustenance and grace. I have forgotten that Jesus wants to keep the party going. 

Reverend Robert Brearley writes, “Sometimes the church has forgotten that our Lord once attended a wedding feast and said YES to gladness and joy. Our God loves to hear the laughter of people celebrating.” In times such as these, we can forget to live the joy of such a revelation. This sign at Cana tells us that Jesus served a God who infuses life with joy, who thinks it’s worth a miracle to keep the party going as we celebrate each other. 

Brearley continues, “God does not want our religion to be too holy to be happy in.”

God doesn’t want our religion to be too holy to be happy in. In other words, we need to stop taking ourselves so seriously and look for the moments where we can gather joyfully as a body of Christ and celebrate that fact that in our faith, life triumphs over death and that weeping may come for a night but joy comes in the morning. 

We host such events of joy here. At Trunk or Treat in October, we transform from regular churchgoers to dinosaurs and witches and hippies. We host a Harvest Luncheon in November, where we do our best to answer pop culture trivia as we feast on Cracker Barrel, offering the leftovers to our friends at Room in the Inn. At the Festival of Cakes coming up next month, we turn the Fellowship Hall into a mardi gras celebration as our youth auction off cakes for their summer trip. We always have leftover cake to share with each other because there is always more than enough at Jesus’ parties. At the Pride parade in June,  we walk down a busy street with our fellow Disciples, handing out stickers and dancing around, celebrating love in all of its forms. 

In the midst of so much political turmoil and senseless violence, it will not do our souls well to live in fear for the road ahead. Jesus reminds us of that by inviting us to choose JOY so that we have sprinkles of celebration and abundance to guide our feet for this long haul work. 

So, it is important that we, as a church, remember how Mary gets Jesus’ ministry going. He swings into action, prompted by his mom, to keep the party going in Cana. He determined that it was time after all for the water to be turned into wine, all so a wedding feast could continue. What a way for Jesus to begin his public ministry in John’s gospel! 

In the past few years, I have been Marge Simpson and Wilson, the volleyball from “Castaway.” I have been Dumbledore and Yzma from
“The Emperor’s New Groove.” At the Pride parade, I wear feathers and beads, doing my best to channel our beloved Gayle, who is a weekly reminder of our faithful commitment to celebrate this Joy to the World in Jesus. I have dressed up as a washer machine at Trunk or Treat and provided bubbles for every camper at our Fall Retreat at Bethany Hills Camp. I do this as a reminder to others as much as to myself that I am invited to participate in the playfulness of the Christian life, joining Jesus in the Great Abundant Party, a foretaste of the resurrection. 

When I moved over the holidays, I got rid of a lot of stuff. But, I couldn’t get rid of my costume bin, even though that thing is getting heavy. I will continue to schlep that thing around no matter how many times I move, adding tutus and wigs to it in order to keep the party going. May my faith and yours never be too holy to be happy in. 

Hallelujah! 

But now

Thomas Kleinert

There was a time when you were only known as “the baby.” Your parents, your siblings, really anyone who dreamed or knew about you — they only spoke of you as “the baby.” They spoke with joy, certainly, and with anticipation and hope, but you were still just “the baby,” a tiny mystery of a person. Depending on the year of your birth or how much confidence your parents had in blurry ultrasound images, they may not even have known if you were a boy or a girl, or if there were more than one of you.

At some point during the pregnancy, your family started making lists of possible names for “the baby;” girls’ names, boys’ names, names that aren’t gender specific. They may have listed grandparents, aunts and uncles, best friends and favorite characters, names that would go well with the family name or start with the same letter as your siblings’ first names, or names that capture courage, kindness, or whatever other trait they hoped you would embody. And as the due date drew closer, the list got shorter. Eventually the moment came when they looked at you and they just knew what your name was going to be, and they spoke it. For the very first time, you were called by your name. You were no longer just “the baby,” you were somebody.

Mary and Joseph didn’t start with a list. The angel told Mary, according to Luke, “You will name him Jesus,” and according to Matthew, it was Joseph who was told by an angel, “You are to name him Jesus.”[1] So that was settled months before Mary even started to show.

The two readings we heard today are powerful, beautiful affirmations of identity, and in each, God is speaking in the first person singular, addressing somebody directly, through the voice of the prophet or a voice from heaven.

“I have called you by name,” says the creator-of-you, Jacob, the shaper-of-you, Israel, “You are mine.”

“You are my beloved son, I delight in you,” says the voice from heaven to Jesus, who’s just been baptized and anointed with the Holy Spirit for his mission.

I love that we get to hear these words of affirmation at the beginning of the year, this year in particular, when we mustn’t forget who and whose we are, and who it is we follow on the way to God’s reign.

Isaiah gives us exuberant poetry, addressed to a people stuck in desolation. In Isaiah’s message, the Babylonian exile is described as a punishment, or at least a consequence, of the people’s failure to honor God’s commandments, God’s torah, God’s instruction for faithful living. God, says Isaiah, turned away from them. God gave up Jacob to the spoiler, and poured upon him the heat of this anger and the fury of war; but [Jacob] did not take it to heart. Isaiah vividly describes the exiles as a people robbed and plundered, all of them trapped in holes and hidden in prisons. They are sinking in hopelessness, and there’s no one to rescue. There’s no one, says Isaiah, to say, “Restore!”[2] No one.

And in that desolate landscape of devastating silence, Isaiah stands and proclaims the new word, the word of the One who makes all things new. “But now,” shouts Isaiah — now there is someone to say, “Restore!” Now God speaks the new word declaring an end to judgment and captivity, and the promise of homecoming rises like a song in the morning.

Oh, we’ve heard the prophet tell us of the Lord, who created the heavens and stretched them out, who spread out the earth and what comes from it, who gives breath to the people upon it and spirit to those who walk in it,[3] but now he speaks of us, he speaks of God’s people and who we are:

Thus says the Lord, the One who created you, O Jacob, who formed you, O Israel: Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine.

Rise up, stand up, remember who you are. Remember, you have been created, shaped, called, claimed and redeemed for a purpose: you are the children of Abraham and Sarah, countless as the stars — I have called you by name; you are mine, the people whom I formed for myself so that they might declare my praise.[4]

In Isaiah’s proclamation, the Creator of heaven and earth speaks to God’s people “like a lover,” as Anathea Portier-Young put it, “whose heart is bursting, who has waited an eternity just to say their name.”[5] And the Holy One of Israel will do all that is necessary to secure their release and homecoming. Why?

Because you are precious in my sight and honored and I love you.

These words are spoken first and foremost and irrevocably to the Jewish people who have lived as people of the promise since the days of Abraham and Sarah. And we are invited to hear them addressed also to us, to all whom Jesus Christ has embraced as his siblings, all who pray with him for the coming of God’s reign, all who follow him on the way and enact with him at his table “the great ingathering of God’s beloved from all of God’s creation.”[6] For the end will be what God has spoken from the beginning: the feast of life when all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well. In the company of Jesus, we dare to hope that when God says “everyone” it means everyone: everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made. Home from our exiles, all of us scattered ones who forget so easily.

Today we celebrate that Jesus gets in the water with us. It may seem counterintuitive to step into the river of repentance when the oceans are rising and powerful storms are flooding the land. But when fires rage bigger, faster, and hotter than anytime on record, stepping into the river of repentance feels like the saving proposition it is. Today we celebrate the gift of this river, and that Jesus steps into it with us, not because he needs to, but because he wants to. He wants to be where we are, so we can be where he is. We step into the river of repentance with our sins and regrets, our guilt and shame and fear, and we pray that like water, grace is washing it all away, until we are who we were made to be, until we know who we are.

And Jesus steps into that very river in deep solidarity with us — and he drowns in it, drowns in our sin, in our helpless brokenness, in our fear and ready violence, in all the heavy lovelessness we carry. All of it. Drowns in it.

And you’ve heard the story, you know he rises, and you know the heaven is opened and the Holy Spirit descends, but now the voice from heaven speaks, and he hears it, he knows it, and he only hopes that we hear it too:“You are my Son, the Beloved, in whom I delight.” He knows this; this is the song in his heart. He hopes we hear the words as addressed not only to him, but to all of us.

In Luke’s narration of the gospel, the scene by the river is followed by a lengthy genealogy: name after name, generation after generation, the whole long line that makes Jesus who he is, going back all the way to Adam and Eve — but the voice from heaven has already declared who he is, has already spoken his true name.

We are all deeply shaped by our ancestors and what they have done and left undone, by the legacy of their dreams and the pain of their trauma, but Jesus reveals who we are: God’s beloved in whom God delights. This relationship is the one that shapes and heals and fulfills all the others that make us who we are.

God’s love for us is the one relationship in life we can’t screw up. We can deny it, sure; we can ignore it, neglect it, forget it, and run away from it, but we cannot end it. Nothing we do or refuse to do will change who we are: God’s own, God’s beloved, God’s delight.

Often we forget. We may forget because we’re busy making a name for ourselves. We may forget because others have convinced us that we are not worthy of love, too insignificant for any kind of attention. We may forget because pain and shame have buried our sense of self as God’s own.

What are we to do about our forgetfulness? We follow Jesus, he’ll remind us. We pray, and at least occasionally we let God do all the talking. And again and again we gather at the homecoming table for the feast of life, the great ingathering of God’s beloved from all of God’s creation.

There was a time when you were only known as “the baby.” Yet long before anyone would think of what to call you, God named you: God’s own, God’s beloved, God’s delight.

Do not fear, for I am with you, says the Lord. I will bring your offspring from the east, and from the west I will gather you. I will say to the north, Give them up, and to the south, Do not withhold. Bring my sons from far away and my daughters from the end of the earth — everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.

[1] Luke 1:32; Matthew 1:21

[2] See Isaiah 42:22-25

[3] Isaiah 42:5

[4] Isaiah 43:21

[5] Anathea Portier-Young https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/baptism-of-our-lord-3/commentary-on-isaiah-431-7

[6] Walter Brueggemann, Isaiah 40-66 (WBC), 54.

What is Your Word?

Margie Quinn

A few weeks ago, I told a story at the communion table that I’d like to share again. It’s one that Anne Lamott claims she tells her Sunday school kids every year, and of which they never tire, though she thinks that has something to do with her weekly distribution of snacks. 

“A young girl is having a hard time falling asleep one night,” Anne recounts, “and calls out for her mother. Her mother comes in and gently tucks her in again and assures her that Jesus is there in the room with her, so she needn’t be afraid. This goes on and on, each time the increasingly annoyed mother saying basically the same thing until finally, in the dark, the little girl says plaintively, “I need someone with skin on.” 

“This,” Anne writes, “ is the main instruction I would leave my family in my swag bag of spiritual truth: be goodness with skin on. 

Be goodness with skin on. 

All four gospels begin very differently. Matthew, our resident historian, starts with an account of the birth story that begins with a breakdown of Jesus’ family tree. Mark, our energizer bunny, jumps right into describing our locust and honey-eating friend, John the Baptist, who is already running around in the wilderness and baptizing people. Luke, Mr. Justttt Right, tells us that he has decided, after investigating everything carefully, to write an orderly account of what happened regarding the birth of Jesus (which he does very comprehensively). And John, our final gospel author and resident artist, (you know the type– one walking around in the woods and pointing at beautiful lichen or intricate flower pattern, waxing poetic on life’s beauty), begins his gospel like this: 

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.” 

Such a poet. 

“All things came into being through him and, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” 

Isn’t he a beautiful writer? Isn’t it all just a little hard to follow? Which is why we should lean in a little closer and bask in his telling. John goes on to describe Jesus as the true light, who enlightens everyone, who is in the world even though the world doesn’t always know him, who has the glory of someone full of grace and truth. 

Light. Glory. Grace. Truth.  

Those are nice words, words we have heard a lot in the church. But I find myself, like the young girl calling out for her mother, needing words with skin on. Luckily, John tells me that this is exactly what happened with the Word: It became flesh and lived among us. 

The word went from being this intangible light, glory, grace and truth to embodying them in the three or so decades he had with us. The Word became goodness with skin on. 

Jesus embodied Light by going into dark caves to heal people that everyone else had given up on. He embodied Glory through his resurrection, triumphing over sin and evil. He embodied Grace, washing the feet of friends who would deny him, abandon him, and betray him. And he embodied Truth, fighting the systems of power that spread lies of scarcity while he showed us a more honest way to live. 

That’s all well and good, Jesus being these big words with flesh on, but what does this have to do with us? Is Jesus the only one who gets to embody these lofty words? 

Episcopal Priest and author Barbara Brown Taylor says this: 

“Almost everyone has a word that he or she has a gift for bringing to life. For one person the word is ‘compassion.’ For another it is ‘justice.’ For someone else the word is ‘generosity.’ For another it is ‘patience.’ 

Until someone acts upon these words, they remain abstract concepts–very good ideas that few people have ever seen. The moment someone acts on them, the words become flesh. They live among us, so we can see their glory.”

I love this. Everyone has a word that we have a gift for bringing to life. When we act on these words, they go from being swirly concepts to being goodness, or patience, or justice…with skin on. 

Last night, I asked my boyfriend, Collin, what my word was.. He said “open-hearted.” That was very nice of him. My friend Mariah says that I am a “Walking-Exclamation-Point.” That’s three words but I’m hyphenating. I’d like to think I have a few other words, maybe “authenticity” or “humor,” or as my nephew called me once when I chopped all of my hair while living in Seattle, “Cool Uncle.” I think, I hope, I bring these words to life. 

At my sister-in-law, Tallu’s, funeral, her dear friend, Priest Scott Owings, shared what he viewed as Tallu’s “God-Word.” “Her God-Word was Bread,” he said. She was good at baking it, breaking it and sharing it. She nourished people with it and fed them, which became her life’s calling, starting the “Nashville Food Project” to grow, cook and share delicious food with our community. “Bread” is a word that Tallu made come to life. 

After Eva’s funeral yesterday, I wondered if her word might be “Flower,” not only because she loved them, or because she smelled good, but because she made everything more colorful and more beautiful. She bloomed when she saw you. What a good word to embody. 

Open-hearted. Bread. Flower. These are nice words. Sometimes though, we don’t love the words we embody. As we enter the New Year, I can already feel myself starting to put skin on words like “Busy” or “Weary” or “Hopeless.” In those moments, I wonder if it’s most helpful to ask the people who love us what our word is. 

What’s your word? What abstract concept do you bring to life simply by being who you are? 

Perhaps Vine Street also has a word it embodies. Perhaps we are “Music” with skin on. Or “Service.” Or “Welcome.” What do you hope our word could be this year? What are the words you hope visitors from our church leave with? It is never too late for us as a church to bring one of God’s life-giving words to life. 

In the final verses of this passage, John claims that no one has ever seen God, but in Jesus, we have. We have seen God with skin on. We have seen a man who took these abstract words like grace, truth, glory and light and embodied them so that we may have a better idea of how to be those things ourselves. And at a time when many people feel like the young girl who has a hard time falling asleep, who needs someone with skin on, we get to be witnesses,  as John the Baptist said, “to testify to the Light made known in Jesus.” We testify to his light not  just by talking about or reading about him, but by living like him. Out loud. Embodied. With skin on. 

This New Year, I’m not making a list of resolutions or goals. I’m just going to try to be goodness with skin on. And, like St. Francis of Assisi encouraged, I’m going to try to “preach the gospel at all times, and when necessary, to use words.” 

After the service, ask someone who loves you what your word is. Tell me, or Thomas, or write it on a notecard and stick it on your mirror. Let’s live life out loud, embodying these abstract words by making them real, fleshy, and present. 

May it be so. 

Now what?

Thomas Kleinert

We have heard the story and told it, the story of God and the baby. We have sung the old carols and hummed along with the holiday playlists. We have lit the candles, lots of candles held high as a witness to the light that shines in the darkness, defiantly hopeful that the darkness will not overcome it.

We have celebrated the birth of Jesus, and in many homes the days revolved around a big dining table, surrounded by people of all ages, in a sea of torn wrapping paper — gifts, smiles, thank-yous, and an abundance of good food and holiday cheer. Some of us even missed the half-time show with Beyoncé. All because of the wondrous story of God and this baby. Now what?

“Well, so that is that,” says the narrator in W. H. Auden’s Christmas Oratorio,

Now we must dismantle the tree,

Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes—

Some have got broken—and carrying them up to the attic.

The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,

And the children got ready for school. There are enough

Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week—

Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,

Stayed up so late, attempted—quite unsuccessfully—

To love all of our relatives, and in general

Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again

As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed

To do more than entertain it as an agreeable

Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,

Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,

The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.[1]

How very grown-up this voice sounds. How little room it leaves for wide-eyed wonder. “Once again,” the voice declares with a regretful tone, “once again, as in previous years, we have seen the actual Vision – and failed to do more than entertain it as an agreeable possibility; once again we have sent Him away.”

I think it’s a little early for Auden’s reflective earnestness, though, and you and I wouldn’t be here on the first Sunday after, if the light of that night had not started a little fire in our hearts. So here are, just for contrast, the words of Sharon, as told by John Shea:

She was five, sure of the facts, and recited them with slow solemnity, convinced every word was revelation. She said, “They were so poor they had only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to eat and they went a long way from home without getting lost. The lady rode a donkey, the man walked, and the baby was inside the lady. They had to stay in a stable with an ox and an ass … , but the Three Rich Men found them because a star lighted the roof. Shepherds came and you could pet the sheep but not feed them. Then the baby was borned. And do you know who he was?” Her quarter eyes inflated to silver dollars. “The baby was God.” And she jumped in the air, whirled around, dove into the sofa and buried her head under the cushion, which is the only proper response to the Good News of the Incarnation.[2]

The good news of the incarnation is a lot to take in. For five-year-old Sharon it takes careful retelling, and she can’t tell it without jumping and whirling around, and then some sofa-diving. She knows what an awesome thing it is to say, “The baby was God.” It changes profoundly how we think about God, heaven and earth, sun and moon and stars, and every baby born into this world where rich men rarely come bearing gifts without an agenda and wise men and women are worried. The Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory, and he has changed everything. The baby was God, and all the possibilities we see in the eyes of the infant unfolded into the particular life of Jesus.

Jesus is our childhood’s pattern, 

Day by day like us he grew.

He was little, weak and helpless, 

Tears and smiles like us he knew.

Thus he feels for all our sadness, 

And he shares in all our gladness.[3]

Luke’s story of the 12-year-old Jesus in the temple is the only incident in the biblical gospels about the life of Jesus between infancy and the beginning of his ministry as an adult. “Jesus is twelve years old, a signal to the original audience,” writes Wesley Allen, “that he is on the cusp of adulthood as defined in the ancient world … His actions on this occasion, then, foreshadow his ministry and especially his relationship with God.”[4] Just as the adult Jesus will make one trip to Jerusalem on Passover, where he will encounter the teachers in the temple and finally give his life in obedience to God’s will, so the boy Jesus, near the end of his childhood, makes one trip to the temple, on Passover, where he encounters the teachers. To his family, he appears to be lost, but he knows he is exactly where he needs to be. It’s not hard to imagine him sounding just like any sassy pre-teen in this scene. "Why were you searching for me?” he says to his parents. “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?" Day by day like us he grew, and he grew into his own. But isn’t it a little early to think about 12-year old Jesus just four days after Christmas Day? Doesn’t it feel a little rushed?

I don’t own a Christmas sweater. Several years ago, though, I picked up a pair of Christmas socks at Target. Black, with little green Christmas trees and a fat, jolly Santa. Every year, I wear them once, maybe twice, and then they go in the laundry basket and eventually back in the far back of the sock drawer until next year.

Why am I talking about Christmas socks? Because they fit the category of seasonal accessory, and because the wonderful passage from Colossians talks about getting dressed. The baby was God. The Word became flesh. We have seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus. Now what?

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

The baby was God, and with the Magi from the East and Sharon’s Three Rich Men we come to adore him and to offer our gifts—only to discover that Christmas is a reverse baby shower: new threads for us.

Three-year-old Liam got Batman sheets for Christmas, and he may still wear his Spiderman pyjamas, but he’s outgrowing his Paw Patrol undies. He’s a big boy now.

We’re invited to let ourselves be clothed in layer upon layer of all that Jesus embodies—his compassion and kindness, his humility and patience, his forgiveness, his peace, and above all, the fullness of God’s love he enfleshed.

Your Christmas sweater may already be back in the closet until next year, together with the left-over wrapping paper and all the decorations in the attic. But the birth of Jesus isn’t just about decorations, it truly is about God’s incarnation: the complete enfleshment of God’s fullness in a human being. We know Jesus didn’t come so we could have a day or two or three of merriment and memories—beautiful and life-giving as such days are. He came to reclaim and fulfill all our days. He came to free us from sin, from our self-absorption and greed, and from the ugliness of thought and speech that holds us captive. He came to bind us together for good in the love of God. And you know how much this land and every land needs communities of compassion and people who seek to make room in their hearts and their neighborhoods for the peace of Christ to rule. It begins with you and me and our willingness to wear these new clothes year-round. It begins with our willingness to let the word of Christ not just come and visit, but dwell within and among us.

The baby was God, and I am thankful for Sharon who gives voice to an exuberance that can’t contain itself and calls on heaven and earth, sun and moon and all living things to praise the One who loves all things into being.

The baby was God, and I am thankful also for Auden whose narrator gives voice to the shadow experience of this exuberance:

Once again we have attempted—quite unsuccessfully—to love all of our relatives, and in general grossly overestimated our powers.

But even this very grown-up and somber voice of after-Christmas pensiveness points to our child-like dependence on the One who comes to us in the baby.

Once again, as in previous years, … we have sent Him away, begging though to remain His disobedient servant, the promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

We know Jesus came to reclaim and redeem our every day. We have sent him away, again and again, because the love that found us demands so much of us, and we are slow to change. But “begging … to remain His disobedient servant” we wrap ourselves in Christ’s compassion, kindness, and patience, and we get a little closer to wearing them year-round.

May the fire God has kindled in our hearts burn brightly, bright enough for us to trust that even though we “cannot keep His word for long,” the word enfleshed in Jesus keeps us for good.

[1] For the Time Being, in: W. H. Auden, Collected Poems, ed. Edward Mendelson (New York: Vintage International, 1991), 399.

[2] John Shea, The Hour of the Unexpected (Allan, TX: Argus Communications, 1977), 68.

[3] Cecil F. Alexander, “Once in David’s Royal City,” Chalice Hymnal No. 165.

[4] O. Wesley Allen Jr. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/first-sunday-of-christmas-3/commentary-on-luke-241-52-5